Eternity Sunday Sermon by Marilyn Zehr
November 25, 2012
Texts: Psalm 93, John 18:33-37
As Ed outlined for us, today is both eternity Sunday – and the last Sunday of our Christian Church Calendar – known in the broader Christian Church as Christ the King Sunday.
On Eternity Sunday each year we remember our loved ones who have died in the last year. With combined emotions of grief and love, we say our loved one’s name and in a Spirit of prayerful reverence we place a carnation – a white flower, in the vase here at the front. In this simple yet deeply important act we name for each other and ourselves that death – the loss of the visible life of the one we have loved – simply does not have dominion.
Dominion or Reign and in biblical terms Kingship belongs somewhere else. Dominion belongs with God through Christ.
I begin my sermon by repeating a few verses from Psalm 93.
The floods have lifted up, O LORD,
the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring.
More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters,
more majestic than the waves of the sea,
majestic on high is the LORD!
Your decrees are very sure;
holiness befits your house,
O LORD, for evermore.
I imagine this Psalm being read in parts of the Eastern United States and parts of the Caribbean this Sunday and I wonder how it might be heard there now – where they have a renewed and intimate appreciation of the roaring power of the floods, the thundering of the mighty waters and the majestic waves of the sea. The power of the sea is something to respect if not outright fear at times.
Floods are not the only things we may experience fear about these days. We also fear wars and rumours of wars, and we fear violence in different parts of the world and worry about where that violence might lead. We fear for the safety of our children in school at times. We hope that they will be free from bullying. We fear cancer and the way it has the potential to ravage the bodies of persons we love, or our own. We may also fear the “fiscal cliff” and what it again might mean for retirement savings, our ability to find work or keep work in the field in which we’ve been trained, and most of us have a least a moderate fear of death – our own death and the possibility of the death of persons we love.
We fear death because of the harsh reality that in the visible world – the day-to-day world of our five senses where we smell flowers and feel breezes and hear birds and watch sunsets and know the warm embrace of friendship and love – death seems so final.
And so as with the ancient Hebrews in the heart of our fear we meet up with our deepest longings. When we are afraid our longings for safety and security are awakened.
At one point in their history, the ancient Hebrews expressed that deepest longing in their desire for a King – a King that would triumph over their enemies and with that victory bring prosperity, safety and security and thereby eliminate their fear. “If only we had a king,” they said “all will be well,” and eventually God granted their desire. The people were given King Saul, King David and King Solomon and many more kings reigned throughout the following centuries before the people were eventually exiled in Babylon. Following the exile, they returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple under other sovereignties again until several centuries later they became an oppressed minority within the Roman Empire under King Herod.
It is the Hebrew poets and prophets and some of their priests who helped the people to realize that earthly kingships were regularly fraught with difficulties. The only true King, they said was the one named YHWH.
It is YHWH who is
More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters,
it is YHWH who is more majestic than the waves of the sea,
It is YHWH whose decrees are very sure;
holiness befits YHWH’s house,
and it is YHWH who will reign forevermore.
The Hebrew struggle to understand kingship and the desire that God’s chosen king would save them and dissipate and obliterate their fear continued into the time of Jesus.
The gospel of John records for us a fascinating conversation between Pilate and Jesus about kingship.
Pilate and Jesus join me at the pulpit.
Marilyn as narrator: Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him,
Pilate: Are you the King of the Jews?
Jesus: Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’
Pilate: I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?’
Jesus: My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’
Pilate: So you are a king?
Jesus: You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.
Pilate sits down
Marilyn: There is no one single interpretation of this text and so I will not try to present something definitive, but this text does raise questions about kingdoms and truth. Jesus, Could you say that part about the kingdom again?
Jesus: If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over….”
Marilyn: There is something about the delineations of Kings and kingdoms and leaders and their nations that appears to require protection through force. In this way, your kingdom, Jesus, is rightly understood not to be of this world.
Jesus: You, say that I am a King. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.
Marilyn: If it is not about nations or kingdoms and it’s not about force, and Jesus – you do not exactly deny that you are some kind of King just a different kind of kingdom, what truth is it to which you testify?
Jesus: Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.
Marilyn: Belonging to your kingdom means belonging to truth and if we belong to truth we will listen to your voice.”
Hmm – Truth and belonging; Truth isn’t propositional then if we can belong to it, is it? Truth is more personal it seems.
Jesus: Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.
Marilyn: Jesus, I’m listening.
In the face of my deepest fears, the ones that ignite my deepest longings, you, Jesus, are offering belonging.
Something tells me that it’s going to take a lifetime to appreciate the nature of this truth and this belonging – maybe even a lifetime and my own death.
(Jesus sits down and sermon continues…)
Granted – our struggle is slightly different
than the struggle of those who lived when Jesus did
and from the struggle of the ones who handed Jesus over
and from the ones who were responsible for his execution, isn’t it?
In our post-modern world we have few illusions that kingdoms or any form of national government will entirely keep us from harm or eradicate our fears – for what government is there that can keep us safe from death? All that governments in their best forms can do is promote healthy and helpful environments for life to flourish. Sometimes they succeed in this endeavor and sometimes they don’t. As engaged and active citizens we have a responsibility to aid our governments in their endeavors towards life and safety, but as I said we have few illusions. And ultimately, governments are least likely to succeed in keeping their citizens safe from death and prosperous when they allow allegiance to certain ideologies to lead to violent conflict and war. There are many persons who gather here on a Sunday to worship for whom the death of relatives came about precisely because of the wars and violence caused by competing ideologies and the struggle of nation against nation.
But in and beyond all of that, we hear Jesus say, “My kingdom is not of this world.” His goal and orientation was different than the kingdoms of this world – he didn’t even manage to keep himself, “the king,” safe from death. For those who mocked him – this kind of kingship was laughable.
Instead – death came to him as it comes to all of us – and in this is the difference. In this way at least two things happened.
First, God revealed to us that God knows all of what it means to be human – even the path towards and across the threshold of death. Only in this do we know for sure that God knows our deepest fears and our deepest longings. God knows fully what it is to be human.
And second, death was not the last word. God’s resurrection of Christ from the dead is the ultimate dominion or reign or kingship – even over death the weapon that earthly kingdoms use to enforce their will.
What does Christ’s dominion over death and resurrection mean for us when we lose someone we love or when we find ourselves facing our own death?
From 1 Corinthians chapter 15;
When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
Where, O Death is your victory?
Where, O Death is your sting?
With Paul – I say this is a mystery, but a mystery that can be somewhat discerned – and known to a degree most often by the contemplatives among us. Contemplatives deliberately open themselves to the silent abyss and listen patiently there. At that strange and severe frontier Contemplatives become infused with the knowledge that indeed Love is stronger than death and that there is something beyond death, some Eternal presence to which we already belong. If you have had the difficult privilege of accompanying some one you have loved to the threshold of death, though the body is worn-out and fragile it can be awe-inspiring to be granted a glimpse of this person becoming beautiful with a strange Eternal radiance and presence. Quite simply, the truth that can be known and the truth to which we can belong is that in death as in life we are not alone though it may seem so at times.
The One to whom we belong and the One to whom we listen will come to us at any and all times but especially when the darkness of death approaches. The darkness of death will not have dominion. Everlasting Dominion belongs to Christ Jesus, the One who crosses the threshold of death with us and carries us into life and light.
Thanks be to God.