The appointed Gospel reading seems odd and unsettling for this time of year. It is part of the story of the death of Jesus, which we normally read on Good Friday.
But on the Sunday that some call “Christ the King Sunday,” this reading
makes us wonder: what kind of king is Jesus? what does the kingdom of God mean to Jesus? what kind of kingdom does Jesus practice, and
invite us to be part of as well, in the midst of the kingdoms of the world?
It really is an odd, unsettling
reading for today.
For one thing, don’t we do the cross
just on Good Friday? For another, is
this the best story we can find for Reign of Christ Sunday – a story of Jesus
in the hands of his enemies and doing nothing to save himself, and of him hanging
with thieves and simply opening the door to paradise – just like that, to one
of them?
It’s an odd, unsettling story. But we are living in a time of unsettling stories.
My wife’s sister has a friend you may
have heard about or seen in the local news in the last week or so. Her name is Janice and she was standing one
day in a check-out line at a grocery store or drug store in Dundas. Beside her was the usual display of chocolate
bars, mints and cough drops, tabloids and newspapers. Janice is black, and an older man just ahead
of her -- maybe in his 70's and white, turned around to look at her, pointed to
a newspaper in the display beside them showing a picture of the recently
elected president of the United States, and said to her, “That's why we elect
people like that – to get rid of people like you.”
The worst part of that story – to her
who lived it, and to others who have heard it, is that no one in that line said
anything.”
And this is becoming more common. This week the front door of a Rabbi’s home in
Ottawa was painted with swastikas and an anti-Semitic word was painted across
the wood. Parkdale United Church, again
in Ottawa, was painted with racist graffiti on Thursday of this past week – for
the second time this year. A mosque in
Ottawa was also targeted.
We like to think we are decent,
honest, kind people. But who knows what
darkness, what anger, what hurt has been brooding beneath the surface, hidden in
the DNA of our dominion – our kingdom, and now has been set free, has been given
permission to come out into the open?
It’s
Reign of Christ Sunday. Some call it
Christ the King Sunday, and today’s Gospel reading makes us wonder what kind of king Jesus is; what the kingdom
of God means to him; and what kind of kingdom Jesus practices, and invites us
to be part of as well, in the midst of the kingdoms of this world?
From
a colleague, Rev. David Shearman of Owen Sound, I read this story as well this
week – one that Salma Hamadi of Toronto shared on Facebook.
Hamadi, an Iranian immigrant who has
lived in Canada for approximately 12 years, says when she was on the subway
last week, a Latino man threw down his skates and sat down in front of her
holding his head repeatedly saying, “Oh God!”
He was alone and distraught.
But then a fellow passenger reached
out. Hamadi says, “The Russian guy
sitting beside him asks if everything is OK in a pretty heavy accent. The Iranian says he has a horrible headache
and he’s running late for an interview.”
That's when Hamadi offers him an
Advil. He thanks her, but says he has
nothing to take it with. So, says
Hamadi, “the Middle Eastern woman sitting beside me wearing [a] hijab, takes out
a juice box from her kid's backpack and gives it to him, telling him that if he
takes it now he'll feel better by the time he gets to the interview.”
The man says he’s nervous. Being an employer, Hamadi assures him that
everything will be okay. She recommends
that he not make excuses, but rather simply say that he's late and
apologize.
Then others on the train also decide
to help him prepare for his interview.
“The Russian tells him to walk in confidently and to tie his hair back
if he [can],” she says. “A Chinese teenager
sitting on his other side hands him a hair tie, saying she has a million
of them.” The Muslim woman tells him to
smile a lot as people are more willing to trust you if you smile.
And when the man gets to his station,
they all wish him good luck in his interview. Hamadi concludes her story
by saying, “Now if THIS isn't the ultimate Canadian experience short of a
beaver walking into a bar holding a jar of maple syrup, I don't know what is!”
I wonder if it’s also a little more of
a kingdom of God story – Jesus-style.
It’s hard to imagine Jesus as King
building walls against people who want to come in. It’s hard to imagine Jesus not reaching out
to any who need help. It’s hard to
imagine the Kingdom of Jesus having slogans like, “Make America Great Again” or
“Canada for Canadians” – especially with all that these slogans really mean
under the surface. It’s hard to imagine
the kingdom of Jesus having hard and fast boundaries, barriers or barbed wire
fences between people who are “good” and people who are “bad,” as though “we”
and “they” – whoever “they” are, whoever “the other” is, need to be kept out
and separate from “us.”
In the story of Parkdale United in
Ottawa that was painted with racist graffiti both this week and back in January,
David Shearman went on to mention the response of Anthony Bailey, the minister
at Parkdale, when he was asked by the Ottawa Citizen what he would say to the
perpetrators if they were caught. He replied,
“If I could ever meet these perpetrators, I'd love to take them to lunch and
sit down and talk with them about why they believe the way they do and invite
them to a different way of looking at how we ought to live together. They'll get a free lunch out of it if nothing
else.”
“Truly I tell you, today you will be
with me in Paradise.”
And so
to return to the story of Janice in the check-out line. I wonder how that situation
might have been saved, might have become a moment of healing and saving grace,
might have become an instance of the kingdom of God on Earth, if only one
person in that line overhearing that old man’s vicious comment, had just stood
and quietly said, “I don’t feel that way; I don’t think that’s right.”
No more need have been said. Certainly not something like, “Maybe it’s you
who should go.” Nor anything like, “We’d
all be better off without you.” But, if someone
were really moved by the spirit of Jesus and courageous enough to express it,
maybe they’d also say something like, “You must be hurting a lot, to say
that. You must have lost a lot, to feel
that way.”
Because there it is. Isn’t that the good news, and what Advent and
the promise of God’s kingdom is about?
It’s about a kingdom of life that’s open to all who
are capable of being honest about themselves and lovingly open to others and to
God all around them – a kingdom that Jesus brings to life in the midst of all
the other kingdoms of the world, a kingdom we are graciously invited by him, to
be part of ourselves.
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