Christ the King & Flower Power: Nov. 22nd

John 18:33-37                                                                                                                

                Like many of you, I have been following the response of the French community to the recent attack in Paris.  As one might imagine, much of response has been grief and fear.  Yet there are also people speaking from a place of hope and faith.  Not all of them are calling it faith, but it sounds a lot like faith to me.  There is one interview that went viral.  It was viewed more than 15 million times on facebook alone.  In it a reporter is speaking to a man and his son who cannot be more than 4 years old.  The son is saying that he is afraid they will have to move because there are bad guys with guns.  The father, whose name his Angel, tells his son that it is ok, because they have flowers. The son wisely responds that flowers cannot do anything. The father says that they can and points to all the flowers and candles that people have placed in the midst of the rubble and ash of their city.  The child then asks, “So the flowers and the candles protect us?”  The father tells him they do.  Then the child smiles, not a big smile, but one that makes you think that maybe he understands something—something that even we as adults cannot.

                Today is Christ the King Sunday and it is a Sunday that many people approach with ambivalence.  On the one hand, we know that Jesus was referred to as a king in the scriptures.  But we are also a nation that was founded when we rebelled against the very notion of having a king.  We are a democracy because we didn’t trust monarchies.   God wasn’t a big fan of earthly kings either. In the Old Testament, God encouraged the people not to have a king.  He warned them that kings would not serve them.  A king would only take advantage of the people. They needed to rely on God, not some earthly power.  So it seems odd, that we have come to use this king language for Jesus.  He didn’t really act like a king.

                Pope Pius XI established Christ the King Sunday in 1925.  It was right after World War I and he felt that with the rise of nationalism and dictatorships, people needed to be reminded that regardless of the apparent power of our earthly leaders, there was only one king that mattered, the king of kings...Christ the King.   While I admire the effort, I am not sure it was the most effective strategy.  When we try to compare Jesus to our earthly understanding of kings, he will never really compare. Even in the time that Jesus lived, many of his followers wanted him to be a king, the kind of king that would help them overthrow the Roman government, the kind of king who would display his glory and power in battle.   He was never that king.

                Had that been his desire, Jesus could have been that king.  He could have done anything that he wanted.  He had the power to defeat the Romans, but he chose not to wield his power in that way.  Obviously, that had been done before.  The Israel people had some wonderful kings, like King David, who made them victors in war. But that kind of power was ephemeral. It did not last.  Jesus was the kind of king who would live amongst those who were suffering, who would insist that we love our enemies, even when they hate us and mean us harm.  He was the kind of king who would demand that his followers put down their swords when he was taken away by armed guards.  He was the kind of king who refused to wield his power over those who were weaker, even when those people were people like Pilate, who thought they had the power to kill him. 

                That is why we have this Gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday.  This is one of the scenes in the trial of Jesus.  He was being accused of blasphemy because he claimed to be God.  This was not a punishable offence according to the Romans, but claiming to be king was.  Claiming to be a king was an offense and threat to the Roman Emperor. Part of what Pilate was trying to determine was whether this man was really a threat.  It would appear that Pilate did not think he was much of a threat.  And how could he be? He had no army.  His own followers had betrayed him.  Even his people had turned against him.  There was no way that he was a threat to the Roman Emperor.  Despite all of this, Pilate decided that he needed to be crucified. 

What is interesting to me is that Pilate insisted on putting a sign on Jesus’ cross that proclaimed him as king of the Jews.  In many ways, it was one of the most profound acknowledgments of the power of Jesus.  A Roman leader officially acknowledged him as a king.   Jesus was a different kind of king.  He was a king who suffered for the sins of the world and that was never more evident than when he died on the cross under a sign that proclaimed him “King of the Jews.” 

                Many people felt that this was a defeat for Jesus and his followers. A real king, a powerful God would never allow himself to be crucified.  However, because we know the end of the story, we know that Jesus did in fact display ultimate power when he died on the cross.  He displayed power over death.  Once you have conquered death, no one can claim power over you. 

                I don’t know why this video of a father and his son has been viewed over 15 million times.  At first, it just seems like a display of innocence and hope in the midst of evil and suffering.  I think it is more than that.  Obviously, we know that any gun can destroy all the flowers and candles of this world.  What a gun cannot destroy is what the flowers and the candles represent.  It’s the hope that comes with people wanting to remember and honor those who have died.  It’s people who respond to hatred with love.  It is faith that evil cannot have the last word; that candles will always burn when we mourn those who we have lost; that flowers will bloom even in the most dismal of places.  It’s a king who conquers not with violent displays of power, but with sacrificial love and vulnerability.  When we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, we are not celebrating a king who sat on a throne with a crown of gold, but a king who was nailed to a cross with a crown of thorns.  This is the king we honor.   

