[Propertalk] Christ the King Sunday

[Ann Fontaine]

 From Lane Denson - Out of Nowhere
Christ, the King / Recovery Sunday

A twelve-step meeting was just concluding when a young woman suddenly  
blurted out her name, shouted that she was an alcoholic, then  burst  
into tears and rushed out of the room. An older woman followed and saw  
her seated over in a darkened corner sobbing her heart out. She  
approached  and embraced her and speaking gently, said, "My dear, just  
let us love you until you can come to love yourself."

In this simple, touching encounter, there is revealed what Twelve-Step  
programs are all about. As well, there is witnessed, if not at all  
consciously, what the Gospel and the Gospel's church are all about.  
Somebody knows that or we wouldn't be celebrating Recovery on the same  
day we keep the annual Feast of Christ, the King. It is no  
coincidence, for these two events are both about the same thing.

They are both about love and, if you will, about justice and inclusion  
and servanthood, the profoundest kind of evangelism. They are  about  
our coming to love ourselves and our neighbor and God and about  
finding a safe place where that can be done. Another way to put this  
is that these two events conjoined are about our recovering what it  
means to be human, what it means to live in that image of God, to  
reclaim and to live into that being which is the created gift of God's  
imagination. It is the Great Commandment to love at work so that the  
Great Commission to make disciples can faithfully be fulfilled.

Our prayer book catechism puts it this way. To be human is to be  
created in the image of God, and that means to be free to choose, free  
to choose to love, to reason, to create, and to live in harmony with  
all of creation and with God (BCP p 845). And to whom do we look as   
model for that? We look to the Word made flesh. We look to God's  
beloved son in whom God is well pleased. We look to God incarnate, we  
look to the one to whom God asks us to listen and to behold.

And perhaps the greatest irony of all this majestic Way and Truth and  
Life is that this One is come to be our King, not to rule in the  
manner of empire to which we  so often seem to aspire, but rather to  
lead in the manner of a servant. This Jesus is God's paradox, God's  
evangel, the One whom we as his beloved children and as his church  
must look and become.

It is commonly thought that one turns to the church to become more  
spiritual, that this is our calling. But the events we remember this  
day affirm just the opposite. Our vocation is not to be more  
spiritual, for we are already that by God's gift. Our vocation is to  
be more human and by our Lord's witness to us, to be servant leaders,  
to model in our churches what it means to be human, to be a place  
where people can come and practice their own humanity, a rehearsal  
hall where we can become proficient at serving and witnessing to the  
world a community where people can be loved until they can love  
themselves and thus fulfill God's Great Commandment.

But this Recovery Sunday is also about addiction.

If statistics mean anything at all, there's probably not a family or a  
friend represented here today that has not known its fabric severely  
torn by the intrusion of  addiction in one of its many and often  
subtle forms. And if we are fortunate, we have also seen the creative  
healing which can result in the miracle of the process of recovery  
that so often can be the consequence of some twelve-step program.

We must broaden our understanding of addiction. Perhaps we have  
already  learned or will soon learn, Satan to the contrary, that  
addiction's tentacles extend far beyond the chemicals such as  
nicotine, alcohol, and the other crippling narcotics. For addiction is  
any compulsive, habitual behavior that limits, that compromises the  
freedom of human desire, that jeopardizes our God-given vocation to  
become human.

The brilliant story teller Madeleine L'Engle writes of a friend who    
despaired of seeking help from the church for her addiction. She had  
dropped out and turned to a twelve-step program. When Madeleine asked  
her why, she was startled to hear her friend's tearful reply. "Because  
this simple twelve-step program knows who is the enemy."

Addiction in all its forms is our enemy at all levels of life, whether  
it be addiction to power or to greed or to war or to orthodoxy or to  
tradition or to whatever. It affects all our relationships. It is  
habitual, and it is a behavior, and it lurks. Oh, how subtly does it  
lurk. By the power of its subtlety, we may never know it, for denial  
is not a conscious act until it is thwarted, and even then, we'll do  
almost anything to admit that it exists, and then to come to terms  
with its demands.

This Sunday is about the recovery of our humanity -- from the throes  
of addiction and from our failure to live in the image in which God  
has created us. But it is also a Sunday when we are shown what to do  
with that gift of recovery. This Jesus-model of what God means by  
kingdom is to be a servant leader. It is the way God wants us to use  
this gift of our humanity and the church to recover it, to be a  
resident colony of heaven, and to remind us that this is why God calls  
us to be here.

Servant leadership is the timeless story of the gospel. Whether in  
church or state, it never causes or embraces schism. It only exposes   
the divisions that already there, opening them to the reconciling work  
of servanthood, the true leadership for the third millennium. Its lack  
is our central problem in the church. It is no longer possible for  
leadership to commend itself alone with external credentials, with  
"orthodoxy" or with "churchmanship" or even with the Bible alone apart  
from community [and certainly not with shades of purple].

Without an evident depth of integrity, the authority of election or  
ordination in and of themselves simply do not carry the freight for  
most people in or out, especially out, of the church. The single  
largest segment in our religious population is made up of what the  
pollsters call the "decoupled," those who cherish a belief in God, but  
no longer attend or support a church, what some have called the  
"alumni association." One reason for this is that spiritual and moral  
mediocrity in leadership inevitably receives mediocre response in  
return.

The late Bishop Bennett Sims of Atlanta, in his splendid book on  
servanthood,  is convinced that there resides even now in the church  
the kind of servant leadership essential for a redemptive ministry to  
take hold and flourish. For Christian faith is ironic, not heroic as  
some would make it, and thus makes considerable demands on our  
imaginations.

Assume a position of leadership, he suggests, then give its powers  
away. Take authority, but never use the instruments of coercion you  
possess. Embrace and include the weak and the unappreciated; honor  
them and allow them to make decisions. Refuse the crown unless all are  
crowned and do not glory in the trappings of office.

Listen often; pontificate never. Disdain competition and refuse to win  
if there are to be losers. When you encounter fear or anger, do not  
nurture it or use it to your own advantage. Ask embarrassing questions  
when in the presence of venerated hierarchies. Insist that those over  
whom you may have authority claim their freedom and exercise it  
joyfully and creatively, even permitting them to fail. When confronted  
with hate and fear, venture love. Bear pain rather than inflict it.  
Risk everything in the pursuit of your calling.

"Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice," Jesus said (Jn 18.37).  
The church and our congregations cannot expect the world to get the  
drift until we, ourselves, are deeply embracing servant leadership and  
modeling this kind of ministry for all to see, recovering their vision  
into the kingdom of God that awaits us and into which Christ, the  
King, would lead us.

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The Rev. Ann Fontaine
Lander, Wyoming