24 November 2013

“Christ is ALL”
OT 34C / Christ the King
Colossians 1:11-20 / Luke 23:33-43
24 November 2013


Do you remember the Disney movie “Aladdin?” There’s this great, short scene when Aladdin first sets the genie free from being trapped in the lamp … the genie describes to Aladdin what it’s like, being a genie … he blows up huge and says “PHENEMONENAL COSMIC POWERS!” … and then, squeezes back into the lamp and says, “itty bitty living space.”
It’s about the irony of the contrast, that’s for sure. Big powerful genie lives in beat up old cramped lamp.
It’s the same word we might say about our texts for today. The irony of the contrast between those verses from Colossians, and the Gospel narrative of the final portion of Luke’s passion.
The Cosmic Christ … he in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell … suffering, emptying, dying, on a cross between two criminals.
Hear these words of Paul about Jesus, the One in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.

He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.

And in that first-ness is implied, called forth … an attitude … that anyone who hears Jesus’ call to follow him would live life his way … and so achieve his same end … being with Jesus, sharing in his glory forever … sharing in the fullness of God … everything that God so wants to give us, which he first gave to Jesus … new, full life, together, forever, with him.
And so on this Christ the King Sunday – the last Sunday of the Church year’s round cycle of things … we look back at all the words and ways in which Jesus has called to us since September; the words, the lessons, the truths we’ve read and heard this fall:
God’s economic lessons – how we who are loved and gifted and saved by God, how and for what we’re called to live. God risks it all for you and me, and calls us to live the same way, risking and giving to and for others in ways that don’t make sense in a means to an end, straight line, there-just-won’t-be-enough-to-go-around-way.
But our God is not a God of scarcity … but rather, a God of abundance. And God calls us to abundant living, sharing, caring, giving … no, not giving, because giving implies we own it and NO, we don’t … it’s all God’s so it’s STEWARDING, serving, blessing others with God’s blessing through stuff and money, time and talent and treasure.
And we’ve heard God’s call through Jesus to live in a constant attitude of repentance, hearing his call, turning around, admitting our sins, our failures, our over-busyness … whatever and whoever removes Christ from the center of our lives. We hear his Word of forgiveness … and trust his call to live, in the gain is loss, for you first and me last, cross shaped path called sacrificial, sacramental living … our Baptism in Jesus, our eating and drinking at his table, gets lived out in Service, to and for others.
In other words,

Making peace through the blood of his cross.

And so we arrive at today … this Christ the King Sunday. And, yes, our Gospel reading, summing all this up for us, is once more the recounting of Jesus’ last moments on the Cross.
The words we heard last, exactly eight months ago today … March 24, the Sunday of the Passion … remind us that Jesus, Christ the King for us is always Jesus of the Cross.
Here is the throne from which he reigns … not encrusted with jewels and riches … not protected by the Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security.
No, his throne is made up of rough wood, and nails, and blood … and the only Security comes in, first, the criminal’s word of repentance,

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom

and then, Jesus’ word of promise and hope, ironically, tragically, delivered from his lowest moment:

Today, you will be with me in Paradise.

And so here it is. How different, how stark the contrast:

He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

When they came to the place that is called the Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And the people stood by, watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him …

It is, most surely, the theology of the Cross … the word of God, the word about God, that speaks most clearly this contrasting, opposite word to us … strength through what appears to be weakness, victory through suffering, life from death.
About this Theology of the Cross, Martin Luther offers these words from his Heidelberg Disputations:

This is clear: He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil. These are the people whom the apostles call “enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18), for they hate the cross and suffering and love works and the glory of works. Thus they call the good of the cross evil and the evil of a deed good. God can be found only in suffering and the cross, as has already been said. Therefore the friends of the cross say the cross is good and (self-building up, meaningless) works are evil, for through the cross these works are destroyed and the old person, who is especially edified by (their good) works, is crucified.

