Christ the King: Bringing in the Kingdom

The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch

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

It’s almost the season. Recently, I asked my daughter Sophie (who is nine) what she wanted for Christmas.
“I don’t really want anything for myself mommy. I have so many things. I just want-- world peace.”
“Well, world peace isn’t something I can give you.”
“I just want to help others,” she persisted.

So, I reminded her that last year we had given donations as presents to her teachers. Through Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD), we had given mosquito netting for children in Malaria plagued countries. We gave cards to her teachers telling them that we honored them with this gift. They were thrilled. I told Sophie we could again choose gifts that helped other people. It seems to me that the very next day the ERD catalogue arrived in the mail (some say luck, I say the Holy Spirit). She poured through it deciding that this year she wants to give clean water.

Neither of us came to this point on our own. Her answer was influenced by her Sunday school class. They had discussed Christmas wish lists and Mrs. Berkenstock had asked them three questions. What do I have? What do I want? What do I need? All of us might benefit from such an exercise. Thus came Sophie’s desire for world peace. I had learned about the importance of Mosquito Netting through the Clergy Leadership Project, a program I attended for the past four years. Last year one of our faculty was Dr. Josh Ruxin, from the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Director of the Millennium Village Project, Rwanda. He taught us about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and why they are attainable and for the first time I began to have my own mind changed about world poverty. There is actually something to be done about it. Not just a drop in the bucket. Not pie-in-the sky dreaming. But real people with viable plans in place that are working to eradicate extreme poverty. Like mosquito nets.

Every minute, three children die from malaria contracted from mosquitoes. This is a disease which is entirely preventable. Malaria could become a non-issue if every child had mosquito netting to sleep under. At a cost of about $5 per kid. Thus my excitement about mosquito netting.

There are other factors at work here as well. Alternative giving, giving a donation in someone’s name as a way to honor them, is important to our family in a large part due to the Living Gifts Fair which this congregation hosted for several years. An event that came to be through the vision of Dolores Schiesser, and the many others she recruited.

Today is Christ the King Sunday, the end of the season after Pentecost (which the children here know as the growing season). It is the last Sunday before Advent begins. Advent is the beginning of the Church year and is the season of waiting and expectation. One of the things we wait for in Advent is the second coming of Christ-- a glorious day in our understanding. A day when all the world will be made whole and creation will be complete. So, on this last Sunday of the Christian year we remember that Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus the King may not be the most accessible image for us. After all, these days most kings are found in fantasy stories or Disney movies. Any modern day kings that we do see from countries that have one look like any other top notch executive as far as I can tell. But the kind of King Jesus is-- is glorious! Like Daniel’s vision of the messiah coming on the clouds of heaven and ushering in an everlasting kingdom. Or the fantastic vision in John’s Revelation. Just what kind of king Jesus could claim to be was in fact something that Pilot wanted to know as Jesus stood before him on trial. Jesus answers Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world.” No kidding. Does the world around us look like the kingdom of heaven? What would the world look like if it were the Kingdom of God?

Once, when Jesus was the lector for the day at his home synagogue, he read from the prophet Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

(from Luke 4:16-30)

Then he had the audacity to claim that this was no longer prophecy but reality-- Jesus’ reality. And it can be our reality too. The Kingdom of God, the reign of Christ, is not some far off distant event. We have the capability of making it real each and every day. I honestly believe that if each of us could get it right all at the same time just for just a moment, then it would be here. The Kingdom of God would be complete here and now. Even now the kingdom of God breaks in whenever we act as if it is our sacred duty to make it so. The kingdom of God comes close whenever we act to help create a world in which poverty, imprisonment, blindness and oppression due not rule the day.

Our new presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, has asked the Church to set aside this Sunday as a day of "prayer, fasting, education and advocacy for the Millennium Development Goals." Perhaps you have heard something about the MDGs recently. Here’s why.

