Christ the King Sunday

November 21, 2004

Colossians 1: 11-20

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

I am so glad to be back home.

I was away for ten days in the grace filled power of a Benedictine monastery.

I was away for ten days, immersed in the rhythm of life in religious community. I was gathered with thirty clergywomen and some forty Benedictine nuns and together we prayed the psalms, shared silence and opened our hearts to the mystery of God. At least three times a day we did this work of prayer. We also laughed to the point of pain and learned to the point of stretching but in the midst of the laughter and stillness there was a center, a deep Beyond that held us.

I experienced the soul filling good of being still and knowing that God is God and I am creature and the power and blessing of Jesus Christ is alive and inviting me, poor flawed human that I am, into life lived fully in the embrace of God.

I had a lot of time to think and lift before God the questions of my heart. I had tucked some of my questions and sorting away for the expanse of time I knew awaited me on retreat.

In the stillness of that place, I unpacked my worried heart.

The recent national election was such an intense time of political wrangling, much of it couched in moral and theological language. I had sorting to do.

As I was in prayer, one of the images that would not leave me was the red and blue map flashed across television screens on Election Day. The divide between our nation spoken of endlessly by the news commentators and known well in questioning places in our hearts.

I wondered at the way fear has been used as prod in shaping our public policy. Fear as the winnowing fork that has been used to sift the worthy, who somehow deserve the fat of the land, from the unworthy, who somehow deserve the struggle of having even the most basic of needs met.

I wondered about how it is I ought respond as a Pastor called to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I thought much about this Sunday, which in the church year is called Christ the King Sunday. What does it mean to preach and pray and follow the teachings of a savior whom we claim as king in a culture which daily crucifies the Body of Christ as it is enfleshed in the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless and the invisible?

I am struck by the tension of being called to consider what it means to name Jesus as King. I balk at using a political term for Jesus, because I feel like the Jesus I discern in Scripture and seek to follow in my life has been co-opted by political voices using the name of God to preach a gospel I do not recognize as grace.

But Christ the King Sunday was designated in 1925 to name just this tension. The feast day was instituted to remind us that the reign of Christ should be felt not only in our private lives. The reign of Christ must be felt and lived in the public domain as well.

I do not speak as a Republican or a Democrat on this day. The Sojourners movement out of Washington DC, a non-partisan justice movement grounded in the teachings of Jesus puts it best: God is not a Democrat or a Republican.

I speak longing for us to know of the power of Jesus Christ to transcend any sort of ridiculously small bins we want to sort ourselves into. I speak as a preacher who is heartbroken, and I will admit, furious about the way that the good news of Jesus Christ has been manipulated for political purposes.

The text I read this morning was an early hymn of the church, written to a community that was losing sight of the supremacy of the Jesus vision. The writer was likely a disciple of Paul who wants to make it very clear to his readers that nothing holds more sway in their lives than the power, action, and presence of Jesus. He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together. In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things. Even me, even you. Democrat, Republican, rich, poor, young, old, jaded, hope crazed. We are bound by a vision greater than our fractured selves.

We are held together in Christ.

As I sat in prayer, seeking a sense that there was a way to reconcile the blues and the reds and those relieved by the election and those dejected by the election, it occurred to me that there is a King, a higher power present in this fear soaked world in which we live. And that King and the teachings he gave his life up to bring to us have the power to lead us to the way of reconciliation.

Because the costs of fracture keep mounting: the earth and lives desecrated by a world in which fear is King.

There is a story from the tradition of the Desert fathers and mothers, the long ago folk who first began the monastic movement some five hundred years after the death of Jesus.

There was a monastery in a community that was enclosed, but with enough sight lines into it that passersby could see that they had a well-tended orchard, a crew of monks who were usually busy at tasks, and an almost palpable hum of energy over the monastery.

After passing by for a number of weeks and growing increasingly intrigued and curious about the life that went on within the walls of the religious community, a townsman summoned up the courage to knock on the door of the monastery.

When the Abbot came to the door, the visitor was able to ask the question that had been prompted in him every time he walked by.

“What do you DO in there?” He asked.

“Well,” said the Abbot. “We fall down, and we get up again. We fall down, and we get back up again. We fall down, and we get back up again. And that is what we do in here.”

It is that way in life.

Each one of us. We fall down. We fall short, we make mistakes, we think small, we are afraid, we hurt each other.

And we pay attention well enough to know that we don’t want to stay in that place of pain, so we get back up again and pray to God for the wisdom and the power of Jesus to walk with us and we try again the best we can to live into a life where the teachings of Jesus are King.

And we fall again. And get back up again.

It is that way in life for us as a nation. We fall. We fall short. We make mistakes, we think small, we are afraid, we hurt other peoples.

And we pay attention enough to know that we don’t want to stay in that place of pain so we get back up and turn to the teachings and presence that claim supremacy in our lives and we go on.

And, thank the goodness of God; it is that way for us as faith community. The so many some ones who drive past our church on their way to Bachman’s or to work or to soccer practice and who might summon the courage to venture in to ask: what goes on in there?

We would say to them: we fall, and we get up, we fall, and we get up, we fall and we get back up again.

Because we are human people who believe that it is Jesus the Christ who holds us in our brokenness and who leads us into fullness of life and we have each other to hold onto when we feel like getting back up again is maybe not going to happen this time because we are hurting so badly.

We have each other and our God to call us to get back up again when our cancer is diagnosed our or parents fade and die or our children are challenging or our souls feel shriveled and dry or our marriage is struggling or our heart is broken by the pain of national events or our dreams are faltering.

We have in this place a community of people who come together week after week after week to proclaim a vision for life grounded in grace and compassion. We don’t agree on many things, but we do agree that we have in this place a community of people who know that our call is to learn from Christ and each other and go out from this place with the touch of Christ and it is THAT call beyond any other that will ground our passions and hopes.

We will dedicate your pledges this morning. Your commitment to the vision of Jesus the Christ as it is unfolded through this, your church. We will use the gifts you share: your prayers, your presence, your unique flawed glorious humanity, your money, and your sense of God’s calling.

And we will fall down. And we will remind each other of the something bigger that is the presence and teaching of Jesus Christ. And we will get back up again.

Thanks be to God.

Amen