Omega
Mark 12:38-44
John 18:33-38
November 22, 2009
When today is the last Sunday in the Christian year, an otherwise undistinguished 22nd of November, it is obvious that the Christian year and Lectionary, the Bible and its history are all out of synch. Who’s on first and what’s on second is one of those curious things about being in the church. We may say what we do is timeless, but that may be because we can’t keep track of the time.
You should be confused, since here we are at the last Sunday of the year, next Sunday begins the new Christian year, even though January 1st is considered the beginning of the secular year - the year 2010 A. D. - Anno Domini, the Year of Our Lord. We celebrate Christmas, the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, on December 25, a week before the just mentioned secular New Year and four Sundays after the beginning of the Christian new year.
And as for the Bible, the Gospel, we don’t always keep everything in chronological and narrative order. For a while we go through the birth and early life and ministry of Jesus, but then Lent comes and we wander in our literary wilderness for a number of weeks. Then approximately one quarter of the way into the Christian year, we deal with the end - the Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection. After Pentecost we revert back to where we left off in February and try to keep a straight path until today when it all ends.
Where does it end, but at an incident near the end of the Gospel, an encounter between Jesus and Pontius Pilate usually heard only during Holy Week. Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Judea, asks pointedly, “Are you the King of the Jews?” It seems a long conversation and debate has been raging off stage from the Gospel story and only now is brought onstage. Except for that brief inquiry of the Magi in Luke about where the King of the Jews is to be born, the Gospels never mention anything about this king business. Yet in the ancient world, and maybe still in ours, who wants to be president or prime minister when you can be the king or queen? To be royalty is the fitting end to an accomplished life. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the A and Zed, the beginning and the end. Is being King the Omega experience for Jesus, and for us?
Many of you know that our Regina Bell Ringers have a tradition when it comes to royalty. Whenever a sitting monarch dies, anywhere in the world, they climb up to the tower and toll the bells to commemorate and witness to their reign. When Queen Elizabeth goes to her reward, we are in for a lot of bells. However, we have another sacrament - at the conclusion of a funeral or memorial service for one of our members the bells are tolled once for every year of his/her life. Our saints are royalty to our way of thinking.
Jesus does not answer Pilate straight about his kingship, talking about an other-worldly kingdom. He does not admit being a king, but that his ultimate purpose is to bear witness to the truth. The Lectionary sadly cuts off the passage just before a bored Pilate retorts, “What is truth?” Jesus does not offer an answer. Knowing the truth finally is the best conclusion of all, the Omega point.
But how do we end? Truth, justice and the Canadian way aside, we are never comfortable ending. We avoid death more than we avoid talk of sex, religion and politics, yet the church does death better than anyone else.
I have mentioned the Five Blind Boys of Alabama gospel group, “I’m So Glad I Got Good Religion,” one of their more joyous songs. The twelfth and last song is an acapella rendition of another old African-American refrain, “This Could Be the Last Time.”
This could be the last time,
this could be the last time, children.
This could be the last time, the last time maybe, I don’t know.
The next verses bring the message home, This could be the last time we ever shout together, the last time we are fellowship together. There is something somber, yet powerful in their voices - this is no dirge, no self-pitying, but a theological reminder of how one needs to live one’s life. I don’t know when the last time will come, but that means I should appreciate this particular moment I have, we have together - because this could be the last time.
Rather than moan over what we think we might be missing, the reminder is to live to the fullest what God has given to you now, and a significant part are those other people from whom you benefit. Then this is a reminder that we are not here forever and that ending well means living every moment as if you are beginning all over again. Don’t be bored by the repetition of routines and encounters; look upon each new moment with wonder and amazement and excitement that God is giving me the grace to do this again.
Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, recently mentioned the recent worship service in which one of their elders really threw herself into the service “with reckless abandon.” This is in a black church with a tradition of Pentecostal enthusiasm, but even this was an unusual demonstration of fervour. “She took hold of every song and prayer as if each word held the secret of life and was the key to entering the holy of holies.” Moss was able to speak with her afterwards. “I grab hold of worship so hard,” she said, “because it may be my last time!”
We have our ways of recklessly abandoning ourselves to worship, quieter probably than at Trinity United, but what we happen if we always worshiped, prayed and sang as if it were the last time?
Have we struck a chord? Have we heard a word? The kind of ending these men were singing about - and not just singing ‘about’ it, but singing in the midst of it for they began to sing together in 1939, not a young group - is a revelation that we are all beginning again, all over again, as if for the first time. The Gospel’s all about this, that we move from the old person, let that old person end, die even, and then the new person begins to live again in a new and different way. It’s as if one’s soul has been resurrected from the dead - and it’s not ‘as if’, it is. At the moment you recognize that one part of life may come to an end over which you have no control or power, and you begin again to live every moment, every day, every relationship as if it were your last time, there is a joy that cannot be suppressed, an energy that does not dissipate, a hope that creates new possibilities out of no possibilities. There is the peculiar spiritual mathematics operating in which the urgency of the last time is equivalent to the enthusiasm of the first time.
We are ending a year with successes and failures, loves and displeasures, and immediately we begin anew, determined to take the next moment and the next opportunity with a resurrected imagination. Today we finally have a king who shows you and me how to be royal; next Sunday we start to anticipate a new baby who will show us how to be humble and pay attention to every new grace God gives us. Today we have completed our path; tomorrow a new one is ready for us to begin.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan