Today is the last day of the liturgical year. It is officially the Reign of Christ. I am sure you have all been weeks in preparing for this holiday, have decorated your homes, purchased gifts, sent out your Reign of Christ cards and have prepared all the traditional foods for your annual Reign of Christ feast.

Frankly, I am always grateful for any liturgical festivals that have not been co-opted by the culture and stripped of their significance. I’m equally happy that this is a holy day not taken from the culture and given a thin veneer of religious significance because that never really works.

I am aware that many of you have never even heard of the Reign of Christ. What value can a day called Reign of Christ possibly have for us, enlightened people that we are living in the twenty-first century?

It is especially difficult for us to understand given that the language used is based on a monarchy -- something hard for us to grasp-- most of us have never lived in a monarchy. (The closest we have come is the present ‘imperial presidency’ . . . but it doesn’t really count, since monarchs are sovereign, and reign until their death. Despite the attitude of the present occupant of the oval office; a president’s power is limited by design and one can only ‘rule’ a maximum of eight years.)

 So our task at hand it complex. How to grasp a liturgical holiday called the Reign of Christ?

Though the actual word, holiday, has a double meaning; both a holy day and a day of re-creation just as the Sabbath was established as a holy day of rest and recreation; most of our secular holidays are about remembering and honoring something that happened in the past. The birth of revered leaders, the founding of our nation, as well as days to honor the service of others and a day to give thanks. The ten federal holidays are New Year’s Day, the Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veteran’s day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Not much holiness there. But plenty of recreation.

All have become glorious shopping events. What is holy in our country is consumerism and what we are re-creating is a world where human beings are measured and valued by what they own or don’t own, and their ability to purchase more, more, more. A world in which our lives and planet are sacrificed to the god of more, more, more.

Liturgical holidays were meant to have something else as their purpose.

Liturgy means ‘the work of the people,’ and it, too, has many meanings. It is what we do in this place – it is our work, our offering. But it also is a form of recreation – of ‘re-creating.’ Liturgy is meant to re-form us, re-shape us, into who and what we were created to be in the first place: Children of God. A holy people. A communion of saints. A light to the nations. Salt. Light. Different from the surrounding culture.

In this place, the work we do re-creates us (and in turn the world) in the image of God.

We come to this place each Sunday as we might take our cars to the body shop, to have the dents and scratches and fender benders repaired, to re-create, restore, redeem us to our original intended condition. (Which is one of the reasons we have confessions. It is an inventory of the damage, an assement of the work that needs to be done. It is not so we will feel dreadful about ourselves, it is so we can know how fully we are forgiven. But I digress. .. )

We come to this ‘body’ shop, this ‘body of Christ’ shop to do the same for our souls: for healing, for remembering  who we are and whose we are and what we are about. For re-creation and rest. For being re-made in the image of God. Week after week after week.

The culture gets six days to try to create us in it’s image. We give God an hour to re-pair the damage. God asked for the whole day because it is needed.

Which is why I am a strong advocate of Sabbath-keeping. Not the ‘sit in the parlor and count the flowers on the rug’ kind of Sabbath-keeping of my grandmother’s day. But the kind of Sabbath-keeping that sets the day apart from all other days. I learned Sabbath keeping from my friend Sharon Kohn. who is a Jewish cantor. Many of you met her at my installation. When Sharon was in Houston, she taught across town, but sang the services at a synagogue near where I lived on Friday evenings. We developed a pattern that lasted for a long period of time.  She would fight the traffic to drive from her teaching job to my house on Friday afternoon. (It would take her over an hour.)  When she arrived, stressed and exhausted, she would retire to my guest room and take a nap, followed by some time to pray and prepare for leading worship. Since Friday was her Sabbath, and not mine, I was happy to prepare dinner and set the table. She is a dear friend, and it was a joy for me to have the opportunity to do that. I learned how to cook kosher food, and bake challa. I bought candles and flowers. I used my china and silver. When it was time to eat, she lit the candles and sang the blessing. After dinner, we would go to the service together. I embraced the spirit of Sabbath keeping, and began to apply it more fully in my own life, with my own Sabbath.

Worship, not work. More friends. More time for family.  Relax. Rest. Connect with others, share a meal, play a game, take long walks. No shopping, nothing that doesn’t ‘give life’ or joy. Music, reading – things that feed me. I learned how to feast. On everything good. And let go of the things that drained me.