One billion people live on less than $1.00 a day – approximately one sixth of the people on the planet. Every day 30,000 children die from preventable consequences of extreme poverty; that's one every three seconds. Every year 500,000 women die from complications of pregnancy – most of them exacerbated by poverty. "One dollar a day" does not mean the equivalent of what a U.S. dollar would buy in an impoverished country. It refers to what it would buy here at home. That's like a family of four living on less than $1,460 a year of combined private and public resources (schools, roads and fire trucks are public resources). One dollar a day is the threshold below which there are insufficient calories to keep the body alive. This is not about being poor. This is about living a slow death; this is about the poverty that kills.
[quoted from the Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation website www.e4gr.org/]

In 2000, leaders from 189 Nations, including the US, met to address global poverty and they agreed to cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015. This meeting led to the articulation of eight specific Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger .

2. Achieve universal primary education.

3. Promote gender equality and empower women.

4. Reduce child mortality.

5. Improve maternal health.

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

7. Ensure environmental sustainability.

8. Create a global partnership for development with targets for aid, trade and debt relief.

Our General Convention has promised to support the MDGs. Episcopal parishes and dioceses have been urged to designate 0.7% of their income to eradicate extreme poverty. Our own Diocesan Convention resolved to support the MDGs as well. That’s where I got my white wrist band that say’s ONE. It stands for the ONE campaign. What can One do? What can one person do? One congregation? One diocese? One church? One Body of Christ?

When Sophie asked for world peace, I could have had a better answer, “Well, let’s see what we can do about it.” What can one do? Thanks to Dolores Schiesser this congregation began the Living Gifts Fair which influenced at least our family. Thanks to Becky Berkenstock my daughter and a class full of other youth have something to think about. What can one parish do? Thanks to the vision of the leadership of this congregation, this Cathedral gives away not .7% but close to 10% for people in need in this community, this nation and other countries. What can one diocese do? Duncan Grey, the Bishop of Mississippi, when asked if his diocese would continue to offer their .7% after Hurricane Katrina hit did not hesitate to say, “yes!” After so many people had reached beyond themselves to help them, how could they not continue to help others in need, especially now that they had a taste of the devastation that people in developing countries live with every day.

What would the reign of Christ look like?

Let’s see what we can do about it

Copyright ©Anne E. Kitch 2006

Thanksgiving Day: Do not be Anxious

The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Matthew 6:25-33

If only it were that simple. “Do not worry,” Jesus says. Actually I prefer the translation, “Do not be anxious,” which is closer to the Greek text. Anxiety is more powerful than worry. Anxiety is what can knock us down flat, take over our lives, keep us up at night, or send us cowering in a corner. “Do not be anxious about your life,” Jesus says. As if!

I have to say my own experience tells me about the only thing that seems to make me less anxious is age. Some things just don’t worry me as much as they used to because I have lived through them. And believe me, I wouldn’t want to return to a more anxious age. But is that all there is? Is knowing that I will survive the only rope to grasp when worries about “what next” overwhelm me?

How does Jesus move us away from worry? He asks us to look around us. Look at the birds of the air. No, really look at them--see them--think about them. What can we learn? This is the power behind his words. Consider the lilies of the fields (and the word here is really wildflowers). Consider-- observe well-- learn something—stop—look—contemplate.

Now before we decide this gospel message is take time to stop and smell the roses, let’s consider it further. Jesus is calling our attention to some things that are accessible to us, things that are all around us, things that are simply there: birds and wildflowers. To quell our anxiety, Jesus calls our attention to, connects us to creation. He calls us to really see, observe, and contemplate the world around us and in doing so to notice God’s care for the world. In God’s economy, the birds are fed. In God’s amazing creation simple flowers not only display a complex biology that gathers sunlight converts it into food and energy and releases life-giving oxygen into the air, they are adorned with beauty as well.

Stop and notice God. “Be still then, and know that I am God” quotes the psalmist (psalm 46). Sometimes we need to be still in order to notice God… and to know God. We need to be still to notice and know that God cares for us. After all, knowing God is what it is all about for us. Otherwise, why would we be in church on Thanksgiving morning.

