What can we say November 26? Christ the King

    On these marvelous texts, I’d push you toward not one but two prior blogs on them, as they differ in interesting ways (as I look back on them now!). Here’s one, here’s the other. Lots of interesting stuff. I am moved, today, but Ezekiel 34:16: “I will feed them with justice.” Wow. What an image. Feeding – not with bread, or cool foodie items, but justice, which might be what we really are hungry for? And then in Ephesians 1: Hope is something you’re called to, not something you just have. I’ll ponder that, and preach about it somehow this Sunday!

   I do blush when I think of the sermons I've heard suggesting how Christ reigns powerfully over history, the nations, etc. Christ's reign is only powerful by its lack of power, its gentle compassion, its subversive humility. His palace is a lowly manger, his crowd one of thorns, his retinue a bunch of clueless dudes fleeing for the exits, his armies the poor and pitiful of the world. As Marilynne Robinson puts it in her soon-to-come reading of Genesis, if human beings “are to be granted individuality, agency, freedom, meaningful existence as human beings, then God must practice almost limitless restraint. To refrain, to put side power, is godlike.”

   I also suspect it's a false lead to ask Are we saved by grace? or by works? If you stick very close to Jesus, you will find yourself near those he cared about - and you can't help caring about them as well. We may well say that Jesus comes to each of us as the one who is "hungry, imprisoned, thirsty..." - and it is to! When we recognize his immense grace in this, we can't help but stick very close to him, and so involved in his care for those the world despises or would simply neglect, faulting or pitying them.