Sermon: The Refugee Jesus

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

December 28, 2025, Christmas 1A

Matthew 2:13-23

 

The Refugee Jesus

I wish I could simply preach a simple, carefree, Christmas-y sermon today. I wish I could just ignore this story and keep it cheerful. But this story resists easy cheeriness, and in the world and time in which we live, to ignore this scripture and the way it warns us would be an act of pastoral abdication on my part.

It is one of the most horrifying stories in all of scripture, and possibly the most horrifying in the New Testament, possibly aside from the Crucifixion. The “Slaughter of the Innocents,” it’s called. A frightened and angry tyrant, lashing out in his fear and embarrassment, ordering the death of an untold number of infants and toddlers – all those age two or under in the town of Bethlehem – out of a raging desire to protect his own title and power. Surely we could never imagine such a ruler, or the kind of figure who would commit such an atrocity.

This story slashes across Matthew’s nativity account like the sharp blade of a sword wielded by one of Herod’s men. It all seems fairly innocent at first, if a bit convoluted, as Joseph has to be persuaded in a dream to take his unexpectedly pregnant wife, bearing the Son of God by the Holy Spirit. The appearance of the Magi from the east, how much later we’re not really sure, adds both a curiosity and an element of danger to the event; the so-called “wise men” blunder into Judea asking the sitting king for the whereabouts of the new king, and have to be warned in another of those provident dreams to go home by a different route and not play into Herod’s hands by leading him to the child. (More about the Magi next Sunday when we observe Epiphany.)

At any rate, it would be so tempting to wrap up the story at verse 15, with the Magi following their alternate route and Joseph and Mary left wondering what to do with frankincense and myrrh on the way to Egypt. (the gold, on the other hand, you figure they might have an idea what to do with). Everyone’s safe, Matthew gets to make another of his “fulfillment” references by citing Hosea 11:1 as another prophetic box that Jesus checks off, and we all go home happy.

Herod wasn’t happy, though. And Herod didn’t know when he was beaten.

If the story ever appears in most Christmas celebrations (particularly when the lectionary doesn’t include it as it does this year), it happens only if the “Coventry carol” is sung. That carol dates from no later than 1534, as part of a “mystery play” performed in that city in England, and probably much earlier. This is the one that begins “lullay, lulla, thou little tiny child” which you might have heard before, but the whole carol lays out the horrible story, particularly in the second, third, and fourth stanzas:

 

O sisters too, how may we do, 

For to preserve this day

This poor youngling for whom we sing,

Bye, bye, lully lullay?

 

Herod the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day

His men of might in his own sight

All the young children to slay.

 

That woe is me, poor child, for thee,

And ever mourn and may

For thy parting neither say nor sing

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

 

It is, if we’re paying attention, profoundly hard to read this passage without wanting to cry, or to cry out. Even as we can give thanks that the child Jesus was delivered it’s hard not to cry out with Rachel, whose lament from Jeremiah Matthew invokes here. Why, God? Why did these children have to die?

This story never fails to be horrifying, challenging, and difficult if not impossible to bear; however, in the age in which we live now, we can no longer say it is unimaginable. One of the more striking features of this Christmas season is the appearance of what might be called "ICE nativities" among a number of churches in US cities. In some cases the baby Jesus, or maybe Mary or Joseph, or perhaps all of the are missing from the scene, replaced only with a sign saying "ICE WAS HERE." In others, the nativity figures are present, but masked and weaponed ICE agents are seen approaching with masks on and weapons drawn. 

What didn't necessarily get recognized about those scenes in the press (which really needs more religion reporters out there) or those who complained about the scenes was that, as we see in today's reading, were it not for the intervention of an angel in another dream of Joseph's, our Lord and Savior and his earthly parents were going to be caught up in not a display, but an actual physical act of such violence, and even worse.  

Even in the face of this story, though, I find my voice choking, unable or unwilling to cry out at the injustice of this slaughter recorded by Matthew, if only because if I do cry out “Why do these children have to die?” I am entirely afraid that God’s answer might just be “I was just going to ask you the same question.”

