Proper 29C; Luke
23:35-43 – St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 11/24/2013
Jim Melnyk: “Holy Partners”
The Church has been around for nearly
2,000 years – or about 30 times my current life span. Maybe the short span of what
we call modern time is one reason calling this Sunday “Christ the King Sunday”
seems so strange to me – a feast day that came into being in the Roman church
almost 100 years ago and into our Episcopal tradition even later. It was in
1925 that Pope Pius XI created the Feast of Christ the King to be celebrated on
the last Sunday before Advent. His thinking, at least in part, was to “advance
the message of God in Christ over and against that of the political forces
moving in the world at that time – [led by] people like Mussolini and Hitler.”[1]
Then again, it’s more than just the
relative newness of the feast that gives me pause. The incongruity of our
language makes me shake my head each year when we come to this day. We can get
rather glib about concepts such as kingship and what that might mean to the
world and what it would have meant to Jesus.
Let’s face it – when it comes to
the concept of kings or kingship, what images most immediately come to mind for
us? Fairy tales? Absolute power? Abusive power? Royalty versus peasantry?
Divine Rule? Or perhaps, based on our modern day living, do we think of figure
heads of state and tabloid fodder – news about royal weddings and royal babies
and an elderly queen’s way of waving to the masses, or the ruler of some
fictitious monarchy in a Hallmark romantic comedy? Most modern day American
concepts of kingship have nothing to do with the theology behind the creation
of the Feast of Christ the King. But then most of human history and humanity’s
concepts of kingship have nothing to do with the feast day either.
Our Gospel lesson for today opens
with Jesus hanging on a Roman cross with a hastily scrawled sarcastic placard
nailed above his head – mockingly calling him “The King of the Jews.” This is
Pilate’s comment about anyone who might challenge the kingship of the emperor. We’ve
come nearly to the end of the story since we proclaimed Jesus’ advent a year
ago next Sunday. We’ve come to what the world expected was the end of the story. Jesus has been betrayed by a friend,
abandoned by his followers, indicted by political and religious corruption,
beaten and bloodied, and nailed to the only throne he will know this side of
eternity. The people taunt him: leaders – soldiers – onlookers – even one of
the criminals hanging nearby. “If you are the Son of God, save yourself! If you
are the King of the Jews, save yourself and us!”[2]
Theologian Jim Douglass, author of The Nonviolent Coming of God, writes:
“An executed messiah. A powerless king. What kind of a king winds up on a cross
at the place called The Skull?”[3] Douglass
makes us think, how could someone who is supposed to be the Son of God – the
Incarnate Ruler of the Universe – how could Jesus allow himself to come to such
a scandalous end? Where were the legions of angels – the flaming swords – the
cleansing fires of heaven? How could this happen in the presence of
omnipotence? “He saved others; let him save himself!”[4]
Douglass tells us, “Whether it’s
the first or the [21st] century, redemptive violence is the ruling
myth. The messiah or superhero in this myth saves himself and us from death at
the hands of evil enemies. The means of redemption from evil,” writes Douglass,
“is killing, massively if necessary. How does a king with no army who dies on a
cross fit into our myth,” he asks? “It doesn’t.[5]”
“The king on the cross, the gospel
tells us, is the only one who can save us from the myth of redemptive violence.
Jesus saves us,” reminds Douglass, “from the willful illusion that we will be
freed from evil by killing our enemies. [Jesus] leads us into the opposite end
of killing: suffering and dying, which are the body of nonviolence; love and
forgiveness of enemies, which are its soul. The messiah can’t kill evil. But by
dying to evil [Jesus] can transform it through love.”[6]
In his book, The Bible Makes Sense, Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann writes,
“The church is always on the brink of forgetting who it is.”[7] We
are children of God – sisters and brothers of Christ – heirs to both Christ’s
suffering and Christ’s glory! But, “we live in a society where we nearly have
forgotten what humanness is about.”[8] We
live in a world that seemingly embraces a form of humanness that creates
isolation and alienation, that creates disputes between the haves and the
have-nots, that creates civil strife and death, that creates harsh and
uncivilized partisan bickering – a form of Darwinian humanness that seems to
hold fast to Douglass’ myth of redemptive violence. Brueggemann writes of a
different vision the Scriptures hold for humanity.
“The Bible,” he writes, “holds for
us an invitation into [a different experience of] humanness…. We need not
always be securing ourselves at the expense of others. We need not [always] regard
ourselves as the last defense of what is right.”[9] So. What
do we do with this subversive king – this Jesus, who speaks words of
forgiveness and inclusion even from the bloody throne of the cross? What do we
do with a king who says, “If you seek worldly power and influence, look
elsewhere?”[10] What do
we do with a king who says, “My kingdom is not from this world,”[11]
but whose life and death makes this world a part of his kingdom – his community
or communion of heaven?
We are a people invited to become Holy
Partners with our God. That is a gifted understanding of God shared by our Jewish
sisters and brothers. We are Holy Partners in a heavenly calling – and this Sunday
we are invited to consider the wonder of that calling. Imagine that – the king
of heaven calling us to be partners in creation.
So where do we start? Perhaps we
begin by remembering who we are. Women and men, children and youth – each created
in the image and likeness of God – each called to recognize that image in
everyone. Perhaps we start by choosing to live our lives as if the one who
reigns in this world is not Pilate or Caesar, Prime Minister or President, CEO
or Corporate Board, but God. Perhaps we start by reminding the world that the
myth of redemptive violence doesn’t fit the life and teachings of Jesus.
Perhaps we start by demanding our
religious, political, economic and social structures abandon the illusion that
we must vilify one another when we disagree. Perhaps we start by standing up
for the gospel-oriented resolutions passed at Diocesan Convention this weekend: safe and affordable housing for all people, finding ways to
advocate on behalf of fellow human beings living with mental illness, and
finding ways to support pre-trial release and bail bond reform in a legal
system that unjustly penalizes the poor.
We are one people – certainly
divided and broken – but we are one people living on this fragile earth, our
island home. And we will never find the kind of peace that is the Dream of God
by seeking for it in the halls of power, at the business end of a gun, or by
exercising painfully efficient economic frugality. The only peace that comes
through the myth of redemptive violence – be it military, political, or
economic in nature – the only peace that comes through the myth of redemptive
violence is the silence of the grave. For those who live by the sword will
surely die by the sword as well.[12]
Rather,
we are called to live by the words of Jesus from another “Christ the King”
Sunday’s lesson: “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you
gave me something to drink, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison
and you visited me…. Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of those
treated as the least who are members of my family, you did it to me.”[13]
[1] Carey G.
Mack, quoted in Synthesis Online
[2] Luke 22:39,
paraphrased
[3] Jim Douglass,
Preaching the Word, Sojourners Online
[4] Matthew
23:35
[5] Jim Douglass
[6] Jim Douglass
[7] Walter Brueggemann,
The Bible Makes Sense, 83
[8] Ibid, 89
[9] Ibid, 89
(emphasis mine)
[10] Michaela
Bruzzese, Preaching the Word, Sojourners Online
[11] John 18:36
[12] Matthew
26:52, paraphrased
[13] Matthew
25:35-36, 40, paraphrased
