Kings and Truth

Text: John 18:33-38

Today is the last Sunday in the church year. It is called Christ the King Sunday. You may think it is an ancient feast day of the church, as most of our Sunday feast days are. But it is not. The name (and the topic) was an invention of Pope Pius the XI in 1925. That was a tough time for the Western world, and especially Europe, which had just recently fought the first World War and was on the verge of the Great Depression. Peace and justice did not reign. Pius felt that faithful people needed to be reminded that Jesus was their guide, not only on the heavenly trail but in people’s private and public lives in this world. In a time when earthly kings were falling, we needed a more trustworthy one.

We modern types do not have much respect for kings and kingship. So people have—and I have—sometimes called today the Realm of Christ Sunday, or the Reign of Christ Sunday. In one sense, this is more to the point. Jesus never liked or wanted the title of king, referring when necessary to the kingdom more than the king. He does it in today’s Gospel verses. But in another sense what people are looking for, talking about, and afraid of in the Gospels and especially in John, is King Jesus. A person with power who can command fealty, who is wise, and who leads us with goodness to mercy and justice.

The question of Jesus as king dominates this part of the Gospel of John. In a couple of dozen verses John presents seven scenes declaring or questioning Jesus’ identity or ambitions as king. In today’s verses, the issue puts Pilate on the spot.

Pilate is the emperor’s—Caesar’s—man in Palestine. Pilate seems confused. He walks back and forth. He cannot really imagine that this man Jesus pretends to be a king—or The King in John. Are you the king? You can see Pilate’s disbelief and disdain. How could this poor preacher and teacher be king? Yet Pilate cannot afford to ignore Jesus. What would happen to Pilate if the Jesus movement caught hold? Any threat to Rome is a threat to Pilate.

But when Pilate asks Jesus: are you the king? Jesus responds instead with talk about the kingdom and about truth.

Pilate did not take this answer to be about some future time or some heavenly place. Jesus speaks about the kingdom in the present tense and in the present place. Jesus says his kingdom is not from this world, but it is in this world. Caesar’s authority comes from this world; it is a mortal authority. Jesus’ authority does not come from this world. It is not founded on mortal authority. But it is a kingdom in this world in the sense that it applies to our mortal lives here and now. Pilate is right to be worried. Jesus represents and presents an alternative set of moral and political guides. Different from Caesar’s and his cronies throughout history. More truthful, as Jesus says. Pilate asks about kings. Jesus answers about truth.

To testify to the truth, he says. Jesus is not talking about a competition between ideologies. Not a debate about policies, doctrines, or beliefs. Not true facts. More like trustworthiness. Like being true blue. Or devoted. Like a true friend. To be true is to be in alignment with the world as God created it to be. To move smoothly and effortless with God. Like a wheel that is true.

But things rarely go as smoothly as we hope. At times—maybe most times—life is a little vague. A little foggy. Edges and boundaries are uncertain, and we cannot always tell one thing from another, the good from the evil, risk from foolishness, love for others from love of self. We need a way to see what is true. We need clear vision.

The kingdom of God and truth are related. Jesus relates them. Truth is a good answer to Pilate’s question: are you the king? The kingdom Jesus talks about is a world—this world—in which we see things clearly. The life and teachings of Jesus present to us a picture of the way things are and they way they might be. Rulers of this world present another. The question we have to ask ourselves is which picture seems to us to be a convincing reality? Truth should reveal what actually is, what is real. Which picture seems true?

We humans have had a lot of experience living according to the truths of the world—political, philosophical, cultural institutions. And now here we are. Does it seem to you that we see things clearly? This is a practical issue, not a metaphysical one. Which portrayal of the world is most useful to us and to the world?

We desire to belong to the truth, as Jesus puts it. We long for a kingdom of peace, well-being, and contentment for every person. We are drawn to Christ because he seems to us to be trustworthy, deserving of our loyalty, and a true guide.

The opposite of truth is not falsehood but fantasy. We often live in a way that is at least a little fantastic. We think a lot of ourselves, or too little. We deny the suffering of others. We imagine motives where none exist. We hide from ourselves our own sorrow. These kind of things are the fog machines of life. They blind and confuse us.

