2021-11-22
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text
“Reign of Christ…Reign of Love”
• I want to begin this morning by saying again what a delight it is to be with you friends. Some of you I have known for a long time and others I am just now getting the privilege to meet you. All of it is a delight.
• I want to say a special work of thanks Pastor Hamilton for his kind invitation so that we could be together today on this last Sunday in the liturgical year of the church. More on that in just a moment.
• First it is my great honor and privilege to bring you greetings from your relatives…that is the 322 other congregations which make up the Heartland Conference (formerly known as the Ohio Conference) of the United Church of Christ, which you may know includes two congregations in West Virginia and eight in Northern Kentucky just across the river from Cincinnati.
• I want to share just a bit of our most recent family story here in the Heartland Conference before we dig into our texts to discern the gifts they offer this morning.
• In past 18 months or so, leaders from throughout the Conference have that God has set before all of us as a vision of renewed collaboration where together in Christ’s love, we work to reconcile and restore all of God’s creation.
• Now that sounds large – and the truth is, it is large. But it is not by our own strength alone that we engage this work.
• We trust that there is an alive Holy Spirit that empowers us to connect, equip and support our faith communities to grow as faithful disciples and responsible stewards, following Jesus’ call to extravagantly love all God’s children and creation.
• I know that you know what I am talking about.
• Your work in the arena of anti-rasicm and your partnership with Mt. Zion is a special gift not only to yourselves but to others as an inspiration about what is not only possible but necessary in this season of human history so often bent on diminishment and denial.
• I have read and been inspired by your statement of solidarity.
• We believe we are in the midst of two pandemics. COVID-19 has stolen the breath from thousands of our fellow Americans. The other -- some call it "COVID-1619" -- has been stealing the breath from our Black and Brown sisters and brothers for over 400 years.
• When one of us cries, "I can't breathe," we are all robbed of that Pentecost moment when the Spirit of the Lord moved like a mighty wind into bodies in that first-century crowd, giving them breath. While we may speak with many tongues, with this breath the Spirit allows us to hear and understand as though there is but one voice (Acts 2:4, 6).
• We believe we are in a Pentecost moment now. The wind of the Holy Spirit has pulled the curtain back from our confusion and we now can see clearly that racism is America's Original Sin.
• We seek a way forward in which every person's life is valued and communities are kept safe because those charged with protecting them realize that they themselves are part of a greater family as Children of God.
• More on this in a moment.
• You have been engaged in the wider church whether you know it or not in some significant ways and I know in ways I will just learn about today as I am with you.
• Because of your shared commitment, ministry initiatives across our life in the Heartland Conference are being strengthened and new ministry networks are being developed around the work of anti-racism and the cultivation of a generous life.
• Faith Formation and climate justice and care..
• Just this past week a group interested in how to foster mental health and accessibility in our congregations and communities had its first conversations.
• Climate justice…Harm reduction/drug overdose prevention.
• The great thing about networks is that you don’t have to sign up for a term. You can engage at the level that fits for you. Just let your interest be made known by contacting the Conference office at office@heartlanducc.org
• But there is more that God is at work doing in and through us that stretches beyond the geographical boundaries of the Heartland conference.
• You see this thing of ministry in the name of Jesus Christ is a work local and a work global.
• Last year in late January and early February I traveled on your behalf to Southern Asia, to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India as part of an initiative to bear witness and offer support our partners in that part of God’s creation.
• You have been supporting Post Traumatic Stress disorder treatment for people in the northern region of Sri Lanka in the Jaffna diocese. Pastors from Sri Lanka have come to Eden Theological Seminary gaining training in trauma treatment.
• Then they have returned to tend the emotional wounds of their people who for 30 years suffered due to civil war.
• In Bangladesh, you have been supporting women’s business development in an area of the world where climate change is cutting in half the growing season among the poorest of the poor.
• Daily you have been supporting internally displaced refugees in Syria with food and water relief through the work of our partners, the Forum For Development Culture and Dialogue.
• And those are just a few of the stories from our nearly 300 global partners in 90 countries around the world who share in our response to the commission of Jesus Christ to meet all God’s people at the place of deepest need.
• Closer to home, right now, we are building hope for new beginnings as we are actually working together with the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ to form a long-term disaster recovery ministry in the Dayton area organizing work teams coming to build and rebuild houses for those rendered housing insecure by the tornados that hit this area two years ago.
• Your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing have and will support this effort.
• And I hope you will send work teams as we announce details about this initiative toward the end of this year.
• If you haven’t quite caught on, you and I are in a web of blessing and mutual encouragement and support that daily changes the lives of people near and far.
• Your gifts to Our Churches Wider Mission make these life-giving connections possible – right here in Ohio and around the world.
• I could on and on, sharing about church renewal, support of our Native American Congregations, and support of pastors who in retirement struggle to make ends meet because of their life-long commitment to serve smaller churches.
• Now this is about more than just money. These gifts are about an energy and capacity for love to foster the hope of a new beginning to become real in the life of the world right here you live and throughout the world because that is the commission of Jesus Christ.
• So I say, thank you from the bottom of my heart, dear friends for your faithfulness to this mission of love which we share together near and far.
• Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
• Today, as I mentioned earlier, we come to the end of the liturgical year. Next week, we get a fresh start with Advent.
• But before that, because there is always a before that…we come to this Sunday which historically was called Christ the King Sunday…now we call it reign of Christ Sunday.
• But of course, you know such language is complicated and weighted with meaning often carrying a history frankly betraying the essence of the Jesus’ way.
