November 26, 2006

Christ the King Sunday

Christ the King – of OUR Lives

Revelation 1:4B-8; John 18:33-37

The Reverend Richard E. Allen

 

On the day before Thanksgiving, while planes, trains and automobiles flooded airports, stations, and highways, it was business as usual for travelers aboard the international space station, orbiting 200 miles above the surface the earth and moving at over 17,165 miles per hour.  But life as usual can be unusual on the space station.  And this past Wednesday, while we packed suitcases or prepared yams or stuffing, Russian astronaut Mikhail Tyurin stepped out of the space station and took a well-publicized practice.  Using a 6-iron manufactured especially for this exercise, and hampered by the bulk of his space suit, Tyurin kept his amateur status intact.  He shanked the 10-ounce space-ready golf ball, narrowly missing the side of the station.  Though his aim was off, there was no green to hit in any case, and, with no atmosphere to slow it down, the ball’s distance will be, well, out of this world.

 

To be more precise, engineers compute that before it falls from orbit and burns up re-entering our atmosphere, Tyurin’s golf ball will have traveled over a million miles, and the Canadian firm that paid the Russian space agency for this dubious experiment will be able to claim an unbeatable distance record for its new lines of irons. The fee paid for Tyurin’s swing was not disclosed.  But, as expected, the advertising hype already generated has been priceless.

 

As I read the story, I couldn’t help but muse that nearly anything is possible, if the price is right.  Or, put theologically, God is alive and well in space:  at least, a certain kind of God is alive and well.  We’ve come a long way since the early days of space exploration, when a Soviet cosmonaut looked out his window and noted with contempt that he saw no sign of the presence of God.  These days, a kind of god is very present in space.  Even the Russians see this god.  And this god’s name, spoken so easily these days by both Russians and Americans, is mammon, or money. 

 

Though money is a great tool of great good, it is a very poor god.  So, on this last Sunday in the church’s year, the church invites the faithful to consider a different God, and a different image.  Today we’re not called to worship the clever marketing of a spaceman with a golf club.  Rather, we are challenged to enthrone as our king a Jewish peasant who accepted a cross as the price of his own faithful witness to the love of God.  Today we worship Christ the King.

 

It’s a quaint and perhaps outmoded concept, Christ the King.  Since 1776, we here in this country have had little use for a king of any kind, and something in us may rebel against even this language.  But the truth remains:  our lives are shaped by our highest values and our deepest commitments. 

 

Whether we think much about it, we invest our lives in ways that reflect these values and commitments.  And these values that hold sway in our hearts are no less than kings (and queens), even if we no longer think in those terms.  Though the royal language sounds quaint, it describes a reality in which we all live:  we order our lives in service of values that become for us a kind of royalty.  All of us serve some kind of king or queen.

 

So today’s lesson, a bit of dialogue between Jesus and Pilate taken from the Gospel of John, invites us to consider our deeper, royal loyalties.  When Pilate asks, “Are you the King of the Jews?”, he seems interested in whether or not Jesus is the revolutionary his enemies have claimed.  Pilate is both a soldier and a politician, and as the representative of Caesar in that part of the world, he cannot tolerate sedition.

 

In response, Jesus exhibits his own innate authority.  Jesus, too, is a leader, although he represents a different kind of higher power.  He is a rabbi, a teacher of God, but religion and politics have always been connected, for both religion and politics reside together in the deepest places of both the human heart and the human community.  So Jesus, too, is a politician as well as a theologian, and he represents God in that part of the world.  And the God Jesus represents has made it clear in the commandments that God’s people are to have no other Gods.  This One whom Jesus represents is a jealous God.  In God’s world, divided loyalties are seditious, too.

 

The stage is set, and the clash is inevitable.  The worlds we build and the world God wishes us to have are often incompatible.  That was the story of Babel.  Do we serve our own dreams, or the visions of God?  Ultimately, we each must choose. 

 

Even in this setting before Pilate, with the cross looming in the background of every word they utter, Jesus knows that God finally demands nothing less than total commitment.  Only one king will be “THE” king in any human heart.  Jesus says to Pilate, “my kingdom is not from this world. … my kingdom is not from here.”  Pilate understands part of the truth:  “So,” he says, “you are a king.”

 

In telling this story in this dramatic way, John wants us to know and believe what he knows and believes:  Jesus is the Christ, and we are to follow him and no others.  To be a Christian is to decide to follow Christ, and to follow him all the way, with ALL your heart and soul, and mind and strength – anything less is not following at all.  Finally no one can serve two masters, as Jesus himself reminded his disciples.  Finally, Christians have to choose.  John wants us and our church to decide, as he and his church have already decided, that Christ and Christ alone is King.  John knows that Jesus invites us all to decide.  Eternally, and daily, we decide who rules our lives.

 

The phrase Jesus himself used for this choice of God above all is simple, but often misunderstood.  He used a simple phrase, one well known to his own Jewish culture.  He called it “The Kingdom of God.”  Jesus invited others to follow him, in response to God’s gracious love, as a part of this Kingdom of God.  It was not a place on earth.  As today’s lesson reminds us, Jesus repeatedly said, “My kingdom is not from here.”  It was, and remains, a realm of core values and religious loyalties that place a higher demand on its subjects. 

 

But this kingdom is not otherworldly, either. At least, it is not merely “out there” in a place called heaven.  Past or present, the Kingdom of God is that community of mutual respect and trust – a community of love – that transcends the boundaries of nation or political allegiance of any kind.  It is the community where God, and God alone, is “king,” or ultimate authority.  Not Caesar, not Pilate, not self-interest, not economics, not communism, not capitalism, not country, not anything else is our final authority.  God is our authority, our king.  God alone rules in us, and between each of us.

 

Today the church is invited to remember, and to recommit itself to this realm, this community.  “Christ the King” is not a celebration of the power of Christ over other peoples, other lands, other religions.  Rather, this day is an invitation to each one of us to let Christ’s kingdom be born in us.  Today is an invitation to each of us to open ourselves to letting Christ, and Christ alone, be our highest value, our deepest love, our truest friend, our most stern and valued sovereign.  In a word, our king.

 

This invitation is to a new set of values.  It is an open door to live for Christ and Christ alone, and, therefore, to loving God with all our beings, and loving our neighbors as Christ loves us – with all our hearts.

 

Such a perspective turns the world upside down.  Like Pilate in today’s lesson, those who live for different political or economic values find the call challenging.  But we, the church, find ourselves committed ever more firmly to the virtues of Christ, beginning with sacrificial love.  Today we come to give ourselves anew to Christ as our Lord, our sovereign, our King.

 

What might that look like in our lives?  As I suggested two weeks ago, serving Christ as King might mean, as Martin Luther said, that we give ourselves to Christ in three conversions, not one:  the conversion of our hearts, the conversion of our minds, and the conversion of our checkbooks.  Surely a total allegiance to a true king requires all three. 

 

A commitment to Christ as King surely involves giving ourselves fully to the transforming love of God.  The prayer of St. Francis says it well.  To give ourselves as Christ the King might mean to pray his prayer, and you may want to pray this in your own heart as I recall it for us.  St. Francis prayed:

          Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

          O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

          For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

 In one way or another, we all serve a king.  Our challenge, as Christians, is to know that Christ is our King, and Christ alone.  No other person is strong enough.  No other value is deep enough.  No other system of belief pure enough, or true enough.  Finally, to say Christ is King is to commit our lives – our hearts, our minds, our souls, and our strength – to Christ and to him alone. Any other use of our lives is trivial, like using the international space station to sell golf clubs.

 

That’s why, this day, we sing praises to God for Christ, our king.

 

Amen.