Christ the King Sunday [Proper 29B - Revelation 1:4b-9]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Revelation 1:4b-8

 

Christ the King Sunday

 

It is not lost on me that this letter, what we call the book of Revelation, was written by a lonely prisoner, about a God who seemed to be losing, and a King whose obituary had been published about seven decades earlier.  And so we could dismiss this whole thing as wishful thinking or even the delusions of an underfed exile.  And that is fair because John, the writer of these visions, imagines all kinds of unrealistic things: like tears wiped dried and no more death and a broken world made into heaven on earth.

 

Or we can choose to believe in the unbelievable.  And remember that it is the work of God to plant dreams in the very places hope goes to die, like an island prison in the middle of the Aegean Sea.  

 

I am not sure how this strange series of apocalyptic visions escaped the island and found its audience on the shore, but the ecstatic dreams of that solitary man gave the Church, living under the constant threat of persecution, on the brink of extinction, the will to live and the courage to hope.  And because those determined Christians dared to hope and kept the faith, we are here, hundreds of years later, closing out another Church year.

 

Whatever there was of the Jesus’ movement in the earliest years of the first century probably should have died on Good Friday.  As far as the Empire was concerned, Jesus was just another in a long line of annoying troublemakers.  They had a policy in place to deal with such disturbances: public execution.  The crosses were billboards that were supposed to end these movements, but in this case they didn’t. 

 

I think perhaps it is possible that the most amazing miracle of the Easter world is not the resurrection, but that people believed in the resurrection.  That those earliest followers of Jesus saw victory on the cross.  And found evidence in pierced hands.  And saw something literal in a crown of thorns.  And looked into an empty tomb and saw it teeming with life.

 

Maybe it was just desperation.  And so what if it was?  The cozy and the content probably don’t leave their nets or sing the defiant song of Magnificat or stand on the banks of the Jordan.  Maybe this faith, our faith, was made for the discontent and the desperate, for those foolish enough to hope big, for those defiant enough to believe in a better world, for those willing to live with their heads in the clouds.

 

Often people, even many Christians, misunderstand what this book of Revelation is about.  And they think it is about the end.  But it’s not about the end of the world; it is about the how the world will be made new and about the Crucified King who will come again to make all things new.

 

Once upon a time, that Crucified King, Jesus, taught his followers how to pray.  When he said “thy kingdom come,” it was dangerous political speech.  It was a prayer prayed by those who believed that every oppressive empire would one day crumble at the name of Jesus.  It was a prayer prayed by those who believed, like Jesus, that on earth as it is in heaven, an endless reign of justice and peace, was not only possible but was inevitable.  But at some point “thy kingdom come” became religious repetition.  And we kept saying it but stopping believing in it.  Maybe because it sounds impossible.  Or maybe because we stopped needing it to be possible.  Because, as we know, at some point kings stopped persecuting Christians and started being Christians.  And at some point Christians were no longer devoured by lions in the arena; they sat in the box seats.  And at some point Christians traded the catacombs for cathedrals.   

 

And that is not all bad, of course.  But a Church that is cozy and content, that sits on a perch of privilege, stops looking for something better, stops burning for justice and longing for peace, stops searching the clouds for its Savior.  It might not even remember that it needs saving.

 

Two-thousand years ago a prisoner on the island of Patmos saw something no one else could see: he saw the impossible coming true.  He saw the answer to Jesus’ prayer.  In the midst of the brutal Roman Empire, between the bars, he saw a vision of thy kingdom come.  He saw that on earth as it is in Heaven was a hope worth hoping.  He was reminded that it is the work of God to plant dreams in the very places hope goes to die.  And so he smuggled his hope off the island as a precious gift to the Church of Christ the King, an enduring dream for an Easter people, for those foolish enough to hope big, for those defiant enough to believe in a better world, for those willing to live with their heads in the clouds.