“Another World, Another Reality”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. David McMaster
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Text: John 18:33-38
In a conversation last week, someone asked me if I played golf. I told him that I did but that I was much better as a teenager than I am now, I just don't play often enough. As the conversation progressed, I threw in a little fact that makes many a golfer weep, I told him that I had actually lived in St. Andrews, Scotland for a while but never played the Royal and Ancient. The Royal and Ancient Golf Course is the home of golf. It is where it all got started over 600 years ago. It was the place where the game was banned in the late Middle Ages because it was distracting young men from archery practice. It is the place that monarchs, from James IV on, in 1502, have played golf and been patrons of the club. I have walked the Links course many times, I've experienced the brutal wind coming off the North Sea that can turn an easy course into a nightmare, but I've never played.
At the time, I was attending the equally old and venerable, University of St. Andrews, pursuing post-graduate research in Hebrew and Old Testament Studies. I enjoyed “the auld toon,” immensely and was intrigued, ten or so years ago, when Prince William chose to study at St. Andrews. It's been a seat of learning for about 550 years, similar in vintage to Oxford and Cambridge, so it isn't that odd that a future monarch attended there but I often wondered how the townsfolk reacted to Prince William in their midst? It's a small town so he would be noticed. How would they greet him as he walked and shopped in the town. Did they have to bow as their prince walked by? It must have been an interesting experience for the town and university to have royalty in their midst for four years.
Of course, St. Andrews is also the place that Catherine Elizabeth Middleton elected to study. It is the place where Prince William and Catherine met. It is the place that they courted and I can just imagine them walking the path with the Links on one side and the superb beach and North Sea on the other. I've wondered from time to time if they took romantic walks along the front up to the ruins of the Arch-bishop's palace or through the graveyard that now lies within the ruins of the once grand cathedral.
It has been wonderful to hear how the relationship of William and Kate has blossomed and to see, this week, that after eight years, they are finally taking the plunge into engagement and marriage. It has been front page news, with all sorts of predictions about whether this wedding will match up to the pomp of Charles and Diana's wedding almost 30 years ago. Some will remember that wedding - the open, horse-drawn carriage, the accompanying guard, the guests dressed in their finest, the nation turning out in droves to line the route to St. Paul's Cathedral. The extent of it all, the splendour, the pageantry, the expense, it is difficult for the average person to really comprehend, but this is royalty and this is the stuff of royalty. For most of us it is another world, almost another reality.
When one thinks of royalty these days, what comes to mind? When I was young the words that I would have associated with the royals would have been privilege, upper class, posh, and private. As I approached my teenage years, the jet-setting Princess Margaret had become great fodder for the press. She was joined later by Fergie as the royals became the stuff of scandal. Later yet, as Diana matured, perhaps the word glamour would enter word associations, but royal divorces brought more scandal, and in Diana's death, “distant” seemed to be the word applied to the royal family, a designation that, I think, Prince William and others are rectifying.
While these word associations may reflect 20th and 21st century royal life, the word that would more accurately describe monarchs in the past is the word power. Kings and queens had wielded power. In days gone by kings were in charge of their kingdom, kings could set policy, establish laws, they were the law, they could do whatever they wanted, they had power and they used it. Some used it for good and would look after the interests of their subjects. Some used it in war and became known as great as they extended the borders of their kingdom. Some were weak and lost ground to others and there also those who were evil, self-serving kings who abused power, acted corruptly, and treated their subjects with disdain. Perhaps, it is the abuses that can occur when one person is sovereign that has led generations of individuals to curtail the power of the individual in favour of democracy and parliamentary systems and republics. We do not trust power in the hands of one or a few as much as Macchiavelli did.
It is interesting to see that one of the appellations given Jesus in our New Testaments is “king.” He is given the title, Lord. He is spoken of as having a great kingdom (Col.1:13, etc.). He is elevated above all principalities and powers in the heavens above and the earth beneath. He is set above the angels (Hb.1) and there will come a time when every knee shall bow before him and every tongue confess that he is Lord (Ph.2:11).
