When Christ Becomes King (John 18:33-37)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 25, 2018, Reign of Christ Sunday)

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Heavenly and Powerful and Glorious

When Christ becomes king, he will come in the clouds and everyone will see him and the nations will cry out (Rev 1:7).  So says John in our first scripture today, Revelation.

When Christ becomes king, everyone will see the son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory (Mark 13:26).  So says Jesus himself in the gospel of Mark.

When Christ becomes king, the trumpet of God will sound and the Lord himself will descend from heaven, and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (1 Thes 4:16; Phil 2:10-22; Rom 14:15).  So says Paul in his letters.

When Christ becomes king, all the rulers of the world will bow down before him, and all the nations will serve him.  So says the psalmist in his vision of God’s anointed one.

Heavenly and powerful and glorious is Christ the king.  Knees bow before him and tongues praise him and people do his bidding.  The picture is nothing less than we would expect for king of all the world.

Bound and Imprisoned and Near Death

But it is a picture different than the one that we see in Jesus.

Early in the gospel of John, Jesus feeds the crowd of five thousand with five loaves and two fish.  Awed by this heavenly power, the people begin to murmur, “This is the one!”  It’s not hard to imagine that soon knees would bow before him and tongues would praise him and people would obey his every word. 

And Jesus senses this.  The gospel of John says that he sees they are “about to come…to make him king” (John 6:15).  

But apparently Jesus doesn’t want this.  Because he runs away.  Jesus is not that kind of king.

It is only later in the gospel that Jesus accepts the title of king.   Only when he is bound and imprisoned and on the way to his death. 

When Christ becomes king, knees do not bow before him but rather his knees bow under the weight of suffering.

When Christ becomes king, tongues do not confess his name but curse him.

When Christ becomes king, the crowd are not at his bidding but he is at theirs.

A Different Kind of King

What kind of king is this?  Where is his foretold power and glory?  Where are the clouds?  Where is the praise and adoration?  Where is the transformation of the world?

We like to think that one day Jesus will come and turn the tables; that he will descend triumphantly from heaven with power and glory.  Maybe.  But that sounds awfully familiar.  That sounds eerily similar to the plans and promises of emperors and dictators.  It is not a divine dream but a human one; a fantasy of might and muscle, of control and getting your way, a fantasy as old as human ambition.

I wonder if we see in Jesus something different, something indeed divine.

What if his power and glory are not control and command but love and the communion of hearts?  Look, there he is among the clouds in power and glory—which is to say, there he is on the cross, forgiving his enemies, loving the world unto his death.  There is Christ the king.

And what if the bent knees and confessing lips and serving hands of his kingdom are not but lives transformed by love?  Look, there he is among people kneeling and blessing and yielding to one another—which is to say, there he is among hearts that have been melted by love.  There is Christ the king.

Already King

Perhaps the question is not “When will Christ become king?”  Perhaps, as Jesus suggests in his response to Pilate, Christ is already king.  If we have the eyes to see it.  Perhaps the question is “When will we cease to be like the crowd on the sea of Galilee, eager to make a triumphant king of Jesus, anxious to be on the winning side, expectant of a Christianity that has global influence and imposes laws from on high?  When will we see the kingdom of God is already here, that Christ becomes king wherever love triumphs over force, forgiveness over fighting back, faithfulness over fickle flight?”

I believe that in our hearts we live already with one foot in the kingdom, with eyes that have seen and can no longer unsee our true king.  We have caught a glimpse of his coronation and his kingdom not in the pursuits of our world, of money or party politics or prestige, but in moments of love.  When we kneel by the bedside of the sick.  When we bless instead of contest.  When we share peace with a stranger.  When we seek reconciliation instead of revenge.

The invitation of today, Christ the King Sunday, is not that we crown our king but that we recognize his crown already on the heads of others. 

In the kingdom of God, which is already among us, there are no battles to be won, only battles to be surrendered.  There are no enemies to be fought, only enemies to be made friends.  There are no kingdoms to be vanquished, only our own kingdoms that will vanish.

Today there is nothing for us to wait for—no coronation, no ceremony, no grand arrival.  It is our king who waits for us.

Prayer

God whose kingdom

Is everlasting—

Older than fight or flight,

More enduring

Than human charter or constitution—

Melt our hearts

By your unruly rule

Of love,

Which we encounter

In Christ our king,

In whose name we pray.  Amen.