The opposite of truth is fantasy, but the enemy of truth is indifference. If it makes no difference, why bother? What good is truth in that case? If the truth does not change me, what good is it? If the truth does not lead me to action, what good is it? If the truth does not guide me, what good is it?

We are mere creatures. Truth guides our actions. We need to know what to do day to day. We need to know at each crossroad where to turn. Left, right, straight ahead, or turn back. We need to know when to speak up and when to shut up. We need to know when to take risks and when to play it safe.

Pope Pius was right in a way. Maybe not about kings, but about our need for something like a king. About our need to know how to live.

Peace and justice do not reign. Who comes to guide us? Who says the truth? Whom shall we follow?

Apocalypse Revealed

Text: Mark 13:1-8

In a learned discussion about this reading a while ago, the general consensus was: What the heck?

For two thousand years we have been hearing the same old predictions about the end of time. The signs of things to come by now are cliche. Nation against nation. Famines. Earthquakes. How can these be signs? Wars and rumors of wars, hardship and hunger, natural disaster, and let us add disease—these are the story of civilization.

Buildings are not supposed to fall down. Floods are not supposed to wipe out villages and cities. Crops are not supposed to be lost to drought and bugs. But they do and they have always done. For centuries people have tried to fix the end of time by using events like this as markers. But the events are so common that they do not distinguish one time from another.

When these particular words were written by Mark, chaos ruled. They were probably written during, or just after, the First Jewish-Roman war, in which Israel attempted to rebel against the oppressive Roman occupation. It was not a successful revolt. The result devastated the Jews. Many fled Palestine, and many others were enslaved.

Like hicks visiting the city, the disciples earlier had been amazed by the grandeur of the Temple and the size of the stones. But the stones were pulled down, just as Jesus predicted, by the Romans, a prophecy that Mark in hindsight was confident reporting. The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. This massive and elaborate structure was God’s house and the geographic and spiritual center of life, and had been standing for five centuries.

Jerusalem had been the center of commerce, politics, and faith. Imagine New York, DC, and—I don’t know—the Vatican rolled into one. To see Jerusalem destroyed was to see the end of a nation, and the certain end of an era—a centuries-long era. It would have seemed like the end of the world. There would have seemed to be no more future.

When the things and people at the center of our lives are destroyed and taken away, clocks stop ticking. The future disappears. Day follows day, but nothing advances.

People who suffer trauma—wars and floods and fires, but also loss of someone they love—feel that the ground under their feet is no longer trustworthy. The things that keep them safe cannot be counted on. The seawalls will not hold. The skies are no longer innocent. There is no shelter. There is no protector. Things are no longer in their right places. It is chaos.

You can therefore see how the prospect of the end of time might seem to be not horrible but comfortable. A relief from suffering and from the struggle against suffering and from the exhaustion of hoping.

The destruction of the second Temple was, it turned out, the end of something old and the birth of something new, just as Jesus foretold. The center of faithful life continued its slow turning toward the rabbis; and some instead chose to follow a preacher, prophet, and healer named Jesus. Little ended up to be the same as it had been. It was a new age. Just not the one people expected.

Events need to have meaning. We are not comfortable thinking that things just happen for no reason. Not one stone was left upon another; all were thrown down. But here we are, two millennia later, living ordinary lives. Life does go on.

Yet to know this would not have helped the people in Palestine. It was not the continuation of the world that they longed for—but rather some scheme that would place their present mess in God’s context. When you see all these things, Jesus tells them, do not be alarmed. These are not just bad things. They are part of a larger plan. They are just the beginning of a new beginning. (Not even the labor pains, but just that beginning of contractions when you think it is maybe time to get the hospital suitcase out of the closet.) They—these events—make sense because they point to the future.

When there seems to be nothing more than day to day, when every day seems to be a copy of the dark day before, then even a tiny glimpse of the future—any future—is life-saving. That day when you see that tomorrow might be different from today is the day when you can begin to hope for salvation and healing.

When we read scripture, we have to think: where do I stand in relation to this text? Is it written for me? Is it about some particular thing or some general principle? Apocalyptic texts like this one in Mark—the whole chapter is like this, not just the verses we heard—texts like this make us ask those questions more urgently.