On this day, when the carols and praises get stuck in our throats and wilt in our hearts, we are reminded that Jesus calls us, *all* of us to come; all of us, including Jesus’ fellow refugees, from Gaza or South Sudan or Myanmar or anywhere from which any of God’s children flee death or despair or death or tyranny or death or abuse or death *or death* **or death**, calling them, and us, to life, and life together. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: Three Presbyterian Hymnal iunless otherwise noted): #143, Angels from the Realms of Glory: Carol sing - #144, In the Bleak Midwinter, #110, Love Has Come, #132, Good Christian Friends, Rejoice; #---, What Child Is This, additional verses; #136, Go, Tell It on the Mountain

 

 

 

Sermon: Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Calling; or, The Silent Partner

First Presbyterian Church

December 21, 2025, Advent 4A

Luke 1:18-25

 

Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Calling;

or, The Silent Partner

 

 

One of the great challenges in preaching or studying today's gospel reading is the necessity of putting a much more familiar reading out of your head and not getting the two entangled. And we do need to do this at other times in life; it's both rude and harmful, for example, to interrupt a person who is telling their own story by interjecting details of their more famous or popular or successful sibling’s story in the midst of that first person's telling.

We are in the gospel of Matthew today, which means that a lot of the trappings of the Nativity story which we tend to assume or take for granted just aren't there. Hopefully the elements of the church's Nativity set as displayed here will help us sort out those differences.

We have here Mary, Joseph, and indeed the infant. Normally the infant wouldn't appear until Christmas Eve, but Matthew's narrative as it is divvied up in the Revised Common Lectionary does in fact announce the birth of Jesus, albeit barely, at least by comparison to that more famous Nativity story in that other gospel. While the holy family is here, the scene seems to be "missing" the stable that normally shelters them in this display; if you go back and re-examine the reading from Matthew, though, there's no mention of any such thing, nor of any manger (but this child can't be removed from it).

You also can't help but noticing the absence of the shepherds, but again, no mention is made of such a thing in Matthew's account. There aren't even any animals at all, at least not as Matthew tells it - Joseph and Mary aren't required to travel in this narrative, so no donkey is portrayed, and with no mention of shepherds or stable or any such thing no sheep or oxen or whatever are present. We at least justify the Magi (and their camels) off in the distance (on the organ for today), because even they don't appear in today's reading, we can look ahead into chapter two and surmise they're on their way. 

Joseph learns that his betrothed, Mary, is "found to be with child from the Holy Spirit." Let's face it, the very convoluted nature of that phrase is enough to suggest, to most of our suspicious human minds, that something dodgy is going on. There is pressure, just because of the society in which Joseph lives, to get rid of Mary, by whatever means is necessary. 

Not exaggerating there. Having Mary put to death was not out of the realm of a "righteous" response to this shame, as "righteousness" was defined in the culture of which Joseph was a part. Exposing Mary to public humiliation was probably the bare minimum of a "righteous" response to Mary's obvious infidelity and sin. (Remember, the Magnificat celebrated in the reading two weeks ago doesn't happen in Matthew's account). 

Verse 19 describes Joseph as a "righteous" man, indeed, which means both of the above were legitimate options for him. The verse adds, though, that he was "unwilling to expose her to public disgrace," and that he intended to "dismiss her quietly." While this does seem to be a step up, it still potentially left Mary homeless (there's no guarantee her family would have taken her in, again in the name of "righteousness") and with no means to provide for the child waiting to be born, and certainly subject to public humiliation when that child was born with no father in sight.

This is the state of things when the angel appears in that dream to Joseph. By his response (in deeds, not words) Joseph shows, first of all, obedience to God's new and unexpected calling - to be the earthly father of the son of God, the one who comes to "save his people from their sins."

By taking Mary in, marrying her, and giving the name Jesus to the child as commanded, Joseph is making that whole genealogy that fills up the first seventeen verses of Matthew's gospel make sense. If you look at that genealogy, it starts with Abraham, passes through David and some interesting other names, and culminates with Joseph, "the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah." This genealogy makes no claim for Joseph having the role of Jesus's "father"; in the King James Version, there's no "begat" attached to Joseph's name. 

This ancestral line, founded in Abraham and including the venerated King David, would seem to be a bit sketchy in that case; why wouldn't it be Mary's line that was important for establishing Jesus as being from David's line? That's a claim about Jesus that was out there before Matthew's gospel was written down; you can see it invoked in Paul's letter to Rome (1:3), where Jesus is described as "descended from David according to the flesh." It takes Joseph's choice, after this angel-invaded dream, to make that statement hold true. 

