Image of the Invisible (Christ the King C)

Image of the Invisible

Last Sunday before Advent, the Solemnity of Christ the King (Year C)
24 November 2019--8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 46; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone

 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

It’s been a rough two weeks in our nation.  The impeachment hearings have revealed just how profoundly our national fabric has been rent, how deeply our common life has split, and how sharp a divide there is between those who support the President because in him they find hope for an America restored to greatness and those who want him to be removed from office because they see him as a corrupt and hateful stooge of Russian Intelligence Services and their efforts to rob legitimacy from our elections, rule of law, ideals of justice and fairness, and unity as a people.    

Dr. Fiona Hill and Mr. David Homes.   Courtesy Getty Images. 

Both sides were, at various times, outraged or inspired by the hearings: only at different times.  I have friends from High School, my extended family, and a parish Church where I once lived, cheering on representatives Nuñes and Jordan, as others of us gasped in horror.  Some of us were inspired by the self-sacrifice and loyal duty my old Foreign Service colleagues while my friends gasped in horror.  Our poor, poor, country!

 Royal Visit to Aberfan in The Crown Season 3

This, of course, was going on as most of us were enthralled watching the most recent season of Netflix’s The Crown.  And that fictional account of modern Britain’s royal family includes some gems about why monarchy remains attractive to many, even in this age of democracy and egalitarian opposition to class and nobility: 

Queen Mary says, “Monarchy is God’s sacred mission to grace and dignify the earth. To give ordinary people an ideal to strive towards, an example of nobility and duty to raise them in their wretched lives. Monarchy is a calling from God.”

Elizabeth II herself says, “The people look to the monarchy for something bigger than themselves.”

And that spoiled princeling who turned his back on the crown, Edward VIII, says as an old, embittered and exiled Duke of Windsor, “Who wants transparency when you can have magic? Who wants prose when you can have poetry?” 

The Crown, of course, recounts in soap-opera like excruciating detail how such aspirations more commonly than not are foiled by the ignoble humanity of the nobility, the un-regal failings of the royals.  As the real-life Elizabeth said, “Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.”  For her, it is the aspirational, hope-filled determination to live into the ideal of monarchy that justifies the continuation of such an institution.  For monarchists, the Queen is not merely a symbol of the people’s hope for leadership that transcends party and self-aggrandizement, but more importantly the embodiment of self-sacrifice for the common good.   The fact that Prince Andrew could be just as involved, apparently, in Jeffrey Epstein’s wickedness as Bill Clinton or Donald Trump, does the monarchy no favors. 

I think all of us have had the experience pinning our hopes on a charismatic and convincing leader who knew how to play the right chords of our hearts, and how to inspire our hope.  And then we had the experience of that leader failing us, dashing our hope, and sometimes, even disgusting or frightening us.   One of my mentors as I was preparing for ordination told me his wakening as an adult Christian came when he experienced such a disillusionment.  He had as an idealistic young missionary in Nicaragua eagerly supported and worked for religious socialists (including priests) to help break the endemic corruption and oppression in the country, thinking that in some real way he was helping usher in the Reign of God.  But once in power, these religious Marxists turned out in office to be petty tyrants, corrupt as any of the officials that had gone before.  And because of their ideology of class struggle, vanguard party leadership, and suspicion of the Church, they actually ended up in some ways more broadly violent and oppressive. 

I for one am happy that we celebrate Christ the King and not Christ the President, Christ the superstar, and certainly not Dogma’s “buddy Christ.”    Presidents, even the best, fail.  Superstars and buddies even more so.  Kings and Queens fail too, but Monarchy does not have self-serving human failure built in as part and parcel of the ideal. 

Another thing in the last two weeks has drawn this clearly to mind for me, a very personal one from my life as a principal caregiver of a disabled spouse, who has told me it’s okay for me to share it with you.

Elena’s aggressive Parkinson’s Disease causes freezing of voluntary muscles.  Sometimes this means she cannot open her eyes.   I gently can pry them open, but they will not stay open, unless I call to her and say gently, look at me.  It is only when she stops worrying about opening her eyes, and focuses on something beyond the almost impossible task at hand, on me, that miraculously, she is unfrozen and has her vision restored.  

Looking beyond our self is key in having any clear vision.  It is only when we stop worrying about the task at hand and suddenly go into the zone of doing that we relax and can accomplish hard things. 

That’s why it is important to have Jesus as our ideal King, our shepherd, the lover of our soul, and our loving brother and comrade. 

It’s why Colossians today uses that impossible metaphor: Jesus is the image of the invisible God.  If something’s invisible, no vision or image technically is possible.  But hope and trust in the one who is Truly God and Truly Human squares that circle, and makes the impossible part of real life. 

If we look to Jesus, we see our ideal and our hope.  We see, God helping, ourselves once we have changed and followed Jesus into that great ideal beyond. 

One of the episodes of the Crown tells the story of the 1966 disaster at Aberfan Wales that killed 144 people, 116 of them children in an elementary school, more than half of the village’s children.  At the funeral of the children, the coal mining villagers sing spontaneously and a capella the old Wesleyan hymn,  Jesu Lover of my soul.  It is this outpouring of desperate faith that finally elicits tears in private from the Queen, who has returned to Aberfan many times over the decades since to visit with the bereaved.  Charles Wesley wrote the hymn while he was hiding in a Milk House closet from a lynch mob in County Down Ireland intent on silencing his preach­ing.  Set in the UK to the haunting Welsh tune Aberystwyth, it expresses the core of what it means to say that Christ is King:

Jesu, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high:
Hide me, O my Savior, hide,
Till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide;
O receive my soul at last.

Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee;
Leave, oh, leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me.
All my trust on Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring;
Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.

Thou, O Christ, art all I want;
More than all in Thee I find;
Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,
Heal the sick and lead the blind.
Just and holy is Thy name,
I am all unrighteousness;
Vile and full of sin I am,
Thou art full of truth and grace.

Plenteous grace with Thee is found,
Grace to cover all my sin;
Let the healing streams abound;
Make and keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art,
Freely let me take of Thee;
Spring Thou up within my heart,
Rise to all eternity.

 Treorchy Male Voice Chorus -- Jesu Lover of My Soul

Brothers and Sisters, I invite all of us this week into a practice:  take a few minutes each day and in quiet contemplation, make a vivid picture of Jesus in our minds.   And then compare this, gently and without judgment, with pictures of ourselves at our best and our worst moments, and with our various political and social leaders at their best moments and their worst.   When the comparison breaks down, or troubles us, take mental note, and then go back to the image of Jesus.  Try again, perhaps with another person for comparison.  After a few minutes of such contemplation, put the exercise aside for that day.   Then, throughout the day, occasionally think back on your reactions and try to learn what this might say about our own failings and strengths, as well as those of those who would be our princes.  

We’re going to get through this hard and bitter division.  I pray and hope we will find a way to being one united, if diverse, people, renewed in our commitment to our best values. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.