November 22, 2009 - Feast of Christ the King, Year B (RCL)
Today
is the last Sunday in the church’s year.
The church runs on different time than the rest of the world. We still have a year long cycle,
but instead of beginning January 1, we begin four Sundays before Christmas.
And rather than following a pattern of months, or the cycle of holidays, our year follows the pattern of the life of Jesus Christ.
We begin with by anticipating his birth, hearing the story of the annunciation, the appearance of the angel to Mary. That’s when we have purple vestments and hangings in the church, the season of Advent.
Then we celebrate his arrival among us, a tiny baby born to Mary and Joseph, God made flesh.
We hear the story of the shepherds in their fields,
and the wise men following the star.
White and gold remind us that this is a time of celebration.
We get a brief glimpse into his childhood,
and then begin to know him as a man, green recalling the story of his life,
baptized in the Jordan by John,
calling twelve men to be his closest companions,
heading out to become a traveling teacher and wonder worker.
Then purple appears at the front of the church:
Lent begins in temptation,
and the weeks grow darker
as Jesus’ death looms before us, until
suddenly it’s Palm Sunday, the red of celebration,
and Jesus is being welcomed into Jerusalem as a king, a king in the
tradition of the great king David,
and five short days later
he’s buried,
body left in a cold stone tomb after betrayal and torture and crucifixion.
Then we wake up Easter morning, and Christ is risen, and for 50 days we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, and the promise of our resurrection with him. And we have white and gold again, to remind us to celebrate, and red for the flames of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost.
But it’s only June, and we have until November to fill up,
so we go back to the days of his life on earth, green to recall the story of his life,
and we hear the stories that there was no time to tell between Christmas and Lent,
and we come to know this Jesus
who touches lepers and brings sight to the blind and proclaims the good news of God.
And then, as the days grow shorter and darker,
the teachings of Jesus become more and more ominous,
and we come to understand
that Jesus will come back again, not as a tiny baby again, but as the king and ruler and judge of all,
at the very end of time itself - Christ the King Sunday -celebration in gold and white -
and then suddenly we’re back at the beginning again, purple,
waiting for the coming of the baby.
And that’s where we are today, Christ the King Sunday,
caught on the cusp between the second coming of Christ as king,
ready to tip over into the new cycle,
to prepare for the coming of the baby
once again.
But of course it’s more complicated than that. Because this cycle of stories and colors that helps us remember the story of Jesus
is overlaid on those other cycles, January and February and March, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter,
Presidents Day and Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, Labor Day,
and Thanksgiving.
And somehow in the midst of it all, we try to make sense of what it means to be the people of God in this world of ours,
to make connections between the cycles of our faith
and the cycles of the rest of our lives.
But at first glance
today there doesn’t seem to be a lot to connect
the church year cycle
and the cycle of the rest of our lives.
Overwhelmed with preparations for Thanksgiving,
working out what Christmas shopping you need to do in the Black Friday sales,
the readings for today,
don’t seem like they have anything much to do with what’s happening around us right now.
But as I spent time reflecting on them, the one that caught my attention was the reading from 2 Samuel. It’s described as being the last words of King David,
and we read them today
because Jesus was a descendent of David, the one in whom God’s promises to David came true. David was a great King; he was remembered as the greatest king of Israel. And Jesus was his descendent,
born of David’s line,
but as we were reminded in our reading from Revelation,
not just a king like David
but the king above all kings.
And so David
is like a prefiguring, a shadow, a hint,
of the king of kings
that Jesus would be.
But as great as David was,
we know the stories.
We’ve read them this year.
The David
who slayed Goliath
was the same David
who had an affair with Bathsheba,
the David
who brought the ark of the covenant
symbol of the presence of God
back into the heart of Jerusalem,
was the same David whose wife was embarrassed by him
and whose marriage collapsed,
the David
who was promised many descendants
watched as child after child died,
because of illness and punishment and rebellion.
If we only read today’s reading
it would seem a charmed life,
Davd, the man whom God exalted,
the anointed of the God of Jacob,
the favourite of the Strong One of Israel:
David, through whom the Spirit of God speaks,
like the light of morning,
like the sun rising on a cloudless morning,
gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.
But David’s life
was as messy and complicated as the rest of us.
Great success
and great failure
all muddled together.
And yet this is the same David
who we know as a psalmist,
who wrote songs of confidence and praise and thanksgiving to God
that still speak for us today.
In a life of pain and joy
he gave thanks.
And Jesus did the same thing. It was the night before he died,
when knowing what was to come
when he took bread and wine,
and gave thanks
and shared them with his friends.
Thanks at a time
that must of been full of promise and joy
as he gathered with his closest friends
as we will gather this week
around Thanksgiving tables,
but also full of fear and dread,
knowing he would be betrayed and killed.
And he gave thanks.
And we do this thing every week. We retell the story of Christ from beginning to end, Sunday by Sunday,
and it all reaches its climax
in the story of that night before he died,
when Jesus took bread and wine, and gave thanks. “This is my body. This is my blood.”
We call it the Eucharist, from the Greek to give thanks, to be grateful.
Thanksgiving is at the heart of our faith. We join with Christ in giving thanks,
and we give thanks for Christ himself,
for his life and death and resurrection
and for our life in him.
And so I invite you
as the end of the church year, when we celebrate our Savior come in glory to rule the world
and as we celebrate the feast of Thanksgiving
to give thanks.
As we have done these last two years,
I ask you to take the cards in your bulletins
and spend some time now to write your thanksgivings on them.
When you’re done, we’ll collect them, and they will become our prayers of the people.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009