November 26, 2006
(Twenty-fifth [Last] Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King)

Wild Cards

by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

Daniel 7:9-14  •  Psalm 93  •  Revelation 1:1-8  •  John 18:33-37 or Mark 11:1-11
(From The Lectionary Page)

If you were born anytime in the last 55 years, or if you have reared children or had grandchildren, or nieces or nephews or godchildren at any time in the last 55 years, you too probably have played Candy Land. We don’t play it so much in our house much anymore. Once your children begin to read, other board games become more interesting, but for a while there, Candy Land was a regular feature of the bedtime ritual in the Sommer household. I imagine that some of you probably still know the drill by heart. You draw cards that have a colored square printed on them, and move your game piece to the next nearest square of that color. It's all very linear. You start here and you move on a serpentine journey toward the end. Wait, did I just say linear? There's a twist to the game. Those wacky wild cards. The cards that send you to a particular square, regardless of where you happened to be in your journey when you drew the card. Sometimes forward toward the end, sometimes backward toward the beginning. Sometimes you think victory is yours, only to be sent back to the beginning. Sometimes you think you're doomed to be stuck in the Peppermint Forest forever, only to be sent forward to Queen Frostine with the draw of a card. Wild cards. Wildly unpredictible, unearned, unmerited.

Kind of like grace.

Today is the feast of Christ the King. It is also the end of our liturgical year. And so, not surprisingly, these two themes of kingship and endings are reflected in our readings for today. As with last week, we have apocalyptic offerings from Daniel and from Revelation. Both of these books contain visions that speak to the end of time, to the close of an age, and the beginning of the everlasting reign of God. Daniel was envisioning the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem, following its desecration by Greek rulers. Revelation looks to the second coming of Christ. Time is very fluid in these books. Nothing linear about them. Past, present, and future meld into Kairos – God time. All that marks human existence, all that we rely upon to define us as a people and a culture – our sense of history, progression of time, earthly rulers – will come to an end. Much as humanity has desired to know when the end will be – and this is a recurring theme in apocalyptic writings – it is not for us to know. Anymore than it's for us to know who will win the game or when a wild card will be drawn in Candy Land. We merely know that it will happen.

And so one image today is about the ending of human history. The other image we are presented with is kingship. In the human realm, kingship is all about control of the destiny of your kingdom and of your subjects. It was a topic that Pontius Pilate certainly knew something about – being an administrator under the Roman Emperor. Life in the Roman Empire – even in the provinces like Israel – was structured and predictable. The Romans kept the peace through their military presence, and as long as the people paid their taxes and didn't make trouble, all would be just fine. Anyone or anything that fell out of the bounds of structure, anyone or anything that seemed to be a wild card, was quickly brought back in line. On the surface, Jesus of Nazareth didn't look like a threat to Caesar. But clearly the crowd was stirred up because of him and at some objective level, the threat of insurrection in the troublesome Judean province was ever present. From Pilate’s perspective, it was far better to execute this troublesome rabbi and be done with it in the name of Caesar than to risk an uprising.

How was Pilate to know that Jesus was God's own wild card? Pilate would order Jesus's grisly death by crucifixion. He would see to it that he was dead and buried. What he could not have dreamt of was that God had other designs. That Jesus would be resurrected. And more than that; that the movement Jesus had begun would take hold, first in Jerusalem and then later throughout the entire Roman government. That two centuries later, the Roman Empire itself would legalize Christianity. Or we would come to mark time itself in the western world by whether something happened BC – Before Christ, or AD – Anno Domine, the year of our Lord.

Which brings me back to Candy Land. Cady learned a lot by playing this game, as does every child who has ever played it. You learn about taking turns, and about patience, about how to be a gracious when you win and how to be gracious when you lose. The game takes you on a journey over which you do not exercise nearly as much control as you perhaps would like, and there are very few life lessons more important than that one. All that, and perhaps the most important truth of all: that it isn't over until it's over and that a wild card of grace can change the face of all reality.

Certainly the wild card Jesus turned a Roman official into a bare footnote in a Christian creed.

We are linear people who find ourselves at the end of one liturgical year and about to begin a new one. If it is to be like most in the last 2000 years, it will be filled with joy, sorrow, challenges and blessings, and most likely a wild card or two of grace. There will be some things over which we can exercise our control, but even more over which we cannot. In all, we find our solid footing in our faith which teaches us that all of our beginnings and endings and anxious middle grounds are held in the gracious hand of God, who seasons our lives with grace and surprise, who strengthens us with challenges, who sustains us in our sorrows, and in whose hand alone lies the ends of all creation.