"The waters have lifted up! But mightier is the Lord..." Sermon for Christ the King 2021
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Sermon for
Christ the King Sunday
21 November
2021
The Rev.
Carrie Ballenger
Lutheran
Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem
Hear again the words of today’s psalm, Psalm 93:
The LORD is
king, robed in majesty; the LORD is robed in majesty and armed with strength. The
LORD has made the world so sure that it cannot be moved.
Ever since
the world began, your throne has been established; you are from everlasting.
The waters
have lifted up, O LORD, the waters have lifted up their voice; the waters have
lifted up their pounding waves.
Your
testimonies are very sure, and holiness befits your house, O LORD, forever and
forevermore.
I love this psalm! It consists of just 5 verses, and
yet it speaks volumes to me. This psalm is a song too be sung in troubled
times. It’s a song to be sung when it seems the whole earth is shaking under
our feet, when we don’t know where or how to stand, when justice eludes us, when
our daily movements are determined by numbers of new infections, when waves of
fear and uncertainty threaten to drown us in worry.
In other words, it’s a song for our time.
Notice that the psalmist begins by praising the Lord
in the 3rd person. He’s talking about God to someone. He’s offering
these words to those around him who are wondering “Well this is a mess. The
world is falling apart! Where do we go from here?”
Or, perhaps he’s truly singing to himself. I’ve
certainly been in that place, where I needed to remind myself who holds me and
my future. I’ve been to church many a Sunday morning when I have sung “Great is
thy faithfulness” even when my heart was struggling to truly believe those
words. I’ve been both mourner and presider at funerals when I just couldn’t
sing at all, but could only listen to the sounds of the community singing hope
for me, “I know that my Redeemer lives”.
And so when the psalmist begins with “The Lord is
king…the Lord has made the world so sure that it cannot be moved” it seems to
me he offers these words for us, for all those times when we need to be
reminded of where we stand, of who we are, of who is on our side.
Yes, the world is a mess! But the Lord is king, robed
in majesty. My personal life seems to be falling apart! But the Lord has made
the earth under my feet so sure it cannot be moved. Some days, these are the truths
that get us up in the morning, carry us through the day, and allow us to sleep
at night. No matter what is happening in the world, the Word of God reminds us that
the Lord is robed in majesty. He is secure on his throne and we are secure in
his love. Thanks be to God! Amen!
Clearly, that one verse could be an entire sermon, at
least for me! Such is the beauty of Holy Scripture. But then in verse 2, the
psalmist’s mini-sermon to the world turns into a prayer to God, the Lord of the
universe. “Ever since the world began, your throne has been established; you
are from everlasting.”
And then, a lament: “The waters have lifted up” cries
the psalmist. “The waters have lifted up their voice, the waters have lifted up
their pounding waves!”
Oh my, talk about a psalm which speaks to us today, or
that we could even write ourselves today. O Lord, the waters have lifted up!
The waves are about to overwhelm us! What can we do?
The Lord promises to lead us beside still waters, but at
this moment it seems there are waves of chaos all around us. Voices of fear,
discrimination, and power over others are rising up, drowning out voices of justice
and liberation, mercy and love.
From the nearby neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah to far
away Kenosha, Wisconsin, what the world tries to tell us is that if you belong
to the group in power, you can do whatever you want to do. You can move freely.
You can speak freely. You can even kill
freely! You can rise up and, like a wave, you can drown out the truth because You.
Are. King. Of the World.
Or so it seems.
But no… “Mightier than the sound of many waters,
mightier than the breakers of the sea, mightier is the LORD who dwells on high!”
proclaims the psalmist. The waves of injustice—or of justice denied—will never
overwhelm God, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all things! Weapons are
mighty, but love is mightier. Division and suspicion may have their day, but peace,
reconciliation, and living together are God’s plan for us all. Above all, death
never has the last word, because Christ is risen! Thanks be to God!
I know, it can be difficult to hold on to these truths
and to carry this hope into a new day when we see justice denied again and
again, and when voices spreading fear and hatred and division are the ones
given the most airtime. Frankly, it’s exhausting some days just to do the
basics of following Jesus: Love God, love neighbor, pray for our enemies. It’s
exhausting because it truly feels like fighting back mighty waves in only a
paddle boat and our only paddle is hope. And still, we keep rowing. Still, we
keep moving forward against the stream, powered by that hope. We keep on
keeping on.
One of those saints who shows us what it means to hold
on to hope and to proclaim Christ as King of our lives and of the world is
German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. You may have heard the story
of how he was imprisoned and hanged just days before the end of the Second World
War, as a result of participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler and end the
Holocaust.