A couple of more modern examples of such compassion come to mind. The BBC drama series Call the Midwife (that we tend to get on PBS in this country) featured an episode, a few seasons ago, in which a couple came to those midwives for their child to be born. When the child was born, its skin color made clear that the exuberant father present for the birth did not in fact father the child biologically. Confronted with this stark reality, the present father, without missing a beat, pronounced the child the most beautiful child ever and took in that child as his own.

The poem Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), by the turn-of-the-twentieth-century German poet Richard Dehmel, features a somewhat similar scenario: as a couple is walking in the woods at night, she confesses that, out of an overwhelming desire for a child, she engaged in a liaison (before meeting this man with whom she was walking) in which she became pregnant. Without missing a beat, this man with whom she is now walking declares his unbroken love for her and embraces the yet-unborn child as his own. In both the TV show and the poem we see an act of love portrayed, to be sure. 

Joseph knows, because of the angel's announcement, that Mary has not been unfaithful to him, but even so he faces even a greater challenge than those fictional loving fathers-in-waiting. Again, he's being called to be the father of the Messiah, without the child having any biological relation to him. This is a step of responsibility in such a thing that none of us can know. 

There is also a step of love. It isn't a "romantic" act of love. Joseph has to know that raising such a child will be a task of fatherhood like no other. And yet he takes it on, and he takes Mary as his wife. It is a chosen love, love for God and love for Mary. 

The love that gets invoked in this final candle is given freely by God. Our call is to receive that love and then choose to give that love freely, without condition, in the way God gave it to us. It's hard not to think back to that Call the Midwife story or the Transfigured Night poem, in this sense; inevitably, if we're going to love at all, we're going to be called upon to love *despite*. To love "even though". To love anyway.

We never hear a word out of Joseph in either Matthew or Luke; he is a silent partner in all that happens here, but a partner, nonetheless. We saw at first that he was at least a somewhat compassionate person in his unwillingness to humiliate Mary; in the last he proves to be a loving person. And his choice, his actions in the face of this unexpected calling, speak far louder than any words ever could.

There's an example to follow. Indeed, would that there were more Josephs among us in the world.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #88, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (vs. 1-4); #---, When Joseph heard; #88, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (vs. 5-7)

 

Sermon: Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Song; or, What Mary Did In Fact Know

First Presbyterian Church

December 7, 2025, Advent 2A

Luke 1:39-56

 

Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Song

(Or, What Mary Did In Fact Know)

 

Have you ever heard of the Bechdel test?

The Bechdel test is an informal one, typically applied to movies or works of fiction, that asks of that work two (or sometimes three) questions, to determine if the work has any sort of substantial female characters at all or is simply overrun with dominating males and subservient females. It’s amazing, to be honest, how many movies don’t manage to get an affirmative answer to the two or three questions that follow:

1)                   are there two women in the film (or story) who actually talk to each other without a man around?

2)                   do they talk about something other than a man?

3)                   (sometimes added) do we actually know the women’s names?

It’s a fairly minimal test, to be sure. One conversation between two women doesn’t necessarily change the balance of power in a movie or novel by any means, but that half of the films that get released, on average, don’t even manage to have one such scene in them is pretty amazing.

While the Bible is by no means a work of fiction, it’s pretty heavily male-dominated, if we’re honest about it. For much of the scripture that’s kind of inevitable – Jesus, after all, is pretty much the whole point of the gospels. But today’s reading is pretty remarkable for being exactly that kind of scene – two women, Elizabeth and her young relative Mary, in a conversation with each other, no men around, and not merely talking about those men. It’s a remarkable enough scene that perhaps we ought to pay attention to it and what is said.

Both of these women have had an adventurous first chapter of Luke already. Elizabeth, a woman well advanced in years, has now been pregnant for six months after the angel Gabriel announced to her husband, the priest Zechariah, that the two of them would bear a most important young boy, specifically to be named John. This son would be “great in the sight of the Lord” (1:15) and who would “make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (1:17). Zechariah didn’t respond well to the angelic announcement, and as a result was struck mute; he would only get his voice back after the child’s birth, when he managed to confirm the angel’s command in writing and got his voice back.

