Out of Time

Some topics no matter how many times I think about them always intrigue and confound me: how the techies have crammed so much firepower into the laptop at my fingertips, the length of our intestinal tracts within our bodies (eww gross), and how long ago it was that the light from stars began traveling towards us. It is this last one that really baffles me. In fact, just about every time I go camping, I find myself lost in an almost out of body experience, as I contemplate time and those celestial bodies. Maybe I would describe this more accurately if wrote that I find myself at those times in an out of time moment.

This coming Sunday is the end... of the Church Year, which is another out of time experience. Come November 27th we will begin the season of Advent when we prepare for the coming of Christ. Advent (with roots from the Latin verb to come or to arrive) bids us to look back at Christ's first coming, while looking ahead at Christ's coming again. We typically overlook that Christ is actually coming to us in this very moment, at this precise second, as you read these very words. (TRIPPY!) This Sunday, November 20th, provides a similar opportunity.

The last Sunday of the Church Year gives us the opportunity to look back at when through Jesus God initiated the reign of Christ. This Sunday gifts us with a time to look ahead at how we hope God will come more fully to reign over this world. And yet, just like Advent we often miss the opportunity for Christ's reign to take hold in this very moment. The opening collect (prayer) for this coming Sunday speaks from a place seemingly outside of time and lays out just what the Church hopes the reign of Christ brought/brings/will bring into this world:

"Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen."

As this world feels more and more separated by politics, race, religion, economics, gender, sexual orientation, and nationality, the sins of division enslave us. The tendency is to close ourselves off into echo chambers that will say what we want to hear and agree with our already entrenched stance or perspective. However, the Reign of Christ, which underlays all of reality already, invites us to be freed from the constraints that rip us from one another. While this coming together sounds wonderful and hopeful, it is not something that is easily accomplished, especially at this precise moment.

The more I read of post-election America, the more I speak with friends, family, and parishioners, and the more I experience this self-isolating world, the more I realize just how hurt everyone is. On all sides of all issues there is hurt, and not just a little bit of it. Some feel they have lost their country. Others feel they never belonged to it in the first place. Some feel worthless without work, while others feel neglected because of the color of their skin. Some dread the direction of the nation, while others fear that they will no longer be able to practice their Faith. Some even feel pain enough to inflict violence upon others, and those survivors then have to feel the pain of that violence. As we feel more and more divided these sins of separation will cling to us and isolate us even more. And yet, there is hope, although it is a sobering hope.

Instead of some triumphant passage of Jesus riding into the Holy City with fanfare or a powerful healing that Jesus performed the passage for this Sunday is Luke's telling of the Crucifixion. We remember the reign of Christ through the power that Jesus displayed in choosing to lay down his life, forgiving those who tortured and killed him, and inviting even the criminal next to him into Paradise. Jesus transformed a moment of complete isolation into the opportunity to draw all of creation together to be healed and for the reign of Christ to be most fully revealed. Division is not healed through might, nor is estrangement overcome through a better argument, nor by yelling or threatening another can we honestly persuade someone to earnestly change. A hurting world requires all of us instead to lay down our own lives, so that we might pick up our crosses and follow Jesus into the full reign of Christ. This means more listening and less talking, more openness and less stubbornness, and more cooperation and less competing over who's right and who's wrong.

The reign of Christ has begun... will you be a part of it?