Isaiah 65: 17-25
Isaiah 12
2 Thessalonians 3: 6-13
Luke 21: 5-9

While preparing for Remembrance Day services last week I was reading the stories of the veterans who had an opportunity quite recently, during various anniversary celebrations, to visit the places where they had fought and almost died so long ago. One of them talked about the difference he found. When he had left, at the end of the war, the streets, such as they were, were littered with rubble, the buildings almost obliterated and the fields and barren hillsides a dangerous mix of shells, landmines and burned out and obsolete equipment. 50 years later the evidence of war was all but gone. The houses, businesses, and places of worship had been replaced and the land was productive once again.

What happened? Did a “fairy-godmother” come down, wave her magic wand and cause all the destruction to be reversed? NO! How had that change occurred? I’m not certain but I think that it was at least equal parts the hope and belief that these things could happen, AS WELL AS also a great deal of work and determination.

The people to whom the prophet Isaiah wrote the words of the 65th chapter would have known first-hand about this. One thing we need to remember about the book of Isaiah, is that there were actually three prophets who used the name Isaiah. They all proclaimed a steadfast belief in God’s creative power and in the importance of Jerusalem as the focal point of God’s actions on their behalf. One of these prophets wrote before the invasion and defeat which resulted in the exile. During the exile many of the people were carried off into captivity in Babylon. Then, many years later, Babylon was itself defeated in war, and the victor, Persia, allowed the captive Israelites to return to their homeland. Writing toward the end of their time in exile, the second prophet using the name Isaiah spoke of a return to the land and a restoration of the city of Jerusalem. His hopes were high and he envisioned an almost utopian society. When the people returned, however, they found a temple in ruins, and others who had not been sent into exile had taken possession of the fields and the homes which were left. As you can imagine, it was not an easy time. By the time the third prophet named Isaiah was working and preaching, the restoration of the city and the temple did not bring everything for which they had hoped. The city had been restored but the people had lost a great deal of their hope because the utopia that they had expected had not arrived. While this new prophet does not reject the vision of the second Isaiah, he seemed to project this new creation into a far off future; a future that seemed to many to be outside the normal bounds of time. Even so, all are definitely prophets who place their future firmly in God’s hands, all the while calling the people to a faithful response to God’s glorious actions.

There is a story told of a farmer who decided to replace his aging barn which was leaking badly and did little to protect his cattle from the elements. He build a beautiful new barn and had the old one torn down, leaving just the foundation. However, the first rainy and cold day the cattle did not head for the new structure but he found them huddled together within the foundation of the old one.

Human beings are a little like cattle, in that we are creatures of habit. Even though the old has been torn down, or burned down, or is no longer any good, it is still more comfortable and familiar than the new and the untried.

The images used in today’s passage are based in the reality of the lives of many people who are trying to salvage a life for themselves out of a war, yet they call the people to lift their eyes out of the valley of despair and focus on the mountains of hope, despite the fat that the summit seemed so far away.

Someone once said, “If you live your life out of memory, you live out your history. If you live your life out of your imagination, you live out your potential.” Quoted in Peter Perry’s sermon posted on the P-RCL email list For the people of Israel, the reality of war and invasion was that, as I said, others had taken over their land and their houses. In any war there is a danger that those who did not plant the crop end up benefiting from them while the farmers go hungry and the houses of the original inhabitants go to the victors. The reality of reconstruction after a war and deportation is that there are those who pine for the ‘good old days’ even if those days weren’t really all that good, or even if no one alive had a personal experience of that time.

Just listen to the words spoken by this prophet to his people who were despairing that God would ever bless the people again as they had been blessed in the past. “I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy” “And its people as a delight” “no more shall the sound of weeping be heard”

“No more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days”

“people who are 100 years old will be considered young”

Their relationship with this God will be as close as the ones of those couples who can finish each other’s sentences. Isaiah’s God says, “I will answer even before they call.”

What a wonderful vision!

What a hope!

What response could you make to such a hope? The early church hoped for an immediate return of Christ which would usher in the age that he also spoke of, where justice and mercy would prevail and the righteous would be vindicated. While today’s passage from Luke seems to be all doom and gloom, it was seen as a passage of hope in that they were sure that one day God would make sure that everyone knew for sure and certain who was “in charge” and that this God would assert this power by coming and renewing the creation. The temple and the trappings of the temple were seen by the early Christians, as the signs of the old way which must go before the new age could come in.

There are some common reactions in people who are suffering and oppressed, to the prediction of a future which is grand and glorious. The early church based their beliefs upon the words of Jesus, as the community remembered them, and the teachings of the early church which predicted this immediate return of Jesus and the establishment of heaven on earth. After the temple WAS actually destroyed it would have been very easy to see this as the first of many signs that the end was near, very near. In my point of view, observant people in every age could see these signs and alarmist ones could have sounded the alarm bells in almost each and every generation. Predictions that this is ‘the end’ are not new, but luckily the gospel message speaks as well to us as it did to those who were members of the earliest Christian communities.