Perhaps deciding after that incident it would be better to go directly to the woman involved, Gabriel next appeared to Mary, announcing to her (1:26-38, immediately preceding this passage) that she would bear an even more important son. This son is to be named Jesus. Gabriel rattles off a rather substantial list of characteristics that will be attributed to him: he will be great, called Son of the Most High, receive the throne of David, reign over the house of Jacob (i.e. Israel) forever, have an unending kingdom, will be holy, and will be called the Son of God. She also learns of her older cousin Elizabeth’s pregnancy. While Mary is seriously perplexed by all this, and does have to wonder how this will all work since she and Joseph aren’t even living together much less married, she avoids Zechariah’s mistake and actively gives her consent to what the angel has announced (in a modern movie, her reply would probably be something like “all right, let’s do this”).

So, by the time Mary makes her way to Elizabeth’s house, she’s already been pretty well informed about what’s going on.  She will learn more about all this in her encounter with Elizabeth, some of it in a most unexpected and unusual way, when Elizabeth literally gets a kick out of Mary’s presence, thanks to that infant in her heretofore-barren womb. 

I obviously cannot pretend to know what that sensation would be like, but I’m guessing that those of you who have experienced such gymnastics from a child in the womb probably didn’t have an experience of the Holy Spirit and prophetic utterance immediately afterwards. That’s what happens to Elizabeth, though – she (not the child in the womb) was “filled with the Holy Spirit” and let out an exultation of praise to God and celebration of this young woman before her. In Elizabeth’s words, Mary was to be “blessed among women” and the “mother of my Lord” and in particular blessed because she “believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” through Gabriel. 

As if all that wasn’t enough to overwhelm Mary, there was more to come from the Holy Spirit. It was Mary’s turn to speak, and she clearly shows that she’s been paying attention not only to the messages she has received from Gabriel and Elizabeth, but to the history of her people. 

Her song (Luke likes to make such utterances into songs) begins with praise to God, appropriately enough. She acknowledges that she’s not exactly a person of great status, and yet God has chosen to bless her with this extraordinary event. 

Then things get interesting.

Here Mary becomes, at least for these few moments, a prophet. What she sings here is rich with echoes of those prophets of old in Israel and Judah, declarations of the Lord’s favor for the unfavored. God’s mercy is for those who fear God (and by implication not for those who don’t). God has “scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts” (but not the humble). God has brought down the mighty and lifted up the lowly. God has filled the hungry, and “sent the rich away empty.” 

This really is the language of prophecy, from Isaiah to Jeremiah to Ezekiel and Amos and Micah and on through Malachi. God overturns our world, upsetting what we tend to think of as “the natural order of things,” or even more resignedly “the way things are.” A world in which the powerful and rich trample over the poor and powerless is not God’s world – not in the prophets, and not in Mary’s song. Our way of living gets disrupted and turned upside down – or perhaps, in God’s view, turned rightside up. 

Mary knew plenty. And if we truly listen to it, it might make us uncomfortable, with the vast majority of us here being much more “the rich” in Mary’s world than “the hungry.” 

Maybe that’s why it became so popular to sing this song that keeps asking “Mary, did you know?” It keeps asking her about all sorts of cool stuff that does happen in the life of Jesus – walking on water, healing a blind man, calming a storm. It goes on to all these grand attributes that are going to be – Lord of all creation, one day rule the nations. Somehow, though, that song manages to avoid this uncomfortable stuff that Mary very clearly knows and has very plainly told us right here in Luke’s gospel. It doesn’t somehow get around to the stuff that, in Mary’s song, is the gospel – the “good news.”

Maybe what we most need, as Advent rapidly segues into Christmas, is to listen more diligently and more honestly to Mary’s song. Maybe we should even sing Mary’s song, and not just in the form of the next hymn. Maybe it should be something we make a part of our song, this celebration and exultation of the overturning and disrupting God.

In the end, maybe we should listen more to what these women, Elizabeth and Mary, have to say to us, through the Holy Spirit, in this most unusual text of scripture.

For Mary’s very real and needed song, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #87, Comfort, Comfort Now My People; #99, My Soul Gives Glory to My God; #500, Be Known to Us in Breaking Bread; #384, Soon and Very Soon 

Sermon: Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Hour; or, Be Woke

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

November 30, 2025, Advent 1A (the sermon that would have been preached except for the snow)

Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44

 

Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Hour, 

or, Be Woke

 

It happened Friday, late morning, more years ago than I can remember. I am not a Black Friday shopper, and in fact I slept in while others across the country were fanning out to retail stores across the country to appease the gods of commerce in the guise of “getting ready for Christmas.”

