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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Christ the King Sunday

Today is a special day in the life of the church - it is Chris the King Sunday - a day when we celebrate the Lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives. When I was starting out in ministry in 2007, my mentoring pastor used to tell me that there are three days in the church calendars that clergy really struggle to preach - Trinity Sunday, Ascension Sunday, and Christ the King Sunday. I’m not sure if its difficult because we are on the cusp of entering into the season of Advent, and this is the last Sunday before we get there, or simply because we like to say as the church that Christ is Lord of our lives, but sometimes we find ourselves not acting like it. Either way, here we are, on Christ the King Sunday and our last Sunday in the stories of the faith sermon series.
Ironically, on this Christ the King Sunday, our story doesn’t come from the words of Jesus or the New Testament, but from the prophet Isaiah, and old testament prophet, positioned right around the time when Jerusalem is about to fall from glory and become captives of Babalyon. Like Jesus, Isaiah often tried to reach out to people by speaking in parables, in stories, hoping that people would be able to relate to them better than simply being scolded. The situations is bleak, the people of Israel in Jerusalem, the Holy City, are corrupt. So Isaiah spins them a tale. 
Israel, the vineyard that Jacob planted, the people that God loved, were gifted by God to have the best possible life together. They were planted on fertile ground. God cleared away the obstacles. God planted them to bear the best fruit. God watched over the people of Israel day and night - when they were in exile and in times of peace. And yet, and yet, things did not turned out as planned. Even with every good gift given to them, they yielded bad fruit. Yielded what they were not planted to yield. And now they had a problem. 
But God, the God of love and generosity, refused to give up on them and as a result, God starts to sing a love song over them. God sings about the passion God has for them. Let that sink in - the passion God has for them. What are you passionate about? What does that word mean to you? God tells the people that God are not as God had intended them to be. They, the people of God’s own heart, were the failed harvest. And God’s heart is grieving. 
I was recently asked in a meeting of pastors what you would risk for the harvest of God if you knew that you could not fail. If you knew that you could not fail. Which of course is true because God never fails. I love thinking about these big, Kingdom sized questions, but I have to wonder how often we use our human imperfection, our human failings, be an excuse from living into the Kingdom sized mission God has given us. Not just the world, but us, right here is Philipsburg and Sandy Ridge. We look at ourselves like the people of Israel, a failed people who have not lived into God’s love and vision, and we let that block us from going forwards. We totally miss that this passage in Isaiah is a love song that God is singing over the people, over us. 
So what comes next in this love song, isn’t God glossing over everything. Instead it is a warning. A statement that God hasn’t given up on us. Hasn’t given up on Israel. But God is still grieved. God still has to ask what more could have been done, what more blessings and chances could the people have been given in order to given them a chance to thrive for the Kingdom and ministry of God. They were given everything the neighboring countries could have dreamed of yet they were a sour people.
Oh brothers and sisters, how many times do we too end up like sour grapes? What more blessings could God have given us? And what do we sometimes do with all of the good gifts when we aren’t paying attention? We act as if we haven’t been given enough. Acting like the love of God for us is not enough. Act as if God should be planting, cultivating, and harvesting for our self-interest instead of God’s Kingdom. Acting as if our blessings are meant to be squandered away for a rainy day instead of being shared. Shame on us. Such things simply make us wither and more sour. 
Now God’s anger starts to emerge and God speaks of what is to come. Not because God wants the people to learn their place, but because like a plant that has not yielded its fruits, God needs to ensure that the next harvest of the crop will be different. But what I love about God is that God doesn’t just throw the old plants and vines away, instead God wants to redeem them and give them yet another chance for the sake of the mission and vision of Israel. And as a result, the vine of God’s delight, Israel in Jerusalem, will fall. 
Lest not lose sight of the purpose of this short time of failure and falling though - it is for the people’s redemption. Folks, what areas in your life are in need of God’s redeeming? Even if it is painful? Even if it isn’t quite what you want? Where are the broken and fallen places in your life where a shoot can emerge from the stump of what has withered away? As Christians we identify this shoot as Jesus Christ - so where are the places where you need the touch and love of Jesus Christ in your life today?
For today, on this Christ the King Sunday, we celebrate that even in our broken nature and fallenness, God is not done with us you. God loves us so much, even if the best we could do for a time was yield sour grapes that made us bitter, that God sent Jesus Christ to redeem us. God loves us so much that God did what no mere human could do. In the words of theologian Noel Leo Erskine, “The promised salvation will not come through human intervention but through divine action.” 
Brothers and sisters, Christ offers us a peace that we cannot achieve on our own. This passage shows the iconic image of the lion laying down with the lamb - a sign of hope. A sign of security. But Christ doesn’t just offer us the gift of this peace, but invites us to be part of it as well. No matter how sour the fruit we have yielded in the past, Christ offers us a redeemed future, where we can partner together for the sake of the Kingdom of God. To be co-creators in the peaceable Kingdom. 
What a vision of community. What a task the people of Israel were charged with. While they may never have achieved such peace or justice, they were charged with God with something to work towards. Which leads me to ask, what is the task of our community today? What defines those who gather together and call themselves the church?
We are about redefining relationships. Our relationship to God through Christ and our relationship with the people of God. Instead of asking what can the church do for me, we gather together to ask how we can serve each other and those we come into contact with each day. We say that each and every one of our relationships – no matter their level of depth – is important. And we exhibit this principle every week when we gather.

These are huge visions for our community, for the church. A huge vision of the importance of the peaceable Kingdom in Christ’s Kingdom plan. But God does not give us tasks that are impossible. No, God gives us Divine sized visions that help us grow in holiness. May it be so, here, through the blessing of Christ Jesus!

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