Servants of a Servant King
Servants of a Servant King
November 26, 2017
St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Monterey
Jay Bartow, guest preacher
Texts: Ps. 95:1-7a; Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Ephesians 1:1:15- 23; Mt. 25:31-46
One of my favorite authors is Frederick Buechner. I wonder if any of you are familiar with his work. This particular Sunday of the church year, Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent and a new church year, was a pivotal day in Buechner’s life.
He had grown up in an upper middle-class family on the East Coast, attended a fine prep school, the Lawrenceville School in Princeton, New Jersey, and then attended Princeton University. At the tender age of twenty-three he wrote a novel that received rave reviews and sold briskly and marked his place as a new talent on the literary scene. His second novel was as big a flop as his first was a success. Nonetheless, he carried on and began work on a third novel while living in New York City.
He hadn’t grown up going to church, but he said he had nothing better to do on a Sunday morning than to go to church, and since he lived near Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church that is where he went. The pastor there, George Buttrick, was a gifted preacher and scholar and served as one of the editors of the Interpreters Bible, a respected commentary.
On that Christ the King Sunday in 1953 Buttrick said that Christ is not a king in the worldly way we think of monarchs, yet his subjects number in the hundreds of millions from scores of countries and cultures, and he is crowned in their hearts with confession, and tears, and great laughter. Those words pierced to the heart of Buechner and tears welled up in his eyes. He walked out of church that Sunday a new man. He went home and shared with his wife and mother his mysterious feelings from that service and the next day called to see if he could speak with George Buttrick. He did, and Buttrick listened attentively and suggested that perhaps Buechner would like to walk with him to Union Theological Seminary and explore their offerings since Buechner seemed intent upon diving into learning all he could about Christ and the Christian Faith.
Buechner enrolled as a student while continuing to write and his experience listening to some of the best and brightest theologians of his day, among them Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and James Muilenberg, did deepen his faith. He was graduated from Union and ordained as a Presbyterian Evangelist, since he didn’t have a particular parish where he served. He went on to launch a religious studies department at Phillips Exeter Preparatory School, and to serve as Dean of the chapel there.
Students were required to attend chapel if they were attending church in town, so Buechner had a captive and skeptical congregation, full of bright and critical thinkers, most of whom he was convinced were more intelligent than he. It was a baptism by fire, but served Buechner well as he had to speak the faith in a way that engaged critical young minds. After some years at Philips Exeter, he left that post and tried being a writer again, but with a new center and focus to his writing. He wrote novels that dealt with questions of faith and doubt, life and death. They weren’t sermons disguised as novels, but they did wrestle with the sorts of topics one hears in sermons.
He also wrote non-fiction, and I commend his work to you. For example, his slender volume titled Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. Here are three short definitions from that book. Of compassion he writes,“Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside somebody else’s skin.”
“It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
Of confession he pens, “To confess your sins to God is not to tell him anything he doesn’t already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the bridge.”
Of doubt Buechner says, “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep.”
“Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
You see that for Buechner laughter partners with confession as we affirm Christ as Lord. I have a word of warning to you: Never trust a preacher or politician who does not have a sense of humor. Humor is about the gap between expectation and performance, and that may be why there are so many jokes about religion and politics.
Let’s move from Buechner to the text from Matthew 25 today. Surely this is one of the most familiar and most unsettling of Christ’s parables. It is a parable of judgement, a story of the division of sheep from goats, blessed from cursed, those bound for heaven and those for hell. For us Protestants who cling so tightly to the glorious truth that by grace we are saved through faith, this parable unsettles us. Jesus makes it clear that words alone do not a disciple make. A disciple is a follower, a learner, who is attempting to do what his or her leader does. We are called to walk in Christ’s steps says John in his first letter. (1 John 2:6)
And it is clear from the Gospel accounts that Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, forgave and freed those imprisoned by
demons and guilt, welcomed the stranger and the outcaste. We do not have to look far to see opportunities to confess our faith in Christ by serving the hungry, thirsty, naked, lonely and imprisoned by one thing or another.
Down through the centuries disciples of Jesus have dared to follow him by reaching out to such persons. Rodney Stark in his little book, oThe Rise of Christianity, writes that early Christians during times when plagues visited their cities, did not flee as pagan physicians did, but rather stayed put and did their best to care for, hydrate, and comfort those battling disease, and not just their fellow believers, but their pagan neighbors, many of whom survived thanks to that care. Those neighbors asked why the followers of Jesus took such risks, and those early believers said they were attempting to do what Jesus asked of them. Many of those pagans came to faith in Christ because of the compassion of their Christian neighbors.
The strongest witness to Christ, is living as he bid us, loving as he loved. That marks us as his disciples. If you feel incapable of this high calling, you are in good company. The Apostles felt themselves incapable of such living, but they tried nonetheless, and God enabled them to do far more than they could imagine. Paul’s prayer in Ephesians that we read earlier puts it well: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.”
Those imperfect first followers did great things because they dared to try to follow Christ. They believed he would forgive them when they stumbled, and confession became the bridged that brought them back to God and to one another. The meal we are about to share reminds us of Christ’s presence and forgiveness. God welcomes into the fellowship of Jesus Christ, our Servant King, who shockingly washed the feet of disciples before this meal, and would wash away their sins, and indeed. the sins of the world, in his cross and subsequent resurrection. Confess him as your Sovereign as you partake of these elements and as you depart to serve others in his gracious name.