In the first chapter of Colossians, his pre-eminence is established when he is called: the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, involved in creating the heavens and the earth, all thrones and dominions and powers. He is the head of the body, the church, the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. He is pre-eminent and, perhaps in an attempt to thwart an early form of Gnosticism, Paul states “in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Col.1:15-20).” Christ, then, as Lenny LeBlanc and Paul Baloche have taught us in song, is above all powers, above all kings, above all nature and all created things... Christ is above all.
I was reminded of that one evening when I was invited to attend a fund-raising concert down at the Glenn Gould Theatre. The friend I was with introduced me to her friends who had invited a group. As she did, she whispered to me that this couple were particularly well off. As we were getting to know one another, Jim asked me what I did, I asked him what he did and as he shared about his job and background in finance, we found that we had been in the same program at university (life before my call into ministry). As we spoke about the financial world, its trials and joys, I was a bit envious of what he was doing and, I commented, “There are days when I wished I'd stayed in finance.” To which, he replied, “It's okay, I suppose, but it's not like I'm working for God or anything.” I smiled, God is still viewed as trumping everything else. Christ is still above all.
You may not know this because it is one of the lesser celebrated days within the church calendar, but on this day each year, on the Sunday just before Advent, the church suggests that we celebrate the reign of Christ on this, “Christ the King” Sunday.
But given all that we know of rulers, how are we to see Christ's rule? How are we to envision his kingdom, this kingdom that, he told Pontius Pilate, is not of this world (Jn.18:36)? What is the nature of Christ's power? Are we to see him as we see royals today in terms of privilege and distance? Are we to think back a couple of thousand years to old Jewish messianic expectations and see him as one who will ultimately defeat the enemies of Israel with the help of righteous Zealots? Are we to think back a couple of hundred years to the thought of the Deists and see Christ as the powerful and creative force behind all things, but one which has little interest now in what is going on upon the earth? Are we to accept modern liberal conceptions that view him as a heavenly Santa Claus? You know the fella who says he is going to find out who's naughty or nice, but never really seems to get around to it. In the end, everyone gets presents. Or is Jesus' rule like that of kings and powerful men throughout history? Should we view him as one of those, perhaps, malevolent forces ready to punish us if we do not shape up.
Some of us here grew up in pietistic circles in which the threat of a heavenly club was always there. I grew up in Irish Methodism when one could still here the odd person say, “O, he's a staunch Methodist, you know.” In my early childhood, Sabbath observance was established by the fear of God. We were not allowed to watch television on Sundays. We were not allowed to play sports of any kind. We could go to church all day: morning service, afternoon for Sunday School, and evening for another service, all of which seemed like a lot of work to me, but we could not play. We could go for sensible walks in parks. We could have picnics. We could read Sunday newspapers which probably caused others to work, but we could not toss a ball around. We could sit at a beach. We could watch the waves, but there was no swimming at all on the Sabbath. And if anyone worked or played, tossed a ball around or swam on that day, the wrath of God was going to get them. They were doomed. The ruler of the universe would get them back in this life or the next.
Is that how we are to think of Christ? What are we to think of Christ our king? Our passage today teaches us a whole lot about Christ's personhood and reign and I want to touch on two of them, the first being the incarnation, we need to see Christ's rule first of all through the lens of the incarnation. Paul writes, “He is the image of the invisible God,” and “In him (in Jesus), the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Col.1:19).” Unlike Queen Elizabeth who was thought distant at the time of Diana's death and, unlike the Deists who think that God is uninvolved with us, the incarnation, if it tells us anything, tells us that God, our King is involved, that he is with us.
It is important to have a supportive presence with us. We get more accomplished when another person is with us. There is a protective element in having someone walk beside us. There is support in another person when things are not going well.