We might decide that we are only observers to a long-ago event. It’s a story. The lesson we take then is what it tells us about Jesus with his disciples. It tells us about how what kind of leader Jesus was, for example.

Or we might decide that since Mark was written decades after the death of Jesus, it only tells us what kind of thing the writer Mark was interested in about Jesus. That Mark sees the events in Jerusalem as having to do less with Jewish-Roman politics and more to do with the nature of Jesus. Events in history are subordinate to the story of Jesus and are more like props in that drama.

Or we might decide that this text describes something not so much in the life of Jesus but in our lives. That the text is prophecy for us. It describes a time in history, but it is our history. If we do that, as some do, we search for clues in the words that help us determine when all this is going to happen and, in particular, whether it is soon. So Jesus’ advice to his disciples—be aware! watch out!—is really advice to us. We need to be attentive.

Or instead, we might decide that the text is (for us) not about Jesus’ time or Mark’s time or our time. It is rather a way for us to know God, to know who we are, and to get an idea of what we are to do. It is grist for the mill of our faith. It has the same force and effect as the parables Jesus tells, the words from Paul in his letters, the stories of king David, the songs of the psalm. We might decide, then, that this apocalyptic story is timeless, just as all those other ways we hear God’s word are. No more, and no less, than those other ways.

Our response to this story and other apocalyptic stories like it in Daniel, for example, or in Revelation, reveals much about us: it reveals our own deepest hopes and most profound worries about God. It tells us about ourselves as well as about God. It tells us about guilt and shame and about gratitude. About whether we accept God’s forgiveness. And about where God is.

So you might in the end decide that this particular story tells us the same old thing, the same old thing that the Bible has been telling us for more than three thousand years. That God is here in the workings of the world. That all things in the world are God’s. And that God is good.

The Trust Network

Text: Ruth 3-4; Psalm 146

Put not your trust in rulers. This from today’s psalm is hard advice to hear after just finishing an exhausting but resolved election campaign. Though some are unhappy with the result, the ferocity of the campaign tells us that most people are willing to put their trust in rulers; the only question being which ones.

Psalm 146 is usually described as a psalm of trust. God is trustworthy because God keeps God’s promises, brings justice, feeds the hungry, lifts the downtrodden, and frustrates the wicked. Yet in another way the psalm is about distrust. It starts with the admonition about rulers, which it extends to all living creatures, or at least all humans. We and our thoughts perish. We are mortal, short-lived, and imperfect. And because of that, not worthy of trust.

Yet, we are creatures of the earth. The sun rises and sets, fortunes change, unexpected joys and troubles find us. We need to eat. We are social creatures, binding ourselves to others or fighting against them. Is it even possible to trust God without trusting humans? If we never trust other people, how can we actually in our day to day life trust God? When we trust others, we trust God.

Ruth is a foreigner, from Moab, married into an Israelite family. Yet when her husband dies, her mother-in-law Naomi, urges her to return to her own people. Ruth will not, and she famously says to Naomi, “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.”

There is a two-way connection of trust here. Ruth trusting that she will be safe with Naomi, and Naomi trusting that Ruth will act as a daughter to her. But it extends beyond these two protagonists. Later, Ruth trusts Naomi’s family to provide for her, which they do. And in today’s story, Ruth trusts Naomi’s scheming ways, which turn out in the end to be good for everyone. Naomi trust’s Boaz’s good nature and sense of duty. Boaz trusts Ruth’s good will and in God’s providence. It is a complicated network of trust. God is hardly mentioned in it—just in passing, really—yet trust in God is its foundation. Just because God is hardly mentioned does not mean that God is not present. Just because we do not always talk about the work of God’s hand does not mean that we do not feel it to be there. Too many negatives in that sentence; let’s try this: we know God’s hand guides us even when we do not chatter on about it.

There are strong cultural, local, and family connections in the story of Ruth. In the story of the Bible, for that matter. There is a tension between—or better to say a cooperation between—between the personal and the community in our relationship with God and what we hope from God. The church (not this church, the whole church) has been arguing for centuries about whether personal piety—one’s individual connection with God, with Jesus—or community behavior—how we as a culture are guided by God—is more important. But clearly the answer is Yes. Salvation is both singular and plural.

