Feast of Christ the King

Kristin White

John 18:33-37

I’ve never had a king. Not in the literal, flesh-and-blood “don’t-get-in-trouble-with-that-guy-or-else” kind of a way. I came of age in the 1980s, and I remember the curated courtship of Charles and Diana, remember waking up in the night to watch their royal wedding. As a lifelong Episcopalian, I do love a parade, and that was as pretty as any I’ve seen. In the end, though, when I think of what it is to be king, the pageantry of it all seems sort of beautiful and quaint, maybe an interesting distraction, but ultimately not relevant to my life. And I kind of want to ask  that queen, or that king: “Who are you, really? And why are you doing this?”

Today is the day we celebrate as Christ the King Sunday. The readings all talk about sovereignty and dominion. And I wonder, as I imagine someone coming to us today, I wonder how the church might respond to those same questions: Who are you, really? And why are you doing this? Our response matters, for us and for those who would ask. Because in this time of Paris and Beirut and Baghdad and now Mali, in this time of debates and budget cuts and refugees, those twin seductions of fear and isolation are very much with us. And I don’t believe that the church can afford, in this moment or any other, to be a quaint distraction, finally irrelevant to people’s lives.

I want to ask if those are the real questions behind Pontius Pilate’s defensive words to Jesus in today’s gospel: “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus doesn’t seem to think it’s Pilate’s question anyway. “Do you ask this on your own?” he says. Is there a chance that what that threatened and anxious governor wants to know of the strange prisoner before him is this: “Who are you, really? And why are you doing this?”

“But as it is,” Jesus says, “My kingdom is not from this world.”

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Last Sunday Bryan preached a remarkable sermon about telling the truth in the hardness of this time – of Paris, of the shootings that continue to happen, of the death that is too much with us. He shared that truth, in his words, “Because I’m your pastor. And I love you.” He shared the promise of our baptism: that God does have a plan for the hope of the world. And that plan? It’s us.

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More than a year ago, we dug in hard to the question of who we are, really, as St. Augustine’s Church, of why we do what we do. We had conversations all over the place – among vestry and wardens and clergy, at coffee hour, by email, at adult forums. We wanted to say something real and true of our mission. And this is it:

We invite people into our midst.

We connect with God and each other.

We equip ourselves as disciples.

We ask God to send us forth.

When we created this year’s annual giving campaign, the thing that made the most sense was to share who we are, really, and to talk about why we’re doing this. We’re telling the story of being Shaped by Mission in letters and pictures, in newsletter reflections, in people speaking of their experience as Margaret will today.

Who are we, really? We are a church that, when we found out four days before Christmas last year that a girls’ choir from Kenya had arrived in Chicago without a place to stay, members of St. Augustine's invited them to stay in your homes. We invited them to sing at our Christmas Eve service, invited them around our table, invited them into our lives: ice skating and learning to ride a bicycle and watching for the first snowfall of their lives. Who are we, really? We’re a church that connects our lives of worship inside this space with the hard things and the beautiful things happening out in the world – a church that on the Sunday after the President’s eulogy at Clementa Pinkney’s funeral, at direction not my own, turned together to connect our voices as we sang about God’s Amazing Grace. Who are we, really? We are a church equipping ourselves from smallest to tallest, with children carrying the stories of Jesus into our lives. Who are we, really? We are a church asking that God will send us forth, just as we prepare to send out a truckload of gifts; so that 35 families who otherwise might not have Christmas presents, now will.

As I thought about this sermon today, and the stories and pictures that people have shared, and will, it made perfect sense that I would be talking about our giving campaign on Christ the King Sunday. Because every one of those stories and pictures offers a glimpse of the kingdom. A kingdom not of the world as it is, but of the world as it should be.

I’ve been thinking of Bryan’s sermon all week, in a call-and-response kind of a way. The phrase I can’t get out of my head is this: “Because I’m your pastor. And I love you.” It drew me in, and compelled something from within me. And I hold that for the church, together with those questions: Who are you, really? And why are you doing this? I hold it all, with the tragedy in our world and in our communities and in our own lives. I hold it all, standing against the fear and isolation that would seduce us into thinking we can build a fortress that promises our own security. And what I hear us say, together, to that question: Who are you, really? Is this: We are the Church. We invite and we connect and we equip and we send. And what I hear us say, together, in the face of tragedy, and to people understandably seduced by fear and isolation, and to people who suffer the results of that seduction…what I hear us say, together, to the question: Why are you doing this? Because we’re the Church. And we love you.

On this Sunday of Christ the King, I give thanks for you – for a church that I would describe as many things, but never quaint or irrelevant. I give thanks for a church that really is Shaped by Mission, a church living into God’s call in a world that starves for a worthy hope. I give thanks for the church I love. And I ask that you give as generously as you can, to help us be who we are, as fully as we are able. I will tell you that I’m not asking you to do anything that I do not. As a sign of our commitment to this parish, John and I pledge 10% of our income to St. Augustine’s.

I’m glad to talk about the practicalities of what would be possible as we all give from our generosity. Please let me know if you want to talk more about that. What I will say to you now is that when I heard about Beirut and Paris, about refugees and poor people who need a place to be welcome…when my dear friend was diagnosed with cancer…when doctors admitted my sister’s husband to Intensive Care last Thursday…what I wished for them all was that they had this church. I wished for them all to have St. Augustine’s.

