This Sunday ends our church year. Next Sunday the season of Advent begins. We
will move into the third year of our three year cycle of readings—Year C. But for now we linger at the end of this
year, celebrating that ending, but hoping for what may come. We celebrate, because we trust that a
triumphant Christ will come again to renew the earth and establish justice and
righteousness.
Each Sunday and perhaps each day we pray, “Your kingdom come,
your will be done. . . ” and “the kingdom, the power and the glory are
yours.” But each of us may hold a
different image of what that may look like.
The disciples James and John saw the reign of Jesus as an
opportunity for honor and power. In the 10th
chapter of Mark they ask: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at
your left, in your glory.” And in the 20th
chapter of Matthew, their mother asks for them!
Then sometimes it was not about power, but about redemption. In the 23rd chapter Luke reported this: one of the criminals crucified next to Jesus, humbly admitting his crimes, said: “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Our readings today reflect these two points of view. Both Daniel and Revelation are biblical texts
which depict visions of a magnificent revealing of God's power and
majesty. Whatever is evil will be
vanquished. Whatever is just and
righteous will prevail! Daniel
wrote: “To him [the one like a human
being] was given [by the Ancient One] dominion and power and kingship, that all
peoples, nations and languages should serve him . . . His dominion is an
everlasting dominion that shall not pass away.”
The mystic John of Patmos wrote about the revelation he
received in which he described Jesus Christ as “the ruler of the kings of the
earth . . .[and] on whose account all the tribes of the earth will wail.” As the “Alpha and the Omega,” Jesus Christ is
the one “who is, and was and is to come, the Almighty.”
Yet our gospel reading reports a much humbler, but perhaps
more startling, image. Jesus first
deflected Pilate's interrogation, “Are you the King of the Jews?” but then he
answered more directly. “My kingdom is not of this world . . . my kingdom is
not from here.” This puzzled Pilate, as
it continues to puzzle us today. When
Pilate asked Jesus to clarify, Jesus said: “For this I was born and for this I
came into the world to testify to the truth.”
What is the truth to which Jesus testified? What was the repentant criminal responding to
when he asked to be remembered?
One thing we can say about Jesus' truth is this: it can draw
people closer to God. Jesus responded to
the thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise. To Pilate, Jesus explained further, “Everyone
who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
I think we can also say, Jesus' truth points to a spirit of
humility. If we are listening to Jesus,
like Mary of Bethany, we are placing Jesus at the center, focusing on his
teaching, and seeking to obey him.
So this view of Jesus' reign is clearly not about power, but
about the truth that God through Jesus is reaching out to us in love, hoping we
respond with humbleness. We are
listening. We are asking to be held in
God's loving and redeeming memory.
I've presented these two ways to viewing our prayer for
God's reign to come and God's will be done on earth as in heaven. Are we more
comfortable with an everlasting dominion being established when all
people—all—will serve the God we worship?
Or are we more comfortable with a kingdom which is “not from here”—in
other words, not like the Roman Empire, nor the British Empire nor the empire
of a superpower? Do we have confidence,
as Martin Luther King, Jr., explained it, that although the arc of history is
long, it bends toward justice? Do we
believe we can experience security simply under the shadow of the Almighty's
wing?
I want to place Jesus at the center of my life, to trust
that, despite my sins, he will remember and redeem me. But then I begin to
wonder if the security that power appears to offer isn't the better way. To be
right that Jesus will dominate the world and all its people with the divine
power, to long for Christ's second coming in great glory and great power: often
these seem to be the true route to security.
And yet . . . again I ask, what sort of kingdom do we long
for? And what part do we hope to play in
that kingdom? Is it possible that the
truth that we must listen to Jesus and follow him means his reign will
unfold—not on some spectacular global scale—but rather in each of us—that we will find the
reign of the risen Christ as we care for those in need in Christ's name—and
that we simply must trust God to deal with the rest? Is what we mean when we pray, “Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done,” that the reign of Christ will begin within each of us? For me, on this day, that is what I hope.
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