But I did want something to eat.

So, I was off to a favorite eating establishment for a very early non-turkey lunch, whilst also juggling both sermon prep and Sunday-school prep in my mind. It may sound odd, but lunchtime can be some of the most effective sermon-prep time I have. I don’t understand it, but I’m happy to take advantage of it.

So there I was, order placed, settling in at a table with my very large tumbler of sweet tea (peach-flavored, as is often the case), when it happened. “Holiday music” started attacking my brain.

I think Mel Tormé was in there, with the chestnuts roasting on an open fire. I remember both “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” being part of the assault. It was relentless. Horrifying, even. And my brain was indeed withering under the assault. I enjoyed my lunch, but no real progress happened on the sermon that was about forty-eight hours from delivery at that point. 

It is by now old hat to complain about how soon the barrage of worldly trappings that gets called “Christmas season” kicks in. There were radio stations playing Christmas music 24/7 even before Halloween, for goodness’ sake.

It’s pretty easy to get lulled to sleep by the ongoing headlong rush of “tidings of comfort and joy,” to be anaesthetized by the omnipresent greenery and bell-ringers at every retail entrance and lush soundtrack of crooned carols. If you’re fortunate enough to escape it before Thanksgiving, it only escalates beyond imagination the day after.

Today’s readings from Isaiah and Matthew are out to deliver serious disruption, a world-altering one-two punch, to such complacency and numbness.

It’s not hard to see in Matthew’s account of one of Jesus’s late teachings. This particular scripture has a long history of being “fear fodder” – the kind of passage preachers turn to who want to strike some fear into their congregation. It’s the kind of passage that gets turned into books about the “rapture” and how badly tribulation goes for the “left behind” while the “saved” presumably look on smugly and safely from heaven.

Matthew would be thoroughly perturbed at the use of his gospel in this way. For Matthew, the immediate problem in the community to which he wrote was quite the opposite; writing as he was at a time when the followers of Christ had been scattered around the Mediterranean and the eyewitnesses to the life and teaching of Christ were dying, Matthew’s community was beginning to despair of any reunion with Christ at all. To this end Matthew warns his readers not to presume that all is lost, but to remember that “about that day no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” If even the Son did not know the time for that gathering up of God’s people, how could we humans claim to know it was all called off?

Of course, that proclamation hasn’t stopped people from calculating, down to the year and month and date, and sometimes even down to the hour or minute or second, when Jesus would return. I guess Jesus must just be dumb in their eyes.

The author and retired Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor puts Matthew’s insistence on the unknowability of that time like this:

He was not concerned with reading signs and keeping timetables, at least partly because he knew how preoccupied people could get with those things. Before long they cared more about their calculations than they did about their neighbors. Once they had figured out who God’s 144,000 elect were, they did not waste any time or courtesy on the damned, except perhaps to remind them just how hot hellfire was going to be. Meanwhile, God’s chosen had plenty else to do: flee the cities, arm themselves against the enemy, purify themselves for their journey to heaven. Once they had gotten themselves all worked up about this, Matthew found it just about impossible to impress them with the fact that there were widows and orphans in the community going hungry because no one was signing up for the soup kitchen, or that there were still some people in jail who needed visiting, as well as some sick people at home who still needed looking after. But what did any of that matter, when the end was right around the corner?[i]

 

Matthew’s words are not about “skipping to the end of the book” and putting life on cruise control until the “rapture” rolls around; it’s about the utter necessity to keep living the life of a follower of Christ without relenting. You don’t know the day, you don’t know the hour; the only real option is to keep doing Christ’s work in God’s world, no matter how bleak – or even more, because of how bleak the world is looking around us. Case in point: those lines about "one taken...the other left. In the days of the Roman Empire two could be walking or working or anything and the Empire could take one away for any reason or no reason at all. If that sounds too familiar in the present-day USA, well, there's the point again. At any rate cruise control is over; the real work of being a follower of Christ begins now.