November 26, 2017
St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Monterey
Jay Bartow, guest preacher
Texts: Ps. 95:1-7a; Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Ephesians 1:1:15- 23; Mt. 25:31-46
One of my favorite authors is Frederick Buechner. I wonder if any of you are familiar with his work. This particular Sunday of the church year, Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent and a new church year, was a pivotal day in Buechner’s life.
He had grown up in an upper middle-class family on the East Coast, attended a fine prep school, the Lawrenceville School in Princeton, New Jersey, and then attended Princeton University. At the tender age of twenty-three he wrote a novel that received rave reviews and sold briskly and marked his place as a new talent on the literary scene. His second novel was as big a flop as his first was a success. Nonetheless, he carried on and began work on a third novel while living in New York City.
He hadn’t grown up going to church, but he said he had nothing better to do on a Sunday morning than to go to church, and since he lived near Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church that is where he went. The pastor there, George Buttrick, was a gifted preacher and scholar and served as one of the editors of the Interpreters Bible, a respected commentary.
On that Christ the King Sunday in 1953 Buttrick said that Christ is not a king in the worldly way we think of monarchs, yet his subjects number in the hundreds of millions from scores of countries and cultures, and he is crowned in their hearts with confession, and tears, and great laughter. Those words pierced to the heart of Buechner and tears welled up in his eyes. He walked out of church that Sunday a new man. He went home and shared with his wife and mother his mysterious feelings from that service and the next day called to see if he could speak with George Buttrick. He did, and Buttrick listened attentively and suggested that perhaps Buechner would like to walk with him to Union Theological Seminary and explore their offerings since Buechner seemed intent upon diving into learning all he could about Christ and the Christian Faith.
Buechner enrolled as a student while continuing to write and his experience listening to some of the best and brightest theologians of his day, among them Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and James Muilenberg, did deepen his faith. He was graduated from Union and ordained as a Presbyterian Evangelist, since he didn’t have a particular parish where he served. He went on to launch a religious studies department at Phillips Exeter Preparatory School, and to serve as Dean of the chapel there.
Students were required to attend chapel if they were attending church in town, so Buechner had a captive and skeptical congregation, full of bright and critical thinkers, most of whom he was convinced were more intelligent than he. It was a baptism by fire, but served Buechner well as he had to speak the faith in a way that engaged critical young minds. After some years at Philips Exeter, he left that post and tried being a writer again, but with a new center and focus to his writing. He wrote novels that dealt with questions of faith and doubt, life and death. They weren’t sermons disguised as novels, but they did wrestle with the sorts of topics one hears in sermons.
He also wrote non-fiction, and I commend his work to you. For example, his slender volume titled Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. Here are three short definitions from that book. Of compassion he writes,“Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside somebody else’s skin.”
“It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
Of confession he pens, “To confess your sins to God is not to tell him anything he doesn’t already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the bridge.”
Of doubt Buechner says, “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep.”
“Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
You see that for Buechner laughter partners with confession as we affirm Christ as Lord. I have a word of warning to you: Never trust a preacher or politician who does not have a sense of humor. Humor is about the gap between expectation and performance, and that may be why there are so many jokes about religion and politics.
Let’s move from Buechner to the text from Matthew 25 today. Surely this is one of the most familiar and most unsettling of Christ’s parables. It is a parable of judgement, a story of the division of sheep from goats, blessed from cursed, those bound for heaven and those for hell. For us Protestants who cling so tightly to the glorious truth that by grace we are saved through faith, this parable unsettles us. Jesus makes it clear that words alone do not a disciple make. A disciple is a follower, a learner, who is attempting to do what his or her leader does. We are called to walk in Christ’s steps says John in his first letter. (1 John 2:6)
And it is clear from the Gospel accounts that Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, forgave and freed those imprisoned by
demons and guilt, welcomed the stranger and the outcaste. We do not have to look far to see opportunities to confess our faith in Christ by serving the hungry, thirsty, naked, lonely and imprisoned by one thing or another.
Down through the centuries disciples of Jesus have dared to follow him by reaching out to such persons. Rodney Stark in his little book, oThe Rise of Christianity, writes that early Christians during times when plagues visited their cities, did not flee as pagan physicians did, but rather stayed put and did their best to care for, hydrate, and comfort those battling disease, and not just their fellow believers, but their pagan neighbors, many of whom survived thanks to that care. Those neighbors asked why the followers of Jesus took such risks, and those early believers said they were attempting to do what Jesus asked of them. Many of those pagans came to faith in Christ because of the compassion of their Christian neighbors.
The strongest witness to Christ, is living as he bid us, loving as he loved. That marks us as his disciples. If you feel incapable of this high calling, you are in good company. The Apostles felt themselves incapable of such living, but they tried nonetheless, and God enabled them to do far more than they could imagine. Paul’s prayer in Ephesians that we read earlier puts it well: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.”
Those imperfect first followers did great things because they dared to try to follow Christ. They believed he would forgive them when they stumbled, and confession became the bridged that brought them back to God and to one another. The meal we are about to share reminds us of Christ’s presence and forgiveness. God welcomes into the fellowship of Jesus Christ, our Servant King, who shockingly washed the feet of disciples before this meal, and would wash away their sins, and indeed. the sins of the world, in his cross and subsequent resurrection. Confess him as your Sovereign as you partake of these elements and as you depart to serve others in his gracious name.
