Trinity Episcopal Church
Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Proper 29 - Christ the King
November 26, 2006
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2 Samuel 23:1-7
Psalm: 132:1-18
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37
Collect of the Day
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 74 th General Convention of the ECUSA
Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:33-37)
The Relationship King
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop
Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to describe something without resorting to metaphor or analogy? This is especially true of human actions or feelings. A typical morning might include working for two hours, quickly dashing to your child’s school for a meeting with the counselor, a stop at the dry cleaner’s on the way back to work, three back to back meetings, two drop in visits by potential clients, quick correspondence to a half dozen people by e-mail between meetings and visits, a couple of quick telephone calls, and making arrangements for a working lunch with your staff. But, isn’t it easier and more colorful to describe such a morning as having been busier than O.J. Simpson’s publisher?
Today marks the end of the liturgical year with the festival of Christ the King. Although a few people know about this festival, “most of us need to be reminded that the church year is different than the calendar year, the academic year, and the budget year.”[1] Many of the festivals that we celebrate in the church year are ancient, with origins in antiquity. Not so with Christ the King. “The feast of Christ the King was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 to celebrate the kingship of Christ as a way of combating the destructive forces that] prevailed in the world prior to the Second World War.] Originally, it was celebrated on the last Sunday of October as a prelude to the celebration of All Saint’s Day. This was fitting symbolism because the triumphant Christ was seen to have motivated the saints and lived on in the Church.”[2] Nowadays, the feast of Christ the King is celebrated on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. It appropriately marks the end of this age and the beginning of the next – which will begin with the start of Advent, next Sunday.
It is hard for Americans who have never experienced royalty to grasp the idea of kingship. Our lessons for this day bring forward different aspects of kingship. In the Common Lectionary, the Old Testament lesson comes from 2 Samuel 23, in which the last words of David herald the everlasting covenant. The idea is to remind the reader that God will eventually re-establish the Davidic dynasty. That is one view of kingship, but as a metaphor, it doesn’t really speak to us today, does it? The reading from the Revelation to John describes God as king forever, and Christ as the “ruler of the kings of the earth.” While we might “kinda sorta” abstractly grasp the idea of God and Christ as being over all earthly things, we probably still find it hard to grasp this idea of God as the supreme ruler of the nations like some sort of militant UN General Secretary. It’s another metaphor that doesn’t work well. As the writer Mary Anderson put it, “in America we are as distanced from the image of ‘king’ as we are from the image of ‘shepherd.’ Popular theology is more intrigued with the image of Jesus as CEO – a leadership role, to be sure, but hardly comparable to that of a king with a kingdom.”[3]
The reading from John’s gospel doesn’t help much. John has Jesus telling Pilate in answer to his question about Jesus being the king of the Jews, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the crowd. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” To earlier groups of Christians – those who were expecting a messianic ruler king – this would not have been a helpful metaphor. But to the Johannine community, it made perfect sense.
The earliest of Christians anticipated Jesus’ return with hope. The Gospel of Mark – the earliest Gospel we have –reflects the idea that Jesus is coming next week or next month at the latest. That’s why Jesus runs through his ministry immediately going from one place to another and then immediately somewhere else. But by the time of John’s community – some four generations after Christ’s death – it was clear Jesus’ second coming wasn’t that imminent. By that time, John’s Christian community had completely separated from Judaism (Jn 9:22), and was among the earliest to come to a whole new meaning of “The Kingdom of God.”
The idea of “Kingdom” in John is not emphasized at all. In fact the word “kingdom” is only used five times by John (Mark uses “kingdom 11 times; Luke 42 times). When John refers to God’s kingdom he refers to it in terms of something that is accessed through faith in the Messiah who was lifted up on the cross at Calvary and who died for all of us for all time (Jn 20:31): “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” (Jn 3:5).
Jesus became the key to the kingdom. John writes, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). For the Johannine community and for many Christians today, Jesus is the foundation for the belief that there is a purpose for our existence and a meaning for our lives from beginning to end. Unlike the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the Gospel of John does not speak about the “end of times” or the second coming (and contrary to popular belief the author of the Revelation to John is not the same person or group who wrote the fourth Gospel). I think that the writer of the Gospel of John was far less concerned with an earthly or cosmic messianic view of Jesus than he was with stressing the importance of Jesus as the portal to eternal life and emphasizing how to live like Jesus in every day life – in the here and now.
So is there a lesson or at least a good metaphor that can help us live in the present? What is the value of the moment with regard to the eternal Kingdom of God that John obsesses about?
