Looking for the king?

Christ the King 2012


Barbara Lundblad, a professor and ‘blogger, tells this of her friend Delores Williams. Delores grew up in the South and remembers Sunday mornings when the minister shouted out: “Who is Jesus?” The choir would shout back, “King of kings and Lord Almighty!” Then, little Miss Huff, in a tiny soft voice, would sing her own answer, “Poor little Mary’s boy.” Back and forth they sang – KING OF KINGS…Poor little Mary’s boy.

On the feast of Christ the King, we cannot and should not fill our minds with images of a regal Jesus seated in majesty without hearing little Miss Huff say softly, “Poor little Mary’s boy.” Any language, any image we borrow from the archaic world of royalty enthroned with pomp and panoply needs the counterpoint of Miss Huff’s truth—that this King is an anti-King, a King whose royal robes are rags and whose throne room is the place where, as the ‘60’s song said, where the ragged people go.

This feast is a latecomer to the calendar. A Pope created it in 1925. I think he took a long, horrified look at the tyrannies and dictatorships and ideologies that were brewing to make the 20th Century such a blood bath and placed this feast as a contradiction to all those forces. A simple Sunday feast is a fragile statement to make against the forces of power and violence.

“Christ the King” is a paradox, a paradox as deep as that choir shouting its proclamation and little Miss Huff whispering her deeper, more powerful truth. The early Christians were very clear that proclaiming Christ Jesus as Lord was a very different thing than proclaiming Caesar as Lord. The Christians were seen by the Romans as subversive, enemies to peace and order, worshipping a Jew who had been executed under Roman law. Merely suggesting that there was any king besides the Emperor was treason. Proclaiming that this Jesus was King was treason and insult both.

Is it still treason? If not, is that because we have forgotten the scandal, the outrageous nature of the Kingship of Christ? Have we placed King Jesus, the rejected and abused and condemned King, in a safe seat dressed in Caesar’s robes? Have we forgotten how astounding it is that we proclaim the marginalized and rejected One as King?

Thomas Merton wrote:

“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all,
Christ has come uninvited.
But because he cannot be at home in it –
because he is out of place in it,
and yet must be in it
- his place is with those others who do not belong,
who are rejected because they are regarded as weak;
and with those who are discredited,
who are denied the status of persons,
and are tortured, exterminated.
With those for whom there is no room,
Christ is present in this world.”

If we wish to see Christ the King, do not look in a palace. Do not look in a place of power or prestige. Do not look where everyone sits content with their privileges or their rightness or their security.

Look instead to the rejected, to those invisible, to those whom we are tempted to dismiss with pity or with condescension. Look to those for whom each day is a struggle to simply exist, who do not have the luxury of a sense of security. And look too at the impoverished, vulnerable, wounded parts of ourselves, those parts that do not fit, that are inconsistent, those parts that we least wish to own or admit.

It is with those and it is there, in those forgotten parts of our world, that Christ the King stands at home. It is there that the pure love and grace of God shines forth. Into this world, this demented inn, the uninvited One whose own people did not receive him—here he reigns. Here he is strong. He stands because he has not been offered a chair, or he finds a cardboard box, or he takes a plastic chair with dozens of others in a crowded waiting room. Here the love and humility of our King shines forth with hope.

Everything from nothing

Proper 27 B 2012
1 Kings 17:8-16; Ps 146; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44


Facebook reported this week on Jose Mujica of Uruguay, proclaimed “the world’s poorest president.” Mujica drives an old Volkswagen Beetle, lives in a farmhouse with his wife and dog, and donates 90% of his salary to charity.

The comments after the article were full of praise for Mujica’s example. But President Mujica falls short of the unnamed women in the Bible today. He has a nice salary to give away. They did not.

I always felt it unfair that Elijah first asked the unnamed widow in Zarephath for some of the last of her food. Why doesn’t God through the prophet simply help her out, first promise her an endless supply of meal and of oil and THEN ask for some dinner? And what happened after that poor widow in the Gospel gave her last two cents to the Temple? Did Jesus send one of the guys scurrying after her to hand her a few coins out of their traveling purse?

It is a luxury to be rich enough to give. It feels good, like the day we gave $5 to Trumpet Man as he sat at the on ramp on the Hawthorne Bridge. It was not our last $5. What if it were? Where is the Gospel in these stories?

Maybe the Gospel is found here: it is when we think we have nothing to give that we have everything to give.

Today is a good and rich day. We gather after the Mass to share food generously prepared. We gather to be with one another, and weall enjoy that. And we gather to share hope and vision for our future as a congregation. We have begun to talk of “renewal” this year. That conversation will go on, but for today we all may speak to where we feel our parish is called this coming year.

The Vestry and clergy will take this input and form a budget with a mission focus for 2013. And in the weeks to come, we shall be invited to commit to this vision, to this ongoing energy of God’s own fire and invitation among us. It is a time of vision and a time of choice.

All during my time here, we have been tempted to think of Saints Peter and Paul as “small”, as “struggling”, even as “broke” and “poor.” The truth is we are not so small, we are not so struggling, we have been blessed in so many ways, and others have been very generous with us. Over and over we have tried to fight the language of poverty and of scarcity.

Perhaps we need to look at things a different way. Perhaps we need to listen deeply to what God says in his Word. If we’re rich, we’re rich, and like President Mujica we may do generous things with our wealth. If we are poor, well then: when we feel we have nothing to give, then we have everything to give. The poorest people can claim the dignity of giving back, of living generous lives. People who come to our doors hungry often insist on picking up litter or doing other chores in order to give back. A crumpled dollar bill will be left on a table at Brigid’s Breakfast.

If we are feeling we have nothing extra, nothing more to give, then we have everything to give.

We can give ourselves wholly to the inspiration of God as the Spirit leads us. We can give ourselves to the molding, transforming Spirit of God as Spirit shapes us into a community both new and old. We can take a chance on a vision, on a dream. Remember: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail.

And we can smile at President Mujica, knowing that we have taken his example one step farther.