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A Sermon for DaySpring
By Eric Howell
“The Power of Grace and Peace”
Revelation 1:4-8
Christ the King Sunday
November 22, 2015
All of our faith leads to this . . .every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and
under the earth and every tongue confess Jesus Christ as King of King and Lord of
Lords. The humble servant washing feet, ministering to the sick, showing
compassion for the sinner is also the king of the universe, revealed in his glory as
the alpha and omega, the beginning of all and the end to which all creation bends
and for which all creation was brought into being.
We come to the end of the Christian year, of all things. And it’s big. This is not a
time for small things, for minutiae or for middling words. This is a day for the epic,
the important, the life-changing and world shaping, even if the shape of the epic is a
loaf of bread and a cup of wine.
That’s part of the wonder of the Christian life: the big and epic are found right in the
stuff of life.
There are some moments that feel big and important. Some of them are obvious.
They are big and important because you know going into them that they are big and
important—the wedding day, having a baby, the death of a parent. Those are big
moments in life. You already know they are.
There are some moments that seem big even if you can’t quite yet understand in
what ways they are big. I’ve been in more than one conversation this week about
what seem like big and important things. So have many of you. I’ve been in
conversations with young adults about their vocations and careers and what do I do
now that it looks like I can’t get into law school. I’ve been in conversations with
children who have lost a parent and what do I do now that he’s gone.
I’ve been in conversations about the church and it’s life together and what do we do
now that we’ve got some important decisions to make. I’ve been in conversations
about the city and its way of life and what do we do to make things a little more just
for a few more people.
And I’ve been in conversations about the world, and what do we do now that it
seems that the world has changed in some way. That’s what I’ve heard folks say this
week. They said it better than I could express it. They said, “I don’t understand
everything that has happened in the world, but what happened in Paris seems like a
big deal.” With everything else going on in their immediate lives and in front of their
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faces, in quieter moments, a lot of people say: this seems huge, like the world has
tilted a little on its axis and I’m not sure it’s going to tilt back upright for a long time.
If Paris were a random, isolated natural disaster, maybe people wouldn’t feel that
way. But it’s not a random, isolated tragedy; it is an evil in a file marked uh-oh that
includes mental pictures from Beirut, the skies over Sinai, Nigeria, now Mali, and, of
course, includes the men, women, children, and possibly, I guess, terrorists coming
here.
We say “It seems” like a big deal because history has not processed this yet. We
cannot begin to know yet whether we will remember this as the beginning of some
seismic shift in the world or whether it will be forgotten by all but the survivors’ and
victims’ families. We just don’t know yet. We don’t have vision to know yet, but
something inside us says: uh-oh, this seems like a big deal.
Shortly after the attacks on the United States in 2001, the common phrase then was
“The world changed on 9/11.” I remember my professor, Stanley Hauerwas, quietly
reminding us: “The world didn’t change on September 11, 2001. The world revealed
itself on September 11, 2001. The world changed in 33 AD when Christ was raised
from the grave.”
I’ve wondered about that since then. In light of everything that seems to have
totally changed about life since 9/11, can we really say it didn’t change the world? I
guess this is where perspective matters, and for Christians our perspective, our lens,
is always through 33 AD, the death and resurrection of the son of God.
Remembering that the world changed in 33 AD is an important reminder that our
perspective is that Christ, who hung on a cross, is also the Lord of all. Christ the
King Sunday, the book of Revelation, the affirmations in the Apostle’s Creed, and the
end of the Lord’s Prayer all point in the same direction, “thine is the kingdom and
the power for ever.” For all that we suffer and for all the pain and uncertainty in the
world and all the evil that is unleashed in all the ways it is unleashed, creation does
not ultimately hang in the uncertain balance between good and evil. The path to the
throne goes through the cross; the path of faithfulness goes through patience and
suffering. But all paths lead to God who holds all and who is the head of all.
