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Christ the King
Sermon by Sandra M. Thomas November 26, 2006, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Jeremiah 23:1-6 Luke 1:68-79
We don’t often have the luxury of this Sunday between Thanksgiving and the beginning of Advent. It seems lately that we don’t often have the luxury of an ordinary Sunday – but here we are! Before you settle back and contemplate your shopping list – let me remind you that in the church year this is the last Sunday of the Year. And the church ends the year ends with fireworks, majesty, and awe celebrating Christ enthroned as King of Kings, sovereign lord of the universe. Today we look up in wonder and joyful worship before plunging into the pre-dawn darkness of Advent next Sunday. Today’s scriptures offer us something to hold onto; a message to remember on to as we step into the [Christian] year ahead. In our secular world, the year ends with evaluation, letting go, revelry, and drinking oneself unconscious. Soon television journalists will begin formulating their stories about 2006 naming the most outstanding leader; the biggest scandal, the best movie, the top ten songs, listing those who “made sports history” or created waves in the entertainment world; the ten best dressed, the ten worst; the top ten news stories; the tragedies, the victories. At the end of the calendar year we look to those who “made it to the top” and those who shrivel in second, third, fourth place. The church year ends with us looking at only One….and perhaps even asking….not “Are you number one?” but “Number One, are you King? – Or in what way are you King of Kings? We believe in God but the question lingers -- Is it safe to trust, to count on you Almighty God, as the one who is in charge around here? Most days it seems like chaos reigns, not God. Baghdad, Parkinson’s, stray bullets, political hypocrisy, Palestine-Israel, junk mail-spam, germ warfare and bird flu, children ruling families, families grasping for a moment together, workers that can’t read, bosses that don’t care, money flying across store counters, crowds pushing neighbors to the ground for Wiggle me Elmo?, hit and run drivers, medicine closet addicts. When all we see around us is cruelty, chaos, and craziness, how is it that we say “Christ is King”? Only with wild hope and stubborn faith. In the Reformed tradition we find our hope and faith reinforced by our sure knowledge of how the story ends. God’s kingdom will come and God’s will, will be done on earth as in heaven – someday, someday soon. Life in the meantime is a matter of perspective. We journey in wild hope and stubborn faith. John Shea tells about a “perspective experience” he had while traveling by plane between speaking engagements. He took his seat and across the aisle a mother had taken the window seat and her little daughter had a baby doll in the center seat and she herself has taken the aisle seat. Once the plane achieved flying altitude and seat belt signs went off, the mother said “Jennifer – come over and sit in my lap. Look outside at the clouds.” Jennifer obediently slide across to her mother’s lap and looked out the window and down at the clouds. Immediately she burst into loud sobs, panicking “We’re upside down! We’re upside down!” Her mother tried to calm her, assuring little Jennifer that the plane was not upside down – it was above the clouds. But the sobs continued. The stewardess came with the soul of logic and said –“Jennifer, when you are in an airplane, you go up in the air, over the clouds. So you see we’re not upside down. We’re right side up.” Having no success Jennifer’s mother then tried “The clouds are upside down, not us.” To which Jennifer replied, her sobs deepening. “We’re upside down! We’re upside down!” It all made sense to John Shea. This little kid has been standing on the ground looking up at the clouds all her life. Now she is over the clouds looking down. Naturally she feels upside down. Jennifer’s mother was losing patience and resorted to discipline “Jennifer – you’re bothering other people – be quiet!” At which time, John leaned over to the little girl and said, “Jennifer, you are upside down.” (Jennifer looked at him in grateful recognition) “But it’s OK. It’s OK.” And Jennifer moved over to sit next to him. We journey through life with such limited experience and perspective. We are children in our ability to see and like the children of Israel we have been set free to live and move and have our being in a wilderness of thirst, famine, conflict, struggle, sickness, whining, and rioting. Can we see behind the next headline? Rarely! Do we know how God is acting in our world? Rarely! But we live on in wild hope and stubborn faith. Remember Abraham – of whom it is written in Hebrews 11 – in stubborn faith obeyed when God called him to leave his own country without knowing where he was going – to live as a foreigner in the country that God had promised – waiting for the city which God had designed and built. He died with wild hope and stubborn faith – although he did not received the things God had promised, but from a long way off – saw them With stubborn faith Moses left Egypt without fear -- but did not march from Egyptian slavery directly into the Promised Land. He and those who followed suffered relentlessly, year after year; having endured the plagues God sent upon Egypt; rushed into wilderness with only what they could carry; they found themselves living as vagabonds for an entire generation. Likewise, Sarah, Hannah, David, Samuel, Mary, John, Augustine, Francis, Luther, learned to fiercely cling to hope when there was no obvious rational way that God could bring good out of the situation. All these and so many other refused to let go of the hope within and the faith they had received when life was tough. We are gradually losing a generation of those who lived through Great Depression and witness to an ability to endure and even thrive when all evidence stood to the contrary…..It’s time for generations that follow to learn how to live each day with wild hopes and stubborn faith – in certainty that God reigns and our end is certain.
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