I recall one day one of my children came home from school and asked if I'd heard the news. “What news,” I asked, and she told me the horrible story of how one of her young friends had committed suicide. I was floored, for this was a family I knew reasonably well. I wasn't sure if I should but something told me to go over to their house right away. As soon as their door opened they threw their arms around me and I threw my arms around them. I stayed for a couple of hours that afternoon. Another couple the next day and the day after that. They were devastated. I didn't say much, I had little to say and wanted to avoid any hint of platitudes. At one point, I said, “I have nothing to say, I can barely imagine your pain, I can just listen.” To which they replied, “You are listening, you are here and that is the important thing.”
It is similar with God. His incarnation in Jesus, if it has anything to say to us, it is that God is here. God is with us. God is not watching us from a distance as Bette Midler and others sang. We have the kind of God who is with us and we must view his rule and his power in light of his coming into the world.
So that is the first thing. But it is not just his coming into the world that we need to think on, we must also view Christ's rule through the lens of his purpose in coming. Paul says here that “through him (through Jesus) God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things (Col.1:20).” And as Paul goes on, it is clear that he has the cross in mind as the source of this reconciliation.
The cross is another thing that tells us much about Christ's nature, power, and reign. The cross lets us know that Christ is not looking out for his own interests alone as some kings have done. “The cross shows us that God is not one who thinks humankind so wretched that it deserves death and hell. The cross,” says United Church theologian, Douglas Hall, “to the contrary, reveals that God thinks humankind no matter how fallen is so good, so beautiful, so precious in its potentiality that its redemption is worth dying for. ”
Greater love has no man than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends. Christ's rule must be seen in terms of the love of the cross. It is a rule of a different order, a different reality, a rule with the power to transform as God “transfers us into the kingdom of his beloved Son (Col.1:13).”
I met Angie many years ago. She became a family friend and we had many laughs together before she shared with us her story. It was a story of neglect and abuse as a child. A story of how an errant grand-parent sexually assaulted her when she was 8 or so. A story of how her father abused her in other ways, continually yelling and telling her how stupid she was and what an idiot she was. One of the factors about abuse victims is that once abused there is a level of acceptance and an inability to set boundaries that others would quite normally set. And, so she told us of how in school, she was bullied and taken advantage of and then she got into this relationship with a man in her later teens that was just crazy - an abusive relationship. She said that by the time she got to her early 20s she just felt and empty. She had no sense of dignity or self-worth, and was struggling to take care of a child.
It was then that she met an older couple who we also knew, that older couple befriended her and began to help her. Their door was always open and in the midst of many, many talks about life and her struggles and fairness, they also passed on to her the thought that she was valuable to God. “I liked the sound of that,” she said, “and I began to read about God and the New Testament. As I read I learned and I learned among other things that in Christ ands through all that he has done I can be a new creation. I didn't feel good about myself,” she said, “there was so much wrong in my life. Maybe I wasn't all my fault, but I didn't feel good about myself and through this reading I learned that I could start again.” It was this that got me: “Christ gave me back dignity when I didn't have any.”
That's the kind of power that Christ has. It is not a malevolent power, not something before which we should cringe. Christ's rule is not something that will kick a person when they are down. Christ's power, Christ's rule has to be looked at through the lens of the incarnation and the cross. It is a power that wants reconciliation. It's a power that draws God toward us and us toward God. It is a rule we can trust in, one that will help us in life and beyond.
On any given Sunday, a minister can look out over a congregation and know that there are people in it who come to church because it is habitual. It is something they do simply because they are Christian. But there are always some who are struggling, some who have come to seek answers, some because they've done something wrong, some because something wrong has been done to them. There are people who are grieving, people who are facing illness, people who are struggling in a relationship or with a child acting out and causing them all kinds of heartache. Many just come to church looking for something, some sort of answer. It's easy when we think about God in terms of majesty and greatness and power, to assume that he his distant, that God is too big to be concerned about us, but when we really understand the rule of Christ, the power of Christ that viewed through the lens of the incarnation and the lens of the cross, we know that He is there for us. This morning, I would invite you to commune with the King, to seek the one who is with us ... the King who loves us so much he died for us. Amen.