November 22, 2009
(Last Sunday after Pentecost: The
Reign of Christ)
(From The Lectionary Page)
The End of the Beginning
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It may, perhaps, be the end of the beginning.
You who are of a certain age or who are students of 20th century history may recognize these words of Winston Churchill, spoken in November of 1942. Something significant had happened in the war against Nazi Germany. After months of defeat in battle after battle, at last there was a glimmer of hope. General Montgomerys forces had utterly defeated Rommel in North Africa. Churchills speech was, as usual, on point. The victory in North Africa did not herald the end. VE Day was years in the future. Nor was it the beginning of the end. In retrospect, that might be construed was D-Day which, in 1942, was nearly 2 years in the future. But something had changed. Something significant in the tide of history happened. Nobody in the room, Churchill included, could have predicted exactly how events would unfold that would bring the war to its conclusion. The most he could say was that the decisive Battle of North Africa marked the end of the beginning.
Today we observe the Feast of the Reign of Christ, or the Feast of Christ the King. It is a feast day that straddles beginnings and endings. We are at the end of the liturgical year. Advent begins next week. Not surprisingly, our readings are filled with temporal disturbances. God is described as the Ancient One, the Beginning and the End, the one who was and is and is to come. And while were still trying to get our heads around all that, we find our gospel passage slamming us back into Holy Week, back to the to the so-called trial of Jesus before Pontus Pilate. How ironic that on this feast day we use a passage of Scripture where Jesus evades Pilates direct questions about his royal status.
Irony abounds. The Temple authorities triangle in a hated Gentile overlord to dispatch an itinerant rabbi. Certainly the power imbalance was absurd bringing Jesus before Pilate was the political equivalent of going after a mosquito with a grenade launcher. In fact, Jesus had no interest in political insurrection. His kingdom had an entirely different foundation one predicated on the glory of God, not on the political might of whatever empire happened to be in power. Ironically, the Temple authorities and Pilate, mutually disdainful of each other, unwittingly shared the same world view: use of wealth, power, violence, and state-sponsored terror to maintain their privileged status quo.
By contrast, the kingdom that Jesus proclaims could not be more different. The Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed is one of abundant life, of forgiveness, of healing and of restoration, of bringing sight to the blind and movement to those oppressed by paralysis of any kind. The Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed throughout the gospels, and especially in the gospel of John, is NOT an otherworldly future reality. The reign of Christ is a present reality. We may well believe that our earthly life is nothing but a vale of tears, and that we must pin our hopes on the pie in the sky in the sweet by-and-by, but we sure as heck didnt learn that from the gospels.
What Jesus does brilliantly in our gospel reading is serve notice to Pilate and all others who hunger for the kind of world that Pilate served that he is not interested in merely exchanging one death-dealing empire for another. In him, the reign of God has begun, whether Pilate and his ilk can recognize it or not. The kingdom that Jesus represents is not about wealth or military might or political strategy or social prestige. The kingdom that Jesus represents is paradoxical and subversive. The hungry are fed, the sick are healed, the dead are raised to new life, leaders are servants, and the King is not only the shepherd of the people but also the Lamb of God, the Passover lamb whose blood will preserve the people from eternal death.
The best laid plans of the Temple Authorities and Pilate notwithstanding, the crucifixion of Jesus was not the end. It was not even the beginning of the end. It was, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Certainly, from the Resurrection forward, the Good News of Jesus Christ was unleashed upon the world by none other than folks like you and me people who, through baptism, are given the capacity to see the world with new and transformed eyes. Ordinary people, made part of a royal priesthood through baptism, who use our hands and our feet, our hearts and our minds to be Christ for one another until he comes again in his glorious majesty and brings all of human history to an end.
When will that be? Hollywood blockbusters notwithstanding, probably not in 2012, though God alone knows. The most that we can perhaps say, as post-resurrection people, is that we are at the end of the beginning. And so for the moment, we Christians are called to live fully into the reign of Christ, not as triumphalists, not as colonialists, but as servants, modeling our lives in accordance with Christs own example. How do we do that? We already do. Every time we feed hungry people, every time we reach out to someone in need every time we baptize a child, every time we welcome a stranger into our midst, every time we gather in fellowship in the breaking of bread and in the prayers, every time we subvert or better, transform -- the messages that our consumerist society gives, the reign of Christ is more fully revealed. In real time. In the here and now.