For Christians who remember the cross, that the world is a violent place where evil,
persecution, and injustice roam, is not a surprise or a new revelation or anything
that Jesus didn’t already know for sure when he came. Lest we get too dark in the
hole here, let us also affirm the world isn’t always a dark, dystopian existence—far
from it—but it has never really been any different than holding the reality that the
world can be wonderful and awful, light and dark, hopeful and seemingly hopeless.
And it’s not a duality between the two. To live with faith in this world is sometimes
to hold some real suffering.
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It’s all of it held together. God holds it together and nothing escapes God’s sight or
concern. One of the words that shows up in Revelation more than any other book is
Almighty. God Almighty. The word Almighty means God all-ruling, God allpowerful. Another translation is God who holds all things. I like that. God holds all
things together.
The early generation Christians understood full well the dangers of the world.
Revelation, even with all its scary images, is an assurance to them that God still
holds all things, that God is still all powerful, that Christ is still on the throne of
heaven.
They lived in a world of a looming empire, crushing armies on the march, the violent
persecution of God’s people, and the very real sense that they were swept up in an
epic collision course between good and evil.
It is all the more remarkable and important then that this Revelation, with cleareyed awareness of the world, begins not with fear or anxiety or despair, but a word
of hope that transcends fear: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was
and who is to come.
To a people who were scared, conflicted, and hurt, those were the opening words:
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.
It’s as if a question is posed to each of us. Which is going to loom larger in the world:
fear and anger or grace and peace, retribution and division or grace and peace, the
violent way or the way of grace and peace?
Maybe it doesn’t seem like a fair contest given the nature of reality like 9/11 or Paris
or our own divisions, but don’t underestimate the power of grace and peace. They
are the duct tape by which God Almighty holds all things together. They are the first
two gifts given to churches and Christians in Revelation. Neither is weak nor cheap.
Grace is a gift that finds hope in despair, and forgiveness in hurt. God’s grace saves
us and sustains us and has the power to reconcile enemies. U2’s song “Grace” has a
poignant line: “Grace finds beauty in everything. Grace makes beauty out of ugly
things.”
Grace is a gift. Peace is a gift too. Recollecting the Hebrew notion of shalom, peace
is wholeness and completeness. It is more than the absence of conflict, but a deep
abiding sense of belonging to another through differences and despite divisions.
Neither avoids suffering or promises a way to avoid it. There will be suffering in the
world, in our relationships. We will suffer pain. Sometimes we will cause it in
others. One of you reminded me recently that the root word of suffering is the same
root as patience.
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In the opening of Revelation, the Lord God Almighty of grace and peace is called the
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end. In their own way, grace is the beginning
and peace is the end to which grace leads. Grace is the first step; peace is the end to
which grace begins to make a way.
Through Revelation we have spiritual vision to know the pain and suffering in front
of us. . .and also see Christ as the beginning and end, the head of all, the almighty
one seated on the throne for all time and beyond time.
That brings us here, to the Table of the Lord where the exalted and ultimate is real
and present. We approach the Lord’s Table as a remembrance of the last supper
Jesus shared with his disciples. And so we approach it with a thankful humility
before his suffering, mindful of his broken body and spilt blood to save sinners.
We also approach the Lord’s Table as a promise of the feast we will share with him
and with one another in the day to come. And so we approach it with a hopeful
patience, waiting for his grace, waiting for his peace to come to all creation. Until
that day, we wait and hope for the day when every tear will be wiped away.
Christ is King and is drawing us to what will be: the heavenly feast to which all the
peoples, nations, and tribes come streaming by grace, in peace, in unity. This is our
hope, as distant as it seems in weeks like this one. This Table is the promise and
God does not break promises.
This is God who was and who will be and who is here, present to us. As we come, let
our prayer be, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done.” May the day come soon and
until then may we, who are held by God who holds all, hold one another and the
world a little longer with a little more grace and the hope of a little more peace.
Copyright by Eric Howell, 2015