Christ the King

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 and Revelation 1:4b-8 and John 18:33-37

Today is the last Sunday of the Church year. The seasons and feasts of the Church year enable us to enter-into the good news of the kingdom of God, and they culminate in the Feast of Christ the King: where we glimpse Christ enthroned over the Universe, reigning forever in justice and peace; and where we are empowered to live as citizens of that kingdom, to relate to others justly and peaceably, as if the is-to-come was already here.

In the heavenly courtroom, Daniel sees God, the Ancient One, take his throne as judge. He does not pass judgement unilaterally, but in conference with others, also sat on judgement thrones, while countless angelic beings serve the court in other roles. The defendant is brought in – one like a human being; traditionally, son of man; that is, a symbolic representative of humanity in general and of the people of God in particular [Daniel 7:27]. The case for the prosecution and the case for the defence are, presumably, heard; and at last the Ancient One passes down the judgement of the court: reign with me, over everything, for ever.

John also depicts a courtroom scene, in which Jesus is summoned to stand trial before Pilate. The matter to be decided is whether or not Jesus is king. Jesus testifies to belonging to a kingdom not of this world, though he himself makes no open claim to kingship over it. Instead he claims to testify to the truth, and to be credited with authority by those who belong to the truth.

It would appear to be the trial of Jesus before Pilate; but really it is the trial of Jesus before God and before the listener (remember those other thrones?). It would appear that the accusation is brought by the representatives of God’s people; but really they speak as representatives of the kingdoms of the world. The son of man is Jesus; but Jesus as true representative of God’s people; really, Jesus and his servants, those he now calls his friends. And God passes the verdict of those sat on the thrones: be glorified (that is, lifted up on the cross).

The Feast of Christ the King was instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, in order to help Christians live out their allegiance to Christ in the context of Mussolini’s messianic claims to power. Ninety years on, we live in days that are no less dangerous; days in which terrorists and political leaders alike claim the right to pass judgement, elevating themselves and subjugating others. Days in which we are pressed to declare, where does our allegiance lie? As a citizen of the United Kingdom? Of the West? Wider, of the world? Or, first and foremost, not of this world?

Not of this world does not mean, not interested. The reign of Christ the King is not of some other realm; rather, in Christ heaven and earth, God and humanity, are reconciled. Not of this world means, not conforming to the pattern of this world, where violence gives birth to violence. In the kingdom over which Jesus reigns – in which we are invited to sit on the throne with him [Ephesians 2:6; Revelation 3:21] – forgiveness gives birth to forgiveness, justice gives birth to justice, peace gives birth to peace.

Today is the Feast of Christ the King. Eat and drink of him who stood trial for us and for all, on whom the Ancient one has passed judgement. Then go and celebrate by acting justly, showing mercy, and walking humbly with your God.

Second Sunday before Advent

[This sermon was given at a Deanery Evensong used as an opportunity to prepare for Advent – given that for any of us Advent is a busy time – and using lectionary readings set for the First Sunday of Advent.]

Anticipating Advent : Psalm 44 and Isaiah 51:4-11 and Romans 13:11-14.

When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, I watched children’s television. I was lucky enough to belong to that generation of children who grew up watching the Golden Age of children’s television, the days of the legendary Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate, whose work included my personal favourite, Ivor the Engine, and also the much-loved Bagpuss.

Bagpuss – as you will remember if you were a child, or indeed a parent, in the 1970s and ’80s – was a stuffed toy, a cat, large and saggy with pink and off-white stripes, the favourite toy of Emily, a little girl who collected lost and broken things and displayed them in her window so that their owners, passing by, might see them and reclaim them. Each of the 13 episodes would begin with Emily singing to Bagpuss -

“Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss
Old Fat Furry Catpuss
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring
Wake up, be bright, be golden and light
Bagpuss, oh hear what I sing.”

- after which Emily would depart, at which point Bagpuss would wake up, or, come to life. And when Bagpuss woke up, all his friends woke up too, and went to work first identifying and celebrating the new item Emily had brought them and then mending whatever was broken.

