November 22, 2009 Sermon
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Last Pentecost/ Proper 29 - B
November 22, 2009 Allan Conkling
I remember the summer that I was finally old enough and tall enough to climb aboard the big roller coaster at the old Playland Park in San Antonio. In those days a ride on The Comet was a right of passage. You took your place in a car in the back, behind guys who looked like Ricky Nelson with their dates in poodle skirts, behind the skinny airmen in uniform on pass from basic training at Randolph. The grizzled old carnie locked the bar across your lap with a bang--nothing else between you and certain death if you were to fall. Then with a jolt the cars caught the chain, and in a clatter of metal on metal, and the groaning of the wooden frame, we were pulled slowly higher and higher. The daring held their hands above their heads. There are shouts, nervous laughter, and giggling girls. And me, in the back, with white knuckles and trembling knees. Oh brother, here it comes!
This morning for dramatic effect I wish we could have a bar come across our pews! Would that we could experience the thrill of that first ride...get ready for the roller coaster ride is about to begin. Almost unbelievably and certainly under prepared, we have arrived at "the most wonderful time of the year: time of year": Thanksgiving week and the beginning in earnest of the holiday season. The ride will not be over until New Year's Eve, 5 ½ weeks from now. Moreover, it is the start of the second decade of a millennium that, to me, is still very new.
In church we are drawing the final curtain on the life of Jesus. When the curtain rises again it will be Advent. Today we ring out the old year not with Auld Lang Sine, but with our proclamation of Jesus Christ as King. We call this day Christ the King Sunday. The readings and music for today all exalt Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Christ the triumphant. The Alpha and the Omega.
But oh, catch the contrasts in the different readings we have before us! The symbol of his regency is not a family crest or a coat of arms. His scepter is a cross and he wears a crown of thorns. Jesus was born not to royalty but to poverty; his mantle was human flesh which we call the Incarnation.
"So you are a king" asks Pilate mockingly? This would seem to be the punch line to a sad joke, were it not for our Lord's response: "My kingdom is not of this world." Note here that Jesus does not say, "My Kingdom is not in this world," for obviously he is here. But Jesus' kingly power was not the domineering, "power over others" type. Instead the kingship of Christ translated into "power with others", which further translates for us today into "an empowerment of others". As one writer says,
"He is here with us, okaying our vulnerability and telling the truth about ourselves. And because he is here with us, he becomes our king, and, as we say, 'that is out of this world.'" (Sermon notes)
In our day and culture Kings and Queens are pretty much the stuff of fairy tales. The Royals live out their lives on the pages of British tabloids. Wealthy sheiks send their children to Ivy League schools and exercise their monarchy by controlling the production of crude oil. Henry VIII...wicked King George...Old King Cole...King Lear...Oedipus...King Arthur: part history part fantasy.
Meanwhile most of us live in places that are neither "once upon a time", nor "happily ever after", places marred by brokenness, illness, addiction and despair. We live in a world that is hungry and impoverished, literally and spiritually. In the words of Gerard Loughlin,
"It is a world of plans without purpose, structures without order, information without knowledge, speed without movement and connections without relations It is a world with a past but no memory or faithfulness; with a future but with no patience or hope; and with a present but with no dispossession or charity. This world will tolerate anything except that which will not tolerate it; that which tells of a world differently founded." (Loughlin, in the book, Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, 2009, pg. 51-52).
Into this world Christians are called to testify to the presence of a different reality. A kingdom of hope. Christ's realm is for all people. God offers us a place in a kingdom without oppression, terror, or subjugation. Inhabitants of this Kingdom pledge allegiance not to the flag, but to the banner of the Prince of Peace.
To hail Christ as King means that we believe that God has a plan and a place for every person. As Jesus says in John,
"For this I was born and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth." (Jn. 18:37)
Out there, the holidays will take off like a crazy roller coaster. As we prepare ourselves for what promises to be another wild ride pray God to still our hearts, to listen and seek joy in the little things: in short to make us God’s worthy subjects.
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Revised: 11/29/09