As mentioned in my previous post, this year my internship congregation did a special liturgy for Christ the King Sunday, in which we traced the liturgical year, season by season, in a pattern of reading-reflection-hymn. What follows is my short reflection on the gospel pericope for Christ the King, Luke 23.33-43. I am also including my reflections on Advent, Epiphany, Lent, and Ordinary Time. Full liturgy is available upon request (vicarjosh (at) gmail (dot) com).

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Augustana Lutheran Church
20 November 2016 + Christ the King
Luke 23.33-43

There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”

It’s puzzling, at first glance, that we read a gospel lesson on Christ the King Sunday that has our so-called “king” hanging on a cross, dying. It’s certainly not the image of a king I would choose to use if I were trying to make some grand claim about Jesus.

But I think that’s exactly the point: Luke’s gospel is full of subversions and reversals. This is another one: Christ the King is so unlike any earthly monarch we can imagine. Recall way back at the beginning of our journey through the church year this morning to my reflection on Epiphany. The psalm on that day speaks of a king who will judge with righteousness and justice, defend the cause of the poor, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.

Our gospel text today adds another element to Christ’s kingly qualities: solidarity with those who suffer. As Karoline Lewis writes, salvation for the second criminal here means:

…that there was someone who saw his suffering, who was willing to stand in that suffering with him, who spoke up against his suffering in the form of empire, evil, and totalitarianism. That someone was Jesus. The criminal died knowing that someone was with him in his suffering. [1]

Every Sunday we proclaim Christ crucified, but especially so on Christ the King. That proclamation calls us into a brave new way of being church. To quote from Lewis again, it means, among other things, that we are compelled “to look to the left and the right and notice who is getting hanged on a tree and say stop.” [2]

I’m sorry to say that there are too many people being hanged on trees in our world today. In the first century, crucifixion was a tool used to silence those voices that the Roman Empire didn’t want to hear or deemed as threats. Today, on November 20th, many people around the world will gather for the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance to name and remember those beloved children of God who have been murdered as a result of transphobia.

It is the church’s responsibility to call out these and other acts of evil: Transphobia. Racism. Homophobia. Sexism. Islamophobia. Xenophobia. We have a starting point in Luke’s story of the crucifixion — a story that underscores the wideness of God’s abundant love and mercy for all whom God has created, a love that is so deep that it manifests itself in a God who suffers right alongside the most vulnerable and whispers to them, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=4754
[2] Ibid.

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ADVENT

The season of Advent is a powerful counter-cultural pushback against the hurried rush to Christmas. While all around us we have seen Santas and candy canes and holiday greenery for weeks, the church defiantly declares “not yet!”.

Advent isn’t about any of these things, or even the birth of Jesus, “but about the church’s continual prayer that God will come to us, bringing life to a dying world.” [3] In fact, it’s not until the Fourth (and final) Sunday of Advent each year that we hear a gospel text about the birth of Jesus. Prior to that, we’re introduced to John the Baptist, whose cry on Jordan’s bank “calls us into hope and urges us into justice.” [4]

Everything about Advent urges us to wait, to slow down, to return to ourselves and to God. On our wreath, we light one candle at a time. In our prayers of the day, we pray for Christ to “stir up” divine power and come, even as we pray for God to “stir up” our hearts in renewal towards the divine will for justice. Even the blue of the pastor’s vestments and the paraments in our sanctuary is not unlike the deep blue of night just before the coming of the dawn.

So in Advent: We wait. We watch. We pray. We look expectantly for the coming of Emmanuel, God-with-us.

[3] Gail Ramshaw and Mons Teig, Keeping Time: The Church’s Years (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2009), 73.
[4] Ibid., 74.

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EPIPHANY

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me… gold, frankincense, and myrrh?! If Advent is the pushback against Christmas coming too soon, then the peculiar feast day of Epiphany protests how quickly we rush to move on after December 25th. Indeed, Epiphany marks the conclusion of the twelve days of Christmas, and the gospel read on this day still proclaims the coming of Christ into the world, as we retell the familiar story of the magi visiting a newborn king.

The psalm appointed for Epiphany also tells us exactly the kind of king we can expect in Jesus. This king, in stark contrast to earthly monarchs, will judge with righteousness and justice, defend the cause of the poor, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor. Following the example of such a king, we too are called to recommit ourselves to the work of justice.

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LENT

“What are you giving up for Lent this year?” It’s a question many of us who grew up in the church have probably asked and answered ad nauseam over the years. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Lent has nothing to do with giving up our favorite things, like ice cream or coffee. If that were the case, I’d be a very cranky vicar.

In fact, the giving up of material pleasures appears to be more an aberration in the history of Christian liturgical practices, a “blip” in the grand scheme of things. As early as the fourth century, Lent was observed as a forty-day period of preparation for new converts to Christianity who wished to be baptized at Easter. Only in the medieval era, when adult baptisms declined, did the focus move to fasting as an act of penance to make up for one’s personal sinfulness.

Fortunately, in recent years, the earlier, ancient practice of the church has resurfaced. Easter is again a popular time for baptisms, with Lent as its counterpart both in preparation for baptism but also an annual renewal of baptism for all Christians. Still, classic expressions of Lenten discipline—giving alms to the poor, praying, and fasting—are common and even encouraged. But the goal here is to stress that these things “are not necessary for gaining God’s approval… [but] are behaviors that we choose to adopt to remind ourselves of the renewal of life that baptism calls forth.” [5]

Keeping a holy Lent therefore suggests that our fasting be a hunger for justice, our alms a making of peace, and our prayer the song of grateful hearts.

[5] Ibid., 85.

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ORDINARY TIME

Ordinary Time is anything but ordinary. Liturgical scholars are quick to remind us that the naming of these “green Sundays” after Epiphany and after Pentecost as “ordinary” refers not to their quality but simply to the fact that they are ordered, or numbered. No matter what we call these Sundays, though, it’s important to remember that every Sunday, regardless of season, proclaims Christ. In other words, every Sunday is a little Easter.

The green of these “ordinary” days, many of which fall during the spring and summer months, also calls us to delight in the beauty of God’s creation. Hear now these words from John O’Donohue:

Nearer to the earth’s heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.

We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The here and now.

May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.

May we enter
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And light and the rain. [6]

[6] John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 73-74.