November 25, 2007,Last Sunday after Pentecost, All Souls' Episcopal Church

Stir Up Sunday
Luke 19: 24 – 38

Today, we celebrate the feast day of Christ the King. Pope Pius XI instituted this day in 1925. He designated the feast to be celebrated on the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent. He did so, in his encyclical to insure that the Roman Catholic Church remembered to end the liturgical year with the essential theme that in Christ Jesus, “The King of Kings and Lord of Lords”, all things are, and will be, rightfully restored. All evil will be conquered, all disease healed, all natural disruptions will be ended.   All humanity, divided and enslaved by sin, will find its freedom and consummation in Christ the King.

 No wonder church historians came to regard this encyclical as the high point of this pope’s pontificate.  The feast of the reign of Christ at the end of the church year has endured and spread to other liturgical churches….ours included, of course.  All our propers this morning have a common thread of the Kingship of Christ.

 Also in our Episcopal Church, in the l928 prayer book, this Sunday before Advent was often called “stir up Sunday” because the collect began with “Stir up, we beseech thee, Oh Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.”

So, here we are on “Stir up Sunday” The Sunday before Advent. Can we not “Stir up” our thinking of the reign of Christ the King this past church year and think of this Sunday here at All Souls as a gathering of pilgrims…..you and I…. We have been on a journey this past year, and still have places to go, people to meet, prayers to pray, goals to accomplish and much to learn. We meet today at the end of the church year gathered together where we have this opportunity to celebrate our experiences as we partake of the sacraments at the altar….perhaps to meditate, perhaps to reminisce and to pray about what has happened in our lives….. the particular woes and wonders of expeditioning over the past year trying to imagine what lies ahead.

We can ask ourselves meaningful questions to see how….or “if” Christ the King has reigned in our lives and to think how this map of our journey will be plotted for the future, Of course, this brings to mind the old joke……..

Question: How do you make God laugh?

Answer: Tell Him your plans!

 But questions are important here and we must think of the future, always trying to allow Him to lead us.

 What has it meant to you and me to be travelers and followers of “The Way”? What have we learned? Has our understanding of God, our world and ourselves been altered in any way? I guess, quite simply. we must ask……have we changed?

 The answer, in one way, is obvious….Yes!…..Of course we have changed. As we grow older physically, we learn, perhaps, that there are some activities  which we must, or perhaps should give up. These are “givens” and common to us all……but on this “Stir up Sunday” I would ask us to let us look further on and delve into our inner selves, and ask if we have changed spiritually?

 If we had read further on in our Gospel this morning, our Christ gave voice from the cross, “Father, into Thy hands, I commit my Spirit.” Behind each life…behind all life…is a spiritual dimension. Christ pointed to this time and again in His ministry. He tried to make people aware that their real lives are grounded in and destined for the spiritual world. So…..perhaps here is where we should place our emphasis.

 For you see. I can no longer do 50 push-ups in the morning…but….. the growth of spirituality has no bounds in my life and it has no bounds in your life.  If we can become more aware of this on our journey in the year ahead, we can indeed change and blossom even more from within!

 Speaking of growing spiritually, a number of years ago, I became aware of a fact personally that ties in here. I learned that the Spiritual dimension that lies behind all of life can appear more quickly and beautifully in a so called “primitive” culture than in a modern 21st century sophisticated one. We must guard against being simplistic here and painting everything  one way or another, but  this fact was brought home to me when I went to Namibia in Africa to work on rebuilding a mission compound at Odibo which lies near the Angola border. The mission was devastated in the war for independence from South Africa. Bullet holes were everywhere in the brick and stucco, windows gone, doors ripped off. We were able to accomplish quite a bit of reconstruction. In the process, I got to know the Diocesan Bishop Shahala and his Suffragan Bishop Petrus. Both men were truly filled with the Holy Spirit and were accomplishing a blossoming of Anglicanism that could be considered miraculous. But I must say that this is the story practically all over Africa. The Spirit of these people (and this is my main focus) was so profound and so deep. Their worldly possessions were nothing by our standards, of course, but their spirit and their awareness of “Christ the King” in their lives was truly inspirational! While I was there, Bishop Shahala confirmed about 100 confirmands at a humble church in the bush. Bishop Petrus confirmed 85 in western Namibia. Anglicanism is on fire in Africa. It is on fire because it is traditional and believes in the Bible and does not slant its words and meaning to a contemporary culture.

 I learned much from this experience; the spiritual dimension was alive and well. Christ the King was truly King to these beautiful people. These people are so very open with their love and simplicity and receptivity to the working of the Holy Spirit……BUT….. a very important fact I wish to express…..many of you are too! Many of you too are filled with the Holy Spirit. You see, in many ways, and I say this positively, they are as children. You and I are so sophisticated and surrounded by many diversions and detours that these wonderful people do not have. Our task is to obviously be thankful for the blessings we have and to use our blessings and to use our sophistication and to use our talents to reach and touch others in the name of Christ the King.

 Christ said that we must come to Him as children…..so if and as the world tries to wrestle away our innocence and idealism for us as “striving” Christians, we must realize that it is never too late to try to regain the better parts of them. It is never too late in a world of electronic banking and space travel to reach out and to reclaim the faith, hope, trust and simplicity we had as children. as we move on in our pilgrimages in the years ahead.

 It is our call as Christians to do all we can to bring that spiritual dimension  to the forefront of life, and need be, free it from the things that might bind, sidetrack and restrict it.

 It is never too late to reach out for the “Unseen Kingdom” We must call upon all the best dimensions within ourselves so that we can joyfully serve  one another. This is what Jesus did, and it is what Ralph Waldo Emerson was talking about when he made these remarks in his great essay entitled “The Oversoul”. He wrote this:

 “The great distinction between teachers sacred or teachers literary between poets like Herbert and poets like Popebetween philosophers like Spinoza and philosophers like Locke between men of the world who are (reckoned) accomplished  talkers, and a fervent mystic prophesying from his thought…the distinction is that one class speaks from within and the other class from without..  Jesus speaks always from within.  And in a degree that transends all others.  In that is the miracle.”
(End of quote)

 That is what our lives are intended to be: souls speaking to souls; spiritual reality speaking to spiritual reality!

 Today is the New Years Eve of the church calendar, Next Sunday, as we begin our next liturgical year, we pick up the Gospel of Matthew to help us prepare for the coming of the Christ-child…..the coming of Christ the King!! Will we be open to the spiritual presence….as children…..as Jesus asks us to be? What do we proclaim to the world from within our being? Perhaps we might think of those “stirred up” African Anglicans. I know that we have things that we can teach them, but what does their story teach us?

 The complete collect for this Sunday from the 28 Prayer Book reads:

 “Stir up, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the wills of Thy faithful people,
that they plenteously bringing forth the fruits of good works,
may by Thee be plenteously rewarded through Jesus Christ our Lord”
Amen

If we allow Christ the King to reign in our lives and stir us up, we will be plenteously rewarded with Eternal Life. Christ the King is the final destination….the final word over all. Christ the King is the unambiguous reality in a world fraught with chaos and bewilderment.

 Affirming now that Jesus reigns as Christ the King

Come, let us adore Him!

(Back to Sermon Directory)