Date: November 17th & 20th
Preacher: Pastor Ashley Rosa-Ruggieri
First Reading: Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalmody: Psalm 46
Second Reading: Colossians 1:11-20
Gospel: Luke 23:33-43
The end of the church year always seems to come quickly once October hits. After the season of Easter and the day of Pentecost in the Spring, we fall into this pattern of weeks after Pentecost, a constant state of green, right up until Reformation and All Saints Day worship. After those two Holy Days of red and gold/white, we are back to green for just a moment before finishing another church year and beginning again with Advent. But today, Reign of Christ or Christ the King worship, is the final week before we move on to the next church year. This time of endless green from Pentecost up until Reformation is often called "Ordinary time."
There is a sense of monotony or repetition because there are not special days throughout to break it up, and yet I often wonder if Ordinary time is the most realistic way to dig deeper into our lives of faith. Because it is not only on the highest, holiest days that Jesus walks with us, and it is not only at those mountaintop moments that God's reign is truly coming. Those days are not the only ones where we pray the Lord's Prayer, part of which is asking for God's reign, the Kingdom of God, to come to us here and now as it is in heaven. And yet, it can be easier on those holiest of days than on the ordinary ones to remember everything that God has promised us through our walk of faith. These days of ordinary time give a more realistic expectation of what it means for our faith to always be with us. So that even on the seventeenth week after Pentecost, we have a constant reminder inside of our minds repeating all of the ways that God has not left us. Today, for Christ the King, we round out this full church year and begin with the next, knowing that even though it may feel like we are starting from the beginning of the story, from the days of awaiting the coming birth of Christ, the promises we celebrate throughout the church year still stand throughout the whole year.
The promises of a baby in a manger, a man teaching disciples, a savior on a cross, and an empty tomb are all still as relevant and real today as they were when we celebrated them this past year, and will still be relevant next week when we enter again into Advent. And so, when we have a Gospel story like the one today, a passage taken from our Holy Week narratives, a story of Jesus, our King of Kings and Lord of Lords, dying on the cross, that reminder of triumph and the promises fulfilled after this story are important. Our journeys of faith do not exist in isolated ways, they are dynamic, they affect each other, and they connect us to the story of Jesus each time we hear any part of them. God’s promises shown through these stories are everlasting, eternal, to all people, at all times, in all places. Jesus, the Christ, our Savior, and Messiah goes beyond one season or church year. Because of this, even a promise in our Gospel today holds power, and shows a piece of our interconnected story.
This promise, made to a criminal on the cross, from the Messiah being put to death was not one made lightly or in an isolated way. When Jesus says that the criminal will be with him that day in paradise, he is drawing on the same promise that he told to his disciples, the same promise that we remember in worship when we take the bread and the cup in communion. The promise that was to be started at Jesus's death written in this passage, and fulfilled on the third day when he rose again. This Easter promise is a defining moment of our faith, this knowledge that the God of creation came down to walk among us only to then be put to death on a cross and defeat death forever by rising again, this is an everlasting promise. And so, when we have this final week of the church calendar, Christ the King or Reign of Christ day, we remember that our God is powerful even when coming to the earth in a vulnerable body that dies. Our God is powerful even in the days between death and resurrection. Our God is powerful even when everything we might be told in the world would tell us otherwise.
In the Lutheran tradition, we understand each Sunday to be its own celebration of Easter. One way that we hear this sometimes in our liturgy is on traditional Sundays (like today) when we add in the Preface during communion. The start of the Preface assigned for general Sundays is, "It is indeed right, our duty, and our joy that we should at all times and in all places give thanks and praise to you almighty and merciful God through our savior Jesus Christ, who on THIS DAY, overcame death and the grave..." and it goes on. When this preface is said, we do not say, “who on Easter,” or “who on resurrection day,” we do not say something else that might indicate that the day of this promise’s fulfillment is anything but this current day we are living.
In the same way we hear the criminal in our passage come to Jesus's defense on the cross, knowing that he is the Messiah and that those around them could not possibly understand that if they were treating Jesus the way that they were. And so, Jesus's response to this man is filled with this promise. Jesus says, “TODAY, you will be with me in Paradise.” Not tomorrow, not in three days, not in some day unknown in the future, but TODAY. Because when it comes to the promises of the Lord of Lords, time is no matter. These promises are eternal. They stretch back before anyone hearing this sermon was born, and they will continue on into every day after. In these words, we hear the same promise from Jesus on the cross as we hear in the preface before communing--today is the day. Today you are reminded. Today you are called. Today you are forgiven. Today you are loved. The promises of God do not fade, do not grow weary, do not quit, so that we can say with confidence that today Christ has overcome death. Today, the saints in light are with Jesus in paradise. Today, everlasting life is open to all people. We declare this to be true, every day, and especially today, and remember that our God will reign forevermore over a kingdom made for all. May the Lord reign forever, and may we be reminded of that, today and every day. Thanks be to God.