I became aware of the creative ability of Sabbath-keeping. I became aware of the genius behind it: a whole day of letting God be God and falling into the soft lap of God . . . a whole day of not seeing myself as all-important and the center of the universe. . . . a whole day of being human with the potential of being fully human . . . 

I began to live in a different way on the Sabbath, and it started to give shape and form to my week. I cleaned house before the Sabbath so I didn’t have to do it on Sunday. I cooked ahead so everything was ready. I looked forward to the day, because I prepared for it. I  began my Sabbath on Saturday evening, and I had a true Sabbath sleep that evening. It changed my preaching and my worship leadership, as well. Because preaching stopped being work for me and became more fully an act of worship. That may be hard for you to understand, and it is difficult to explain. But, while writing my sermon is work, delivering it has become an act of worship, a form of offering. A prayer. I truly ‘preach my heart out’ each Sunday . . . I offer myself to God through my words.  Sharon taught that to me. I hope you, too, are pouring out your hearts as well, and I feel you are: I hear you singing your hearts out, playing your hearts out, praying your hearts out.

I am serious when I say I do not work on Sunday. I am, like you, worshipping God. With my whole being. How could I lead you in worship if I were not also worshipping?

Such a small thing, a holy day . . .  but what power it has had to change my life.

What happened?

Did simply ordering my life make that difference, or did I open myself to something larger?  Did I enter a different reality, a different realm when I choose to order my life around the Sabbath?

The peace that I feel on a Sunday is eternal. It has always been there. I simply opened myself to it, made a space for it in me. And I am aware that I can do that on every other day as well.

Holidays do have power to change things --  to re-create. Us. Our days. Our world.

Unlike most secular holidays, the Holy Day we recognize today doesn’t just look back: it looks forward. Some would say it doesn’t look back at all. That Christ has never reigned. That the world has never been fully in Christ’s hands. Many would say “Take a look at our world. It’s a mess! Where is God reigning?”

Our text reminds us that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, and scripture tells us that the world was created through Christ, that all things are complete in Christ.

The Reign of Christ is not only coming, it has always been and is now. We just have not chosen to live in it. It is not a place that we move to. It is an attitude that moves into us. Something we open to.

Christ is in it all.  Christ is how we are to look, how we are to live. The teacher of how the work is to be done.

Christ is the example of what being fully human is like.

Not that we are all to be like Jesus. Jesus was fully Jesus. Jesus was fully who and what he was created to be. We are each of us meant to be fully who we were created to be. Fully Susan, fully Rick, fully Van, fully Jenny, fully Louise, fully Mary Ann, fully Bill, fully Dave. Fully you.

Perhaps that is how the second coming will happen: when we are all, or enough of us are  -- fully, authentically true to being who and what we were created to be in the image of God.  Perhaps when we can get our egos out of the way and allow the image of God to shine fully in and through us, when we are fully human ourselves that is how Christ is going to come again. When we allow love to be all there is in us and all that flows through us, then we can be open to the Reign of Christ.

Which is why I pray and study scripture. I want to nurture the Christ within. It’s going to be a life-long journey.

Last night, I was in the Music Hall, transcendent place that it is, then on the way home, I drove through Over the Rhine.

And I thought: this is how the world is now. This is how my life is, too. Far from what God had in mind.

How can this be? How can these things exist in such close proximity?

We cannot help but look back on the past: our own past, the church’s past and on humanity’s past, and we cannot ignore how things are right now.We cannot miss both the glory and the litter along the way: our mistakes and the mistakes of our foremothers and forefathers in the faith. The landscape is littered with our errors and shortcomings, as well as our shining moments. We cannot hide from them. They are reminders that even the best, as well as the worst, of our human efforts often lead to disillusionment and despair.

It would be easy to be overwhelmed.

Where do we turn for hope? Where can we find grace?

This is the day we remember again the promises of God. This is the day we read texts that remind us that the qualities we seek come from God. This is the day we see God’s gracious intervention in our lives to redeem us from our selves, from the mistakes we have made, the wreckage we have made of parts of our lives, in order to stand claimed once again to be more than we have yet allowed ourselves to be.

Just as we rejoiced in the possibilities of ‘a new regime’ in our nation’s capitol, we rejoice even more surely in the reality of a new regime in our lives and in our world.

It’s a fresh start, rooted in God’s grace and promises of a new dawn.

Here, in the Sunday before we begin again our journey to welcome the Christ again to the world, we remember the goal of God’s regime, the promises of Christ.