And I know that we can’t be everywhere. But we can be right here, as fully as we are able.

Who are we, really? And why are we doing this?

Because we’re the Church. And we love you.

November 15: Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Daniel 12:1-3; Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25; Mark 13:1-8

Bryan Cones

I wish I could stand here today and tell you that Sunday church is a place of safety, a kind of shelter from the storms of the world, an hour when we can close those doors and shut out the sometimes horrific things we human beings do to each other, or a place where we can forget about the suffering that bad luck or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time can bring.

I wish I could tell you that grace of God and these four walls and this beloved community could protect us from the destruction rained down in Paris, or from the funeral last Tuesday of a 9-year-old boy targeted in an alley in Englewood, or the random shooting of a beautiful young woman from Evanston, or even from the more everyday sorrows of cancer or disability or grief.

I wish I could tell you that being good, and following Jesus, and saving plenty of money for retirement and living in a nice community and being a responsible citizen could guarantee that nothing bad will happen to you and will keep your children safe.

I wish I could tell you that because I’m your pastor, and I love you, and want the best for you, and I want all that for myself and my family as well. But I can’t tell you any of that, because I'm your pastor and I love you, and because we all know it’s not true, and I wonder if that’s one of the reasons we come here on Sunday.

I know it’s not true because a few years ago I visited a neighborhood in Syria called Yarmouk in Damascus, bustling with blocks and blocks of low rise apartments and shops, and full of beautiful, kind, hospitable, cultured people, eager to become friends and to make peace together. I know that neighborhood now to be a smoking ruin, completely destroyed in a suicidal civil war.

I know it’s not true because of a 45-year-old friend of mine, a handsome, funny, thoughtful and exceedingly kind person, a man devoted to his partner, who has always done good work, and is a model citizen, and was diagnosed with cancer not two months ago, and is now in hospice and hopes he might make it to Thanksgiving.

I know I’m not the only one who can give examples like that, who can testify that life isn’t safe, and that being good and going to church and believing in God don’t guarantee protection from any of the dangers of the world.

But even if I could get up here and lie to you, and tell you everything will always be OK, these three readings today would expose me immediately. All three of these scriptures were written for days like to today, for times like these, and for people like us, when the world seems to have gone completely mad, and the faithful are wondering just what God is up to, if anything.

The gospel makes it sound like Jesus is foreseeing the Temple’s destruction, but the community of the gospel writer, 30 years later, has already heard the news: Jerusalem is a smoking ruin, just like my Syrian neighborhood, razed to the ground by an earlier group of thugs in a breathtaking assault meant to inspire terror all around.

Daniel’s community, just 200 years earlier, was reeling from the tyrannical rule of the Greek empire that preceded the Roman one, complete with the unrelenting desecration of the Temple and the abuse of human beings that would shame even ISIS.

And the preacher of the long sermon we call the letter to the Hebrews, which we’ve been reading from these past weeks, decades after Mark, is pleading with her beleaguered community, whose members are about to throw in the towel, because, despite the resurrection, nothing has really changed. The Temple is destroyed, Israel’s hopes are dashed, and the Christian community itself is now under threat.

All these believers are asking the same thing: What’s the plan? How is God going to rescue us? When is Jesus going to come back and fulfill his promise? When is all this going to be over? And Jesus really isn’t much help: It’s just going to get worse, he says. “These are just the birth pangs.” So don’t expect him to parachute in anytime soon.

So is there any good news to be had? Anything helpful at all? Of all the places we could look, it’s the writer of Hebrews, one of the weirdest books of the New Testament as far as I’m concerned, who finally at the end of her long sermon gives the best counsel. It boils down to something like: Remember your baptism and keep coming to church. In other words, don’t give up on being Christian.

Remember your baptism: For us, perhaps, it means a constant return to the baptismal covenant we all renewed just two weeks ago at Grace LaRosa’s baptism.

It means remaining faithful to this fellowship, this Sunday gathering, to coming here week after week for a taste, in the words of the Bible and the sacrament of the Eucharist, a taste of the world that God wants for all of us.

It means resisting evil, whether in the form of grotesque violence, or in the hidden fears and hatreds that feed it, which are alive and active here in Wilmette every bit as much as they are in Chicago, or Paris, or Syria, or anywhere there are human beings living together.

It means proclaiming in word and example the Good News of how God is transforming the world, of how in Christ God has changed even death into life.

It means serving Christ in all persons—all persons, everybody, everybody, everybody, no matter where they are from or how they got here, or how they worship God or even if they do, or if we agree with them or even if we like them.

It means striving every day, striving in the ways that God provides to us, for justice and peace, and for the dignity of every human being.

Finally, the preacher to the Hebrews says, we must “provoke” each other to these good things, not let each other become discouraged and overwhelmed, even to get after each other when we do. Christian life, after all, is a marathon, not a sprint, and sometimes we just have to gut it out.

Because God really does have a rescue plan for the world, a path to the new creation God wants for us. The thing is: We’re it. It’s us, it’s the church, at least in part, the continuing presence and power of Christ in the world, God’s community of first responders and relief workers, reconcilers, healers and peacemakers, even provocateurs, whom God has called in Christ to take part in the renewal of the world. And it’s through the everyday bits and pieces of faithful living that God is bringing forth God’s dream for creation.

None of this, of course, will keep us safe, or comfortable, and in fact it may be both dangerous and challenging, but it sure seems to me something worth living for, and maybe even dying for.