The Birthpangs of Prayer (1 Samuel 1:1-20)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 18, 2018, Proper 28)

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The Story of a Semicolon

Mark Wingfield, pastor at a Baptist church in Dallas, Texas, recently got his first tattoo.  He got it not to fit in with the younger generation or to make himself look more hip or approachable.  He got it because he wanted it.  Because he needed it.

Etched now onto his inner bicep, where he can see it every day, is the tattoo of a semicolon.  Originating in Project Semicolon, an initiative that endeavors to share love and hope with those who wrestle with depression, suicide, addiction, and self-injury, the semicolon tattoo has a simple message for Mark.  It means: “‘Your story is not over.’  It’s not a period, which ends a sentence; it’s a pause that says there’s more to come.”[1]

A year ago, Mark began to endure a neck pain so agonizing that he couldn’t escape suicidal thoughts.  Surgery and follow-up procedures addressed the pain, but had other repercussions, including the immobilization of his right hand and arm for months and a chronic spinal fluid leak that results in a never-ending headache.  But it was not simply pain and disability that Mark has confronted: “What injury and illness and depression steal from you most of all,” he observes, “is perspective—the ability to understand that there’s more to be written in your story.”  As a pastor who had proclaimed the good news that there can be growth in suffering, gain in loss, resurrection in death, he nevertheless struggled to see past the pain and despair of his present circumstances.  Suffering had constricted his vision.  For him, the semicolon is a bodily reminder of what he does not always feel: that God is with him and his story is not over.

The Barren Wife Bears a Child

At the beginning of today’s scripture, the narrator twice discloses Hannah’s condition, so that there is no mistaking what this story will be about.  “Hannah had no children,” he shares first (1 Sam 1:2).  Then moments later, “The Lord had closed her womb” (1:5). 

You know the underdog storyline in Hollywood, where a dark horse rises against the odds and comes out on top?  We see it in The Mighty Ducks and Karate Kid and Rocky and countless other films.  Well, the nearest equivalent in the Hebrew Bible would be the story about a barren woman.  Just as surely as the Mighty Ducks would win the championship and Mister Miyagi would coach Daniel to karate victory and Rocky would become assume his position among the boxing elite, the barren wife would in time bear a child.

So at the start of today’s story, the audience already knows the end.  The question becomes not “Will she bear a child?” but “How will she endure the waiting and the hardship in the meanwhile?  And how will this child come?”

Her Distress Is More Than Barrenness

For Hannah, it must have felt like her story was already over.  To set the tale in motion, the narrator begins with a repeated scene.  “Year by year,” he says, Hannah would go to Shiloh with her husband, Elkanah, and his other wife, Peninnah.  There they would offer sacrifices to God, and Peninnah would antagonize Hannah (1:6-7).  We don’t know what Penninah said or did, but whatever it was, we can imagine it only rubbed salt in the wound of Hannah’s barrenness.  I don’t think it’s an accident that the narrator repeats himself and reminds us a second time that this is happening “year by year.”  Rather I think he’s suggesting Hannah’s growing sense of despair.  Another year without child.  Another year humiliated by the other, fertile wife.  As it was, so it shall be.  To compound her misery, her husband just doesn’t get it.  He cares less about her sorrow than he does about his own standing in her eyes.  “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” he asks her pitifully (1:8).  It’s little surprise that all Hannah can do is hurry off to the sanctuary, where she bursts into tears before the Lord (1:9-10).  As prayer pours forth silently from her lips, the priest Eli chastises her, “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself?  Put away your wine” (1:11-14).  It seems Hannah can find no relief.

She responds to Eli with an honest confession: she’s not drunk, she’s depressed.  Or in her words: “I am a woman deeply troubled….I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time” (1:15-16).  The common interpretation is that Hannah is upset she can’t have kids.  But I think the narrator has shown us it’s more than that.  Her distress is more than barrenness.  It’s the yearly humiliation by Peninnah.  It’s the misguided sympathy of her husband.  It’s the mistaken judgments of men like Eli.  It’s the feeling that her story is over.

Her prayer, of course, is for a child.  But I believe that it’s also deeper than that.  She’s at the end of her rope.  She’s exhausted her options.  There’s no life left for her worth living.

The Precariousness of Prayer

The word prayer originates in the Latin word precarius, which refers to something obtained through earnest request.  As the Latin word precarius suggests, prayer inherently springs from uncertainty.  Prayer is precarious.  Prayer means coming to the end of your rope.  Running out of options.  Not seeing a clear way out.  Prayer is what you do when you don’t know what to do.  As Paul suggests, the purest form of prayer may be the wordless kind, the kind where you’re reduced to sighs and groans, where you don’t even know what to say, much less what to do (Rom 8:26).

What’s fascinating about Paul’s description of prayer, is that he extends this imagery of groaning and sighing into the metaphor of childbirth.[2]  Jesus uses the same metaphor in our gospel scripture today, where he envisions a time of great distress, a time of conflict and chaos, rumor and war, but then turns this trouble on its head, saying: “Do not be alarmed….This is but the beginning of the birthpangs” (Mark 13:8).  Like Paul, Jesus draws a special connection between this metaphor of birthpangs and prayer.  At the end of his spiritual forecast, he concludes with the invitation, “Keep alert and pray” (Mark 13:33).  Just one chapter later in Mark, when Jesus enters into his own moment of great uncertainty and distress, he models this message, praying and again inviting his followers to pray (Mark 14:32, 35, 38). 

In her own precarious moment, Hannah prays.  When she finishes, she leaves the sanctuary transformed.  The narrator remarks that finally she eats and drinks and that her face is no longer downcast.  From a practical standpoint, this change makes little sense.  She hasn’t conceived yet.  Her rival Peninnah will be waiting for her with the same insults as before.  The situation hasn’t changed.  But somehow in her prayer, Hannah has changed.  Maybe not a lot.  We don’t have many details.  But she has changed enough at least to eat and carry on.  Enough to manage a smile and push forward.  Later when she names her child Samuel—which can mean something like “God hears”—we discover how prayer changed her.  It was simply trusting that God had heard her, that God was with her, that her story was not over.  Through prayer, what looked like a certain end, became a beginning.  What felt like death throes, became in fact the birthpangs of her soul.

I have friends like Hannah, who have not been able to bear children themselves.  I know they’ve prayed like Hannah.  For me, their stories complicate this story, because I know that the ending is not always conception and birth.  Instead it’s adoption.  Or a calling into youth ministry.  What I find remarkable in each case, is that my friends do not despair forever.  In their moment of distress, it may genuinely feel like there is no life left worth living.  But through tears, through pouring out their soul, through prayer—they encounter a God who hears, a God who is with them, a God who affixes a semicolon to their trouble and promises that their story is not over.

To See the End as the Beginning

The temptation in a time of distress is to despair.  When we’ve run out of rope, when we’ve exhausted all our options, when we don’t know what to do, the temptation is to say “game over.”  “That’s all she wrote.” 

The good news of Hannah’s story, which echoes in the faith of Paul and in the life of Jesus, is that uncertainty does not spell the end.  In fact, it’s often precisely in these precarious moments that we draw near to God.  It’s in these precarious moments that we find ourselves truly praying, entrusting ourselves to a God who hears us, who is with us, who provides for us.  True, we have no guarantee of what exactly will happen next.  It could be more suffering, as it certainly would be for Jesus at his next Passover.  But as it did for Jesus, so it does for us: prayer gives us eyes to see that what seems like an end is actually a beginning.  What seem like death throes are actually birthpangs. 

Prayer

Loving God,

We live in a precarious world,

Where sometimes it feels

Like we have run out of rope,

Exhausted all our options,

Come to the end of the road—

Instead of giving up

Or gripping harder,

We pour our spirits

Before you,

Trusting that in your love,

Each period can become a semicolon,

Each end can become a beginning.

In him who shares our birthpangs, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

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[1] Mark Wingfield, “A Tattoo That Says, ‘Your Story Is Not Over,’” https://baptistnews.com/article/a-tattoo-that-says-your-story-is-not-over/#.W-q25XpKjUo, accessed November 13, 2018.

[2] Discerning within history a collective groaning and sighing, he casts this hopefully as the birthpangs of creation (Rom 8:22).

"Got God?" (Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 11, 2018, Proper 27)

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“Do You Believe in God?”

