St.
Alban's Episcopal Church
Austin, Texas
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Austin, Texas
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From the Pulpit:
I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving. You look well-fed. We had a relatively quiet day at our house with only five of us for dinner, but it was a very pleasant weekend, one filled with traditions. I’m sure your family has plenty of traditions as well. One of ours, which you may share with us, is watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. All the bands from all over the country and floats with waving children, and song and dance from musicals and giant balloons lead Santa down Broadway to Herald Square to officially open the holiday season. How ironic that today’s gospel reading is all about a parade. How ironic that as the world is turning its face towards Christmas we, in church, are reading a passage normally associated with Palm Sunday. They’re out buying presents and decorating their trees and we’re reading about the day on which Jesus entered into Jerusalem knowing they were going to kill him. This is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of our liturgical year. Today is the day when we are to hear the timpani and trumpets, to see the shining rays of the triumphant Christ as we observe what is the New Year’s Eve of our peculiar Christian calendar. Next week will be the First Sunday of Advent, and once more we will anticipate the birth of the Christ Child, but today we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the parade route strewn with palm branches and people’s cloaks and the air ringing with shouts of ‘Hosanna,’ which means ‘Save us!’ We need to pay attention to the significant details of this story. Jesus knew and the people knew that he was fulfilling the words of the prophet Zechariah, who had written in the first days after the Jews had returned to Jerusalem from exile. Zechariah had told them about the coming of the king who would save them, that he would ride on a colt descending from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem. Here he was, before their eyes, coming from the right place and riding on that very colt that had never been ridden, and he looked nothing like the shows of military force that they saw when the Roman armies came into town to frighten them into submission. They were seeing the promise of salvation before their eyes, but he was not what they expected, and would soon be hanging upon a cross, humiliated and defeated by the powers that be. Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven. This day is rife with irony. Today we celebrate one of the names of Jesus. In the sixteenth century the Spanish mystic Fray Luis de Leon, wrote a whole theological treatise on fourteen of the names of Jesus, because he said these names are how we can know him. Can you think of some of the others besides king? Jesus himself tells us he is the bread of life, the living water, the light of the world, the way, the truth and the life. And in our reading from Jeremiah we hear that the savior is also a shepherd. What a paradox, that Jesus is named with the might of a king and the humility of a shepherd, but that paradox is exactly what Jesus is all about. These two metaphors for him taken together tell us more about him than either could do alone. Probably most of us don’t have much more intimate knowledge of sheep than a lamb chop or a wooly sweater, but the imagery of sheep and shepherds is still familiar to us. We can identify with the need to care for those who are relatively powerless. It’s not that hard to imagine the importance of sitting on a rainy hillside to make sure wolves do not carry off baby lambs or aged ewes. Even that stubborn old ram is worthy of protection. I think we can all resonate with this name for Jesus. Perhaps it is the name of king that presents more of a challenge. There aren’t all that many royals in the world today, and the ones that we hear most about in the news aren’t doing much to hold up an image of respect. But the people of Jerusalem are looking back at the image of King David, the one who had ruled a united kingdom. Probably an image that would work for us is that of King Arthur in the glorious days of Camelot. They were looking back at their golden age and living in hope that Jesus would restore it. So today let’s take this odd juxtaposition of metaphors, the shepherd and the king, and find meaning in them by taking them on ourselves. What does it mean for us to wear these mismatched mantles? What does it mean for us to see not only Christ, but ourselves, as inheritors of these roles? We are shepherds. Like Christ we are called to care for each other. Jesus tells us to do that in no uncertain terms. It may be more difficult, though, for us to claim our starry crowns, our royalty, but maybe that’s because of the image of humility that our society holds up to us has more to do with debasing ourselves than with what it really means, which is claiming who we are, being authentic. And who are we? We are created in the image of God. You’ve heard me say it many times, and I’m not about to stop any time soon: God became incarnate in Jesus to show us what God intends for every one of us. What Jesus was and what Jesus did is what we all can be. But being king is not about what Jesus gets but rather what he gives. And this image of the shepherd, of the king, of Christ the King is, when you roll it all up on one metaphor, one who has stewardship over all God’s riches. They are God’s and we care for them. All the sheep. All the treasure rooms. All the sunsets and rain forests and glaciers, the old growth forests and the depths of the oceans, the utter, reckless abandon of all creation. We are the creatures, the ones fashioned by God’s own hands, out of mud on a random morning long ago, out of God’s longing for beings to participate in God’s love, and when God loved us into being, God gave us access to God’s profligate generosity. Be shepherds, God said, love my sheep. Be kings, God said, know that you are royal, that you are made in my image. And know that the infinitude of my blessing flows through you. Know that you are royalty not for your sakes but for the sake of the world. There is a paradox in being called to be shepherds and royalty. And in this paradox we are called to deal with the profligacy of the riches with which God has entrusted us. We are called, in the words of Luke’s gospel, not to worry, not to create boundaries out of fear of insufficiency but rather to invest ourselves into the abandon of God’s infinite generosity. Do not be afraid, little flock, Jesus says to the disciples, for your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. What has God given us? Everything. More than everything. Whatever we have comes from God and merely flows through us toward the fulfillment of God’s kingdom. The illusion that it is ours shrinks it into a cold pebble that our fist can clutch in our pocket. The knowledge that it is God’s lifts it to become a treasure chest overflowing to feed God’s beloved. So, here we are, on our church’s New Year’s Eve, the crescendo of the story that will begin again next week with silence and darkness and waiting and then the birth of a small and humble child, who is the king of all creation. There is a spiritual exercise designed by the sixteenth century monk, Ignatius of Loyola, who was the founder of the Jesuit order. It is called the examen, and perhaps some of you practice it. At the end of the day – in this case at the end of the year -- one is invited to reflect on how one’s year has gone. Where in this year have you felt the presence of Christ? Where in this year have you felt the absence of Christ, which of course has less to do with Christ’s willingness to be there than our welcoming Christ’s presence? Where have we experienced the richness of God’s gifts and the joy of letting them flow through us for the blessing of the kingdom? Where have we felt fear and poverty and the need to clutch what is not ours to ourselves? Where have we known that we are indeed faithful shepherds? Where have we, in humility, admitted that we have royal blood in our veins, and that the treasury has been entrusted to us? We are leaving behind a year in which, in the words of the New Zealand Prayer Book,‘what has been done has been done, what has not been done, has not been done. Let it be.’ But a new year dawns. A new year challenges us to claim our identity… we are God’s shepherds…we are the daughters and sons of Christ…we can step forward in confidence of God’s profligate bounty and live richly and authentically, humbly and faithfully, shepherds and kings, all of us, to help make this world ready for the coming of Christ, our King. Amen.
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05/16/2008 | ||||||
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The
Rev. Margaret Waters