The church’s power should look like Jesus’s power. It should look like love. It should look like self-sacrifice. It should look like care for the stranger, the suffering, and the excluded.

We’re the church. We’re the body of Christ in the world. We ought to exercise power in the same way he did. Not by abdicating responsibility. Not by withdrawing from the world. But also not by force or compulsion. By care, by kindness, by courage. By love.

On this Feast of Christ the King, may we know our citizenship to be first and foremost in his kingdom. And may we follow with faith and courage in his way of love.

The year I graduated from high school, there was a lot of talk about the end of history. The Soviet Union had collapsed, all was right with the world (at least from a certain point of view), and it seemed certain that nothing interesting would ever happen again. At 18, the idea that history was over and done with once and for all really bothered me. I wanted to witness history, maybe even to be a part of it. The end of history sounded so very boring. I felt cheated of an adventure.

Let me just say, for the record: I was an idiot.

History is back in full swing—and it’s not nearly as much fun as I thought it would be.

“The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise.”

That’s a club we might just manage to be part of. “Saints with a lowercase s,” let’s call it.

I noticed something new in the psalm we read today. It’s a psalm of return, of exile’s end. It’s a song of celebration: “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”

But listen again to the last line: “Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.”

There’s a celebration of exile’s end there. But there’s also an instruction for how to act in times of sorrow, in times when exile is only just beginning. Those who went out weeping had much to weep about. But they didn’t go empty-handed. They carried with them seeds. They carried with them hope for the future. They carried seeds, and even in exile they planted and nurtured those seeds. And when finally they returned home, they brought back with them bundles of harvested grain.

The lessons we hear each Sunday follow a calendar that was set up years ago. Sometimes I love the lectionary. Sometimes I hate it. And then there are weeks like this, when I’m not sure whether the lectionary is a blessing or a curse.

Because, you see, we’re starting our annual stewardship campaign next week, and here Jesus is talking about camels and eyes of needles.

Wow. Things sure were different in biblical times.

From what today’s Gospel tells us, it sounds like there was a group of people who claimed to follow Jesus, but they did things a bit differently than another group of people who also claimed to follow Jesus. And then one of the groups tried to interfere with the other group.

Crazy, right? That would never happen today. Today, we’re all just one big happy family. Isn’t it great that we’re past all that?

We don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love. God’s love is certain, even before we ask.

But a life of faith is how we live in response to God’s love. And a life of faith has two parts: believing and acting.

The believing part is finding the courage to answer Jesus’s question for ourselves: “who do you say that I am?”

The acting part is choosing to follow him, whatever that choice might cost us.

What does that look like?

Jesus says it looks like denying yourself. It looks like taking up a cross. Losing your life for his sake and for the sake of the gospel.

That sounds difficult—but it also sounds exciting and important.

But I think one of the hardest things about a life of faith is that most of the time it isn’t so dramatic. Most of the time, it’s lived out in small ways, tiny gestures. A kind word. A glass of water. A moment of rudeness forgiven. A quiet prayer.

Sometimes when you read the Bible, it’s like God’s speaking directly to you. The message is clear, simple, straightforward. But sometimes it’s not so easy. You wrestle with the text. Its meaning and message remains a stubborn mystery.

The Bible isn’t a single book. It’s more of a library—a collection of texts written in three original languages, over more than a thousand years, in locations spanning well over a thousand miles.

We need to pay attention to that history—to that context—not to change the Bible’s meaning, but to understand it more clearly.

We love our traditions. I love our traditions.

But at least at first glance, Jesus’s words in today’s Gospel aren’t very complimentary about the traditions we hold so dear.

Jesus says that the tradition isn’t what matters. What matters is what’s in your heart.

I recently asked my phone what I needed to do to make my life easy. It gave me a lot of advice. Some of it was even good advice. Get enough sleep. Create a budget. Go for a walk every day.

Some of the advice was oddly specific. Use an electric toothbrush. Drink celery juice every morning. Only buy one brand of socks.

I’m pretty sure I’ll never add celery juice to my daily routine, but the rest of the tips were at least worth considering.

The real problem was the question I asked: “How can I make my life easy?” The algorithm was apparently too polite to give me the real answer.

“How can I make my life easy?”
“You can’t.”

[Image: Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/katieharbath/4249809778]

If you’ve been in church for the past several weeks, you’ve heard about the feeding of 5000 people with five loaves of barley bread. You’ve heard Jesus call himself the bread of life. The living bread that comes down from heaven. A new and better manna in the wilderness. And next week he’ll say it again.

We’re hearing about it a lot. Maybe this bread thing is important.

Elijah is the greatest prophet of the Hebrew Bible. So what is he doing hiding in the wilderness begging God to end his life? Shouldn’t a prophet be more resilient?

Growing in maturity looks like being ever more fully yourself. It looks like living ever more completely into God’s will. Maturity includes strength, but it’s a strength that has no need to prove itself.

I think that’s at least part of what it means to “no longer be children.”

And I suspect that it’s that kind of maturity that allows us become again like a child. To love simply and purely. To know without doubt that we are who and what God made us to be.

Peace has always been an aspiration of Christian life, but we haven’t always done a very good job of making it a reality. It sometimes feels like we get it wrong more often than we get it right.

I’d like to tell you one story in which I find hope. It’s grim at the beginning, but there’s light at the end of it.

“Don’t be afraid.” The words can be comforting. They’re words you might say to a child frightened by a thunderstorm. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t worry. Everything will be ok.”

But I’m not at all sure that that’s how Jesus meant those words. I think Jesus told us not to be afraid at least in part because fear itself is dangerous. Fear can make us abandon our principles. It can make us refuse to see the truth in front of us. Fear can make us do terrible things.

I’m beginning to understand “be not afraid” less as comfort and more as command. Don’t be afraid. Instead, have faith. Don’t be afraid. Instead, follow your conscience—no matter what doing so might cost you.