Twenty-five years ago, almost to this day, the first “got Milk?” commercial hit the airwaves.[1]  I still remember it.  A historian sitting in his study begins to eat a peanut butter sandwich, when he gets a call from the local radio station with its $10,000 question: “Who shot Alexander Hamilton?”  The historian’s eyes open wide with delight.  He knows the answer is Aaron Burr.  So with a mouth full of peanut butter, he proudly responds: “Aan Buhh.”  “Excuse me?” comes the radio host’s reply.  The historian reaches for a milk carton, hoping to clear his throat.  But horror of horrors, the milk carton is empty.  “Aan Buhh, Aan Buhh,” the man cries hopelessly, as the radio host says, “I’m sorry, maybe next time.”  Then the scene fades to black, and the message “got Milk?” flashes across the screen.

As the “got Milk?” slogan gathered steam, a host of spinoff slogans appeared on t-shirts and bumper stickers.  One such spinoff has inspired what is likely the hokiest sermon title I will ever use, “Got God?” 

What fascinates me about the “got God?” slogan is the way we normally interpret it.  In most Christian circles, asking this question would be tantamount to asking the other person, “Do you believe in God?”  In other words, the implied correct answer to the question, is, “Yes, I’ve got God.  I believe in God.”

The Songs of Naomi and Ruth

Today’s scripture presents us with the conclusion to the story of Ruth.  Because we missed the opening to the story last week, here’s a brief recap to bring us up to speed.

Once upon a time, there was a famine in Bethlehem.  Lacking food, Elimelech and Naomi and their two sons sought refuge in the land of Moab.  But tragedy struck again.  First Elimelech died.  Then Naomi’s two sons, who had since married Moabite women, died.  So Naomi was left alone in a strange land with no security outside her two daughters-in-law.  When Naomi heard that the famine had ended in Bethlehem, her hometown, she decided the best thing would be for her to leave her daughters-in-law and return home. 

Everything in the story turns on what happens next. You know how in a play the most defining moments are often expressed through music?  Well, in the Bible, it’s no different, except that poetry takes the place of music.  Poetry is the Bible’s way of telling us, “This is a really important moment in the story!”  In the story of Ruth, there are two expressions of poetry.  They both appear right after Naomi decides to leave her daughters-in-law and return home.

The first bit of poetry comes from Ruth’s lips.  As I’ve already suggested the analogy, let’s imagine for a moment that Ruth is a musical, and that the lines I am about to read are being sung with enthusiasm by the young Moabite woman Ruth.  Naomi has just decided to return home to Bethlehem, when suddenly the lights dim and the spotlight focuses on Ruth as she clings fiercely to Naomi, singing: “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people will be my people, and your God my God” (1:16-17).  Strangely, there is no response from Naomi.  The scene simply fades to black.

The next scene opens with Naomi and Ruth trudging into the town of Bethlehem.  Several of the women there spot Naomi and begin whispering among themselves, “Is this Naomi?”  Again the lights dim and the spotlight settles on Naomi, and she begins to sing a mournful song: “Call me no longer Naomi [which means pleasant], call me Mara [which means bitter], for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.  I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty; why call me Naomi when the Lord has dealt harshly with me, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” (1:20-21).”

If I had to summarize the story of Ruth, I think I’d probably start with these two expressions of poetry.  They tell me what I need to know.  On the one hand, there’s Naomi. Naomi has no trouble talking about God.  Four times she says God’s name.  If they’d been printing the “got God?” slogan on t-shirts millenia ago, I don’t think Naomi would have had any trouble wearing one.  She’s got God.  She believes in God.  At one of the most defining moments in her life, she namechecks the divine multiple times.  (Incidentally, I might point out that Naomi’s belief does not inspire or encourage her.  In fact, her belief has made her very bitter.)

On the other hand, there’s Ruth, the foreign woman who presumably doesn’t know a thing about the God of Israel.  All she knows is that she and her mother-in-law have been dealt a tough hand, and they’re better off together than alone.  All she knows is that she’ll stay with her mother-in-law through thick and thin.

Where Is God?

As the story plays out in today’s scripture, Ruth returns to Bethlehem with Naomi and ends up meeting Naomi’s distant relative, Boaz.  The two of them marry and have a child who will secure the land and lineage of Naomi’s deceased husband.  In other words, we are led to imagine that Naomi and Ruth, who had been dealt such a tough hand, live happily ever after. 