Anxiety distracts us from God. It distorts our relationships with others. It divorces us from who we really are. Anxiety gnaws at us, pulling us down into despair, mocking our desire to trust, teaching us rather to fear.

As long as we are noticing things, take note that Jesus did not say, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Combating anxiety is not that easy. This teaching of Jesus’ is a profound comment on the danger of sin and temptation: that we would be pulled away from God. The cure for worry is right relationship with God. Strive first for the kingdom of God. When we put God first, when we take time to consider God’s great loving work of creation and remember that we are part of it, then we also are recalled to who we are. We are God’s beloved and as such we can put love in place of anxiety.

There are troubles. We are not without troubles. Jesus doesn’t say, “Your troubles are over.” Rather he says there will be plenty of trouble, “Tomorrow will bring worries of its own, today’s trouble is enough for today.” Or and older translation, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” But no evil overcomes God’s love.

One of my favorite prayers for anxious times is by contemporary writer Joyce Rupp. It goes in part:

Like the ebbing tide of the ageless sea,
I yearn to be calm, be still,
no fretting and intense beating
against the shore of myself.
But the seagulls of anxiety screech
and the wild waves press upon my life.

…I do believe in your nearness,
yet I get too caught up
in my series, pressures, and needs.
Once again I open my being to you.
Come, Peaceful One, come!
Fill me with surrender and quiet.
Draw me into the stillness of your heart.
Together we will walk the seashore of my life.
(from Prayers to Sophia)

In anxious times, in pleasant times we do not walk alone. It is easy to give in to anxiety on Thanksgiving. There are so many expectations, so many temptations that draw us away from our center. The gift is, there will be many things for us to “consider” this Thanksgiving Day. The day itself calls us to consider our blessings, particularly the blessings of the earth. As we offer our thanks to God for the abundance of the earth, we are also called to consider our relationship to creation, to ordinary birds and wildflowers and to one another. And we are called to recall God’s presence in our lives, to recall God’s great care for all of creation-- for each little flower that opens, each little bird that sings, each relationship that is loving or difficult.

God knows us. God knows what we need. Consider, take a closer look at, and contemplate God’s love for you.

Draw me into the stillness of your heart, [O God.]
Together we will walk the seashore of my life.
Amen

© Anne E. Kitch 2006

Pentecost 24: In For The Long Haul

The Ven. Richard I Cluett
November 19, 2006
Daniel 12:1-3 + Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 + Mark 13:1-8

“Famine, social unrest, institutional deterioration, bitter internal conflicts, class warfare, banditry, insurrections, intrigues, betrayals, bloodshed, and the scattering of people throughout the country...”

Sounds like the evening news, but it’s not. Sounds like the world today, but it’s not. It is how the historian Josephus described the scene in Israel & Palestine about the time when the Evangelist Mark was putting the Gospel to pen and paper.

Jesus spoke of wars and rumors of wars. He predicted the destruction of the temple that had been built by Solomon in Jerusalem. And when Mark put pen to paper it had come to pass or was about to. About the year 70 in the Christian Era.

Rome had been laying siege to Jerusalem for years, there were popular messiahs, prophets crying out woes on the city and temple, mock trials, and crowds creating tumults. There were wars and rumors of wars for the better part of ten years and Josephus reports portents, including a brilliant daylight in the middle of the night...

I have a photograph in my office that I took from the Mount of Olives at a place that had to be near where Jesus spoke to his disciples. There is now a chapel on that spot. You sit down and look out over the Kidron Valley, across to the Old City of Jerusalem and you see the lower walls that had held up the Temple. They are all that’s left of the Temple of Solomon. The wall is called the Wailing Wall.

The place is called the Temple Mount by Jews. It is called the Dome of the Rock by Muslims and contains Al-Aqsa Mosque. It is the site where many people believe Jesus will return to when he comes again to complete the work of creation.

It is also the site of major conflicts that keep the Middle East full of war and the rumors of war. “Not one stone will be left here upon another.”