The temptation for some was to place all of their eggs in the basket of an immediate return of Jesus to renew and transform the creation. That was all that some could see. It’s the same kind of thing some people latch onto today with the hope of getting into heaven being the ONLY thing for which they live. So, when we look at the passage from the letter to the church in Thessalonika, read earlier in the service,we must remember that it was written in the context of a community of faith where some had really given up on the earthly life and depended upon their brothers and sisters in Christ to meet their daily needs until the return of the Christ.

The writer of 2 Thessalonians is very critical of such behaviour. He urges them to live in faithfulness and each to make appropriate contributions to their common life together. Some, in more recent years, have read this passage and, ignoring the original reason for its being written in the first place, have seen it as an injunction against welfare and other social programs. This is not the context and certainly flies in the face of the early church’s care of the poor and the call of the gospel.

There are many reasons these days to lose hope. Every time we turn around the news is gloomy. The death of Yasser Arafat makes the immediate and long term future of the middle east, uncertain. The war in Iraq does not seem to be solving anything and the fear of terrorism does not seem to be lessening. I read a report the other day that said even if we all implement the Kyoto Accord the planet will suffer devastating global warming. AIDS is threatening to destroy Africa and the gap between rich and poor is widening more and more.

I could go on but these passages are primarily about hope. As I look at these passages I note that the primary actor is God and the primary focus is on God’s saving actions. The writers firmly believed that God was ultimately in charge and that God would act for life and health and wholeness.

The appropriate human response was to participate actively in the life of the community, in the living out of the salvation and grace freely offered to God’s people. This presence and this grace does not mean that things will not change; the people lost their temple - several times. It does not mean that people will not suffer for their faith - they did. It does not mean that the outlook will not sometimes be genuinely bleak - it may well be. It does mean that God’s grace is available to all in all generations. It does mean that there is purpose to life and to living in faithfulness despite the outward circumstances. It does mean that the life of the community and working together as God’s people is very important. It does mean that the potential for life altering change is always there. It does mean that the power of God working in and through God’s faithful ones can alter the very course of history, for the better and that sometimes leopards do change their spots and lions and lambs lie down together. When we despair for the future we need only look around at the changes that have occurred over time and recognize the hand of God and the power of the Holy Spirit in that change.

Our God is a God of life and this God has created us for life and takes delight in us. Let us respond in love, trust, and faithfulness.

Amen.

Luke 1: 68-79

Colossians 1: 11-20

Luke 23: 33-43

A number of years ago, during a meeting of General Council, a journalist working with the United Church Observer was talking to a colleague from another denomination’s national magazine. They met the person who was moderator at that time, in the breakfast line and the Observer reporter addressed him by his first name. After they had been seated the Observer reporter looked at his colleague and seeing that she was upset about something, asked,

“What’s wrong.”

“That was your moderator?”

“Yes”

“You, you called him by his first name.”

“Why not? We’ve been friends for many years. Why should I call him anything else?”

“But why was he carrying his own tray”, she sputtered, flabbergasted by what she saw as a lack of respect. The Observer reporter was left scratching his head because he could not imagine that a moderator would not carry his own cafeteria tray!

I am a big fan of CBC radio and listen to it a great deal, especially when I am driving. I know the voices of the local and national reporters and hosts. Occasionally, when I see a picture of one of them, for the first time, I sometimes am moved to say something along the lines of, “hum, I didn’t think that she or he would look like that!”

We all have expectations about things and make assumptions about people all the time. When I say the words, “football player” you imagine a totally different kind of person than if I had said, “figure skater”. When I say the word, “king”, many of you would instantly think of things such as thrones and horse drawn carriages and polo and fox hunting and power and servants and wealth. Just this past week, I saw a few excerpts of an interview with Prince William, the second in line to the throne of the British Commonwealth. We expect many things from the Crown Prince in waiting but for now, he wants to be treated just like any other, perfectly normal college student. I doubt that he will ever be granted that wish, completely! Most normal college students don’t have security concerns and I doubt that Prince William will ever have to sell his stereo in order to buy groceries because he failed to budget and his parents refused to send more money! We think of the royal life as all glitz and glamour, but I doubt that it’s all that it’s cracked up to be!

