8:30 AM service cancelled due to snow

I don't know how many people might happen to check this (I have no idea how many of you might read this or have it bookmarked for checking once in a while) - but if you happen to come here, I wanted to let you know that St. John's has cancelled its 8:30 AM service for tomorrow, 12/20.

We are still holding out the possibility that we will be able to have worship & the kids' Christmas play tomorrow at 10 AM, so please check your e-mail (if we have it) or call the church & listen to the voice mail to see if we are on or not for the 10 AM worship.

November 22, 2009 - Christ the King Sunday

Christ Is Exactly the King We Need
John 18:33-37
Christ the King Sunday – November 22, 2009

Today is Christ the King Sunday. It's the last day of the church year, a little like our very own New Year's Eve. It's our final festival day before we dive into Advent next week, starting all over with the stories of Jesus' life, and death, and resurrection as told, this year, through the eyes of Luke. Christ the King Sunday is a relatively recent holy day – Pope Pius the 11th began it in 1925 as a way to unify people in the face of growing nationalism, to remind the church & its people that their ultimate allegiance is to Jesus, not to any leader or nation of the world. And while it's nice to have a concrete beginning and ending to the church year, I have to admit that Christ the King isn't my favorite festival day.

I think it's the use of the word “king” that does it. We don't really understand what it means to have a king, because what we know about kings is pretty limited to fairy tales and nursery rhymes, or what we have seen of how a monarchy works in jolly old England w/ Queen Elizabeth, waving regally as she passes by. The notion of a king seems antiquated & ancient. Besides, we don't want a king! Every 4th of July, we throw parties and set off firecrackers to celebrate our history as a people who threw off the shackles of the monarchy & replaced it with something better – a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We have 200+ years of pride in the fact, that in America, we elect our leaders! And if they don't do what they said they'd do, if they don't come through for us in the ways we hoped they would, well then, we just vote 'em out of office the next time around! You can't do that with kings. So this notion of Jesus being our king is foreign to us, and not just a little uncomfortable.

Because if Jesus is our king, then we are his subjects. And kings have authority over their subjects. Kings have a responsibility to their subjects, yes, but subjects also have a responsibility to obey & follow their king. And though we easily pray things like “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”, and “thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen,” that doesn't mean that it has quite sunk in that if Jesus is the king over us, he has ultimate and final authority over how we live our lives. If we thought about that, I think we might be a little less inclined to pray these words. There are other images we like better – Jesus as the good shepherd, Jesus as a dear friend, Jesus as the little vulnerable helpless baby born in Bethlehem. That Jesus doesn't feel like much of a threat to our way of life. But Christ as King may be a threat – a threat to our sense of independence, a threat to our belief that our lives are our own to live any way we want...

The gospel story from John, this little snippet of the last hours of Jesus' life, reminds us Jesus was a threat to many. The religious leaders of Jerusalem – the chief priests and the scribes – were threatened by Jesus – by his teachings, by his way of life, by his very being. And so they brought him to Pilate, a Roman ruler, asking for him to condemn Jesus to death, because by law, they themselves couldn't execute him.

Pilate himself doesn't quite to know what to do with Jesus. He can't figure Jesus out. “Are you the King of the Jews?” he asks. And instead of a direct answer, Jesus answers with a question: “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you this about me?” “Well, I'm not a Jew, am I?” - I didn't put you here – your own people did, so what did you do, Jesus?

And Jesus, King Jesus, says this: “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.”

You can almost hear Pilate say, “A-ha!... So you are a king?” Poor Pilate – here he is, trying to figure out what's going on, who Jesus is – what Jesus is – and Jesus just says, “You say that I am a king.” But this is not kingship the way Pilate knows it; this is not kingship that even we in our limited understanding of kings would expect it.

Because in Pilate's world, and even still today in ours, rulers are expected to be in charge. They have political power, they have military might. Rulers stand up for themselves – they don't let themselves be taken advantage of. They guard their position, they hold on to their power, their influence, their might as long as the possibly can.

But Jesus is a different kind of king. It makes me think of a scene from Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade. That's the 3rd one, the one w/ Sean Connery as Indy's dad – off on a search for the Holy Grail. And there's a scene when they come to a cave that's filled with goblets. And in order to escape, Indiana Jones & his crew have to pick the right one, the Holy Grail that Christ used at the Last Supper. And the choice is overwhelming. Which to choose, of all of these beautiful chalices – some made of silver, some made of gold, most encrusted with precious jewels of every kind. All ornate, all gorgeous, all worthy vessels for Jesus, the king of kings – and yet the correct one, as I remember is, is a humble wooden cup, a common cup, made out of common things – yet made beautiful by the hands that took it and blessed it, made holy by the blood that would fill it.

Pilate who is so accustomed to kings who lord their position over their subjects, so used to rulers who take advantage of their power to maintain their authority, doesn't know what to make of Jesus. Because he, and we, would expect a king to be enthroned on a throne of gold, of wealth and beauty and status – but Jesus will be enthroned on a splintered cross. Pilate, just like us, would expect a king to have a crown made of precious metals, covered with diamonds and rubies and emeralds, but the crown Jesus will wear is a crown of thorns. We would expect the king to rally his troops to his side to give up their lives to save his in a grand and glorious battle, but instead, Jesus, our king, gives up his own life for us there on the hill of Calvary.