The community welcomes Ruth, an outsider, gathers around her, and takes her in, and feeds her (it is no accident that so much of the story has to do with grain, food, and drink). She and her mother-in-law Naomi are redeemed, it says, meaning claimed. As a consequence, the family line is extended on to David, Israel’s greatest king, and according to Matthew’s Gospel, on to Jesus.

Ruth and Naomi come to the story with nothing. They are impoverished and without stature. The widow who trusts Elijah in the second reading has nothing. Just enough food to eat one last meal. The widow in the Gospel story has nothing. Just a little to give all of it away. We don’t know what happens to that woman. But we do know that Elijah and the widow, and Ruth and Naomi, survive. They do so because of a mixture of God’s intervention plus God’s actions implemented in the actions of other people. People acting together and trusting one another as much as they are able.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus has contempt for the scribes. They are both arrogant and cruel, devouring widows’ houses and who knows what else. In their cruelty, they deny God’s commandment, reiterated by Jesus, to care for those who are in need. In their arrogance, they forget that God is the creator and source. They congratulate themselves, patting themselves on the back, think themselves especially worthy of respect and places of honor. They imagine themselves to be responsible for their lives of abundance.

They do not recognize how they are the product of God’s grace and the many graces of the people of the culture in which they live. They forget somehow—something that the characters in the story of Ruth would never forget—that people are interdependent. The fortunes of each of us are tangled up with the fortunes of all of us. The scribes in Jesus’ story are the rulers the psalm warns against.

The genealogical line from Abraham to Jesus that begins the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew goes through Ruth. This is remarkable. Ruth is an outsider, a Moabite. The rules and tradition among Israelites against intermarriage were very strong. Yet Ruth marries Boaz, and they give birth to a child, even though Boaz is getting on in years. And that child becomes the grandfather of great king David.

The line runs through Ruth plus three other gentile women: Rahab, Tamar, Bathsheba, plus Ruth. Without these foreigners, these people otherwise despised, there would be no line. (In fact, Tamar is remembered by the townspeople as they give a blessing to Ruth). The righteous scribes need to remember that they would not have wealth and power without these four women.

We can conclude from Ruth’s story and the story of the others that God is not inclined to stand on ceremony when something needs to get done. It is not so much that God has a plan and finds the best people to implement it. It is rather that God makes good use of the people who happen to be there. It seems that God extracts the plan from the events that have already unfolded.

A corollary to this is that God works in the daily lives and decisions of people, and lots of different kinds of people—even leaders. And also that the interdependence of people is a form of God’s grace. A means of grace.

I’d like to say a word about Veterans Day, which is today. It used to be called Armistice Day, when the first World War ended. The eleventh hour on the 11th day of the 11th month. It was meant originally to celebrate the end of war in general. We see how well that worked out. But hoping for an end to war especially on this day is not foolishness.

We continue to hope for peace because we learn from these stories and others that even the very unlikely—the inconceivable—is possible with God. Using us, God’s children. And showing us again and again that we are all in this together. And teaching us to trust in God by trusting one another, God’s daughters and sons.

Bookends

Text: Revelation 21:1-6
Other texts: John 11:32-44, Isaiah 25:6-8

The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. These words open and close the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. I am, says the voice from the throne, the A to Z, the start and the destination, the first and the last.

To understand the end, we have to look at the beginning. The very beginning, the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Chapter 1, verse 1. “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” The universe was not created from nothing. It was formed from chaos, from the deep, from the cold void. Out of chaos God formed order, making boundaries between one thing and another. Making distinctions, creating meaning. Naming things. Dividing night from day, sky from earth. A story begins.

We who live in an infinitesimal fraction of all time see time as orderly and directional. Clear in the moments but indefinite in the epochs. Cosmologists postulate a moment of creation of the universe about fourteen billion years ago, but which in the end probably gets colder and slower forever, or nearly so. That is one way to talk about it.

We who live in God’s hands see time as intentional and passionate. Clear in total but only partially revealed in the moments. In this language—which is parallel to the language of physical cosmology, describing the one, same universe—the world has a beginning and an end that are both marked by God’s will and presence. There are two ends: Genesis and Revelation, not by accident being bookends to the story of the Bible in between. We start and end with God, seeing God no matter in what direction we look.

