Christ the King, Proper 29C, November 24, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Colossians 1:11-20 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power.
Luke 23:33-43 Save yourself.
Merciful and generous God, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
There are days when I am tempted to depart from preaching the lectionary – and this is one of those days. There’s a lot going on this morning. Today is the Feast of the Reign of Christ – or Christ the King Sunday. This is the last Sunday in the church year – the completion of our lectionary cycle of Bible readings – our version of the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah!1 Our new liturgical year begins next week. Also, it’s almost Thanksgiving and just past the somber 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. We are celebrating the baptism of Connor Christopher Carmine today, welcoming him into the household of faith at Emmanuel Church. And it’s pledge stewardship Sunday – a day on which we give thanks to God for this parish’s important witness in the world, and pledge our financial commitment to do all in our power to keep the ministries and ministers of this place going – or better, growing — for another year! Quite a casserole! And those are just the things I know about. I’m sure there’s more going on with you all. (That’s just how life is, isn’t it?)
I have not given into the temptation to stray from the lessons appointed for today. I’m going to preach the Gospel because I’m guessing that maybe some of you heard the Luke reading just now and wondered what a story like that is doing on a nice day like this! What is a crucifixion story is doing being read this far away from Holy Week? Maybe some of you who knew this was coming, but are skeptics (like me), heard the reading and seized on the utter implausibility of three people hanging on crosses having such an in depth conversation while undergoing the most brutal form of capital punishment the Roman army could devise. I’m going to preach about this Gospel passage, because I think it has something to say to us, something that pertains to all of us, whether we are confused or confident in our religious practice, whether we are mourning or celebrating today, whether we are worried or hopeful about the future, whether we are here for the first time or the last time or somewhere in the vast middle of our spiritual journey at Emmanuel Church.
This Gospel lesson is here because while we are celebrating the all-embracing authority of God’s Christ – that is, Love’s redeeming urge, and we sing songs of gratefulness and praise, we can always use a reminder, in my opinion, that our king of kings and lord of lords was executed as a criminal with other criminals. He was friends with criminals while he lived, and then he died with them too. The word that Luke uses for criminal is literally “evil doer.” What kind of king would be executed as an evil-doer? Well as it turns out, OUR kind of king would be executed as an evil-doer. We all have experience with evil-doers, but in our culture, we don’t really have much experience with kings. So how could we translate this so it would speak to us? Perhaps “highest authority.” (Although Christ the Highest Authority Sunday doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.)
Another word for Christ is Messiah – the one hoped for, anointed, to save and redeem God’s people who are lost and not valued, especially and because of the power mongers of this world. The Gospel of Luke tells us about the mocking of Jesus that went on from the soldiers, from the crowd and even from another guy hung along side of Jesus. Now that really takes some nerve doesn’t it? The mocking challenge to Jesus is that if he’s really a king, he should really do some saving, starting with himself. That’s how a “real” king would behave. But Jesus was on earth to show people how God behaves, not so much how a real king behaves. One of the important things that Jesus taught us was that God, as it turns out, doesn’t save us by getting us out of humiliating and painful situations. God doesn’t save us from chaos or disaster and God doesn’t save us from dying. This was surprising in Jesus time – and it’s still kind of surprising today.
What God does is forgive and forgive and forgive, knowing that we are never far from calculated and random acts of violence and devastation, as perpetrators or victims or bystanders. What strikes me about this scene most is that three times Jesus is challenged to save himself, and he does not. What he does is save the person next to him. If we are going to follow Jesus, that is what we might do too – both remember that we are not called to save ourselves but to save one another, to deliver one another to hope and blessing, to welcome one another into the garden for the souls of the righteous, remembering that we all need a little forgiveness and some of us need a lot.
What we are doing when we pledge our commitment to a child being baptized on the last Sunday of the church year, and what we are doing when we pledge our commitment to a parish like Emmanuel Church, is asserting that while signs of endings are all around us, we believe in new beginnings and second chances, we believe in hope and blessing, and we believe that we need one another to live fully into the mercy and grace of God. We are demonstrating that we are determined to create a place for people we don’t even know yet to experience the Good News of Jesus Christ as it is lived out from this place.
Luke’s crucifixion narrative is a Gospel story that reminds us that injustice, violence, and even death do not have the last word in the realm of God – which is the realm of Love. It’s Love and only Love that has the last word. Love and love and more love. What Jesus came to demonstrate is that Love is the Highest Authority, that Love is the first word and the last word. Love is the boss of bosses and the ruler of rulers. That’s how Jesus saves us – by showing us that God loves us no matter what. And when we can soften our hearts enough to realize it, to have compassion for ourselves and for others, God welcomes us right into God’s glory – God’s glory — that’s another way of saying paradise. It was the criminal on the other side of Jesus, who demonstrated compassion for Jesus in this story. Even in his own agony, rather than joining in the hard-hearted taunting, he managed to quiet the other criminal with words that demonstrated his capacity to love and be loved – even if it was only a glimmer and at the very end of his life. Turns out, all Love needs is a glimmer – a small crack in our hearts to work its way in. According to Jesus, there isn’t anyone in the world that God doesn’t want to feel God’s love – and Love can’t wait!