• Often the marriage of Christianity with empires of one kind or another have supported violence looking more like the way of the Roman empire, creating and supporting such things as the Doctrine of Discovery legitimating genocide of indigenous peoples we are just now beginning to name out loud and confess.
• But, of course, this is not all there is. Because we have a text that keeps calling us back to a rediscovery of a motion of mending that dares to trust a spirit stronger and a force more powerful than what the world says is the final word especially when it has taken forms that have highjacked the way of Jesus.
• And strangely this morning it takes us to the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate.
• Pilate has responsibility for being sure things don’t get out of hand in the prefect of Judea. He has special concern for things to not get out of hand in Jerusalem during the time of Passover.
• He is Rome’s agent and has the power to put people to death – especially those who claim to be king in an empire where there was only one Caesar.
• So, the word that’s apparently on the street calling Jesus the King of the Jews is no small thing.
• Of course, Jesus has not said this of himself. What he has persistently preached is that the kingdom of God or the reign of God has arrived or is at hand or is arriving.
• What the Gospel does put before us is a stage where the way of the world and all of its self-protective mechanisms and systems encounter an entirely different way.
• Earlier in John, it is called not only the way…but also the truth…and the life and it is centered how Jesus is conveying God wherever he goes.
• So on this stage Pilate (aka the world) asks of Jesus…(the fullness of love capital “L” in human form)…if he is a king.
• Jesus responds that his reign is not of this world. He could have said, “Pilate you think that by your violence, you can keep the peace, but there is force more powerful and it is not like anything Rome has ever imagined.”
• There is a force more powerful and even if you put me to death this force of love will rise.
• On this stage, on which the arc of history will turn and continues to turn, Jesus names his God-given vocation…to testify to the truth…the Greek word is alethia.
• And it means to use words to make a reality evident. You may have noticed…everywhere Jesus has gone…his words make the reality of Agape love evident…this love that seeks the greatest good of the other.
• But it is more than just his words…it is a force of presence.
• This truth which Pilate wonders about is not just an exercise in philosophical reflection but a divine encounter with a loving force that has the power to redeem and to heal.
• And often, you probably have noticed, with Jesus it starts by listening to the deep story of another.
• I want to suggest something to you this morning that maybe you have already done years ago, but maybe not.
• I have found it continues to transform my encounter with Love capital “L” which is how I most often refer to this one we call God who is larger than any of our language and who truthfully is in us and through us all the time whether we know it or not.
• So here it is. When you read the Gospels and I hope you will read them again and again because you likely know they will speak ever new things because the journey is not straight line.
• But neither is it a journey alone. So when you were are reading the gospels, put the word “Love” in for the word Jesus or any word that refers to Jesus. It’s very simple.
• But let me show you how it can transform your hearing of the gospel and eventually your discovery of God in every human being.
• Actually, I want to begin with the prologue to John - that very first chapter…
• 1 In the beginning was love, and Love was with God, and Love was God. 2 Love was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through love, and without love not one thing came into being.
• What has come into being in love was life, and the life was the light of all people.
• Or here is another… A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Love said to her, “Give me a drink.” 9 The Samaritan woman said to Love, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” 10 Love answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked love, and love would have given you living water.”
• One more…as Jesus is getting the disciples ready for his death… Thomas said to Love, “O Love, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Love said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through love. 7 If you know love, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know Love and have seen Love.”
• I hope you get a sense of what this kind of reading might do inside your life. It will begin to speak a truth that is more than ideas, but a force more powerful, especially when you are in a drought or when the weight of the daily deluge of the news threatens to drown you.
• But there is something more…this kind of exposure to the force of love can ready us to listen to the holy narrative of another person’s life.
• You may know that such listening is often the first act of love. To show up and listen to another in loving, undistracted attention, no matter how painful the story may be gives space for a holy wholeness to rise.
• It is one of the reasons why the current debate about what kind of history should be taught in our schools matters so much and why we need more of the stories of the human family and not fewer.
• Because having your story, present and past, said out loud and acknowledged especially if it has been hidden too long, is to allow a force more powerful to be activated in the shared life of the human family in a way that moves toward a motion of mending and a reign of life-giving love.
• Not only that but the stories we rehearse out loud together, form and inform the systems we design and inhabit.
• Even more we are exposed to the wider expanse of the story of God’s unfolding apart from which everything remains narrowed and shallow.
• It reminds me of the chorus of one of my favorite songs. Draw the circle wide, draw it wider still, let this be our song, no one stands alone, standing side by side, draw the circle wide.
• You know when Pilate and Jesus met on that fateful trial stage, there were different narratives about what the truth of justice means.
• For Pilate it was all about enforcing a status quo grounded in violence and fear. We see this narrative getting acted out all around us these days.
• For Jesus it was about the truth of God’s deep desire for an arrangement of life empowered by Agape love where all God’s children can freely use their gifts without fear for the upbuilding of the common Good and the good of creation so that all may flourish sharing in God’s abundance and joy.
• This my friends, is what we are called to and by Love’s grace invited into
• And it seems to me, This is what the Reign of Christ which is to say, the reign of love, capital “L” is all about.
• It is the first and last and only word worthy of our “yes”.
• It is the source and end of our deepest thanksgivings.
• I give thanks to God that we are on this journey together with all of its twists and turns, its hurts and hopes, and that in all of it we are not left to ourselves.
• This is the good news. You can trust it with your life.
• Blessings on you, dear friends. You are a gift. I give thanks to God for you and I pray God’s blessings on your life together.
• Amen and Amen.