God is in the personal as in the cosmic. In this vast time we live in our own short times. We have our own Alpha and Omega. We are formed from will and love and out of the miscellaneous atoms of the earth—who knows where any of these tiny building blocks come from for any one child? And in the end we let all that substance go back into the earth for the creatures that follow. From dust to dust, we remind ourselves. Like all creatures, we are created and we die.

We are not designed to live forever in this body. Often times that is a blessing, and ashes to ashes is a blessed promise. Weariness and the burden of memories (both regretful and joyful) and the increasing disorder of our systems makes an end welcome and moves us to pray to be taken home.

But also often: not. People go before their time. Accident, disease, violence claim our moments and cut them short. And even when some persons might be glad to leave, those of us who remain grieve their loss and mourn their company. And are left deeply disturbed, as Jesus was, standing beside his friends Martha and Mary and in front of the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Jesus was angry, it says. Troubled, the way we are at the death of someone we love. Or at anyone’s death. We report how many people died from hurricane Sandy, or in a bomb attack in Syria, and hearing that, we are distressed. Today we light candles in honor and grief, and as we do, the others who watch each of us are moved because they know.

Even in the face of the Resurrection, Christians cannot ignore the affront that death is, and its sorrow. Even if the true significance of death is less than we feel, it is not nothing. Death signifies something, even if we are not sure exactly what, or how it all works.

When Jesus comes to meet Martha and then Mary, they are understandably desperate. Death is powerful and voracious and has swallowed up Lazarus. Yet their complaints to Jesus—Lord, if you had been here, they each say, Lazarus would be alive—show a realization that maybe, probably, in Jesus there is a countervailing force. They and everyone seem to be confused about what is possible—could Jesus have saved their brother? He stinks in the tomb; is it too late? Can Jesus save him still? If so, does that mean now? Or at the end of time?

It is not clear why Jesus cries. It is overdetermined. Is it because he waited? Because Martha and Mary are brought to their knees in grief? Because he put his obligations of his mission ahead of his friendship? Or because he is just plain sad at the death of Lazarus? Are these tears of shame, or frustration, or regret, or grief? As ours might be. What is clear is that Jesus is angry at death and indignant (described much too weakly in our Bibles as disturbed). Mary and Martha and we share his indignation. He is not fond of death.

The story of the Bible begins with the creation of life and ends with the destruction of death. And in between, are God’s presence and promise in the face of death. The passage we heard in Revelation quotes the passage we read in Isaiah. When the tears remain, God will wipe them away. But in the end—and the end is what Revelation is about—in the end God will wipe away death altogether. God will swallow up greedy death. No more crying or mourning or pain. Death is hungry, but God is more hungry for life. God has wished us into being and wishes us to be.

The story of Revelation is in one sense a long undo, a long rewind of the story of creation. The first heaven and the first earth made in Genesis are the story in which we now live. It is not quite right. For whatever reason, things have not quite worked out as God intended, and death brings sorrow. In Revelation, the story is played back to the beginning, to a new heaven and a new earth. But in this second version, even the chaos that existed before creation will be gone. The sea—the dark abyss—is no more, it says. There will be no evil left to seep in and pervert God’s will for creation. Not this time.

The world of the story of the Bible goes from A to Z. As in the Dr. Seuss book, it turns out there is something good beyond Z. But that seems to be another story that we only get a hint of. In Genesis, a story begins. It does not end in Revelation, but a new story begins. Heaven resides on earth, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, and God lives here, too.

Around the altarpiece here are the words—in Swedish—the words “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Marking the beginning and the end of that promise are two letters. Alpha at one end and at the other not Omega, but Omicron. In Greek, Omicron is in the alphabet just beyond the middle, as O is in English. Omega is the end. Omicron is not the end.

Perhaps this was a mistake by those who painted the mural. But perhaps not. Perhaps it it good theology—a reminder to us. We live somewhere between Alpha and Omega, in a time both of sorrow and of hope. Ours, and God’s.

The Bible from beginning to end is a long love story, about God’s love for us and for all creation. We, all of us and each of us, live in a story that begins and ends with God’s hopes and God’s promise.