At 53 years of age, Eugene O’Kelly was the CEO and chairman of a huge accounting firm.[4] As he tells it in his book, at one point of his career O’Kelly was so determined to impress a client that he tracked down the man’s travel schedule, then hopped a flight to Australia in the seat next to him. He chatted with him half way around the world. Having landed the account en route, upon arrival in Australia, O’Kelly immediately hopped on a flight back to Manhattan.
Soon thereafter O’Kelly was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer that would kill him within three months. What would you do if you received such news? O’Kelly said that he had always focused on planning for the future. Now, he said, he would have to learn the true value of the present.
In his book, Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life, O’Kelly said that he decided to have intentional conversations with those who mattered the most to him. He also spent his final one hundred days turning ordinary events into what he called “Perfect Moments:” a good meal; a meaningful conversation; taking time to soak up the beauty of nature over the course of an afternoon.
What O’Kelly discovered is what the writer of John’s gospel points to. And that is that in the end, it’s all about relationships. Relationships with God and with one another. Isn’t that really what “love God and love your neighbor” are all about?
This is the last Sunday of the church year, and many would say it’s about time. This has been – for some – an awful year of gruesome news. The ongoing war in Iraq, insurgencies in other countries, terrorist threats, horrific mass murders of innocent children, and more natural disasters have been in the headlines. During the year, instead of prices on signs outside of gas stations there have been signs reading, “an arm” for regular and “a leg” for premium. It is hard to imagine how we can find perfect moments looking back over the year.
But, John’s gospel commends to us to look at our relationships, perhaps with the intense passion of a doomed man, in order to find those moments. Like Eugene O’Kelly, John’s Jesus was also a condemned man. And both men tried their very best to connect with their friends and make them understand that it is personal relationship with God and with other beings that meaning and understanding can be found.
So, after another year of living our lives, burying our dead, baptizing our babies, marrying and divorcing, struggling and thriving, we bring it all to the feet of Jesus the Christ, confident that in our relationship with him and with God we will realize that Perfect Moment that will give perspective to this past year, and which holds the promise of a blessed future. And we give thanks. We give thanks that we are a people in relationship with one another and loved by God.
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Now these are the last words of David: The oracle of David, son of Jesse, the oracle of the man whom God exalted, the anointed of the God of Jacob, the favorite of the Strong One of Israel: The spirit of the LORD speaks through me, his word is upon my tongue. The God of Israel has spoken, the Rock of Israel has said to me: One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land. Is not my house like this with God? For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure. Will he not cause to prosper all my help and my desire? But the godless are all like thorns that are thrown away; for they cannot be picked up with the hand; to touch them one uses an iron bar or the shaft of a spear. And they are entirely consumed in fire on the spot.
1 O LORD, remember in David’s favor
all the hardships he endured;
2 how he swore to the LORD
and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob,
3 “I will not enter my house
or get into my bed;
4 I will not give sleep to my eyes
or slumber to my eyelids,
5 until I find a place for the LORD,
a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
6 We heard of it in Ephrathah;
we found it in the fields of Jaar.
7 “Let us go to his dwelling place;
let us worship at his footstool.”
8 Rise up, O LORD, and go to your resting place,
you and the ark of your might.
9 Let your priests be clothed with righteousness,
and let your faithful shout for joy.
10 For your servant David’s sake
do not turn away the face of your anointed one.
11 The LORD swore to David a sure oath
from which he will not turn back:
“One of the sons of your body
I will set on your throne.
12 If your sons keep my covenant
and my decrees that I shall teach them,
their sons also, forevermore,
shall sit on your throne.”
13 For the LORD has chosen Zion;
he has desired it for his habitation:
14 “This is my resting place forever;
here I will reside, for I have desired it.
15 I will abundantly bless its provisions;
I will satisfy its poor with bread.
16 Its priests I will clothe with salvation,
and its faithful will shout for joy.
17 There I will cause a horn to sprout up for David;
I have prepared a lamp for my anointed one.
18 His enemies I will clothe with disgrace,
but on him, his crown will gleam.”
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
[1] Mary Anderson. “Royal Treatment.” The Christian Century 120(23): 18 ( November 15, 2003).
[2] Fred B. Craddock, John H. Hayes, Carl R. Holladay, Gene M. Tucker. Preaching Through the Christian Year. (Harrisburgh, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993), 474.
[3] Anderson.
[4] The story of Eugene O’Kelly is taken from Timothy Merrill. “Perfect Moments.” Homiletics18(6): 26-30, 2006.
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Copyright © 2006, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
22 November 2006
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