Scene 1: Christ The King. The very words when put this way
have always struck me as odd. Every Sunday I sit in Rock Spring Parish, and
looking across the sanctuary is a small window with a crown. And through the
middle of the crown on an angle is a wooden cross – reminding one who gazes at
this window of the Christ the King paradox: No cross/No crown. The window is
hidden from the sight of the congregation as if it is there solely to remind
the priest sitting in what looks all-too-much like a wooden throne never to
forget the ground of humility that defines our “king” as one who does not
demand we “strain our necks looking upward, or strive to climb the narrow
ladder to heaven.” Rather, our God and king is bent low in love; to love each
person, each creature, every rock, tree, pond, river and ocean. And that it is
the preacher’s task to find ways to make such a God known, leading others to
find ways to live out of such humble and indiscriminate love. [Ilia Delio, The
Humility of God, St Anthony Messenger Press, 2005, p115]
Scene 2: Back in 1989 I used to drive around in the car
listening over and over again to a cassette tape (remember those!) of Gordon
Cosby talking about Jesus as “the slain lamb.” While a chaplain on the beaches
of D-Day Gordon had had a vision of a new way of being “church.” I used to
marvel at how Gordon’s Lynchburg, VA drawl could so easily draw out six
distinct syllables from the words “slain lamb.” The sermon, from March 5, 1989
at the Church of the Saviour, was about Changing One’s Inner Power Base. I
listened over and over and over again as Gordon spoke of a power greater than
any political, economic or military power represented in this iconic image of
“the slain lamb.” Today, when I finish my treading on the treadmill at Gold’s
Gym, I spend the final five minutes walking backwards. It was a practice urged
by someone writing in the Thursday Health Section of the Baltimore Sun and it
makes sense. This means I stare at the wall immediately behind the treadmill
where there are two scuff marks on the wall forming a cross. I repeat the Jesus
Prayer as I tread backwards and gaze upon the Gold’s Gym cross, with a slight
amendment: Jesus Christ/Lamb of God/Have mercy on me/A sinner. Gordon urges us
to pray without ceasing with this image of the slain lamb as the source of real
power, God power, true and just and faithful power unlike that anywhere else in
this world, but which will be the real
power of the world to come. Lamb of God somehow embodies the true nature of
Christ better than Son or King. No cross/No crown.
Scene 3: One day, when Harper and Kirk Alan were very young,
we visited the Abby Church at Bath, England. As we wandered around the Abby
Church I picked up a welcoming brochure. In part, this was what it said: Jesus
was born in an obscure Middle Eastern town called Bethlehem, over 2000 years
ago. During his first 30 years he shared the daily life and work of an ordinary
home. For the next three years he went about teaching people about God and
healing sick people by the shores of Lake Galilee. He called 12 ordinary men,
and an untold number of women, to be his helpers. He had no money. He wrote no
books. He commanded no army. He wielded no political power. During his life he
never travelled more than 200 miles in any direction. He was executed by being
nailed to a cross at the age of 33. Jesus taught us to trust in a loving and
merciful Father and to pray to him in faith for all our needs. He taught that
we are all infinitely precious, children of one heavenly Father, and that we
should therefore treat one another with love, respect and forgiveness. He lived
out what he taught by caring for those he met; by healing the sick - a sign of
God's love at work; and by forgiving those who put him to death. Jesus' actions
alone would not have led him to a criminal's death on the cross, but his
teaching challenged the religious and moral beliefs of his day. People
believed, and do to this day, that he can lead us to a full experience of God’s
love and compassion. Above all, he pointed to his death as God's appointed
means of bringing self-centered people back to God. No Cross/No Crown.
Scene 4: Every year it seems I go back to Wikipedia to
remind myself how Christ the King Sunday came about. In 1925 Pope Pius XI felt
the secularization of society was leading people away from God, away from
Jesus, and designated a Sunday to bring us all back. It was to be the last
Sunday in October, but then that became Reformation Sunday among some
protestant denominations – as if the dividing up of the people of God into an
infinite number of different churches with competing theologies is something to
be celebrated! Yet, 1925 was a time not unlike our own in which Pius saw a
number of authoritarian dictators asserting power over the churches and
democratic institutions. He felt something was needed to bring us all back to
Christ. Coming from a Church power base that had itself moved far from any
vision of the slain lamb may have contributed to it becoming the failed
strategy it seems to be. The Pope’s impulse, however, was good, and we would do
well to consider his concerns for the broken and sinful world he tried to lead
back to some vision of God’s dream for all people. No cross/No crown.
Scene 5: On Tuesday morning I picked up a book in my office
– Oscar Romero: The Violence of Love. Romero, of course, was the San Salvador
Archbishop who on March 24, 1980 was silenced by an assassin’s bullet while
celebrating Holy Communion with the poor people of that country in a small
hospital chapel. The day before Romero delivered a sermon in which he called on
Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God's higher order and to stop
carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights.
