Reign of Christ – The Kin-dom of God where everything is connected.

Today in the Anglican Church we celebrate the Reign of Christ. It is also the end of the liturgical year and a day that has been traditionally known in the Anglican Church as  Stir Up Sunday: a name inspired by the Collect in the Book of Common Prayer for this Feast Day: “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” Historically this was also the Sunday when Christmas baking was begun as in stirring ingredients in a mixing bowl: Christmas cake, Christmas puddings etc.

And our minds and hearts, our world, and even our church are certainly being stirred at this time:  There is much going on that is causing turbulence, unrest and uncertainty. Wars in various parts of the world and deep political divisions in the United States, as well as issues closer to home. My drive home often takes me down Pandora Street and the number of unhoused people camping in tents there. On the news I see the disturbing amount of life-destroying drugs coming into our country. I followed with great concern this week the divisions in the Church of England, and the implications of those divisions. Yes, we are being ‘stirred up” alright by world events, but is there another kind of stirring up that we are experiencing as Christians?  is Jesus Christ, whose Kingship we celebrate today stirring our hearts to greater awareness, to a Christian response in the midst of a world that is in such great need of it?

Jesus resisted elements of the kingdoms of this world that drew boundaries around who can and cannot be included as 'one of us.' It's the same reason Jesus makes critical comments in the Gospels about relationships to mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters; because he wanted us to have an expansive and inclusive view of who our relatives could be than the traditional social and political boundaries of the day tried to narrow and limit.

Today's Gospel jumps to Jesus’s trial before Pilate for an important purpose. Pilate asks Jesus a key question, a question about the identity of Jesus: “Are you the king of the Jews” Interestingly, Jesus does not give a direct answer but enters into a dialogue. He knows that Pilate is trapped. Pilate is the most powerful man in the kingdom. He also knows that Jesus is innocent but needs to trap him in a technicality to save face. We are witnessing this very thing in the US political system today. Even people in powerful positions are afraid to speak the truth because of the implications for their career, and perhaps even their safety. And the church is not immune from this: it is not easy to speak the truth, to point out injustices. In the church of England we are witnessing this very fear in the wake of the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. A fear of rejection, loss of position, loss of power.

In the Nehiyaw/Cree tradition, there is a fundamental natural law that is contained within a principle called wahkotowin which translates literally as kinship, and refers to an understanding that all people, all creatures, and indeed all that is, are in fact related, because of their common source in the Creator and Mother Earth. Our relations, therefore, stretch far beyond the nuclear family, or the tribe, or the nation; in fact, they can be understood to include everyone and everything with which we share an interconnected web of existence. And if that's true, then we have a responsibility to live and share together with respect, justice, and peace, including those who are different from us.

This is the point: that no one is excluded in the Kingdom of God. Jesus in this important dialogue gives Pilate the opportunity to speak truth to power, to be authentic. It is what Jesus has done in all of his encounters in the Gospel with individuals:  the Samaritan woman at the well, the man born blind, Nichodemus who came to Jesus under cover of darkness. In this, his last dialogue with another human being, he gives Pilate the opportunity to be real. This is always Jesus’ offer. But to receive it means facing the truth about our lives, the truth Jesus holds up before us. Pilate refuses to face that truth “what is truth?” he says dismissively!

What about those of us confronted by this text today? Jesus still offers the invitation to be authentic about how it is with us, and in being authentic, to be led by the shepherding king into abundant life.

This is what I think Jesus was trying to teach when he spoke of the coming kingdom or kin-dom of God. We do not have to have our friends nor our enemies decided for us by the limited standards of this world. The Way of Jesus invites and enables us to reach out across the borders we create for ourselves to keep different peoples apart and instead to receive one another openly as kin.

We are all quite aware that we are living in a time where nationalisms and identity wars are at a major high and are seemingly on the rise. Everything is hyper-polarized and all kinds of efforts are being put into movements claiming they will make nations or peoples great again by isolating them from diversity and shutting out those who are different. If there was ever a time for Gospel People to embrace an alternative vision of deep interrelationship, I think this is it.

On this Sunday, the Church proclaims Christ the King. The Church announces that it bows only to Jesus the Christ. The Church declares that it does not give allegiance to any other person, principality or power, claiming to be sovereign. Will the church live up to this profession or be fearful in this post-Christian era of losing members and thus losing influence in the community. Does the church temper its message and its mission in an effort to retain its position, it’s security?

And so on this ‘stir-up’ Sunday, we turn again to Jesus Christ for our vision, our direction on how we are to live and how we are to be a faith community that witnesses to a different kind of Kingdom. We ask God to stir up our hearts, awaken our imagination, and direct our action to the dream that they have for us as the people of God. May we be open and may it be so.

 

Amen

 

 

 

 

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