Many individuals, many groups eagerly anticipate the Second Coming, eagerly anticipate the completion of this world and the inauguration of the next. Are you ready for the rapture?

Preacher Fred Craddock once said, "Maybe people are obsessed with the second coming because, deep down, they were really disappointed in the first one."

We are now in a period of the Christian year, this end of this aone and the one to come on Advent 1, when scripture focuses on the end time, the second coming, the eschaton, the eternal consequences of the Now.

Millennial thinking or more accurately, millennial guessing, is very popular in our time. Lots of people have a view of how it will go, “The Left Behind Series” being only the latest and most egregious example. I am sure you remember all the hoopla, fear, and prognostication in 1999 and 2000 about what will happen in this new millennium.

The Book of Daniel is an example of apocalyptic writing about the end time that was popular in the century before Jesus. The war then was with Syria. The basic theme is, “The present time is one of suffering because of evil, but those who persist, those who are faithful will be vindicated. God will win; God will deliver, so be faithful.

But what do we do while waiting for the Messiah?

Mark and the early followers of the Way believed that the end was imminent. The prediction of Jesus had already come to pass. But, now, we know more than 2000 years later that it is not imminent, that we are in for the long haul.

There are indeed wars and rumors of wars and false prophets, and portents, and earthquakes… but we know, we think, we believe, , we hope that the end is not today.

But when it comes “it will be all right.”

We have been assured that in the person of Jesus, in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us…” Everything will be all right.

Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregren puts it this way. How often do parents say that to their children, "Everything will be all right"? A child falls and leaves some skin on the ground. "Everything will be all right," we say to the sobbing child. We tell the bed-ridden grandparent in the hospital, "Everything will be all right," even when we know that it might not be all right.
Just because we proclaim that everything will be all right, that doesn't mean that we do nothing. When children have fallen down and blood is all over the place, we don't just say, "Everything will be all right." There may be a fast trip to the emergency room. There may be bandages and antibiotics applied from the medicine cabinet. We do all that's in our power to make sure everything will be all right.
"How can I make ends meet, when more bills are coming in than income?"
"Everything will be all right"
"I'm having surgery tomorrow and I'm scared."
"Everything will be all right."
"The tests for cancer came back positive."
"Everything will be all right."
"My brother was just sent to Afghanistan."
"Everything will be all right."
"My mother just died."
"Everything will be all right."
And then we do everything in our power to try to make things all right and to encourage and support those in troubled times.
What do we do while waiting for the Messiah?

In the book Everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten one of the rabbi’s learnings is, “When you go out into the world, watch out, hold hands, and stick together.”

The author of Hebrews tells us this way, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together… but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day coming.”

Those who know Jesus know the way through troubled times and the way to wait for the end of time.

Amen

Pentecost 23:Look Again

The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Cathedral Church of the Nativity

Mark 12:38-44

I apologize. Please remember that--it will come up later, because things are not always what they seem.

That is perhaps the message of the Gospel passage we heard today. It is a familiar passage, one we often call the Widow’s Mite. Many of you know this story, right? It is especially popular for preachers this time of year, the liturgical season we call Stewardship. Many preachers look forward to it’s appearance in the lectionary and I have enjoyed preaching on it myself. This passage reminds us that that looks can deceive. Jesus and his disciples are sitting in the temple watching as people come and put money into the temple treasury. Just when it seems that $2000 is more than $2, Jesus points out otherwise. The amounts are not what they seem. If you are rich, to give $2000 is less than to give $2 if you are poor. Thus Jesus’ point.

As he watches many rich people put in large sums, he also sees a widow put in a couple of coins--all that she had to live on. He calls his disciples to notice, “Look, this poor widow has put in more than all the rest.” There are many sermons (and I have preached some of them) that use this story to talk about the importance of giving, or that the size of the gift isn’t as important as the intent, or that percentage giving is better than a fixed amount no matter how large, or that giving out of our need is somewhat more worthy than giving out of our abundance. Now if you love this story, and I do, I apologize--because things are not always what they seem. This is not the story you are familiar with, because Jesus doesn’t teach any such thing as those sermons would suggest.

