Christ the King Lutheran Church, Houston, Texas
Christ the King Sunday
November 24, 2013
Luke 23:33-43
Bishop Michael Rinehart
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.
Thank you for the privilege of being with you to preach Christ the King, on Christ the King Sunday, at Christ the King Lutheran Church.
As bishop of the Lutheran Church in Houston and New Orleans and surrounding areas I bring you greetings from over100 congregations, campus ministries, hospital chaplaincies, military chaplaincies, camps and the missionaries and global companions we support.
As we approaching Thanksgiving in the next few days, it’s a good time to think about all the things for which we’re thankful. Today as I stand here I am thankful for your ministry. For your work with the Bach society. For your mission support. For your partnership in campus ministry. For Paul and David. For Pastors Brad, Karin and Robert.
Today I want to talk with you about seasons of life. I’m going I invite you to reflect deeply about your life, with the end in mind, because it is only when we stop denying the reality of our mortality that we begin to get a glimpse of the profound gift life is, and can experience the fullness of life in Christ. So sit back, get uncomfortable, take a deep breath, focus your mind and center yourself. Think back over your life for a moment.
Spirituality is being aware. Awake. Look around. You are here in the nave of Christ the King, in Rice Village, in Houston, on November 24, 2013. Christ the King Sunday. It is the end of the church’s year. We are approaching the end of the calendar year. Thursday is Thanksgiving. The leaves are falling from the trees and skittering across the road. Next week we begin Advent, a four-week march to Christmas. Winter solstice is a few weeks away, Saturday, December 21 at 5:11 PM, the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Then Christmas, followed by a new year, 2014.
Seasons.
In our family we are particularly mindful of the seasons of life this week. Last week we said goodbye to our son’s childhood dog of 13 years. He’s 20 so this is the end of an era. A bookend of his childhood. Like Pastor Robert and Kathy and many good and interesting people I know, we are dachshund people. As often happens with dachshunds, his back got the better of him. It’s a design flaw.
So it’s been a weird week for us. There are seasons in life. Some come upon us by choice. Retirement is the end of one chapter of life and the beginning of another. Moving is a choice, but even in the best of circumstances involves grief, and a change of seasons. Some griefs are thrust upon us. The death of a loved one. For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to to be born and a time to die. A time to mourn, and a time to laugh.
Reflecting on seasons this week, how things come to an end, I couldn’t help but think our grieving is not for the one lost, but for ourselves really. It is not their suffering we grieve, but our own. It is not their mortality we grieve but ours.
Grief is often about the loss of what was. The end of a career, a relationship, a dog, represents a period of time gone by. A season. Where did the years go? We thought we were caught in eternity. We were only denying our mortality.
Seasons remind us that there is a rhythm to life. Youth directors step down. Congregational presidents end their terms. New leadership emerges. Children go off to college. They marry, have children. Sunrise, sunset. The circle of life.
So, young and old, what can we learn from this? Whether you are ending a season or beginning a new one, or both, what can we learn if we step off the treadmill, pull back and reflect?
My spiritual director this week suggested that the two thieves next to Jesus on the cross in today’s gospel reading represent two ways of facing death, of engaging our mortality. We can respond like the first thief with bitterness and anger, mocking the oncoming darkness, or we can respond like the second thief, with humility and hope.
As a people off the resurrection how can we engage our mortality, how shall we engage the seasons of life?
1. Giving thanks.
2. Beginning with the end in mind
3. Focus on what is important.
4. Finding joy
5. Forgiving
6. With Hope
1. Give thanks. Take nothing for granted. All of life is a gift. Everything we have is free grace. Meister Eckhardt, my second favorite German heretic once said, “If the only prayer you ever prayed was ‘Thank You,’ it would be enough.
2. Begin with the end in mind. At the end of your married life together what do you want to be able to say? I was a good husband? What does that mean? What do I need to do now to make that happen? What do I need to do today, to make that happen? What do I need to do every day to make that happen?
Begin with the end in mind. When my children grow up and move out of the house I want to say I was a good father. I don’t want them to say, “He was a workaholic. We never saw him.” What do I have to do now to make that happen? What are you going to do this week to make that happen? What are you going to do today to make that happen? Begin with the end in mind.
When I die I want to be remembered as the best grandpa ever. What do I need to do today to make that happen?
3. Focus on what is important. I read an article this week written by a palliative care nurse. She write about the top five regrets people have on their deathbed. You can link to the article here: http://www.karenstan.net/2013/11/11/nurse-reveals-top-5-regrets-people-make-deathbed/. For years she spent most of her time with prior in the last 3-12 weeks of their lives. She says people grow a lot when they are faced with their mortality. When asked about their regrets, five things emerged consistently. Spoiler alert:
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I didn’t work so hard. (Mostly men that missed their kids’ childhoods and their partner’s companionship.)
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. We have a mediocre existence when we don’t express ourselves.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
When your life ends, they are going to have a funeral. Then they will put you in a hole, throw dirt on you and then they will go back to the church and eat potato salad. And while they eat their potato salad they will summarize your life in one sentence. There is nothing you can do about this. It will happen. You have no control over this. You do, however, have some control over what they say, by how you live now. Who you are. What you value. How you treat others.
When you die, they will summarize your life in one sentence. Write it now. Live it now.
During communion take out a pen and scribble on you bulletin. What would you like them to at about you? Oh, Frank, he sure drove a nice car. Is that what you want them to say? Frank, he was one of the most generous people I know. He would give you shirt off his back. You are in control. You are in the driver’s seat. But there is only one to get there. There are no short cuts: It actually has to be true.
If you want them to say, “Oh Frank, he loved people. When you were with him, he listened, you felt like you were the most important person in the world.” If you want that, what are you going to do today, to make that happen? Begin with the end in mind.
4. Find joy. We’re all so busy worrying about what we want, or what we don’t have, we often fail to celebrate what we do have. Live in the moment. Look your friends in the eyes and be fully present.
5. Forgive. To forgive is to free yourself from the past to embrace the future. Not to forgive is to carry a burden around with us. We carry the grudge to punish others, but we end up punishing ourselves. On the cross Jesus says to the soldiers, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
6. Hope: Finally, because we are a people of the resurrection we can look at the seasons of life with joy. Seeing the big picture means we do not have to pretend that things won’t end one day. We are freed from the denial of death. We can look boldly and joyfully into the future with honesty and with hope.
Seasons are good. They remind us that all things come to an end. They also remind us that new things begin. That scary tree with no leaves that seems dead has a surprise waiting for us in the Spring. One book ends. We don’t want to end, but they all do. And then, like the first bud of Spring, we discover another one. God surprises us.
Of course, some endings are sad. Some are even tragic. But if the crucifixion tells us anything, it is that God can bring good out of even the most tragic circumstances. To claim Christ as King is to claimed by a persistent, relentless hope, even in death, even in grief, even when seasons change.
Because we are a people of the resurrection, because we believe the promise of new life, we approach the seasons of life with joy, with a bird’s eye view. We trust that when one season ends, The Lord of life has one more surprise waiting around the corner. We don’t understand it all, but we know, if Christ is King, then death is not the last word. God is God of the future, a future that extends far beyond the tenure of our mortal flesh, these fragile earthen vessels made of stardust.
And so when our earthly pilgrimage is done, and we breathe our last breath, we who call Christ, the King like the thief on the cross pray, “Jesus, remember us when you come into your kingdom.”
