The Last Sunday of Pentecost
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
This is - astonishingly! - the last Sunday in the season after Pentecost - the last Sunday of what some churches call "Ordinary Time". It has another name, too....anyone know it? "Christ the King".
Now this has always seemed a little odd to me here in the USA - after all, the best that can be said of royalty after the Revolution is "the sooner you’re gone the better!" It's hard to consider what "Christ the King" might mean as a metaphor when kingship's largely considered a good thing for other people but not for us!
It can get in the way, can't it?! And it can blind us to two important words and phrases that are intended to sum up this day - in the Collect - that God seeks to "restore all things", and that God seeks to bring "unity" to the "divided...peoples of the earth".
Now most of the time I think there's a danger that we can disconnect this sort of religious language from the realities of our world....but not today. Not at this moment in the history of our world.
On any other Sunday of Christ the King we could blithely talk of the end of things and the promised vision of new birth and never make a connection with the world beyond the walls of this place.
But not today.
It's not hard to connect the dots when it comes to endings, is it?! The talk of endings isn't confined to some odd religious sphere that's somehow disconnected from real living - it's absolutely right in the center of everything, it's absolutely "real-world" stuff.
Financial meltdown where ever you turn. The stock market making bungee jumping look like a sedate afternoon pass-time suitable for Church fêtes; in fact doing bungee jumping with the bungee cord too long... Wham! Huge multi-national Companies losing half their stock value overnight. Bankruptcies everywhere. Trust destroyed. Anger and fear stampeding down main street.
And there seems to be nothing that anyone can do about it. We all feel powerless.
It's a horrible mess, isn't it!? But think on this: for some folk, maybe for many folk, this sense of powerlessness, of not being able to control what happens - and most especially of not being able to control what happens to them - is a constant, companion.
And then mix in this: unprecedented changes in world culture, a tidal wave of social change that has continued to flow from the Reformation until today, when it is reaching its peak. A tidal wave - uncontrollable.
Have you noticed what people do when, in the face of change, and in the face of disaster, they feel powerless? When they feel that the world is changing and they have no control over that change? When they know that they are going to experience loss?
Depression. Anger. Attempts at the manipulation of others. Trying to control people and situations so as to recover some feeling of control for the self.
My friends, that sort of behavior goes on all the time. Now it certainly gets exacerbated in times of crisis, but it's always with us.
It happens in families. It happens in corporations. It happens the body politic. Surprise! It even happens in Churches.
What was that prayer? God's will is to "restore all things", and bring "unity" to the "divided...peoples of the earth".
I'm sure that a lot of us would hope that meant the stock market - preferably restoring it to the 14,000 point range" (though I suspect many prayers have ascended to heaven much along those lines!).
But that's for small gods - our God is bigger than that. This prayer is about restoring that which is broken - and when you put that with the other part, the "restoring unity to the divided peoples of the earth" part, then it becomes clear that it's about much, much more than a hiccup - even such a big one - in our economic system.
Ultimately the language of restoration and unity is the language of reconciliation and healing. And as some of you heard me say last night, reconciliation IS the ministry of the whole Church, all the time - we are all called to share with Christ in his ministry of reconciliation all the time.
That means being aware of those places where things and people are broken. It means seeking to help those people who feel helpless, powerless, disconnected from their wholesome selves, to recover a sense of self that finds rest in God.
And it means calling them back into responsible relationships with and in the community.
I would be lying to you if I said that this work is easy - it isn't! Our president-elect has a cake-walk compared with the hard work of restoration and reconciliation that is always with us.
But it is the ministry we accepted at baptism. All of a sudden those promises start to mean a whole lot more than just words on a page, don't they!?
And it is a ministry that we do not do alone - we do it with each other; we share it with Christ; the Body, in all its mystery, is with us.
And so we find ourselves thinking, on this day, about endings.
So here's the thing: as we are faced with endings all around us, we are being reminded that new birth is just around the corner - that it is always just around the corner - that God continues to promise us that it is always just around the corner - and that this truth, this promise, this reality is calling from us a response, a commitment, a hope: that we will commit ourselves to be a part of that new birth.
That, I believe, is of the substance of reconciliation, of the restoring of all things - and, especially, all people - to their true and whole status before God and each other.
May we have the strength together to work for that reconciliation, that restoration, that unity of all things, and all people. Amen.
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