Choose Your King Carefully

Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43

Stories help define who we are and holidays are ways of inviting the telling of stories. In their own ways holidays serve to help us get a handle on our identities. They help us understand our past and our roots. They help us understand the stories that shaped our lives and our societies.

Certainly that is true of the Thanksgiving holiday. The Thanksgiving holiday invites us to remember and retell stories of Pilgrims and the Native Americans giving them seed corn, of fruitful harvests and of days of giving thanks. A part of our identity as a people comes out of the telling and retelling of this story. Now not all of our ancestors came here in freedom. Some came in chains. Some were already here when the Europeans and Africans arrived. But what ever the total of all the stories may be, the particular story of these English Pilgrim immigrants is one of the defining moments of our national history, so the holiday gives us the time to tell the story, to repeat the feast, and in so doing we can get a new grip on our identity as individuals and as a nation.

The same process takes place, not only in nations, but also in religious faiths. Our neighbors who are Jewish repeat the stories of their salvation and in their great holiday which is Passover. It is the custom to celebrate the Passover around the family table. According to the old, old, old custom the youngest member of the family inquires of the most senior member of the family, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Then the senior member of the family retells the story. "Our ancestors went down into Egypt and were pressed into cruel slavery and God, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, delivered our ancestors." Identity, community, and a sense of a future are woven all together in the re-telling of the story. Holidays are the occasions of story-telling.

We have a double holiday this weekend. Your bulletin cover died all the activities of the week remind us that it is the holiday of the Pilgrims, but it is also the holiday: of the Christians, not just Americans, but Christians everywhere. and unknown to most of us, but It is a holiday that is obscure . 11 other a Sunday called Christ the King Sunday. Just like all the other holidays, this one invites us to remember the stories, remember the roots. In fact if you pay attention to the holidays and the seasons of the Christian worship calendar you will discover that these seasons and days are teaching tools to help us know the stories.

Next week we start Advent. We start preparing and getting ready for Christmas and we begin to tell the stories of John the Baptist and of Mary and Elizabeth and Joseph r' s that and the shepherds and the wise men and all the stories that attach around this holiday. The holiday gives us the occasion to tell the tales, to find out who we are.

In the weeks following Christmas, between Christmas and Lent, is the season where we are to focus on the teachings of Christ. Then Lent invites us to pray and fast and examine our souls, to prepare for the central Passover story of our faith, Good Friday and Easter. So all around the calendar it goes and today the cycle of the year ends with Christ the King Sunday which reminds us that Jesus is not just about history, but also about hope. Reminding us that Christ is not just about the past, but about our destiny. Reminding us that the weak one, the powerless one, the crucified one is also the coming victor, the one who will rule our lives. So the cycle comes around.

Today, on Christ the King Sunday, I would invite you to join with me in reflecting on two phrases that the author of the Book that we call Colossians used in order to talk about Christ and Christ’s glory as king. The first of those phrases quotes St. Paul as saying, "All things were created for him. "I would invite you to meditate on that phrase. All things were created for Christ. How different that phrase is from the realities of the ways we live our lives. "All things were created for Christ" It would be a very different world.

How would we look at the troubles in the environment and the whole ecology movement if we began to see every creature on the face of the earth as created — not for our enjoyment—but for Christ's enjoyment? We tend to look at the natural world as something there for us to exploit and use according to what we want right now. But St. Paul suggests that all things were created, not for us, but for Christ. Perhaps the singing of a nearly extinct bird or the splashing of a nearly extinct fish are part of the great symphony of praise that God intended and created for Christ. Then what does it mean if we look upon these creatures as our servants? Ecology. God created all things for, not us, but for Christ. Ecology.

And how about economy? What if our personal and social economic systems were created, not primarily for us, but for Christ? There are many positive, helpful, creative, constructive things about the idea of private ownership, but there is also a significant spiritual problem with this idea. For the notion of private ownership leads us to presume that somehow or another our stuff is for us. Friends, our stuff isn't for us; it is for Christ. Our homes, our-cars, our bank accounts, our retirement plans, our baubles and bangles, and beads exist for Christ. What a different way of looking at possessions we would have if we understood them to be—not ours—but Christ's. Under our authority temporarily to be sure, but belonging ultimately to Christ.

I occasionally wish that you could all enjoy the perspective that comes from standing up here in this perch, looking at you. Just looking at you is a rather entertaining experience. The way you dress, the way you comb your hair—if you have any, and the various and sundry other ways of yours that are often entertaining to watch as you sit out there. You are a very entertaining group, but you were not created for my entertainment. Nor was I created for your entertainment. You and I were created for Christ. All things were created for him, St. Paul tells us. He is the king. He is the ruler. He is the almighty monarch of the world. Not us.

A second wonderful expression out of Colossians which I would encourage for your meditation is where the author says, "In him, all things hold together." In Christ all things hold together. In my experience and observations, it seems as if most things are flying apart, not holding together. Right? Think of all the ways we and the people in our societies and in the nations around us are flying apart. Just a few weeks ago the folks in Quebec voted on whether to remain a part of Canada. The nation of Canada came within a hair's breadth of flying apart. The underlying movement, the motivations, and the passions that led to that vote were a part of the forces of disintegration of that society. Certainly we use over and over again the horrors in what we formerly called Yugoslavia as yet another example of nations disintegrating and falling apart. I do not know about you, but my tongue has not learned to pronounce, nor has my brain figured out the geography of all those little republics that were created with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Does anybody know where Azerbaijan is? I thought Georgia was in the southeast of the U.S. And on and on it goes. There is a disintegrating process going on in the nations of the world these days.

In local communities issues of race and poverty and drugs and crime are disintegrative. In families death and divorce are disintegrative. In our individual lives the stresses and the strains and the pressures often threaten to make us fly apart. The world seems to be flying apart and yet St. Paul says, "in Christ, all things hold together."

In what allegiance do you place your hopes for community and stability? Is it in politics or in family or personal prosperity or nationalism or on and on in the various "isms" of our time? All of these forms of social glue ultimately fail. All of these forms of community solidarity ultimately release into chaos. Things fly apart.

Writing in 1920 William Butler Yeats wrote a poem you know well. It was called The Second Coming and its first stanza goes this way:

"Turning and turning in, a widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

The center, it seems, doesn't hold. If the center is any of the false gods of our time and way, the center doesn't hold. But in Jesus Christ there is hope across all the divisions of human life. There is hope to hold together. In Jesus Christ there is a loyalty that transcends all other loyalties that bind us together and—in Jesus Christ—there is the promise that one day when his reign is complete and his kingdom is fulfilled, it will be a reign of peace and love for all of God's children. That is the promise of Christ the King. A promise that all things were made for him and that all things hold together in him.

There a lot of enticing loyalties out there. A lot of kings and monarchs, a lot of rulers of this world. But be cautious; none of them will hold us together except Christ. Choose your king carefully. Amen.

Carl L. Schenck