If you are
visiting today and feeling a bit out of sorts, do not worry. Everyone attending today is out of
sorts! It is the observed tradition of
this parish right now that we celebrate a “special” service the first Sunday of
the month, rotating among a sung Eucharist, Morning Prayer ante Communion, and
a Healing Service. As we all do that
calendar check in our heads, you are realizing that “hey, wait a minute, this
is still November.” You would be
correct. Next week, the first Sunday of
December, is also the first Sunday of Advent and means the bishop is
coming! So, to keep the folks who love
Morning Prayer ante Communion happy, we moved that worship service back a week. Next week, we will still be out of sorts as
we will be celebrating a baptism, a confirmation, and a reception. So please join us as we struggle to remember
how to use parts of that BCP we do not use very often!
Morning
Prayer ante Communion was, of course, the style of worship observed by many of
those who grew up in the Episcopal Church prior to 1979. The focus of services in those days were
meant to be on the songs and canticles and on the prayers. But then, in 1979 with the switch to the new
Prayer Book, we had an influx of fantastic preachers and the focus of our
services switched from prayers and music to the ever-present great
preaching! Why are y’all chuckling? Whoa.
Are y’all saying the preaching is not great around here?
I say that,
in part as reminder and in part as instruction.
Today, I expect your chances of meeting God will be better in the music
and in the Sacrament than in my preaching.
That is not to say it cannot happen, but today will be more homily than
sermon on my part, and that is intentional, given the service liturgy.
The other
reason for the “out of sorts” feeling will be the color. We have been green for nearly five full
months. We were red for Pentecost, white
for the Sunday after which we call Trinity Sunday, and then green for
twenty-three straight weeks! That shakes
us up a bit, right? And now you have
been reminded that Advent starts next week.
So, liturgically, we are jumbling things up after a long season of no
change. And we all know how
Episcopalians respond to change!
We are
white today in observance of Christ the King Sunday. I included notes in the Order of Worship
about the feast, and you are welcome to read those if I bore you. Suffice it to say, though, we spend this
Sunday intentionally reminding ourselves that Christ is King, that He is the
One to Whom all things have been given.
And, although the intentional feast is relatively new in the life of the
Church, it is of no less importance today than in the centuries past. Chaos and darkness often seem more powerful
than God. Our politicians, much like the
rulers of old, seem far more concerned with their own self-aggrandizement and
the tearing down of their rivals, than in governing in light of justice and
mercy as revealed by God in Christ. Systems
in the world seem beyond our control, sort of like Skynet’s in different parts
of our lives. The healthcare system is
all about us getting and staying healthy, right? Well, at least our retirement systems are all
about us being able to enjoy our golden years without fears about provision,
right? Well, at least we all know what
the cloud is and what it does for us?
Hmm. At least we all understand
the role of Oak Hill in city government, why it exists within the city limits
of what we call Nashville, right?
I could, of
course, go on and on. We could talk
about the systems of for profit prisons or student loan enslavement . . . err. Debt. We could wax eloquently about the justice
system, food insecurity, or our education.
You get the idea. These systems,
which we created, much like Skynet in the Terminator series, seem to have taken
on a life of their own and sought to, at best, not help us and, at worst, hurt
us.
If we add a
dollop of natural disasters and a couple helpings of armed conflicts, you and I
can better understand the world in which this Sunday was created and why it is
so needed today.
If you add those effects on your life that
work to convince you that your faith or trust in God is crazy, those whispers
of the Enemy which work to convince us that God cannot love us if He allows
disease or injury to plague us or death to stalk us, we can see the need for
this day that much more!
Christ is King!
It is good
for us, more than once a year but especially once a year, to remind ourselves
that He wins, He rules, in the end! The
fully human/fully divine Jesus, who descended from heaven, lived and ministered
among us, died for our sins, and was raised from the dead, rules! It should be a comforting thought! A hopeful promise!
As
Americans, we know, probably far too intimately and cynically now, that our
politicians don’t give a you-know-what about us. They are working on their own power, their
own security, their own provision. It’s
evidenced in the way they rule themselves, excluding themselves far too often
from the laws they create for us, by the way they use us and others to keep
themselves in power.
But Jesus
of Nazareth had only one single concern: He wanted us to understand just how
much God loved us. He wanted us to know
that our Lord wanted only what was best for us.
Even when we taunted Him If You are the Son of God, come down. You saved others, now save Yourself. He willed Himself to stay on the Cross. Even though He knew, absolutely knew, you and
I would fail Him, you and I would sin grievously against Him and the Father and
the Holy Spirit, still He willed Himself—He loved us in spite of our sins and
failures—to stay and die on that Cross.
We know what love is because of His life, His witness, His ministry, and
even His dying. And that we might know
He was Who He claimed to be, and that we might know God had the power to redeem
all things in our lives, even our deaths, God raised Him on that wonderful
Easter morning!
And one glorious
day, at least for those of us who call Him Lord, He will return to judge the
heavens and the earth. That will be the
focus of at least two weeks of our Advent readings. We will remind ourselves that His not
returning is more evidence of His grace, that when He returns, His patience has
run out. And those who have rejected His
love, those who have rejected His Kingship, will find themselves separated from
His loving presence for all eternity.
But this day, this day we call Christ the King Sunday, we remind
ourselves that He is King, that all things are subject to His Will. And we give joyful thanks! I know, we Americans have a thing against
kings and queens, sort of. Try to
subject us and we will revolt. Show us
some good pomp and circumstance, like a wedding or a coronation, and we get all
I’ll give up sleep to watch THAT!
Y’all are laughing only because you watched the Royal Wedding, didn’t
you?
We give joyful thanks this morning that Christ is King for at least two
reasons. One, we should be overjoyed
that the One figure in human history Who demonstrated true love is the One
proclaimed by the Church to be THE King of King and Lord of Lords. But the other reasons is a bit more
selfish. Because we have bound ourselves
to Him and asked Him to bind Himself to us, you and I are heirs. To use the language of the Old Testament, we
are like first born sons, promised a double portion of inheritance. To use the language of the New Testament and
modern world, though, we are princes and princesses in His Kingdom. That’s right!
What do we call the heirs of kings?
By virtue of Christ’s authority and power, one day, THAT glorious day,
you and I will be shown to be princes and princesses in His Kingdom, where we
will reign with Him for all eternity.
I know. It’s a difficult concept to
comprehend. How can there be so many
kings and queens? How can He be King if
we are kings and queens? Isn’t that a
kind of democracy? In truth, I do not
dwell on it too much. God always exceeds
what I can ask or imagine. As cool as I
think being a king might be, I know it will pale by orders of magnitude with
what God intends for His children. Plus,
I know that in the Age to come, He will have given me a new heart and a new
mind. I will not even be tempted to
govern in accordance with my will, but always and only governing in accordance
with His. So, I just trust that on THAT
day it will make sense to me. For now,
though, as He patiently waits to establish His kingdom in its entirety, it falls
to you and to me and to all who call Him Lord to invite others to accept His
offer of salvation, to accept His discipline where we sin and crosses where we
are His hands and feet, and to accept that He would make all of us, every
single man, woman, and child we encounter in our daily life and work, heirs in
Christ, and princes and princesses in that Kingdom to com, world without end!
In that promise and His peace!
Brian†
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