When we come to the end of the church year we come face to face with the expectations we have been working with for the past year, our faith expectations that is. 51 weeks ago we began the church year in great anticipation. For the four weeks of Advent we focussed on the promises of God using the themes of hope, peace, love and joy. We lit candles even as the world was becoming darker and darker. The candles symbolized the light that was coming into the world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We looked forward to the coming of the messiah. We celebrated his birth and we wondered what great changes would occur now that he had finally arrived. Then, it became clear that he was headed for Jerusalem even though he knew that there was great danger in going to Jerusalem. He did not toe the party line. He marched to the beat of a different drummer. He was crucified.

But that was not the end. The power of God raised him to new life and the Spirit came to guide the church. Through the long summer and fall the scriptures have focussed on what it meant to be a disciple of this Jesus. Now we have come to the end of our journey and we celebrate his ruler over all of creation. This is sometimes called, “Christ the King Sunday” or “The Reign of Christ Sunday”. Yet, we are as confused about what that means.

There are expectations that we may have had that this Sunday forces to reconsider. The lectionary, the list of readings that ensures we hear the major themes of the biblical story over a three year period, has us reading the crucifixion story on this Sunday. Crucifixion! Why not a story about Jesus power such as the one about Jesus sitting on his throne and separating sheep from goats. That sounds more “king-like”. Surely there is a passage which shows more success than his crucifixion, his defeat! Surely, we should keep this passage well confined to Lent or Holy Week.

It was on a cross that Jesus died and it was on the cross Jesus that his rule was shown just as surely as it was in other times and events of his life and ministry.

No, he was not the victor in the world’s terms. He died a criminal’s death at the hands of those who thought that this would be the end of him. The hope for a messiah was a Jewish hope and had been for many generations. It was an especially important hope for a people who were impoverished and oppressed by the mighty power of Rome. Since the days of the great King David, they had not really been able to live out their destiny as God’s chosen people. Surely the messiah would come, and be like that great king David. He would run the Romans back to their home and restore the throne of David. The children of Israel would be great once again! Oh, those were the days. Those would be the days!

Yet, when Jesus came he did not show the slightest bit of interest in overpowering the enemy with a sword. He talked about some decidedly dangerous things such as ‘loving enemies’ and ‘turning the other cheek’! His version of success seemed like failure and he was more interested in giving than he was in receiving. He liked to spend time alone and he didn’t want praise and adulation. He did not cultivate friendships with the rich and powerful, but he hung out with a small group of outcastes and ne’er-do-wells and his main followers were women and fishermen and other common labourers.

If we look at the story of his crucifixion we see even more things that go against our expectations. We would expect resistance, but none is recorded. We might expect him to curse his executioners. We might expect him to be like Maude and say, “God will get you for that, Stanley!” Yet, he did not. His words, as recorded in Luke’s Gospel are words of compassion and forgiveness. He forgives his executioners. I believe that his words also pronounce forgiveness on all of those who were involved in the legal process that ended with his crucifixion. He also responds to the request of the repentant criminal to be remembered when he comes into his kingdom. He responds with compassion and an assurance that they will be in paradise together.

Compared to Advent and Lent, the Reign of Christ is a relatively new celebration in the church. It comes to us from our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers and was first celebrated in 1925.

We need to stop and think of what was going on in the world at that time: Benito Mussolini had been the head of Italy for three years, Adolph Hitler had been out of jail for a year and the Nazi party was growing in popularity. The world was about to be embroiled in a great depression and then the cataclysm of another World Wide War. It was hardly a time when people saw the visible expression of the belief that 'peace and goodwill to all' really had the power to move hearts or make a real difference. Yet, it was at this scary and unsettled time that people of faith were asked to catch a vision of the world as it could be if Christ actually reigned in the hearts and lives of those who claimed to be his faithful followers.

So, in a time when we are worried about terrorism, or at least we live next door to a very powerful nations who is very worried about terrorism, what does the reign of Christ have to say to us? Who or what rules our lives and gives them purpose?

Is it the quest for money?

Is it the quest for prestige?

Or is it the call to self giving and service?

Is it a gentleness and humility that seems to be counter cultural and counterproductive to personal goals and ambitions.

It is accepting a degree of vulnerability that seems a little naive or, even crazy?

The magi believed that the King of the Jews would be born in a palace, but they only discovered him after tehy had found the palace devoid of hope.

We heard today that the title, “The King of the Jews’, was placed on the cross, almost as a taunt, because many would have seen crucifixion as the death of any hopes that he was the messiah, the king!

Yet, for Jesus this death on the cross was not the end. The power of God which raised him from the dead was the power which vindicated his way; the way of peace and humility and justice.

And for those who followed, who came to believe that he had been raised, that power could move mountains and change hearts of stone. That power could save the world, if only people would trust and follow.

So the question is asked of each of us, as it has been asked of every generation since Jesus: does the love of Christ and the way of Christ and the power of the risen Christ rule in our lives and hearts or not?

Amen