The message from Isaiah is not dramatically different. Isaiah’s prophecy in this passage has a clear “not yet” quality to it. You can scan through it quickly and see how much the word “shall” is used to translate Isaiah’s message:

“In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established…”

“…all the nations shall stream to it.”

“Many peoples shall come and say…”

“He shall judge between the nations…”

Even the most famous quote from this passage is couched in “shall” language – “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks” and “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” – it’s all still an object of future happening. And we can clearly look around and see a distinct lack of such change around us.

But then, notice what follows next, in verse 5:

“O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” Not a “shall” in sight.

Imperative – “come.” “Let us walk.” Do this. Do this now. Even Isaiah sees the need to call the people not to get caught up in future dreaming, but to do now what the Lord calls God’s people to do, to “walk in the light of the Lord.” 

As is typically the case, the first Sunday of Advent in particular is a two-sided observance. Yes, we begin the period of waiting and marking the days to the firstappearance of Christ on earth, the event we celebrate on Christmas. But this day also reminds us, a bit stubbornly, that the Incarnation is not the end of the story, and that we still live in Advent as we await that time when Christ shall come and call us unto himself. We still wait, we still prepare, and not unlike Matthew’s readers, sometimes we give up hope.

But our call has not changed. We are still charged to be followers of Christ in a world that does not want us to be followers of Christ, even though the world desperately needs us to be followers of Christ. There are still the poor, the hurting, the ones who live under regular and constant threat of violence, the forgotten, the lost, those who no longer know why they’re here, the ones whom nobody loves. They are still waiting for us to show and live the gospel to them. 

If the church’s “New Year’s Day” means anything to us, perhaps it is the kick-in-the-pants we need, to paraphrase A Brief Statement of Faith in our Book of Confessions, to receive courage from the Spirit in a broken and fearful world. In a time of increasingly open racism and misogyny and xenophobia and hatred of every kind, being enacted gloatingly and with pride even by people who call themselves Christians, we are still charged with being bearers of good news, being followers of Christ. Perhaps this beginning of Advent is a wake-up call, dare I say a call to "be woke", a call not to fear nor to gloat; a call to pay attention and keep following Jesus. 

So, no more sleeping. No more snooze button. Wake up. Be awake. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #352, My Lord! What a Morning; #104, O Lord, How Shall I Meet You; #384, Soon and Very Soon

 

 

---

[i] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Don’t Say When: Expecting the Second Coming,” Christian Century 121:19 (September 21, 2004); accessed online November 26, 2016 at http://christiancentury.org/article/2004-09/dont-say-when

 

 

Sermon: Full Circle

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

November 23, 2025, Reign of Christ

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 1:68-79

 

Full Circle

  

 

This is the last Sunday of the lectionary year, a kind of liturgical New Year's Eve as it were. Next Sunday when we show up here, provided enough people stick around after the service to get it all done, you will see purple vestments, some greenery about, at least one banner hanging, some extra candles, and maybe even a manger scene. One could magnify that fact of finality with the observation that, as the last Sunday of Year C, this is the end of not just a one-year liturgical observance but of the whole three-year lectionary cycle; next Sunday brings us to the First Sunday of Advent, Year A - we really have come full circle. 

For much of the church's relatively recent history this final Sunday of the liturgical year has been known as Christ the King Sunday, making it one of two Sundays of the year devoted as much to a doctrinal idea as to any event or sequence of events recorded in scripture. The other is Trinity Sunday, which falls directly after Pentecost Sunday, and is dedicated to the mystery that one God is also "God in three persons, blessed Trinity" as the hymn teaches us. 

Here the point is that Jesus, the one whose nativity we'll be marching toward starting next week, and the one whose life and teaching takes up most of the gospel readings across the course of the liturgical year, is king. A few hymns take us there as well, like the one we sang at the beginning of this morning's service.

What is harder to come by, however, is a great deal of scripture that is quite so direct about making that point about Christ the King, at least not in the way that we have come to understand kingship and rule in human history.

Kings, or queens in such cases as they reign, often end up seeming horribly out of touch with those over whom they rule. A couple of theatrical examples might help us see this: think of the musical Camelot, as Arthur and his queen Guinevere wonder back and forth "what do the simple folk do?" Their answers, let's say, aren't great. Or for a more farcical example from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail (and its later very loose theatrical adaptation Spamalot) that same King Arthur travels through the countryside amongst many of his subjects who don't even know who he is - "I didn't know we had a king," and other such exclamations. 

