After Thoughts: Christ the King Sunday

Luke 23:33-43

I grew up in Indiana, a four-season climate with blistering summers, splendid autumns, bitter winters, and glorious springs. The rhythm of life was visibly manifested in the sights and sounds and smells of nature all around me. So it wasn’t until I lived in Singapore, a tropical climate with much more subtle variations in the seasons, that I came to fully appreciate the liturgical calendar. The seasons of the church year bring a structure and shape to life that is comforting, hopeful, and empowering, albeit often under-appreciated and under-utilized.

In the Colossians lesson for this week we read that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. Jesus is Eternity stepping into time, Everlasting stepping into human history. Just as Jesus is the image of the invisible God, so the liturgy, the lectionary, and the liturgical calendar are the Church’s images of the life of Christ. They bring enlightenment to a great mystery, and profound truths to the story of who we are. In the rhythm of the church year, we affirm our faith and our identity. The sights, the sounds, the songs, the colors, the Word, the meal – all of these are tangible manifestations of our heritage and our hope. The mind-blowing incomprehensible beauty of our story is that it only gets sweeter each year as we plumb the depths of its riches and God opens the eyes of our hearts to new truths, new realities, new hopes.

We began the season of Pentecost all those weeks ago with Holy Trinity Sunday – God revealing himself to us as relationship: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now we end this season and the year on Christ the King Sunday with a King who is hanging on a cross seemingly powerless to thwart the earthly rulers determined to put an end to his life and his ministry. All hope for a King, a Messiah, a Savior, has been nailed to that chunk of wood, pounded into despair, headed to the grave. The leaders and soldiers are taunting Jesus – if he’s who he says he is why doesn’t he save himself? One of the two criminals by his side agrees – why doesn’t he save himself and, while he’s at it, save them, too?

Somebody in this story saw beyond the immediate reality. He accepted his guilt and condemnation as proper punishment for what he had done and, in that harsh reality, he saw a glimmer of hope. Beside him was the true source of salvation. Here was God at work making peace through the blood of the cross, through the sacrifice of this Innocent Man. And what does this thief ask? In his humility, he asks simply to be remembered.

Remember me. Not save me. Not justify me. Not free me. Not rescue me. Just a plain and simple – remember me. This reminded me of a story a friend told me a few years ago. One of our college classmates who had also grown up in our neck of the woods had enjoyed a considerable degree of political success since graduation. One day, at the local grocery, my friend had run into this fellow who greeted him warmly, shook his hand, commented nicely on his son who was with him – and added grandly: “If you’re ever in D.C., let me know. I’ll get the lad a tour.” A few months later, my friend and his son were headed to Washington and attempted to make contact in advance to arrange a visit to the politician’s office. No reply ever arrived, not even an acknowledgement that the messages had been received. So it often is with earthly leaders.

But Jesus is no earthly leader. He isn’t out to save himself. He is out to give himself up completely and totally in order to save us. He is the King who bends down to lift us up to new life. He will not and cannot forget the works of his hands, his creatures made fellow heirs and children of God through his sacrificial atonement. He remembers us. And, in that remembering, he creates for us a place in his kingdom.

So now the last Sunday of the church year is past, but we have one final observance. Thanksgiving is upon us. Let us take this time to slow down, breathe deeply, close our eyes, join hands with friends and family, and give thanks to God.

After Thoughts: Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 21:5-19

On the surface, today’s Gospel reminds me of Chicken Little. Remember the story? An acorn falls on her head, she takes it to be a bit of the heavens that has landed upon her, and begins running hither and thither crying “The skies are falling! The skies are falling!” She decides she must report this to the king, but she’s not sure where to find him. As she runs along, others join her, all hoping to help her find her destination. At last, along comes Fox Lox who assures the fowlish group – Henny Penny, Duck Luck, Loose Goose, Turkey Lurkey – that he knows the way. Fox Lox leads them straight to his den, ushers them in, and that’s the end of the story.

Yes, on the surface this reading seems to be all doom and gloom, the sky is falling. Wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues. It goes on and on from bad to worse to downright terrifying. But keep reading. We are not lost like Chicken Little. The King has found us. And promises that the realities of this earthly world are temporary. Whether the glory of the Temple or the end of ages, through good and bad, God remains. With this assurance, we can remain humble in times of prosperity and brave in times of trouble.

In all times, but especially in those hard times, we can rejoice because these circumstances are an opportunity to testify. What a cloud of witnesses I am blessed to know. My mother facing and fighting cancer at the age of 42. My grandmother saying her goodbyes at the age of 90 certain of her reward. My dad’s steadfast love and support despite his broken heart as my brother wrestled the demons of addiction. So many who have faced financial, emotional, physical, relationship, and mental hardships, earthquakes that shake life to its very foundations, and yet they have carried on, their faith strengthened through the trials, their very being witnessing to the glory of God.

