Jeremiah 23:
1-6
NPMC
Psalm
46
Christ the King
Colossians 1:
11-20 In
Memoriam
Luke 23:
33-43
November 25, 2007
The Fullness of God: Reconciliation and Remembrance
Collectively our congregation has suffered staggering losses. Were we able to add up or attempt in some way to quantify the loves lost and people mourned in this last year these would amount to unbearable heartache. This: in a time of peace and relative comfort for us. It has not been necessary to add to the river of our own tears any lives lost in war or natural disaster. In the reading of the names one after another, in the cadence of those named and remembered, the recitation lulls us rather gently into a realization that life is tenuous, time passes and nothing stays the same for us who live on.
And on this last day of the church year, a day when many traditions
celebrate Christ as the King and ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise, we take
stock of our life as a community, the “living body” of Christ the King. In
light of the pain and separation we have lived through in this year there is a
thread of promise running through our collective life together - the knowledge
that we are living in the fullness of God. Dead or alive we are gathered into
the heart of God forever.
For we believe, as the apostle Paul writes to the Colossian Christians, that all
things come together in the life and work of Jesus. This is our unashamed and
unabashed confession. Jesus is the image of God and we as the church are the
body of Christ and together we stand: the fulfillment, the fullness of God. We
trust in this close connection to God, we know completeness even in our broken
world and in the brokenness and chaos of our own lives. For there is much about
the way we live that is disorder and disorientation. There are times when we
despair and think that we have made such a mess, or that our children have
slipped away from their moorings in faith and that hope has run out.
But no, today, right here and now, as we remember our loved ones who are gone
from us, as we turn toward advent’s new promise and as we share in the Lord’s
Supper, into every corner and crevice of our lives, God’s reconciliation meets
us. Lest we are wont to translate this into a warm fuzzy or a passive acceptance
of some magic that is done to us anesthetizing us in a vague and comatose
comfort I remind you that God’s reconciliation involves a profound
disorientation to the ways of the world.
We find ourselves at odds with popular culture when we choose to live the
patient endurance cited in our scripture text this morning. When we take
seriously a way of life that is lived in joyful thanksgiving to the Father it
means that we live in peace through the blood of Jesus’ cross. Translated? We
are reconciled to God in intentional acts of peacemaking and forgiveness in a
world that markets self interest and litigation; go to the courts if you are
being treated unfairly, make demands so that others comply to your wishes, get
ahead even when others struggle and drown in the wake of your gains.
Reconciliation according to God’s way compels us to care for others out of the
strength that we find from within; strength that God gives. Our culture laughs
at such folly advertising in various ways that it is good and right to die for
war but ludicrous to die for peace. Yet, die for peace is what Jesus did and it
is what we remember when we share in the body of Christ in the bread and cup.
“Through Jesus, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on
earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” (v.20)
Christ countered the expectations of the winners of his day by standing solidly
with the poor, with those who struggle with faith, with those who are grungy and
homeless and on the wrong side of the law. Our culture laughs at such folly;
throw them in prison, get them off the streets. They threaten our well- being.
Lock them out, eradicate terrorism by building higher walls, demoralize the
people who shout for justice and may the wealthy have their way.
Redemption comes from God through us into the world we inhabit. “ God has
rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his
beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (v. 13-14)
God has claimed us for a counter-cultural ministry, a desire for peace and
justice: not an anaesthetized and smug salvation but rather an active and loving
way, of being light in the dark corners of our world. We are redeemed and
reconciled through God’s grace not because we are better than others but because
we recognize the way of peace and acceptance that comes from God mirrored
through the life and inevitable death of Jesus, the compassionate One.
So today is a day of profound connections. We are connected to each other and
to those who have died; connected and re-oriented into the heart of God, into
the tender care of God for such is God’s pleasure. Because the heart of God is
the way of peace, justice and mercy we live in completeness, in the fullness of
God’s pleasure today and always.
I would like to close with the words of a hymn that is found in our new hymnal
supplement, “Sing the Story.” Hear these words as a prayer:
Nothing is lost on the breath of God, nothing is lost forever;
God’s breath is love, and that love will remain,
Holding the world forever.
No feather too light, no hair too fine, no flower too brief in its glory,
No drop in the ocean, no dust in the air, but is counted and told in God’s
story.
Nothing is lost on the breath of God, nothing is lost forever;
God’s heart is love, and that love will remain,
Holding the world forever.
No impulse of love, no office of care, no moment of life in its fullness
No beginning too late, no ending too soon, but is gathered and know in its
goodness.
Nothing is lost on the breath of God, nothing is lost forever. AMEN