Let’s look at the text. In fact, let’s look at what is not there. Jesus does not condemn the rich people. Nor does he commend the widow. He doesn’t say that the widow’s gift is better, he only comments that she gave more. Nor is the widow set apart because of her motivation, as if her reason for giving is better. The text does not tell us what is in the Widow’s heart. We simply do not know why she does what she does. Nor does the story suggest that Jesus knew he reason (Jesus didn’t know her heart as he sometimes does). In commenting on this passage biblical scholar Addison Wright remarks, “she could have acted out of despair, out of guilt, out of a desire to be seen contributing for all the story says. ”(The Widow’s Mite: Praise or Lament?—A Matter of Context, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 1982)

You know what else the text doesn’t say? It doesn’t tell us we should all go and be like the widow. Jesus does not tell the disciples to go and imitate her. There is no, “Go and do likewise” or, “Truly I tell you, she is close to the Kingdom of God” or even a note that Jesus looks kindly on her. A few weeks ago we heard the story of the Rich Young Man, you remember, the one Jesus told to go and sell all his possessions. In that story, the text clearly says Jesus looked at him and loved him--and then told him what to do. In this story Jesus doesn’t address the widow at all.

And I’ll tell you what comes next in the biblical text, just in case you think our reading ended before we got to the explanation. In the Bible, the story moves on.
As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

So what are we to make of this? This story that was so familiar but that we now find isn’t at all what it seems? The rich give out of their abundance and are not condemned. The widow gives out of her need but is not commended. If this text is not about how wonderful the widow is, what is it about?

I think perhaps one way to address this is to look where it begins. Jesus has it out for religious leaders who are more concerned about themselves than the love of God. The scribes were the teachers and recorders of Moses’ law. That in and of itself is not the problem. Many scribes were faithful, loving God with all their heart and mind and strength. The scribes that Jesus excoriates are those who allow privilege to blind them to need. Jesus condemns those who devour widow’s houses, who ignore or exploit the poor. So we do know from this passage what Jesus thinks of those who exploit the poor. We don’t know what Jesus thought of the widow, but as far as I know Jesus never told a widow or a poor person to give away everything they had to live on. Perhaps Jesus was scandalized that this poor woman would give away all that she had into the treasury of a temple which would not be left standing. Perhaps here is the widow whose house had been devoured by religious piety. What did Jesus think? We don’t really know.

I knew a widow once. She came to church faithfully and she worried constantly about many things. One of her worries was the appeals that came to her through the mail, especially the ones that told her she needed to give money to save her soul. She would come to the Church office clutching a letter in which some minister begged her through the written word to give more to insure her place in heaven. She worried that she had not given enough and was not good enough in God’s eyes. I had unkind thoughts in my heart about the people behind those appeals, who preyed on her, who devoured her. It appalled me. Perhaps Jesus was appalled by the sight of an old woman giving away to a religious institution all that she had to live on.

So what are we to make of this text if it is not the beloved story about sacrificial giving that we thought is was? What do we do with scripture when it doesn’t say what we think it does, or should? Please remember that I apologized up front, because I am not going to solve this one for us today. But we might ask ourselves what the gospel is for. What these lessons are for? What our scripture is for? I can get us out of this one by referring to the catechesis on p. 853 of the Book of Common Prayer. “Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God? …because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.”

These scriptures are for us the Word of God because God still speaks to us through them. I know that in times of joy, and in times of confusion and in times of need I have read the same scriptures and heard different things. Things are not always what they seem. I need to remember that maybe I don’t know so much about this scripture passage. Maybe I don’t know the mind of Christ. Maybe God’s word has more to tell me. So I am sorry I have no words of wisdom for you this morning; only a suggestion. Let this be your mantra this week: things are not always what they seem. What might we see, learn, wrestle with if we look at things with new eyes, hear with open ears? What might God be calling us to ponder?