He was silenced, like Jesus was on the cross, for calling people to a new
vision of the power of God’s Love, Compassion and Justice. Like Jesus, his
voice has not been silenced. The book is a collection of quotations from his
homilies the last four years of his life. His final words, spoken just minutes
before a single bullet pierced his heart: “God’s reign is already present on
earth in mystery. When the Lord comes, it will be brought to perfection. This
is the hope that inspires Christians. We know that every effort to better
society, especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that
God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.” Romero embodied the very
essence of the slain lamb. Romero knew well the words of John the Revelator who
in the opening verses of his vision of the king of kings wrote, “Grace to you
and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven
spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness,
the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who
loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom
of priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and
ever. Amen.” [Revelation 1:4-8] No cross/No crown.
Scene 6: Ellen Davis, Old Testament Scholar, professor,
preacher and friend, recalls the scene in John’s Revelation depicted in chapter
5:11-12: “Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the
throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of
myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, ‘Worthy is the
Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and
honor and glory and blessing!’” John writes to a community and a world in
crisis. The book is not about predicting the end of the world; it is about what
is happening here and now and what we are to do. It is a book about worship.
Who will we worship? John repeatedly offers two choices: We can worship God in
Christ, represented as the God of humility, the God who stoops down in love,
the God who comes to us as one of us as the slain lamb. Or, we can choose the
conventional route and worship the culture and the empire, represented by John
as “the Beast.” It is a God, writes Davis, who calls us to “utter
self-forgetfulness.” She gives us the example of Desmond Tutu “extending his
arms to the white government officials and police [of South Africa] to ‘Come
over to the winning side!’ as itself a vision of heaven, of utter
self-forgetfulness, as one of the major ingredients of heaven’s joy.
She continues, “The saints in heaven are not thinking about
themselves; they can’t think of anything but God. Heaven is the place where
everyone is completely freed from fear and self-concern. John shows kings
taking off their crowns and throwing them down at God’s feet, myriads of
myriads falling down on their faces, laughing and singing and praising God…We
might say the saints in heaven can afford to forget themselves and we cannot,
living as we do in this world of competition, strife and terror. But those who
have the most to teach us about what the Christian life must look like in a
dangerous world – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Gordon
Cosby – those teachers tell us the that exact opposite is true. Not only can we
afford some measure of saintly self-forgetfulness; we cannot afford anything
else. We cannot afford our personal and national habits of keeping ourselves
front and center, and excluding so many from our circle of love and concern;
the poor in our own country and around the world, those who differ from us in
color and language and the name they use for God. Most of all, we cannot afford
to think about ourselves, our own generation, to the exclusion of our
grandchildren and their children. We cannot afford to insist on winning our own
temporary ‘victories,’ securing present comfort on terms that guarantee
incalculable suffering and loss for others [as well as for the Earth itself].On
this the judgment of the gospel is clear: if we are ‘winning now’ on terms that
keep others from experiencing the blessing of God, then we will not in the end
find ourselves on the winning side.” [Ellen F Davis, Preaching The Luminous
Word, Eerdmans, 2016, pp 315-316] No Cross/No Crown.
Scene 7: After doing a deep-dive on Christ the King, and
immediately after reading Ellen’s sermon, I was propelled down into the
basement to find a cross. In 1983 it was given to me by the Reverend David
Ward, the priest who sponsored me and sent me to seminary, at my ordination to
the Diaconate. David had had to retire due to cancer. In between chemotherapy
sessions he would walk the beaches and collect driftwood. He had made this
cross himself of the driftwood he had collected and brought it to me at my
ordination despite the great difficulty it was to be there at all. After the tragedy
at St. Peter’s, Ellicott City, I had wrapped it in bubble-wrap and stored it
until such time I might have a place to display it. Now, after reflecting on
Christ the King I needed to see it again. I unwrapped it to find it had
completely fallen apart, held together as it was by silicone caulking adhesive.
Never you mind. I spent a day trying to figure out the puzzle of the cross
before me. Eventually I realized I needed to take apart the few pieces still
held together and start all over. David, who is now among the utterly
self-forgetting saints in heaven, was there to guide me. I finally found a
place for each piece of driftwood in a new incarnation of David’s final gift to
me, he who had made it possible for me to do what I have been doing these past
35 years. It’s not the same. But that’s just it. Nothing ever is. Except for
God’s vision, what Verna Dozier calls God’s Dream - God’s humility, love and
compassion for a repaired and healed world. It was hard work re-creating and
resurrecting David’s cross. That seems to be the core of Christ the King –
there is still hard work to do.
But, No cross/No crown.
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