We envision and live into the new kin-dom, different from any the world has yet known. When asked what this new kin-dom would be like: Hans Kung had this answer:

“It will be a kin-dom where, in accordance with Jesus’ prayer, God’s name is truly hallowed, God’s will is done on earth, [and men and women] will have everything in abundance, all sin will be forgiven and all evil overcome.

It will be a kin-dom where, in accordance with Jesus’ promises, the poor, the hungry, those who weep, and those who are downtrodden will finally come into their own; where pain, suffering and death will have an end.

It will be a kin-dom that cannot be described, but only made known in metaphors; as the new covenant, the seed springing up, the ripe harvest, the great banquet, the royal feast.

It will therefore be a kin-dom – wholly as the prophets foretold – of absolute righteousness, of unsurpassable freedom, of dauntless love, of universal reconciliation, of everlasting peace. In this sense therefore it will be the time of salvation, of fulfillment, of consummation, of God’s presence, the absolute future.” (Hans Kung, On Being Christian)

I have been told I am a fool for clinging to hope in such things. On more than one occasion. But I am not alone in my foolishness, thank God. I am surrounded by others who live into hope.

Give me foolish over despair any day of the week.

B.A. Garrish relates a story in the book, The Pilgrim Road:

“In one of my favorite Sydney Harris’ columns , he tells of a Quaker friend of his, who walked with him one evening to the newsstand, paid the surley vendor for a paper and thanked him politely. The man said nothing, not even a word of acknowledgment. “A sullen fellow, isn’t he?” Harris remarked. His friend shrugged his shoulders and said: “Oh, he’s that way every night.” Then why do you continue being so polite to him?” The answer was: “Why should I let him decide how I am going to act?”

“Why should I let him decide how I’m going to act?” That, it seems to me, at the most elemental level, is “spiritual dominion”: a sovereign disposition that doesn’t relinquish control over its own inner self. “My friend,” Harris comments, “acts toward other people; most of us react toward them.”

That, at it’s heart, is what the Reign of Christ is about: who will reign in our lives? What will reign supreme in our lives? Will it be it our past failures, the despair the world doles out so freely, or will it be hope in the promises of God?

It is about not only how we choose to live our lives, but what we are going to put out into the universe.

I may or may not be part of changing the world, but I can refuse to let the world change me into less than who I was meant to be. This time of the year, more so than at any other, the pressures on us to conform to the culture are powerful. They are not only outside of us, but they are deep within us, because we are addicted to the culture. When Jesus resisted the pressure to conform, it was not well received. In our gospel text today he stands firm – he will not allow himself to be co-opted.

On this day between giving thanks for the many blessings God has given us and the Advent season where we prepare for Christ to come again – hopefully in each and everyone of us, we are challenged to remember that kingship, for Jesus, was the reverse of what it is considered today; it consists not of a heirarchy of privilege, but of right relations for all, justice and mercy, and transformative love that brings new life. In fact, earlier in Mark, Jesus fled the crowds because he feared that they would try to make him a traditional sovereign, not a beatitude ruler. Today we celebrate Christ as the king of justice, of mercy, of love. In this kin-dom, we are not called to follow, but to lead. We can and must all be beatitude leaders, especially in these bleakest of times. We must maintain our visions, prophesy hope, and remain faithful and committed to the struggle, even and especially when facing so many daily apocalypses and forms of death.

The Revelation to John is all but meaningless to us who live in a "Christian nation" and sing triumphant songs—"Lift High the Cross." The reality faced by the Christians to whom John was writing  is all but lost to us. They were dying for their faith. Our faith, on the other hand, has been crucified by the culture, and we are often blind to that. The faith has been watered down and used to disguise the true gods of our nation.

John writes grace and peace from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first born of the dead. For John, "witness" and "the dead" were synonyms. To be a witness was to be a martyr. The choice was between God and Caesar. You could not have both.

That choice hasn’t changed: we, too, must choose our allegiance. Who will sit enthroned in our hearts and in our lives? Will it be the culture? Our egos? Or will we let Christ reign in our hearts, our lives, our hopes, our dreams?

Who truly is the One you will be expecting these next few weeks—will it be the God who demands that there be no other God beside? The God who comes to the poorest and the weakest and those who cannot even begin to participate in our cultural ‘celebrations.’

Will it be the God who sets you free from your addiction to the culture to be more fully who and what you were meant to be?  Who sits enthroned in your heart?