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Year B, Proper 29, the Feast of Christ the King, November 26th, 2006
Daniel 7:9-14; Psalm 93; Revelation 1:1-8; St. John 18:33-37
St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church
The Reverend George F. Woodward IIINot to belabor the Buckeye win last weekend, but the commentators mentioned with some frequency that quarterback Troy Smith could spot an open receiver anywhere on that field. It’s been said of Wayne Gretzky, maybe the world’s best hockey player, that he could “see all over the ice.” Legendary basketball star Bob Cosey was found to have peripheral vision about 50% greater than the average person. They said Bob Cosey could look due East and enjoy a sunset! When Bill Bradley played for Princeton, he could throw a ball to a teammate he wasn’t looking at, and Bradley, like Cosey, when tested, had peripheral vision 40% greater than the average person.
Breadth of vision is important in sports. Breadth of vision is important in every part of life. Some people, like our own Howie Schow, can look at business prospectuses and Excel sheets full of tiny numbers and make sense of the financial market…how does he do that! A gifted physician often exhibits nearly a sixth sense in making correct medical diagnosis. A statesman, as opposed to a politician, perceives trends in the world and exhibits a probity and wisdom in decision making that we all long to see more of.
Disciples of Jesus are called, also, to breadth of vision, to a perceptiveness that flows from commitment to God, to the pursuit of truth, and through sacrificial service to others. There is what we call “orthodoxy” (“orthodoxy” literally means “right praise” but it is often used to mean “right theology,”) and then there is “ortho-praxis” or “right-living.” In the Christian Faith “right-living” is at least as important as “right-thinking,” and both together lead to the breadth of vision God wants for us.
We celebrate the Feast of Christ the King this day on the last Sunday of the Church Year. It is an odd thing to celebrate. Jesus wasn’t a successful “king” in any conventional sense. The government of His day sentenced Him to death, and He didn’t seem much interested in earthly power. His exchange with Pilate reveals that He well understood the distinction between the reign He promised and the one Pilate exercised. “My kingdom is not of this world,” He tells Pilate. “For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” To which Pilate gives the cynic’s response, the response that says that in this expedient world where only results matter, such assertions do not dignify reply: “What is truth?” says the pragmatic Pontius Pilate.
Whatever proved useful in the moment was “truth” for Pilate, and Jesus was not proving very useful. Pilate saw in Jesus, not a human being, but a problem to be solved. Pilate is concerned with maintaining power, establishing the authority of Rome, accumulating goods and honor. That is Pilate’s kingdom.
Jesus spoke of another reign, one in which individuals are seen, not as problems, but as persons. A reign in which the world stops for a long-suffering woman with a hemorrhage, or for one caught in adultery; a world in which a parade is stopped to summon Zacchaeus down from a sycamine tree, and a journey halted in order to hear the plea of a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, a world in which “collateral damage” is not an acceptable category. To say that Christ is King is to say that we believe that Jesus’ perspective was truer than Pilates, that what is truest about God and the world and human life isn’t power, authority, riches, and honors, but the extension of God’s care to the least of these Christ’s brothers and sisters.
Which kingdom, really, do we believe in…Christ’s or Pilate’s? The way we act, and the way we live reflects our real beliefs. In which kingdom do we dwell?
I remember being fascinated as a teenager by the polar expeditions of the nineteenth century. They seemed so daring, and it was fun for a teenager to imagine a time when the world was still full of unexplored terrain. Annie Dillard* puts those journeys in perspective in an essay called “An Expedition to the Pole.” She describes the richly appointed sailing vessels that set out from England on those first voyages into the unknown, traversing vast waters for mysterious and uncharted territories. Those ships often carried no more than twelve days of emergency fuel for what was even then known to be a three-year voyage. Instead of additional coal, “each ship made room for a 1,200-volume library, a hand-organ playing fifty tunes, china place-settings for officers and men, cut-glass wine goblets, and sterling silver flatware.” Most tellingly, they “carried no special clothing for the Artic, only the uniforms of Her Majesty’s Navy.” The great ships carried all the trappings of Empire, but with no vision for the conditions they were going to face.
They all died. For more than three decades, search parties found skeletal remains scattered across ice packs. The remains told stories of people ignorant of location, geography, and weather. Accompanying one clump of frozen bodies “were place settings of sterling silver flatware engraved with officers’ initials and family crests.”
To say that Christ is King is to remind ourselves not to venture life’s waters preferring the trappings of security and affluence and power to the spiritual equipment essential for authentic navigation. To say that Christ is King is to say that what is necessary for navigation is a moral compass that points to the least of these; that understands that God stops for Samaritan women, for Canaanite women, for Martha and Mary, for Lazarus, Zacchaeus, and Bartimaeus, and we should too. Simple people, individual human beings with all their wants and needs and rough-edges, are God’s focus, whatever their nation, color or creed. “Lord, when was it that we saw You hungry and gave You food, or thirsty and gave You something to drink: When was it we saw You a stranger and welcomed You, or naked and gave You clothing? When was it we saw You sick or in prison, and visited You? Then the King will answer them, “Truly and certainly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to Me” (St. Matthew 25).
In the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, people gather around large chess boards for public games over strong coffee. You can stand around and watch the games if you like chess, and many people do crowd around the boards of the better players. I was watching a game one day when the fellow next to me leaned over and whispered “ˇAsi es!” which means “That’s it!” The game was up. I couldn’t see it just yet. Even the soon-to-be-loser did not seem to realize that he had lost, but the decisive move had been made. No matter how the loser prolonged the game in hope of winning, he hadn’t a chance in the world. Those who knew what was happening saw who the victor was.
The Church begins a new year next Sunday with the arrival of the First Sunday in Advent. Just as the world celebrates the start of a New Year on January 1st, the Church celebrates a fresh start at Advent as we announce the events leading up to the birth of Christ. This is the last Sunday on the Church calendar…another year has passed. We end our year by saying we know who the victor is. Christ is King, and His values will win out.
Pilate, that wily old political hack, still thinks he’s in control, and a great many still play his game. But some of us believe in the young upstart from the boondocks who started raising eyebrows two thousand years ago with His focus on the simple, the outcast and the poor, with His persistent proclamation of new tools for navigation, and His surprising strategies. Jesus could see all over the ice. He looked at people, even the down and out, and saw persons, not problems. He led by serving. He had breadth of vision. He could look West and see a sunrise. “ˇAsi es!” we say. “That’s it!” The game is up for the Pilates of this world, even if they don’t know it yet. Christ is King, and we’re going His way. Amen. GFW+
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* Annie Dillard, “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” Harper and Row, 1982 pg. 24
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