During Holy Week, we have a bare cross that stands in our cemetery.  It has a sign that reads, “King of the Jews.”  On Easter Sunday we have another cross that we cover with flowers. A symbol of fear, hatred, and pain becomes a beautiful vision of joy and triumph.  We don’t just do that because it’s pretty.  We could just take the cross down and stick with the flowers if all we wanted was something pretty.  Instead we cover that hate with love.   We transform death into life because that was what Jesus did.   We stand here as a church…so that candles will always burn for the loved ones we have lost, flowers will always bloom even on the darkest and coldest of days, and the cross will always stand as a reminder that we have a king who refused to sit on a throne and instead lives among us.  

Letting go: Mark 12:38-44

Year B, Pentecost 24                                                         November 8, 2015

            Our Gospel reading is a deceivingly difficult text.  At first glance, it seems like a gift from heaven. Here we are in the middle of our fall stewardship campaign and the Gospel reading is the widow’s mite.  Everyone knows that story…the woman who has little gives all she has to her faith community. It’s almost like we purposefully picked this reading for this time of the year.  But then you have that darn context again.  Right before this lovely story about the widow is Jesus telling the crowd to beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes….who devour widow’s houses for the sake of appearances say long prayers.  These scribes that Jesus is warning about are the same scribes who might benefit from the gift that this poor widow is making.  Furthermore Jesus is accusing them of taking advantage of the plight of widows like her and here she is giving everything she has to them. It seems odd that Jesus would support such a action.

            We hear a lot about widows in the New Testament as well as the Old Testament.   The Bible tells us again and again how important it is to care for widows.  There were several reasons this group of people received special attention in the Bible.  Now when we think of widows, we consider the emotional ramifications, the loss one experiences when he or she loses their spouse.  While that was certainly a factor at this time, the primary social concern was related to caring for the physical needs of the widows. 

At this time, women could not inherit money or property.  If her husband died, she would be left with nothing.  If she had a son, the property would all go to the son and the expectation would be that the son would care for his mother.  However, if there was no son, then there was no safety net.  If the woman was still young and able to have children, she might be able to marry again.  If this was not possible, then her options were limited to: depending on the kindness of male relatives, begging on the streets, or becoming a prostitute.  Working was not an option for women and there was no social security or Medicare.  Widows epitomized what it was to be completely vulnerable and dependent on others for their own well-being.  This is why the people of God were commanded again and again to care for widows. 

In the Gospel for today, we are told that not only was this woman a widow, but she was a poor widow, which tells us that she had no one caring for her.  She had nothing except for two coins.  She gave both of those coins to the treasury of the temple.  The traditional understanding of this text (and the one that is most convenient for stewardship sermons) is that she was a model of sacrificial giving.  She gave everything she had to God.  Jesus was holding her up as an example for all of us to follow. The more critical interpretation is that Jesus was using her to illustrate how unjust the system was, another example of how the poor and vulnerable were abused.  Right after he pointed her out, he predicted the destruction of the temple.  Why would he encourage her or anyone else to give to a temple that was about to be destroyed? 

The more I wrestled with these two interpretations, the more frustrated I became. I realized that I could not with integrity preach the traditional interpretation of the text with the emphasis on sacrificial giving but I also felt that she had more to teach us than what was wrong with the world at that time. 

We had a funeral recently and I was reading the liturgy and I came to a part that I have never given much consideration.  “For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord, and if we die, we die in the Lord.  So, then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s possession.”  We are the Lord’s possession.  It seems strange to me that we find comfort in this statement after someone has died because I am pretty sure there is no other time when we refer to ourselves or others as the Lord’s possession.  People would probably balk at that idea. Nobody wants to be someone else’s possession, even if that someone else is God.   It is only when we lose someone to death that we can allow for the possibility that they are now God’s possession.

That reminded me of the widow in this story.  All the commentators and scholars, when they talked about her being a widow, it was only to explain her plight, her financial circumstance.  It was never about the fact that this woman had lost not only her financial stability, but her partner in life. I know that there are many people here who have suffered that loss, or the loss of a child, a parent, a sibling, a close friend.  Most of us have lost someone who is precious to us.  I can only imagine the pain that must come with losing a partner in life.  In my limited experience with loss, what I have learned is that even in our grief when we acknowledge the person as the Lord’s possession, we still have to find the strength to let go, to truly accept that they are the Lord’s possession.  We have to let go of something that was once ours to hold and give it to God.  When you have experienced that kind of loss, then letting go of a few coins, even if they are the only coins you possess, isn’t that big a deal…not much of a sacrifice at all. 

I wonder if this widow, in her intimacy with loss and grief, knew something that the great scholars of her day and ours cannot quite grasp.  Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s possession.  If we can understand that while we are still living, then we become free from everything.  When we declare that we are the possession of the Lord, then we no longer feel as possessive about what we have or think we have.  This woman is held up as a model of sacrificial giving.  Perhaps that is true, but not because she sacrificed a few coins, but because she learned to let go.  She learned the hard way, but she learned.  I imagine that is one of the hardest lessons in life, letting go of people, letting go of control, letting go of things, letting go of independence, letting go of prestige…. The way we find strength to let go is to trust that we are not letting go into some abyss.  We are letting go so that God can take hold.  In letting go, we are giving…we are giving to God.