THY KINGDOM COME
A Sermon by Rev. James D. Brown
Market Square Presbyterian Church
Christ the King Sunday
November 25, 2007
Scripture: Jeremiah 23: 1-6 and Luke 23: 1-12,33-38
Each year we are in the habit of planning our worship within the framework of what is call the Christian Year. While you might not be able to recite all the components of it, you are probably aware that next Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, a period of building expectation as we prepare, once again and yet as if for the first time, for the coming of the Christ Child into the world. And even if you have not been paying attention to the Church calendar, you could not have missed this week's so secular clue to the season that is upon us: Black Friday.
For just a moment let's recall the journey we've been on for the past twelve months, leading up to today's celebration of Christ the King Sunday. Advent begins the Christian Year, setting the stage for Christmas, which is really a season of twelve days culminating in Epiphany, when we recount the story of the Wise Men from afar as the revelation that Jesus has come into the world as God's gift to Jew and Gentile alike.
Now the Christian Year is in full gear. We commemorate Jesus' baptism by John in the Jordan River, and quickly we enter into the season of Lent with its somber reminder on Ash Wednesday that we have come from the dust of creation, and to that dust we shall return.
Lent is a 40 day journey of repentance and reflection, culminating in Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Maundy Thursday, coming from a word for Jesus' mandate that we love one another, is a time for joining Christ and his companions at table for a final meal.
Good Friday is not so good at all-it marks the scene so powerfully depicted by Luke in today's lesson, where to our never-ending horror we find the Righteous Branch of God hanging from a cross between thieves. Good Friday is God's Friday, not a day of our own choosing. In a manner that stretches our human logic to the breaking point, Christ makes peace for the whole creation by dying on the cross.
We'll come back to this scene in a minute. But first, let's turn to the pivot point of the whole year-Easter, when the church erupts in joy over the Good News that death is not the final word, that the Crucified One has been raised by God to new life. A few weeks later Jesus' ascension signifies that from this point onward his followers will rely not on touch and sight but on cherishing his presence as an act of faith.
Fifty days after Easter comes Pentecost, often called the birthday of the Church. On Pentecost we remember a day in Jerusalem when the first followers of Jesus were so awash in the power of the Holy Spirit that old boundaries of language and religion and ethnicity fell to the wayside, and a Church for the whole human family came into being.
Trinity Sunday follows in short order-a day when we acknowledge that in some mysterious fashion, the unseen God is best understood as three persons-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-of one being, yet still distinct-with Christ revealing the image, the character, the qualities, the very nature of God through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The remaining half of the Christian Year is made up of Ordinary Sundays. The word means what it says-there is a routine, an every Sunday pattern to reading lessons from the Old and New Testaments, with an emphasis on the everyday life and teaching of Jesus. This season takes us through summer and fall, with two notable Sundays being World Communion and All Saints-the first of which marks the universal nature of the Church and the second our eternal union with all the saints, in life and in death.
Now here we are, celebrating Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday in the Christian Year. It feels a little odd and yet just right to end the year with a kingdom theme. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." These words fall from our lips on a regular basis. We want to mean them, we need to mean them.
Jesus was clear that his life and ministry were about the coming of the kingdom of God into the world. His cross was emblazoned with the shocking words, "The King of the Jews," spelled out according to an ancient tradition in the two dominant languages of his day-Latin and Greek-and in his own tongue, Aramaic. The King of the Jews.
In every generation Christians have had to try to make sense of this kingdom language. Jesus and his followers worked at this too. Luke tells us early on, at the time of Jesus' birth, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Lord, and we hear angels cry out “Glory to God in the highest heaven... !” And yet, Jesus will not meet everyone's expectation of what a king should be and do. Even as murderous plots were being hatched to kill him, Jesus tells his followers: “I am among you as one who serves.” What kind of king is this?
We Presbyterians understand that the Church is reformed and always being reformed by the Word of God. So too with our own lives and the life of the world. For us, the biblical image that works best is that of Christ transforming the Church and the world in the same manner that a dollop of yeast transforms a lump of dough into a loaf of bread. God's kingdom is always coming into the world in ways that surprise and astonish, for those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. On Christ the King Sunday it is helpful to look into the heart of our contemporary situation for signs of God's kingdom.
One of the great issues of our time is the relationship between Christianity and Islam. Every day on TV and in the news we hear rumbles from adherents of both of these world religions about a to-the-death battle between waged between Muslims and Christians.
Some commentators delight in calling this an end-times holy war between good and evil. When you stop to think that Muslims and Christians-at least nominally-represent half the people in the world, you have to flinch.