Jesus tells us these things will happen, not to frighten us, but to prepare us. But he doesn’t want us to dwell on them. He says to “make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” Do not prepare your defense; that is, don’t live like you’re under attack already. If you run around with the belief that the sky is falling, every little nut that drops into your day will have you predicting the end of the world. Preparing a defense is about proving yourself right – your perspective gets out of focus. So let us choose what we know for certain. And what we know is that this is the day the Lord has made – we will rejoice and be glad in it. We will live today. We won’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring enough worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

When that day comes – when the worst for us happens, whatever that may be – God will provide. We will have words and wisdom and peace that passes understanding. We will know that God is God in those darkest moments. Malachi tells us that there will be healing and – I love this image – that we will go out leaping like calves from the stall. Can you see it, too? All gangly and uncoordinated and newly-made, dancing into freedom.

So do not fear, little flock. God is in control. Let us not be like Chicken Little and her gang of cluckers who believe Fox Lox and follow him to their doom. Oddly, Fox Lox himself never believed the sky was falling – he played to their fears to feed his greed. But we know where to find the King. He has told us there will be days and times when it seems the sky is falling. But do not despair. Not a hair, not one single hair of our heads, will perish. And by our endurance we will gain our souls.

Or as Eugene Peterson interprets it in The Message: Stay with it to the end. You won’t be sorry – you’ll be saved.

After Thoughts: Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 20:27-38

This Gospel reading for the 25th Sunday after Pentecost, falling on the Sunday we celebrate All Saints’ Day, has been a great comfort to me. You may be wondering why. I know, at first reading, it seems a bit odd and perhaps irrelevant. If a man dies, and his wife has no children, the man’s brother marries her. That brother dies and another brother marries her. On and on until all seven brother-in-law/husbands are gone, and finally, the poor woman herself passes on. Which one is her husband in the afterlife? It does indeed sound strange. But even weirder is the original law which calls for sandal removal and spitting in the face if the law is broken. (See Deut. 25 for the details.)

It’s not just this law that interests me. It’s all those fascinating laws of the OT that we often laugh at or disregard, but which have such profound purpose. The Law was given to flawed creatures (all humankind) living in an imperfect world (throughout time, not just this current generation) to protect and enrich relationship, first with God, and then with one another. Women today still have our struggles, but they are of a different type than this perpetual bride who lived in a time when women were basically property. As long as a female had a husband or son, a male protector, she had some degree of security. On her own, she was nothing.

So this particular law, much like Jesus’s rebuke of divorce, as well as all of the law, is meant to protect, love, and nurture the most vulnerable in society. The law is perverted when, as the Sadducees in this story did, and as we often do, it is misinterpreted in legalistic, literalistic, and often pedantic ways. To attempt to apply earthly law to the heavenly realm is a gross misunderstanding of God’s cosmos. Jesus tells them in no uncertain terms how off track they are in their thinking.

Yet, for those of us who do believe in resurrection, we often try to imagine what it might be like. Some might say those imaginings are childish or futile, even sappy and silly. But having experienced the loss of both parents and a younger brother, I must say there is something comforting in thinking of them there together in heaven. After my dad died, my cousin sent a beautiful email, imagining Dad arriving in heaven, back with his parents and his dear sister who had died too early. He painted a picture in words of them gathered around the kitchen table, cups of coffee for all, eagerly awaiting Dad’s arrival and asking him to put on a pot of chili.

Sappy and silly, perhaps. But I don’t think Jesus would mind. Like the anticipation of Christmas morning, so is the resurrection, and the promise of no more tears, no more death. Jesus has something remarkably good in store for God’s children after this earthly journey. As the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death came around this week, there was tremendous solace in this promise, remembering her as one of those saints who has gone to her reward. After my dad died in 2010, we found a little handwritten note folded in his wallet. “The best is yet to come.” For my mom, dad, and brother, that ‘best’ has come.

As a child, I loved Heidi – the book, the movie, the whole idea of a little girl running around on a beautiful mountain. Years later, as an adult, I was blessed to call Switzerland home for several years and to travel around the country. On one trip to a small mountain village, I disappeared when we got to the hotel. I had wandered around to the side porch, a wide veranda stocked with rocking chairs, and got lost in the beauty before me. Charlie was calling my name. When he finally came around the corner and found me, I was beaming. “Remember when you dream about something and so many times the reality is a disappointment? But this? This is so much better than I even imagined. It takes my breath away.”

Just take a moment to think about all these beautiful earthly gifts God has bestowed upon us. Mountains, deserts, plains. Sun, moon, stars. Animals, forests, sea, and land. And especially us, the human race, and the gift of relationship with one another. Relationship comes in so many different packages and is a profound, though imperfect, gift in our fallen world. Romantic love is beautiful. Until it isn’t. Parenthood is wonderful, yet painful when relationship splinters. Friendship is a blessing, but can fall apart. Our human relationships are still beautiful though fragile and deeply flawed. In the resurrection, relationship will be perfected, purified, and made whole. So it is that imagination fails me when I ponder entering the dance of sacred eternal relationship with the Divine Trinity at the resurrection. The best is yet to come indeed.