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Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

Reign of Christ

Year B
November 24, 2024
Melinda Quivik

Daniel 7:9–10, 13–14
Psalm 93
Revelation 1:4b–8
John 18:33–37

            These readings hold out to us the fundamental repository of all wholeness, healing, and righteousness: Truth. Jesus says, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” Jesus is responding to Pilate asking, “Are you the king?” And then without waiting for an answer, Pilate asks a rhetorical question: “What have you done” that your “own nation and the chief priests” have turned against you? If someone doesn’t want Jesus to have power, Pilate assumes that Jesus must be at fault. Beyond denying what is true, Pilate blames the victim. Standing there, Jesus is facing a power that is not the Truth. Pilate cannot see beyond his own need to retain power. He faces a people who are on the verge of rebellion, and he cannot afford to take the side of what is true. Pilate does not know Truth. Rome is not Truth. Violence, oppression, subjugation of the weak (think immigrants and refugees and creatures of Earth) is not Truth.

In the same light, we who care about Earth-keeping must see ourselves as if we are being grilled by Pilate. What have we done that our Earth has so revolted against us?! And we are simultaneously Pilate who is unable to access what is true for all the noise in our contexts. Lies and self-interested distortions of Truth bombard Earth's people every hour. Like Pilate, we face  Jesus and ask him who he is and what he stands for. If we can hear that the Risen One who is Christ over all the universe stands for what is True, we then have to dig as deep as we can to find the truth that is at the foundation of God’s creation and our relationship with that creation.

            The purpose of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension is to rule the Kingdom of Truth––or, as we say with more inclusive language––to reign. We celebrate the Reign of Christ in order to set in the center of our faith the wisdom given to us by Christ's reign. That reign extends far beyond our beautiful blue planet, but for our purposes, the things of creation that God has given to us reside at the heart of our responsibilities. Our task is to recognize the intimate relationship we have with this Christ who reigns as king.

One crucial place where we find our rightful relationship with the kingdom of God is in the eucharist. Our greatest power is in what we have been given by Jesus: his body and blood. We understand it in numerous ways, of course––as communion with God, as a sign of God’s equal love for each person on Earth, as forgivenness, as cleansing, as hope for tomorrow, as “food for the journey.” But let us add another interpretation to the eucharist.

Let us so wrap our minds around the truth of the presence of Christ, God-with-us, Emman-uel, that we can say a king is in our bread and wine. While we celebrate Christ the King or the Reign of Christ on this Sunday at the end of the liturgical calendar, we are assured that the one who feeds us with the food of eternal life in the feast of thanksgiving spoke the most profound truth of all: “this is my body” and “this is my blood.” Jesus identified himself with the things of Earth, the ordinary food we eat and need every day. Jesus told us that the nourishment we receive from the fruit of the vine and the grains made into bread (of all kinds) become our own bodies. This food gives us power every day to see through lies, to live in Jesus’ name, and to live, then, in what is the Truth.

In a normal world, these things are absurd. How can God become what we eat? How can we possibly be the body of Christ? Some people say that God is the Earth, that we should understand who God is by accepting that God is engulfed as the universe. Earth, then, is identified completely with the divine. That idea is called pantheism (pan-theism) which means everywhere–God or all things are God. It can handily lead to worshipping Earth and all created things. We could imagine that such ideas may lead human beings to care more about stewardship of land, water, air, and creatures, but identifying God completely with creation can also be too simplistic a vision of God even though it is well-intentioned.

A more appropriate conception of the relationship between God and Earth is panentheism. That idea says that God is not limited to the created world (not confined inside what God created) but can, indeed, inhabit the things of this world like bread and wine. God can, indeed, become human. Jesus can be both human and divine precisely because God’s own self is both capable of being inside the things of creation and yet also beyond nature, capable of defying nature by rising from the dead. Images of God as both the Ancient One and the “one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven” (Dan. 7:13) set representational worldly things beside the images of what is eternal and will not pass away. They become one God, defying our imaginations.

And yet, we are invited to imagine that a king is in our bread and wine. . . and we are transformed in the meal. A famous line from Augustine (Sermon #272) summarizes this truth: “Be what you see; receive what you are.” When we see in the feast of thanksgiving, the eucharist, the very body of Christ which we ingest and which becomes our own bodies, we might ask ourselves: What, then, shall we do with the lives we have? What will this Christ-infused body––by which you and I are defined as individuals and as communities––do to honor what lives inside of us?

I can imagine that we will assume greater postures of humility. We will steward the things of Earth and Earth itself. We will work to mend our destructive ways. We will find ourselves aglow with joy. We have become the priests serving God because Jesus “made us to be a kingdom.” (Rev. 1:6)

 

_______________

 

Hymns to consider:

 

In ELW:

#814    Take Oh Take Me As I Am

#808    Lord Jesus, You Shall be My Song

#735    Mothering God, You Gave Me Birth

 

In All Creation Sings:

            #1004  Faith Begins by Letting Go

            #1005  Ask the Complicated Questions

 

 

Melinda Quivik
Melinda Quivik
Twin Cities, Minnesota

Melinda Quivik, an ELCA pastor (who served churches in Montana, Michigan, and Minnesota) and former professor of worship and preaching, is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal Liturgy, a writer, and a preaching mentor with Backstory Preaching at backstory-preaching.mn.com. Her most recent book, Worship at a Crossroads: Racism and Segregated Sundays, is a response to Lenny Duncan's Dear Church. She calls all churches to learn why worship ways differ in our various traditions as we seek to be more welcoming.

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