But years before that, in 1933, when Adolf Hitler
became Chancellor of Germany, Bonhoeffer gave a radio broadcast on ‘The leader
and the individual’. The word for ‘leader’ in German is, of course, “Führer”.
The authorities recognized how subversive Bonhoeffer was being in this speech and
cut him off before he could finish.
But what Bonhoeffer was able to say in this broadcast is
that no mere human can have ultimate authority over other humans. Ultimate
authority lies only with God. Bonhoeffer said: “The individual is responsible
before God. And this solitude of man’s position before God, this subjection to
an ultimate authority, is destroyed when the authority of the Leader (Führer)
or of the office is seen as ultimate authority … The fearful danger of the
present time is that above the cry for authority, be it of the Leader or of an
office, we forget that man stands alone before the ultimate authority and that
anyone who lays violent hands on man here is infringing eternal laws and taking
upon himself superhuman authority which will eventually crush him.”
Hear that again:
“anyone who lays violent hands on man here is
infringing eternal laws and taking upon himself superhuman authority which will
eventually crush him.”
A word for us today, as we reflect on the unjust
systems which allow murderers to go free, and justice to be denied, again and
again.
But again: “Mightier than the sound of many waters, mightier
than the breakers of the sea, mightier is the LORD who dwells on high.”
Dear people, as you know, today is Christ the King
Sunday. It is a day set aside to reflect on God’s authority, not only over our
own lives, but over the world. In recent times, some have questioned the wisdom
of honoring such a day, as in the Western world at least we have mostly done
away with kings in favor of presidents and prime ministers and governments
elected for a time, only to be replaced by the next party’s favorites.
But it seems to me that as we see a wave of world
leaders who are hungry for ultimate authority, who seem to have an insatiable
desire to gain power over others, that we need this day more than ever. As
voices of fear, scarcity, crisis and division grow louder, like pounding waves
of worry, we are again and again faced with the question: Are these our rulers?
Are we subject to these voices? Do they define us, guide us, and determine our
future?
As followers of the crucified and risen Lord, we can
confidently say “NO!” Not only on Christ the King Sunday, but every day. Mightier
than the sound of many waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea, mightier
is the LORD who dwells on high.
But to be clear, declaring
Christ as King does not mean we sit on our hands and say “Jesus will take care
of it. He’s king, after all.” The call
to discipleship is never a call to passivity. In the same way, we do not
declare ourselves to love our country and neglect to vote or to contribute to
the wellbeing of our community. We cannot profess to love God and then trample
on the human rights of our neighbors, for as it says in 1 John 4 “Whoever
claims to love God but haters their brother or sister is a liar.”
For this reason, Christ the King Sunday is not about
waving a Jesus flag and cheering for the “right” team! Rather, it’s a day to
renew our commitment to following in his footsteps. It’s a day to invest in becoming
co-creators of the kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven.
In the 4th century, St. Macarius of Egypt
wrote: “Do you not realize or understand your own nobility? Each of those who
have been anointed with the heavenly chrism becomes a Christ by grace, so that
all are kings and prophets of the heavenly mysteries.”
All are kings and prophets. You are kings (and
queens!) and prophets! What would it mean for you to claim that title? When you
feel powerless in the face of injustice and war and occupation…what would it
mean to remember that through baptism, you are anointed and sent as ambassadors
and spokespeople for the kingdom of heaven?
Of course, as ambassadors of God’s kingdom, we have a
rather strange message for the world. We are sent to reveal to the world in
word and deed that God is mighty, and Christ is king, but that authority may
not look like what you expect.
The might of the Lord is mercy,
The might of the Lord is grace,
The might of the Lord is vulnerability,
The might of the Lord is reconciliation,
The might of the Lord is justice,
The might of the Lord is in vanquishing enmity rather
than vanquishing enemies.
The might of the Lord is love, sacrificial love,
radical love, a love that took Jesus all the way to the cross.
It was Bonhoeffer himself who also said:
“A king who dies on the cross must be the king of a
rather strange kingdom.” Amen!
Dear siblings in Christ, as we close out this church
year and look toward Advent and Christmas, we will soon begin a third year of
living with a global pandemic. Here in Israel and Palestine, the occupation
continues. Waves of injustice pound at our doors. But we are still here, in our
rowboats, powered by hope in God.
“Mightier than the sound of many waters, mightier than
the breakers of the sea, mightier is the LORD who dwells on high.” Thanks be to
God. Amen.
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