Today is the Last Sunday after Pentecost, the concluding Sunday of our Church Year, the culmination of our yearly cycle of lectionary readings and celebration of themes from the life and ministry of Jesus. This last Sunday of the liturgical year is semi-officially known as "The Feast of the Reign of Christ," and it sums up our whole statement of faith in Jesus, as we recognize Jesus as the King of kings and Lord of lords, the One in whom it is God's pleasure to restore all things and to bring all people together in his most gracious rule. Today we celebrate the good news that Jesus reigns.
But as soon as we say "Jesus reigns," we must also recognize that we are speaking a paradox. We as Christians proclaim the faith that the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus has changed everything, that the whole condition of human life and human work and human hope is transformed by the Good News that Jesus has overcome death and has closed the gap between God and us, that because of Jesus the powers of destruction have been defeated and our ultimate destiny of co-creating with God a world of justice and peace and right relationships for all creatures--not just all humans, but all creatures throughout the Universe--because of Jesus our ultimate destiny for good is assured. We mean all of that when we say "Jesus reigns."
But even while we proclaim that the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus has changed everything, we look around us and sometimes we have a hard time seeing that very much has changed. We proclaim that Jesus came that we might have life, and have life abundantly--and yet so many people in our world live un-abundant lives, lives oppressed by poverty, lives without even the basics required for survival. We proclaim that Jesus came to bring communion and community in the discipleship of equals among all peoples--and yet we see division and disunity and conflict between nations and tribes and sects. We proclaim that Jesus came to inaugurate God's reign of justice and peace--and yet injustice, oppression, exploitation, warfare, violence continue to hurt and destroy people and communities and ecosystems throughout our world. We proclaim that Jesus reigns--yet the signs of Jesus' reign seem very hard to see. The reign of Jesus is for us at best a paradox.
The reign of Jesus is a paradox in our Gospel reading today, too. In this scene from his Passion story, Luke presents Jesus as a king whose power is in his humility, a king who reigns not from a throne but from a cross. There are certainly no signs of worldly power around Jesus in this Gospel. The bystanders and the soldiers call Jesus "Messiah" and "King," but they do it to mock him, to underline the fact that he certainly has no power to stop the violence they are committing against him. The inscription on the cross says "The King of the Jews"--but that's just the Roman army's way of saying "You have no power against us; you see what we do: we take your king and kill him like a common criminal." The only uses of the word "King" in this passage are meant to be ironic, adding insult to injury, twisting the knife to make sure Jesus suffers as much as possible. There are no signs of worldly kingly power about Jesus in this Gospel.
And yet throughout this Gospel Jesus acts like a king. As the soldiers are crucifying him, he says "Father, forgive them"--it is the role of the king to commute sentences and forgive offenses. To the thief who asks to be remembered when he comes into his kingdom, he says "Today you will be with me in paradise"--it is the role of the king to gather the scattered, to set free those who are oppressed, to give places of honor to those who are faithful. Even though Jesus has no worldly power, still he acts like a king, a king whose power is not bound by this world, but whose power comes from opening the Way into God's future.
And that is the paradox--and the resolution to the paradox--of the Reign of Christ. Jesus reigns now, but the way he reigns is by opening up the possibilities for us to co-create with God the future God wills yet to be. Jesus does not reign by throwing power around, by issuing supernatural commands which the human and natural worlds must obey. Jesus does not reign by forcing the world to bow to God's will. Instead, Jesus' reign goes deeper than that, not imposing God on the world, but drawing the world to participate in God.
I think that's what the Epistle for today is getting at when it speaks of the "kingdom of God's beloved son." It speaks of Jesus' reign as being woven into the very fabric of creation: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers--all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together." What these words say to me is that Jesus reigns not by imposing divine will on the world from without, but by exercising the creative power of God to shape and form and hold together the world from within. The Reign of Christ is always already there, no matter where in the universe we look. But the Reign of Christ is also always already pointing ahead, pointing beyond what has been created to what might be created next, pointing to new works of justice and peace God is willing to co-create with us. And if the Reign of Christ is woven into the very fabric of creation, that means the Reign of Christ is in us, as well, as we are also part of creation. We are part of the world Jesus is drawing to participate in God. We are in Jesus' reign in the present, and Jesus reigns in us precisely by opening us to the possibilities of justice and peace God wants to co-create with us for the future. And that's why the Epistle says "May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power": because we are empowered to show forth that Jesus reigns now by helping to create in his name the peaceable world that is yet to be.
One of the most powerful practical ways we can participate in showing forth Jesus' reign of justice and peace here and now is by working for the Millenium Development Goals. That's why our Presiding Bishop Katharine has designated today, the Feast of the Reign of Christ, as ONE Sunday, and she is calling on our entire church to support the ONE Campaign to make poverty history. In your bulletins today there is an insert about the ONE Campaign, and it contains more information than I am going to try to summarize out loud in a sermon. But let me just point out some salient facts from the insert: More than 22 million people have died from AIDS so far, and more than 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS; 74 percent of these infected people live in sub-Saharan Africa. The UN estimates that, currently, there are 14 million AIDS orphans in the world and that by 2010 there will be 25 million. 1.1 billion people lack access to an improved water supply - approximately one in six people on earth. Each year, 350–500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide, and over one million people die, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa. We've all heard facts like these, and sometimes we can get to feeling overwhelmed by all the needs, all the injustices, all the effects of poverty in our world today.
But there is good news, too. Today, 1.6 million HIV-positive people around the world, most in Africa, are receiving treatment with antiretroviral medicines; that compares with only 50,000 in 2002. In 2006 9.7 million children died before reaching their fifth birthday, compared with 13 million in 1990. During the past 20 years, the proportion of people living in poverty in the developing world fell by half--from 40 percent to 21 percent. That's still too many children dying young, and too many people living in extreme poverty--but it shows that change is possible. And today significant changes can be made by doing relatively simple things: AIDS drugs can now cost as little as $1 a day. A mosquito net can save a child's life for five years and costs only $5. It costs as little as $2 to purchase the most effective malaria treatments. A well to provide a village with clean, safe drinking water for 20 years can cost only $20 per person. These things are not hard to afford; and when people like us get together in organizations like the ONE Campaign, we can actually do them. Not just feel for the world, but change the world.
And that is precisely what it means for us to proclaim our faith in the Reign of Christ. It is Jesus, reigning in our hearts, who makes us strong with all the strength of his glorious power, strong to work through the ONE Campaign, strong to promise a place in a better world, strong with possibilities to co-create in his name the world as God wants it to be. It is Jesus, reigning in our lives, who draws us into his paradox--the paradox that, in spite of all the outward shows of worldly power, in spite of all that the forces of sin and destruction can do, still Jesus reigns, and in his reign the slow, redemptive, transformative processes of love are changing and will change the entire world. That is what we are called to participate in today, that is what we are called to make the central reality of our lives as disciples, that is what we celebrate in this Feast of the Reign of Christ, that is how we let Christ reign in us. Amen.