The Rev'd Jane B Bearden Christ the King November 21, 2010
Last week we had a wonderful visit with Bishop Tom Shaw. He was pastoral, full of encouragement and admiration, hopeful of a future for Trinity carrying God’s word into the heart of the city. As a postulant meeting with Bishop Tom his counsel for me was that a priest gathers, I would expand to say a faith community gathers – gathers to eat - around altar and around the supper table, gathers to serve, gathers to sing, gathers to comfort, gathers to defend, gathers to play Lessons today carry that message of God’s people being gathered and they speak of the responsibility of the leadership to encourage and to facilitate that gathering. Jeremiah is such a party pooper. He is one of those guys who could dampen the spirits in a room simply by walking in. He was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah and he lived during the time of a return to Mosaic Law under Josiah and through the fall of Jerusalem under the last two kings Jehoiakim and Zedekiah and the time of the Exile. If ever there was a tumultuous period of history, Jeremiah was in it. He is often called the prophet of doom because even in the good years under Josiah he warned the king about the failure of the monarchy to address the needs of justice and equity among the people and the danger that reliance on human power presented to those whose true obedience should have been to God, but who instead let power and greed be the center of their lives. But there is another thread to his prophetic judgment – one that offers hope to the people of God who were beaten, enslaved, and separated from the center of their faith. The book of Jeremiah, in its core, makes a theological statement: the God who can and does destroy Judah for its rejection of God and its abuse of marginalized ones - is the same God who will gather up all who are lost and restore justice and equity for that same people. “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheet of my pasture!” …”you have not attended to them, so I will attend to you” Whoops! That sounds like a come to Mama meeting. Reminds me of that Incredible Hulk line. “Don’t make me angry – you won’t like me when I’m angry.” No doubt the “shepherds” in this passage are the kings of Judah who had neither cared for the people with justice nor called the people to account for their own idolatrous ways. And so God will call the kings to account. They had failed to gather the people of God. Jeremiah says that since these shepherds, these kings, had failed because of their own self-interest and hunger for power and wealth – failed to gather the people to lead faithful lives. For sure the people had been scattered by invasion of conquering armies from all directions. They were taken into exile, tortured, enslaved. But the blame, Jeremiah says, for all of these misfortunes - lies with the leaders who took advantage of the people to serve their own interest rather than the interest of the people they served. So God will raise up another to do that work. God will not forget about those who were in Exile or who had been oppressed. God will gather them back and their faith will be restored. All of the people will prosper under the new reign of God. Furthermore this reign of God will encompass more that just the present time and situation. The Reign of God will look forward to the future, a future that belongs to God. The movement of this passage takes us from judgment to promise, from despair to hope. Although it is most likely inappropriate from a literary or and historical standpoint to do so, it is easy to look back as Christians and to see in Jeremiah’s words the promise of a king who we know is realized in Christ. But this king that we know does not look like the military leaders of Jeremiah’s day. Rather this King Jesus models leadership by being present to the people – all of the people rich and poor, men and women, old and young. Not a king that prevents suffering, but one who supports and comforts throughout the ordeal of humanity. This king promised by God will live fully into Micah’s call to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. This Sunday is known as Christ the King Sunday – some now call it the Reign of Christ Sunday. I want to tell you a little about how this particular feast day came to be. In 1925, Pope Pius XI declared that the last Sunday in the liturgical year would be known as Christ the King. It was a foreboding time in Europe.The winds of war and oppression were blowing.People angry after the years of war that had begun because of failed, secret human alliances and ended in disaster for the poor and the middle class were grabbing for power and wealth at the expense of the poor and the weak.Pope Pius, like Jeremiah,wanted to remind Christians that their true allegiance was to be to God, to Christ the King, not to the political forces led by “King” Hitler, and “King” Mussolini that were entombing all of Europe.And so he established a feast day to focus attention on faith in Christ rather than in human leaders. It does not hurt that we are reminded of that each year. We are the people of God and when the powers of this earth seek to overwhelm us with fear, hate, envy, or greed we as Christians turn to the model of Christ that we hear in this gospel today. Christ who does not bring down fire and brimstone on his tormentors, but instead gathers those who seek the salvation of God and promises that they will be restored in God.Christ who prays for the forgiveness of his tormentors and welcomes the lost sinners who seek Him. So what’s the take-home lesson here? As our world struggles with war, famine, oppression what can we learn about our response as God’s people? Are there really insufficient resources to provide clean water and decent living space for the suffering people of Haiti. Is the question really one of laying blame as the news reports seem want to do or is it the neglect of our responsibility as shepherds, as leaders, to gather and restore God’s people - did the NATO forces bring the Cholera epidemic or is the real question have we attended to the task of relief of the conditions under which an endemic disease can spread? Closer to home is there really a shortage of housing and food and healthcare or is it a case of unevenly distributed basic resources. How do we get from anger, fear and greed to God’s restorative justice? I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I do have an alternative to despair. That alternative is to look deeply into the underlying circumstances in which we as individuals, as a faith community, and as a nation get bound up in conflict. What is it that we fear that causes us to act selfishly or in anger, or with apathy to the cries of those who are in exile? What is it that prevents us from letting go of our defenses and placing our lives in the arms of Jesus Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book The cost of Discipleship that “Only in doing can there be submission to the will of God. In doing God’s will we renounce every right and every justification of our own; we deliver ourselves humbly into the hands of the merciful Judge”. Only in doing the work of God can we live fully into God’s promise of salvation.Only in responding to our call as Christ’s disciples can we come to appreciate and to accept Christ’s invitation of love.Only in submitting to the will of God in our lives and turning our backs on the clarion call of power and wealth can we know the Peace of God. Next Sunday we begin the season of Advent. Let’s live into it. Let’s take one of the meditation books at the back of the church and read them every day. But let’s not just read them, let’s do them. Let’s gather around the supper table with our families and let’s talk about how each one can support and care for each other because Jesus supports and cares for each one of us. Let’s gather in small groups as a parish family and do the same thing. Let’s not let the rush of this hectic season rob us of the reality of the Reign of Christ in our lives. Jesus calls us into relationship with each other and with God. Let’s take this coming season of Advent to reorient our lives to the backward way of being a king, a shepherd, and by proclaiming to all we encounter, the justice and love of the Reign of Christ. Amen