“And so their work was done.
Bagpuss gave a big yawn and settled down to sleep
And, of course, when Bagpuss goes to sleep,
All his friends go to sleep too.
The mice were ornaments on the mouse organ.
Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls.
And Professor Yaffle was a carved, wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.
Even Bagpuss himself, once he was asleep, was just an old, saggy cloth cat,
Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams,
But Emily loved him.”

When Bagpuss wakes up, all his friends wake up. And when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too. But what has this to do with anticipating Advent?

Psalm 44 and Isaiah 51 are both songs sung to cause God to awake. Both express something of the disorientation, distress, or yearning experienced when we are out-of-sync with God, when we are awake but he is asleep. And if the image of God being asleep suggests to us more the limitations of human experience and human language than the reality of the divine nature, then perhaps we need to appreciate afresh that human experience and human language is all we have. For God has made us human; to know him, as humans; and has revealed himself to us, as humans. So rather than being overly knowing, let us, with childlike acceptance and wonder, enter into the story.

Romans 13, on the other hand, holds us in a moment where God is just about to wake up, and depicts one of his friends urging his other friends to be ready to shake off sleep too. We are suspended in time with them in this very moment: for with God a thousand years is like a day, two-thousand like no time at all. So in our Lessons we have images of being out-of-sync and of being in-sync with the cycle of rest and work for which we were created and which we are meant to experience, to share with God.

Perhaps more than any other time of year, Advent is a time when it is easy to be out-of-sync. For Advent is given to us as a gift of sleep, and yet that sleep is threatened by Christmas-come-early with its round of lights and baubles and carol services.

In calling Advent a gift of sleep, I don’t mean to imply that we do nothing. Unlike Bagpuss and his friends, we are not ever inanimate objects. For us, sleep is a time when the body shuts down certain activities, such as being alert to the constant threat of attack, in order to turn our attention to making sense of the world, through the processing of our memories, the consolidation of our learnings, the mysterious deconstructing and constructing of our dreams. For us, sleep is when our beloved and treasured parts and our longing-to-be-loved and broken parts wake up. We cannot wake from sleep ready to face the coming day unless we also sleep well; unless we allow ourselves to become one with Jesus, who slept in the middle of a sea-storm; unless we use the night wisely, not as a cover for evil.

We know that December can be a mad time, and so we offer you the gift of this evening, to anticipate Advent. We offer you this time as a lullaby, to sing you asleep, to sing you alive to a deeper-than-surface reality.

Is there anyone here who, like the psalmist, feels that God has rejected us and brought us to shame, has scattered us and sold us for a pittance, has made us the taunt of our neighbours, the scorn and derision of those that are round about us?

Is there anyone here who, like those depicted in Isaiah 51, are troubled by injustice, long for deliverance from oppression, or are weighed down by sorrow? Is there anyone for whom the heavens are vanishing like smoke and the earth wearing-out like a garment – for whom life is unravelling?

Is there anyone here who, like the believers in Rome, is wrestling to take a stand against revelling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarrelling and jealousy? These words could be an advertiser’s strapline for Christmas and New Year, from the office party to family feuds. We may find ourselves wrestling with some or all of these temptations, whether wrestling within or without, against ourselves or against our society.

If our Psalm and our Lessons evoke fitfulness, they are juxtaposed with the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis, songs of hope and trust. There is much to be teased-out in sleep: a making-sense of complexity; lamenting our brokenness, and that of the world around us; a recognition of loss, and the hope of being reclaimed. There is even a mending that takes place as we sleep, as we rest, as we are cherished and sung-over.

Advent is a season of preparation: of our preparing to celebrate the first coming of the Christ, and of his preparing us to celebrate his return. The Christ-child is hidden in the womb. Christ the King is hidden in the heavens. God is asleep. But the child will be born, the King will appear, God will wake up – and we with him. For now, do not be troubled. Be at peace. Sleep. Dream. The day is near; and when it arrives, you shall be made new.

3rd Sunday before Advent

‘Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

‘As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.’

Mark 1:14-20

Picture the scene. Once the world was established, God planted a garden, a place of royal splendour, a place of royal pleasure. And God created the human being, male and female, to share the garden with; to share in God’s work and to share in God’s rest. Day by day, the people took care of the garden, tended it, drew the very best out from it. And evening by evening, the king of the universe would come and walk in the garden with his friends.