The fullness of God … the fullness of God … stretches out his hands and arms, is nailed to a cross, from where he bids all those who would follow him, to come and suffer, come and give, come and die.
Jesus’ path to greatness ends on the Cross.
Yet even that “End” is an end that is not an ending … for it keeps on going … through the grave and empty tomb … to resurrection … to new life … to being reconciled with God forever. The End turns out to be not an ending at all, but rather, a beginning. “Today you will be with me in Paradise” is not The End of All This … but rather, just the next part of the journey in “dwelling in the fullness of God” … for Jesus, for the criminal, and for us.
In other words, now that we have gone through this death, too … death to all that is self-building, self-aggrandizing, “aren’t we so great and so special” people … now that THAT pride and arrogance is nailed to the cross and dies with Jesus … now … NOW … we can rise with Jesus, in humility, in joy, in love for and service to our neighbor, and in hope, not just for life in heaven SOMEDAY, but life right here, right now, in Fairwood on November 24, 2013.
If you’ve been listening to me over the past few years, you know that I have grown in appreciation of the German Lutheran theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Mostly that is because of all the Lutheran theologians, of all the theologians of the past five hundred years, Bonhoeffer gets the paradox of the Cross. He gets that the only Jesus we can … we must … know … is the Christ of the Cross who also, in him, all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. He gets this about Jesus … PHENEMONENAL COSMIC POWERS!” … “itty bitty living (and dying) space.”
Perhaps the toughest reading material Bonhoeffer left us were the letters, poems and songs he wrote while he was imprisoned in Berlin in 1944. These works are compiled into “Letters and Papers from Prison,” and some 70 years later, this work continues to amaze, frustrate, tear apart and pull together those who read it.
For, you must remember, Bonhoeffer wrote these words while he was working out being part of the conspiracy to kill Hitler and overthrow his government. A Lutheran pastor, theologian, a man of peace, one who was by all accounts the rising superstar of Christian theology, thought, writing, teaching, of his time, involved in a mission to murder the leader of his government and take it over himself, with the help of his friends. Of course with our perfect hindsight we might easily pass this off as an “of course he had to do this” … but that is our great error, we putting ourselves in the comfort of our easy 2013 seats back into history, and slighting the wrenching decision Bonhoeffer had to make.
Of course, that plot failed, and Bonheoffer was soon put to death for being part of it.
But hear his words, written in that terrible time and place … fine commentary on our Scriptures today, this day of Christ the King:

21 July 1944 … the day after the failed plot
I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a church person, a righteous person or unrighteous one, sick or healthy. … I mean, living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the word … watching with Christ in Gethsemane. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?

Notes for a book – July / August 1944
The church is the church only when it exists for others. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell people of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.

And finally … a poem he wrote to his fiancé and family on the eve of the new year 1945 … as we cross into another church year together … this old one, on this Christ the King Sunday, now ending … next Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, we begin the cycle of Jesus’ life all over again … may we, too, hear these words as hope … hopeful paradox, to be sure … but hope, clean, clear and bright … as we hear and heed Christ’s call to follow, to follow him, the Christ of the Cross who also, in him, all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.

By Powers of Good
By faithful, quiet powers of good surrounded
So wondrously consoled and sheltered here –
I wish to live these days with you in spirit
And with you enter into a new year.

The old year still would try our hearts to torment,
Of evil times we still do bear the weight;
O Lord, do grant our souls, now terror-stricken,
Salvation for which you did us create.

And should you offer us the cup of suffering,
Though heavy, brimming full and bitter brand,
We’ll thankfully accept it, never flinching,
From your good heart and your beloved hand.

But should you wish now once again to give us
The joys of this world and its glorious sun,
Then we’ll recall anew what past times brought us
And then our life belongs to you alone.

The candles you have brought into our darkness,
Let them today be burning warm and bright,
And if it’s possible, do reunite us!
We know your light is shining through the night.

When now the quiet deepens all around us,
O, let our ears that fullest sound amaze
Of this, your world, invisibly expanding
As all your children sing high hymns of praise.

By powers of good so wondrously protected,
We wait with confidence, befall what may.
God is with us at night and in the morning
And oh, most certainly on each new day.

Amen.