The service featured two spirit-filled choir pieces led by Jon and Matt, that inspired many in the congregation. They were Choral Overture by Hayes and Gaither / Nelson's We Are So Blessed.
In her sermon Deacon Laura, who has a PhD in History gave us the background for the church celebrating Christ the King Sunday This feast day is a relatively recent addition to the Western liturgical calendar. In 1925, in the aftermath of World War I and to combat the nationalism that gave rise to that war, Pope Pius XI wanted the Feast to impact the laity. He issued the following statement in his papal encyclical:"If to Christ our Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth; if all men, purchased by his precious blood, are by a new right subjected to his dominion; if this power embraces all men, it must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire. He must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God."
Deacon Laura preached about ministry on the margins, public ministry and the theology of the cross all Christians should share? Here is the link to her entire sermon.
This context helped me understand a question I had around why we have a Christ the King Sunday in my blog last year (linked here). Last year's Gospel was John's account of the Trial of Jesus as Pilate put questions to Jesus about being a king: “So you are a king?”, Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” I wondered why we continue to emphasize Christ as a king when he constantly dissuaded his disciples and crowds from calling him king.
Today's Gospel, Luke 23:33-43, is different. This is the passage describing the Calvary story about Christ being between the two thieves, which evokes strong memories of my past faith journey.
The first memory is the novelist Herman Hesse, who was a strong influence on me in the early 1970s. He was, for a time, my "poet of the inner journey" to quote how Timothy Leary described Hesse. When I encounter the story of Golgotha I remember a passage in Herman Hesse's novel Demian where the title character is discussing the story with the novel's first person narrator:
“At the end of that class [confirmation class] Demian said to me thoughtfully: "There’s something I don’t like about this story, Sinclair. Why don’t you read it once more and give it the acid test? There’s something about it that doesn’t taste right. I mean the business with the two thieves. The three crosses standing next to each other on the hill are almost impressive, to be sure. But now comes this sentimental little treatise about the good thief. At first he was a thorough scoundrel, had committed all those awful things and God knows what else, and now he dissolves in tears and celebrates such a tearful feast of self-improvement and remorse! What’s the sense of repenting if you’re two steps from the grave? I ask you. Once again, it’s nothing but a priest’s fairy tale, saccharine and dishonest, touched up with sentimentality and given a high edifying background. If you had to pick a friend from between the two thieves or decide which one you’d rather trust, you most certainly wouldn’t choose the sniveling convert. No, the other fellow, he’s a man of character. He doesn’t give a hoot for ‘conversion’, which to a man in his position can’t be anything but a pretty speech. He follows his destiny to it’s appointed end and does not turn coward and forswear the devil, who has aided and abetted him until then. He has character, and people with character tend to receive the short end of the stick in biblical stories. Perhaps he’s even a descendant of Cain. Don’t you agree?"
This was a concept I would have loved to have experienced in my confirmation class. Truly, it wasn't too far from when I was attending my confirmation class. I subsequently read Milton's Paradise Lost and Shelly's Prometheus Unbound a few years after Demian in college. I recognized the same tug at the human heart for the "morality plays" all these works contained and explored. Milton's Satan is the fascinating, brooding, compelling and complex character who declares: "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." In Shelley's Prometheus Unbound Jupiter, the Monarch of Gods and Daemons, is a tyrant whom Prometheus defies to bring fire to man. Prometheus is in man's corner and is punished by Jupiter for the theft of the divine fire.
Through these; together with works like Mozart's Don Giovanni that I experienced years later; I found I was, to quote Joni Mitchell's lyrics in A Case of You, frightened by the devil and drawn to the one's who ain't afraid. There is a defiance that still strikes me as me both American specifically and human generally.
All these now remind me how deeply ingrained our humanity and perceived sense of justice and consequence is embedded within our souls.
Take, for example, the words Hesse gives to Demian when he characterizes the thief "At first he was a thorough scoundrel, had committed all those awful things and God knows what else, and now he dissolves in tears and celebrates such a tearful feast of self-improvement and remorse! What’s the sense of repenting if you’re two steps from the grave?"
However, this is not how the passage reads in Luke. The thief is not dissolving into tears and nor feasting on self-improvement and remorse He simply rebukes the mocking of the other thief by saying. "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong."
This is not a feast of remorse. Then thief only says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." The response "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." does not even mean, in and of itself, that the other thief will not be with Jesus in Paradise too. After all Jesus prays "Father forgive them..."
The other strong memory evoked for me personally by the Calvary story, besides the Demian passage, opens the first song of Patti Smith's Horses album - Gloria:"Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine
Melting in a pot of thieves / Wild card up my sleeve
Thick, heart of stone, my sins my own they belong to me."
When I first heard Gloria Patti Smith's pronouncement conjured a particular truth of profound truth. I have needed to hear that truth repeated many times over the years and Gloria is always there to refresh my memory and reveal again what is true for me.
For as much as I profess to one particular atonement theory or another intellectually - to try and hold it in my heart and accept the Gospel message with joy does not come easy. This is a truth my heart finds hard to accept. It is hard to spit out that bite of the apple that humanity swallowed so long ago from that famous tree in Eden. In the trip from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to the cross as the Tree of Life, Jesus;through scripture; invites us on a journey that must be taken over and over again.
This is another aspect of kings as men's masters that I want to remember on this Christ the King Sunday. After his resurrection Mary, when Jesus called her name, turned and said to Jesus in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). “Do not cling to Me,” Jesus said, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and tell My brothers, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.’” We think of our "masters" in this world as kings, but in the holiest, most profound moment of recognition, of all the titles he is given on earth Jesus is called teacher.
Patti's words makes these journeys I take over and over very personal. They help me arrive each time to the emotional truth of the good news. I reach this in my heart and subsequently it is lost again. I always try to keep remembering how we are so blessed.
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