But then one evening God arrived, and something was wrong. God’s friends were afraid to be in the presence of the king. They felt ashamed. They hid from God.

Now picture another scene. The fishermen of Capernaum work the lake by night, when the shadow of their boats passing overhead cannot be seen by the fish, who hide before their coming. The crew assemble on the shore in the evening, mending their nets before heading out onto the water; and return at daybreak, hanging out their linen nets to dry. It is early evening now. Simon and Andrew are already on the lake, setting their net; James and John won’t be far behind. And into the scene, in the cool of the evening, the king comes to walk with his friends.

More – if they will dare to walk with him, then others will be drawn out of hiding.

You see, the time is fulfilled. After centuries, millennia, of waiting, the moment has arrived. Cousin John had been sent to prepare the way for the king’s return; and when John was arrested, Jesus took that to indicate that his work of preparation was complete. The time is fulfilled, for the king to come in to his kingdom, to call men and women to share in his work and in his rest. And soon enough the fishermen will share in his work; but, just as the first humans, created in the sixth movement of God’s work, experienced the seventh movement – rest – before ever they worked in the garden, so these new companions of the king will go for a rest-full stroll in the cool of the evening before the work of fishing for people.

Today is Remembrance Sunday, and this is a story about remembrance, and about the end – or goal – of remembrance, which is reconciliation. This is a story about God having kept alive the memory of walking in the evening with his friends, and having persisted through all the convoluted twists and turns of human history to the end of walking with us again. This is a story about people passing the story on, down through the generations, metaphorically and at times literally sitting around a small fire in the dark, keeping hope alive in hopeless times. This is our story, and it is still unfolding. It is still needing to be told.

The time is fulfilled; the king is coming in to his kingdom; repent, and believe the good news.

‘Repent’ means change your perspective. Step back. Turn away. Leave your work, enter rest – in order to re-imagine life from heaven’s point-of-view. ‘Believe’ relates to activity, a new way of being, in the light of that new outlook.

We ought not to imagine that these sons and brothers walked away from the family business and never returned. As the good news unfolds, we see Jesus work with them around the edges of the day, on the Sabbath, at the festival holidays, or at times going away on short journeys and getaways, returning again and again to Capernaum. The fishing disciples remain part of the fishing community: families who, along with them, learn to see life from a different angle. God will provide, even as some of the workforce are released. Boats – primary assets – become pulpits and even literal vehicles to extend the kingdom beyond Galilee to the Ten Cities.

The good news of God is proclaimed to us, too, in these words: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” The time is already fulfilled, whether the moment that enables us to hear the invitation is good news or not: the moment might look like a relative being arrested by a corrupt political regime, or a declaration of war; it might look like loss; it might look like gain, a new beginning, an exciting opportunity. But the king is on the move, walking through our lives, visiting the places where we live out our humanity, sometimes at the most inconvenient of times. And his invitation is always the same, whether in the Garden or by the Lake or on the banks of the River Wear, whether in familiar surroundings or unfamiliar, whether in triumph or despair: first, come apart from your activity and rest awhile with me; then, allow my presence alongside you to transform your work. Rest. Work. Repent and believe.

That is why we come apart to be with Jesus in this place, on this day, week by week, simply to spend time in his presence, enjoying his company – and being enjoyed by him – in order that we might return to the places where we spend the week, our homes and our workplaces, our places of leisure and our necessary places of tasks needing to be done, with a made-new and renewed perspective.

We live in a world that tells us we can rest once our work is done – and then keeps adding to the workload. We live in a world that tells us that we cannot possibly take time out from our work, because we are indispensable, or because those who don’t pull their weight are a burden to society. We live in a world that fights for territory and ideological dominance and the control of resources. We live in a world where Jesus walks along the shore as the nightshift is about to begin and says, the fish will keep, will still be there tomorrow; the hired men are perfectly capable of doing their job without you tonight: as for you, follow me. He isn’t laying off workers and requiring as much of more from less; he isn’t dismissing family or business or historical ties to place; but he is laying claim to priority over our lives and resources, over our experience of time, and he will not abandon us, however hard we try to hide. He is, as we will remember in two weeks’ time, Christ the King.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”