Give Thanks for Christ is King

Psalm 106:1-5, 47-48
John 18:33-37


Rockville United Church
The Rev. Suzanne Rudiselle

November 26, 2006

The Christmas carols have been playing in the stores, the decorations are out, recently competing with the Halloween costumes, and the sales have begun. It must be Thanksgiving! Have you had enough? Enough turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, any of the six vegetables that burden the Thanksgiving tables, along with three kinds of cranberry relishes and pies that we gobble up in spite of our groaning stomachs? Have you had enough of the parades and football games, and the relatives who are either fun or dysfunctional?

What were those Pilgrims thinking when they started this? Could they have imagined the excesses we insist on? Could they have even dreamed of people leaving their Thanksgiving tables to go camp out with hundreds of other obsessed people over night in front of a store that would open at 5 am with 18 prize bargains?

Welcome to all you survivors. We’re here to celebrate the reign of Christ which officially ends the Christian year, and to give thanks for God’s bounteous grace which has been shown to us in spite of who we are and what we have done. It’s an amazing conjunction of holidays and one which allows us to look back with gratitude and ahead with hope. Thanksgiving begins and ends with God - not Pilgrims or Indians or food or sales. It also begins with praise.

The fourth book in the Psalms ends with Psalms 105 and 106: the first concentrates on God’s marvelous works. The second focuses on Israel’s failure to trust God in spite of God’s saving acts: granting the land of Canaan in fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, then losing the land because of their unfaithfulness. The two psalms are a study in the contrast between God’s promise and purpose and the people’s perversity.

Between the opening praise, and the end appeal and doxology, which we read, are the confessions, which are written to teach others that in order to offer legitimate praise to God one must be obedient to God’s ways. Praise and thanksgiving are our appropriate responses to all that God has done, is doing, and will do. But, as the psalmist points out, praise and thanksgiving are empty unless we live according to God’s will, because praise is the crucial factor in Israel’s relationship with God - and in ours.

This psalm may be written in time of national tribulation - perhaps in a time like ours - when it is sometimes hard to find things that are praiseworthy. The vocation of the congregation is to praise God, but that praise is tainted by their sins. The recital of sins is instruction. God’s wrath is followed by God’s salvation when the people repent and cry out. Although Israel is God’s chosen people, and we are now part of the new Israel, people of the covenant, deliverance from punishment does not come automatically. Still, in the end, God’s steadfast love remains. That’s enough for a celebration. We are loved! We are forgiven! In spite of - not because of our behavior, God has lessons for us and hopes for us, and strength and transforming power for us.

Now here is the problem: we are grateful for so many things, for life and health, and the material things that we have but are we also thankful for the hard things in life? For the challenges of failed marriages, rocky relationships, lost opportunities, unsatisfying jobs, if we’re lucky enough to have one, declining health, death of loved ones? Are we thankful on cue according to the calendar? Grateful whether or not we see God working in our lives - or in the world? Or are we part of the murmuring tradition - fussing about nothing and everything - not really miserable but creating an undercurrent of dissatisfaction? Remember that our thanksgiving may not infringe on another’s living. On the 350th anniversary of the landing at Plymouth, when some were marking the day with feasts, American Indians held a “Day of Mourning”. Gratitude to God for deliverance and for our safety cannot be at the expense of another.

James Mays writes, “The litmus test for the spiritual health of the people of the Lord is the integrity and actuality of their praise, whether they ‘remember the abundance of the Lord’s steadfast love’, or forget God’s deeds and let themselves be determined by dangers or desires or the ways of the nations.”

Remember God, and the good and the bad that God has seen you through. Remember where you are, how you got there, how you got through it to be where you are now. It’s a process of continual faithful living and unfolding gratitude as we learn to trust God more and more; as we grow in understanding God‘s truth and goodness; as we pray “deliver us from evil; for yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory”.

I’ll tell you what I am grateful for. I’m thankful that we celebrate Christ’s reign and God’s kingdom every day, not just on the 4th Thursday in November. I am thankful that we are not called on to praise or bow to a king of this world, living somewhere in a palace removed from the rough and tumble of life, or a malicious tyrant living off the sacrifices of the people, or even a politician living in the White House. What we can be truly thankful for is that there is One who has come to show us what goodness is, what truth is, what God ultimately has in mind for the human creation.

In the familiar story of Jesus’ trial before Pilate we remember that the Jewish authorities had charged Jesus with calling himself a king - a political crime. When asked, Jesus’ reply is not simple but whether the question is intended in a Roman or Jewish sense? He is not a king intent on intrigue and overthrowing the Roman authority. But the truth is that he is a king whose real influence is over the hearts and minds of people. His power is not the sword but the truth. Jesus answers a political question with a theological response. Proclaiming the truth, being the truth is what makes Jesus a king, and his realm one of equity and justice and love. For some this language of kingdom is difficult for it reminds us of inequity and privilege, but however we express this truth, we understand that there is but One to whom we owe allegiance, One whom we worship, and One to whom we offer our praise and thanksgiving. Jesus’ redefinition of kingship is a revelation of his purpose - to speak truth. He does not repudiate traditional kingship, but instead states his purpose as the revealer of God’s truth. His reign promotes life and not death, peace and not violence, goodness not hatred. His last word confronts Pilate, “whoever belongs to the truth listens to me.” It confronts us as well. Do we listen. Do we hear and heed? Do we know Jesus the Christ whose reign we celebrate this day?

So we are here, well fed, grateful for a respite in the midst of our normal work week, and gathered in this sacred place to say again that we are grateful for second chances, so that when we fail to grasp the opportunities God gives us to do good, we will have yet another chance; Grateful that God forgives us so that we can live and learn to forgive others; Grateful that whatever happens - whatever happens, God is in the midst of it to guide and give strength and to come to us in Jesus, who is the way and the truth and the life.

The poet Wystan Hugh Auden writes:
Let us therefore be contrite but without anxiety,
For the powers and times are not gods but mortal gifts from God;
Let us acknowledge our defeat but without despair
For all societies and epochs are transient details,
Transmitting an everlasting opportunity
That the kingdom of heaven may come, not in our present
And not in our future, but in the fullness of time.

And Meister Eckhart adds, “If the only prayer you say in life is thank you, it would suffice.”

Praise and thanksgiving to God for all good things, and for our Christ who reigns forever.