The most curious thing to me, however, is that the character of God does not once show up in the midst of the drama.[2]  When Naomi and Ruth are husbandless and without any guarantee of food or a home, God never appears on stage.

So where is God?

The only character who professes to have an answer to this question is Naomi, the character who’s “got God,” who is no stranger to God-talk.  According to her, God is the cause of the problem.  “The Lord has dealt harshly with me, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me” (1:21).

Ruth, on the other hand, hardly says a word about God.  She hasn’t “got God” in the confessional sense, in the sense of, “Yes, I believe in God; yes I know all the stories about God.”  And yet the story hints that she is the answer to this question: “Where is God?”  One of the key words in the book of Ruth is hesed, which means something like “steadfast love.”  Elsewhere in the Bible, hesed is a defining feature of God.  “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his hesed [steadfast love] endures forever,” we hear again and again in the Hebrew Bible.  In the book of Ruth, where do we see God’s hesed?  In Ruth herself, who commits to stay with her mother-in-law through thick and thin: “Where you go, I will go…” (1:16-17).

In other words, Ruth hasn’t “got God” in the confessional sense.  She hasn’t “got God” in the sense of, “Yes, I believe in God; I know all the stories about God.”  She’s got God in a deeper way.  She’s got God inside her.  She lives out the steadfast love of God.  Where is God in the story of Ruth?  In Ruth.  God’s steadfast love takes flesh in Ruth’s steadfast love.

How Ruth and Etty “Got God”

You may have noticed the quote at the top of today’s bulletin from Etty Hillesum.  “If God does not help me to go on, then I shall have to help God.”  Etty died in Auschwitz.  She wrote these words about a year before her death.  Lately I’ve been reading her journals, and I’m utterly fascinated with her.  Etty, you see, was not a particularly religious person.  She was not an observant practitioner of her tradition, Judaism.  But as the world around her got darker, she seemed to become brighter and brighter.  As hate gathered around her and grew in intensity, she became more and more convinced of God’s love.

Her experience reminds me of Ruth, because while people around Etty talked about God—about whether God would come and save them—Etty gave flesh to God.  Others “got God” in the traditional, religious sense of having grown up familiar with God’s name and the many stories about God and the many customs of how to approach God.  But like Ruth, Etty got God in a deeper way.  God dwelt within her.  “There are those,” she writes, “who want to put their bodies in safekeeping but who are nothing more now than a shelter for a thousand fears and bitter feelings.”  “There are, it is true, some who, even at this late stage, are putting their vacuum cleaners and silver forks and spoons in safekeeping instead of guarding You, dear God.”  For Etty, the question was not, “Where is God?” or “Will God help us?”  The question was, will we help God?  Will we give existence to God’s insistence?  “We must help You,” she writes, “and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last.”[3]

In the last remaining letter that she wrote, she remarks: “Opening the Bible at random, I find this: ‘The Lord is my tower.’”[4]  I can’t help but think that God would say the same thing about Etty and Ruth, that they were towers for God, beacons of God’s steadfast love, strongholds of healing in a hurting world.

“To Help God”

The good news of Etty and Ruth is also an invitation.  The good news is that we don’t need to get God, in the sense of getting everything right about God, in order to have God with us.  God is already among us, even in the most bitter of situations.  The invitation, then, is that we welcome God into our lives and allow God to become a part of our world through our expression.  The invitation is, as Etty rather provocatively puts it, “to help God.” 

For Ruth, that meant showing the empty and lifeless Naomi God’s steadfast love, which brought new life.  For Etty, it meant showing God’s attention and care to the hopeless prisoners around her.  What might it mean in my life, I wonder—or yours?

Prayer

Faithful God,

Whose faithfulness we know

In the flesh—

In Jesus and in the saints,

Who have given existence

To your insistent love:

Inspire us anew

To embody

Your redemption,

Through which all things are made new.

In Christ, whose body we share.  Amen.

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[1] It aired in October, 1993.

[2] Only at the end, once Ruth and Boaz are already married, does God appear on stage, and then only to ensure that Ruth conceives (4:13).

[3] This and the previous citations are from Etty Hillesum: Essential Writings (ed. Annemarie S. Kidder; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2009), 59.

[4] Etty Hillesum, 157.