Writing recently in The Atlantic [November 2007], Paul Elie notes that “On the surface, our society is thick with religion.” He goes on to suggest that much of the time the religious discourse is mostly decorative" not running very deep and not in tune with the richness of the traditions being advanced in our public places. This is surely true in so much of what is being said in the name of Christianity by some Christians and in the name of Islam by some Muslims. Christians focus on the jihadist elements of the Qur' an and cry out in horror at the cruelty we find there. Muslims likewise can point to passages in the Christian Bible like Joshua 8:24 ff. where Joshua's followers killed every inhabitant in the town of Ai, all 12,000 men, women and children, as the land of Canaan was being wrested from the people who lived there before the Israelites made it their own. We recall each other’s dark sides and keep fueling the fire.
This fall something very different has been taking place. On October 13 a group of 138 Muslim scholars sent an open letter “to leaders of Christian Churches, everywhere.” It is entitled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” and was endorsed by representatives of every major school of Islamic thought. You can read it on www.acommonword.com . You will be amazed.
The letter says, rightly I believe, that unless there can be a new day of peace between our two world religions, there will be no meaningful peace in the world. “If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace. With the terrible weaponry of the modem world, with Muslims and Christians intertwined everywhere as never before, no side can unilaterally win a conflict between more than half of the world's inhabitants. Thus our common future is at stake. The very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake.” Do you remember who is writing this? Over 130 Muslim scholars and clerics.
What the clerics say next is intriguing and hopeful. They turn to the Qur'an and the Old and New Testaments to find a common word, a shared language of faith on which to build peaceful relations between Muslims and Christians. And that language is stunningly familiar. It's what is central to our own congregation's mission statement adopted a decade ago. The clerics highlight two basic tenets of both Islam and Christianity-the call to love God, heart, mind and soul, and our neighbors as ourselves. In the face of all the nastiness being shouted across the aisles of hatred in our world, we are now being drawn back to saving truth.
The clerics start with love of God, quoting the words of the prophet Muhammad from the Qur'an:
The best that I have said-myself, and the prophets that came before me--is: "There is no god but God, He Alone, He hath no associate, His is the sovereignty and His is the praise and He hath power over all things."
Muhammad also says, “If ye love God, follow me; God will love you and forgive you your sins. God is Forgiving, Merciful.”
The Muslim leaders then turn to our tradition, starting first a sacred texts we share with our Jewish brothers and sisters, the Shema in the book of Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your hear, and with all your soul and with all your strength.” The clerics then quote Jesus in his response to the lawyer who asked him, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus uses the language of the Shema, teaching that our first great duty is to love God fully.
The Muslim clerics then fill in the second half of the equation-that of loving neighbor as self. Given the impression of Islam we get from the news, it comes as a refreshing surprise to learn that the heart of Islam includes the same call to neighborliness as does the New Testament. The document, A Common Word Between Us and You, again quotes the Prophet Muhammad:
None of you has faith until you love for your brother what you love for yourself. None of you has faith until you love for your neighbor what you love for yourself
The Muslim clerics and scholars then quote from the Great Commandment of Jesus Christ, in which the mandate about loving God heart, mind and soul is followed by the requirement that “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The clerics are quick to note that Jesus is quoting Leviticus about love of neighbor, thus including adherents of the Jewish faith in the call to claim a common word of hope.
In saying all of this they do not minimize the differences between world religions, but rather ask that our differences not be used as the basis for hatred and strife. Instead, they write, “Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual good will.”
“Thy kingdom come,” I murmured to myself when I read these words. And I murmured the phrase again when I discovered a full page ad in last Sunday's Times, signed by almost 300 Christian theologians and leaders, in response to A Common Word Between Us and You. The work of the Muslim clerics has created a great stirring of hope within both the Islamic and Christian communities. It's no wonder I found the names of Jim Wallis of Sojourners and lain Torrance, the President of Princeton Seminary, Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose Driven Life, and Professor Miroslav Volf of Yale Divinity School among those who signed the response. The time is now to move beyond hate mongering toward common ground
I'll draw toward a close with these passionate words from the Christian leaders who responded to their Muslim brothers. After stating forcefully that the common ground being staked out is absolutely central to both traditions, they issue a call to action:
The future of the world depends on our ability as Christians and Muslims to live together in peace. . . . We are persuaded that our next step should be for our leaders at every level to meet together and begin the earnest work of determining how God would have us fulfill the requirement that we love God and one another.
It's so easy in a time like this to feel that we are being swallowed in a great dark swamp of despair. In such a crisis, we really must be on the lookout for signs like 138 Muslim clerics and 300 Christian brothers and sisters of ours beginning a dialog that seeks common ground, a common word, a common place to live in the world. I believe that it is through just such things that the kingdom comes. Thy kingdom come!