Real life offers the painful example, again from England, of the royal family's utter disconnect from their people after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, twenty-eight years ago. The royal family's initial dismissiveness after the death was met with a wave of indignation and even anger, to the point that the Queen herself (yes, the same Queen so deeply lauded and grieved at her own death not too long ago) had to come forth with what amounted to a giant public mea culpa and a rather elaborate funeral with no less a star than Elton John involved. 

If one confines one's search to the history of the people of Israel, it looks even worse. When you have some time to kill, take a trip through the books of Samuel and Kings and even Chronicles in the Old Testament and scan through the various kings of Israel and of Judah whose stories are told there, sometimes briefly, sometimes in greater detail. If you do this, take particular note of how many of those kings had their careers summarized in the words "they did evil in the sight of the Lord" or something similar. It's a lot.

Speaking of those Old Testament scriptures, take a look at 1 Samuel 8, in which God is quite explicit in telling Samuel about how the people of Israel will suffer for their desire to have a king "like all the other nations." The people don't listen, God tells Samuel who to anoint (a tall, good-looking guy named Samuel), and the trouble begins. Even God isn't all that fond of human kings, it turns out.

To be blunt, calling someone a king in scripture isn't necessarily all that complimentary. The office has to be respected, of course, but an awful lot of people who filled that office did not earn that respect. So perhaps it's not a surprise that the readings selected for this Sunday do less going on about Jesus being a king and more about what Jesus was or was prophesied to be.

Look at that reading from Luke. You might remember it from the season of Advent, of all things, a song of Zechariah upon the birth and naming of his son John, who would be the forerunner of the Messiah. This was what came some nine months after Zechariah had been struck speechless (and maybe unable to hear as well) upon his scoffing response to the angel Gabriel's announcement of the birth to come. Once that muting has been lifted upon his announcement of his son's name, this is what Zechariah has to say. (You can find a hymn version of this at #109 in your hymnal.)

There is a reference to being of "the house of David," but if you're looking for royalty or any suggestion of such, that's about it. Instead Zechariah's song speaks of a "savior," one who would preserve the people of Israel from their enemies. The song goes on to sing of mercy and holy covenant, of being able to serve this savior "without fear" - not a way human kings typically work. At last Zechariah sings of a "dawn from on high" that will come "to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of peace." Not typical king-talk of the time. Or, to put it in modern terms, not exactly a winning campaign pitch for a major presidential candidate these days.

The passage from Jeremiah looks promising, until it becomes known that this passage isn't necessarily referring to a divine Messiah, but a more earthly king. The earlier verses of the passage speak more of shepherds than kings, but then prophets of that era were inclined to compare a good king to a shepherd in how that king would rule over, and care for, the people of his realm. Colossians comes the closest in speaking of God who has "rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son...". From there, though, the passage takes a different direction with its description of "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation" and going on to speak of God reconciling Godself to all humanity through this One. Close, but not quite.

Of course, I have left out one reading from the lectionary today, another passage from Luke. It starts off like this: 

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews."

 

That's it: a man hanging on a cross, named as "the King of the Jews."

For "Christ the King Sunday" to make any sense at all for us, and for it not to lead us off on some very un-Christlike rabbit trails that an awful lot of self-declared Christians are following these days, we have to get over our ideas of what a king is like. That's not Christ. 

Think Good Shepherd.

Think of the teacher.

Think of the one who welcomed the children and then told his disciples off when they tried to turn them away.

Think of the one who broke the bread and poured the cup. 

Think of the one who rode into Jerusalem on a mere colt.

Think of the one who raised Lazarus out of the tomb.

Think of the one who stilled the storm on the sea of Galilee.

Think of the one who was transfigured on that mountain with Moses and Elijah standing by.

Think of the one baptized, with the Holy Spirit crashing in to pronounce him as God's beloved son.

Think of the one born to Mary, placed in a feed trough, with a bunch of shepherds as the main witnesses.

And yes, think of that one crucified, the one who did not stay dead.

There's your King, the only king you want. Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #268, Crown Him with Many Crowns; #309, Come. Great God of All the Ages; #274, You, Lord, Are Both Lamb and Shepherd