And there Jesus shows us what it is to truly be a king... for he comes to rule in our lives, not to abuse that power, not to manipulate us for his own gain. Jesus comes as king, not to be served, but to serve with a self-giving love. He washes his people with water and forgiveness. He feeds his people with his own body and blood. He fights by our side to set us free from sin and death, and he has won the battle for us! And while we would not choose a king, Jesus has chosen us! He has called us his people, he has made us to be a kingdom, where his love and mercy and peace will reign forever. This king, Jesus, our king, is worthy of dominion & might! To him be the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

November 15, 2009 - Pentecost + 24

It's The End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
Mark 13:1-8
Pentecost + 24 – November 15, 2009

“That's great! It starts with an earthquake, birds & snakes, an aeroplane. Lenny Bruce is not afraid...”

That's the opening line of a song by the band R.E.M. called, “It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) – and that's the chorus: It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine).”

It's the song that kept going through my head all this week, as I thought about these readings from Daniel and from Mark's gospel. And even though Andy likes to say that my brain is like a jukebox set to random, or an iPod set on shuffle, I think it makes sense. Sure, Jesus doesn't talk about birds & snakes & airplanes, but earthquakes are in there – and wars, and rumors of wars, and nation rising up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and famines, and big strong buildings being thrown down – not a stone will be left on stone. REM sings about the end of the world as a present event, & Jesus was talking about something yet to take place in the future sometime, still, it sure sounds to me like Jesus is talking about the end of the world as we know it.

The disciples & Jesus come out of the temple, and the disciples are kinda like country bumpkins coming to the big city for the 1st time. They look up & around, & they are impressed. - “Look, Teacher, what large stones, and what large buildings!” What a fortress – tall & strong & solid! Permanent, built to last, that temple, something you could put your confidence in – a symbol of wealth and power and glory. But Jesus is not impressed. “You see these great buildings?” he asks. “Not one stone will be left upon another...” And then Jesus goes into all these other signs...the wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines and nations rising up against each other. And that's not the end, Jesus says! Don't be alarmed – it's just the beginning of the birth pangs!

Well, gee, Jesus, I guess since since you put it that way, I won't be alarmed. It's just the end of the world as we know it...

It doesn't sound so different from the way we feel sometimes. We've seen our own fair share of these signs, they've been happening all down through history – wars (2 going on right now), and rumors of wars (we worry what could happen in Iran & Pakistan & North Korea & the former Soviet Union); earthquakes happen, and hurricanes, and natural disasters of all sorts; famine in Africa, widespread hunger even in places where there is plenty of food. And if that isn't enough to make us wonder about the end of the world, well, we have our own modern-day signs to help us figure it out – things like the color-code system of the Department of Homeland Security – alerting us to times when the risk of something awful happening is high.

I don't know how many of us lie in bed at night, worrying about the end of the world as a whole – but we do worry about the end of our worlds as we know them: the end of a marriage or other close relationship; the end of a career; the end of good health, the end of a life. When any of those things happen, our worlds are turned upside-down – when a tragic accident strikes, or when your business goes out-of-business without warning, or when you get the call from the doctor that says “It's cancer”, or “You're gonna need surgery & we can't guarantee how successful it'll be, but it's your only option, your only hope.” These are the moments, the days, the weeks, sometimes even the years, when it feels like it's the end of the world as we know it – and unlike REM, we usually don't feel fine about it. We feel all sorts of things – worry, anger, frustration, denial, fear – but fine is usually not how we feel when our world gets flipped upside down. And it's not much comfort to hear Jesus say that these big events – on a world-scale, or just at the level of our individual lives – are not the end – and not to be alarmed, because they're just the beginning of the birth pangs. Because while I've never done it, I have it on good authority that giving birth is messy. Giving birth is painful. And if this is just the beginning...

But be that as it may, and as hard as it may be to believe it sometimes, we actually can take some comfort in what Jesus says here. Because as scary as these “predictions” may be (maybe they're not really so much predictions as they are observations of stuff that happens all the time), as difficult a situation as the disciples and all early Christians will soon enough find themselves in, and as much as they may just want it to be over before it begins – when labor hits, with water breaking, and contractions contracting, with its uncertainty and pain – at the other end, you know there is gonna be new life. On the other side, there is a new person – and with that new life, it really is the end of the world as you have known it. Parents, you know it. Even I know it, & I am just a mom to a dog & 2 cats. And where God is concerned, it's not just a new person, but a whole new world.

So too, for us – as scary as life can be, as much as we'd rather not have wars & rumors of wars, as much as we'd like natural disasters to not be so natural, as much as we'd like the bottom not to drop out, as much as we'd rather not have an end to the world as we know it – the promise is that these are the beginnings of the birth pangs. The promise is that God - in and through and despite all of these events – God is doing a new thing. The promise is that in God, new life waits for us on the other side, whether it is in this life, or in the life to come.

The Psalm reminds us that because God is at our right hand, we shall not be moved. Even though all of these things happen, God is on our side. “Therefore,” the psalmist says, “my heart is glad & my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit. You show me the path of life.” Hebrews encourages us to “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.”
God, who has promised to lead us to life, is faithful. Remember that, hold on to that when it feels like it's the end of the world as we know it. Remember that, even when it is the end of the world as you know it, because God is bringing forth a new world, one that changes everything we ever knew – but in a good way. And trust that one day, when we see what God has done, we'll be able to sing along with REM – It's the end of the world as we know it – and I feel fine.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.