Reign of Christ C – November 24, 2013

The Reign of Christ  Year C                                 November 24, 2013

 Luther Memorial Church                                      Seattle, WA

 The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson

 Jeremiah 23: 1-6  +  Psalm 46  +  Colossians 1: 11-20  +

Luke 23: 33-43

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen. 

Years ago there was a television series called “The Invisible Man”.  Anybody remember it?  It was based on a novella by H.G. Wells of the same name, about a scientist who manages, through a series of scientific moves, of course, to render himself invisible.  There have been more than a few take offs on this idea of invisibility and what one could do if one were actually unable to be seen by those around them.

And let’s face it, it’s sometimes not an easy thing to be in relationship with a God we cannot see.  I’d welcome a statue or a photo or even a painting.  Look at all the many thousands of images that have been imagined of God.  And the Holy Spirit is just as difficult, although we have for her the images of dove and flame.  So I appreciate Paul’s writing to the church at Colossia today in our second reading.  Paul says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God.  And our Trinitarian understanding of God tells us just that.  Jesus is God, truly Divine, and yet, truly human.

This Sunday in the Church year used to be known as “Christ the King” Sunday, but is now known as the “Reign of Christ.”  The language shift happened because Jesus never regarded himself as a King, in fact, he decidedly rejected that language, even to the end.  So we figured we might want to re-think naming an entire observance after something Jesus soundly rejected.  But to tell the truth, the Reign of Christ is only a little bit better.  Because even that language seems to imply that the whole point of this Sunday is to say that somehow Jesus Wins!  And we know that Jesus does triumph over sin and death and the powers of evil.  And that IS good news!  That is Gospel news.

But our Gospel today finds God being crucified. Our Gospel for this day is located at the place called the Skull.  Our Gospel offers us the vision of Christ on the Cross, conversing with the thief dying next to him.

Now as difficult as this juxtaposition might seem – Jesus on the cross on the very day when we are celebrating his reign, it is a very, very Lutheran understanding of Jesus.

You see, Lutheran have an understanding of God that is centered at the cross.  In fact, we call it a theology of the cross.  And it means that we find Jesus’ purpose and we find the very core of his life precisely there, at the place of the Skull, on the cross.  We understand that through his suffering, Jesus enters into our suffering.  This is how we know that Christ is present in all of the stuff that seems too hard to possibly understand.  It is how we know that God is present in the typhoons and hurricanes and tornadoes.  It is how we know that God is present in mass shootings and in singular tragedies.

The opposite of the theology of the cross is known as the theology of glory and is a way of seeing God that is found in some churches.  A theology of glory says that because Jesus was raised from the dead, because Jesus “won”, then only good things will happen to his followers, too.  That if we follow Jesus we will be invisible to tragedy, immune from suffering.

About 18 months ago we were looking for a used sofa for Vicar Inge’s apartment.  I found one that looked promising on Craigslist and went to the home of the family who was selling it.  When I went into their home, the mother, who was very pregnant, was feeding a child seated in a high chair, turned away from me.  Now, I am a sucker for babies and as I looked toward the high chair with interest, the mother said “Oh, no.  She has multiple disabilities.”  And then she continued, “But this baby will be fine because I didn’t sin while I was pregnant with him.”  WHAT?  I said as gently but as quickly as I knew how….I said that God had not punished her with her beautiful little daughter.  Oh but yes God had, she said.  “My pastor told me so.”  Her pastor is a nationally known pastor of a multi campus mega church centered just a few miles from here.

A theology of the cross would have offered to this woman and her family a place to understand that God was with them in the random tragedies and difficulties and brokenness of life.  But a theology of glory said that her sin kept her separate from God, abandoned and rejected.

Those who subscribe to a theology of glory want a safe world where if we do the right things and love Jesus and pick up litter then nothing bad will happen to us.  And to be honest, that’s what we’d probably all like.  But it’s not what we have.  We do not have a controlling, chess playing God, giving us all what we deserve from some heavenly throne on a cloud.  And for that we ought to be grateful.

What we have is a God of redemption.  We have a God whose power is made perfect in weakness.  We have a God who enters into all of our suffering and says to each one of us, even to the thief hanging beside him on a cross….truly you will be with me this day, in Paradise.  This day, not this twenty four hour period, but the moment when “God’s salvation fractures time.” [1]And at that moment, we join the thief on the cross, in all of our brokenness, as Jesus the King of the Jews, the savior of the world, draws us to himself and saves us from ourselves.

What does it mean for us, to follow this Jesus, who reigns over the whole world?  Of course, our response when we realize that we have this free gift would be to crown him Lord of all, to sing that he shall reign forever and ever.  But Jesus never said anything about reigning as king or ruler or benevolent monarch.  Jesus said things like “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.  And love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus said things like “Do not be afraid”.  He said that he had not come to call the righteous, but to call sinners.  This Jesus that we follow said that the hungry poor were the blessed ones.  He ate with tax collectors, prostitutes, and lepers and he admonished us not to judge.  This Jesus others called King wept at the grave of his friend and cried out to God in the garden.  He remained silent before his accusers and offered forgiveness to those who nailed him to the cross.

No wonder he refused to be called a king.  Jesus was a bearer of light and love into a dark and broken world.

On this last day of the Church year, we hold this image of Jesus as reigning monarch up against the image of Jesus hanging on the cross.  We cannot have one without the other.  For it is in the suffering and it is in the dying and it is in the rising to new life that Jesus comes to take away our sin.  It is in the forgiveness and in the love that we are saved, not in any kind of power.

This is a hard truth for us to remember.  How can it be, when the world says that we must gain more for ourselves, that we can follow a God who says that we must give it all away?

To help us in our remembering, the church year will thrust us into a time of waiting for a baby to arrive.  When Advent arrives next week and we begin to think about the coming of Jesus, we no longer expect to see Christ the King, reigning from a throne.  Instead we look for him, with the lowly ones he so loved – with shepherds and astrologers, with beasts in a barn and an unmarried mother.  And although we wait, we know that the reign of Christ is in the Kingdom that is here and now – as close as our neighbor or our enemy.  How, then, do we live in such an upside down reign?

Amen.