Christopher H. Edmonston

Out of this World

November 22, 2009

Psalm 132

John18: 33-38

I.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, my favorite celebration of the year. It might be channeling my inner Normal Rockwell, or my inner Hallmark card, but the sentimentalist in me is warmed by the thought of families gathering around table, sharing a meal, and expressing gratitude for blessings.

The pastor in me has always loved Thanksgiving. My guess is that it may be the one occasion each year when some families pray. People who don’t take the time, or have the practice of prayer pause on the last Thursday in November and with weak voice or strong offer to God a word of gratitude. I cannot tell you how many people have told me over the years, “The only time I ever heard my Daddy pray was on Thanksgiving.”

There never was a family, a marriage, a home that was negatively impacted by too much prayer.

II.

Thanksgiving is also a time when the focus is on food, and this warms the inner Southerner in me. Always has. Memories flood the mind and stomach of recipes and grandmothers, of biscuits and pie. Sweet potato pie. Pumpkin pie. Rhubarb pie. Oreo pie. Chocolate pie. Chess pie. Cherry pie. Lemon pie. Pecan pie. Well, you get the direction that this is going.

I only need close my eyes for a moment, and soon the tune of somebody long ago enters the reams of recollections:

“Grandma Rubye, you have outdone yourself with this Chocolate pie.”

“Aunt Doris, these Chicken and Dumplins are so good I’m about to drink the gravy right off-a-my plate.”

“Aunt Rosie, these cinnamon biscuits are out of this world.”

“Would you look at Uncle Neal’s tomatoes, how does he grow those tomatoes?”

“I don’t know but pass ‘em back ‘round again. They are that good.”

“Out of this world, Uncle Neal, your tomatoes are out of this world.”

III.

Most of us I think know the meaning of this phrase. When something is “out of this world” it means it is so good that it must be from somewhere else. That it is so far beyond the normal – good, better, best, out of this world – that we can’t imagine anything that good. Usually in the South when we say this we are talking about food. But sometimes we use it or phrases like it to describe other events or other feats – “he plays basketball like he is from another planet; like he’s not from this world.”

IV.

As a reflection of the mind of God, I have long believed and proclaimed that there is an interior and inherent genius of the Christian faith. And our faith has long held of Jesus Christ that he was in the world, but not of the world. That he was man and he was God. That he was sacrifice and he was victorious.

“What have you done?” Pilate asks Jesus in our gospel lesson this morning. “What have you done? Are you who they say you are?”

Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were my followers would be fighting for me even now.” Pilate, Jesus is saying, don’t you get it? I am out of this world. I am something wholly different.

If you have ever been around genius you have had this experience. If you have ever been near virtuoso you may understand what Pilate must have felt. Something greater than you is occurring, and what you thought you knew is tested, and all the presumptions just might turn out to be wrong.

Tell me, Pilate begs, what are doing? What have you done?

“My kingdom is not of this world.”

Pilate cannot possibly understand.

The question is, can we? Do we? What game is Jesus playing at here?

V.

This week in your mail you’ll be getting your Advent devotional from the church. The devotional is based on the writings of C.S. Lewis, one of the finest Christian minds of the past century. In one entry, Lewis writes, “Enemy-occupied territory – that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed…and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” When you go to church, Lewis thinks, you are following the king in a secret campaign – a campaign that is not of this world. A campaign against the strife, evil, and death that haunts so much of life.

“That is why the enemy” – that is evil or the devil – “is anxious to prevent us from going” to church, to prayer, to faith. I think C.S. Lewis is right.

Could it be that every time you pray, whether the prayer bears immediate fruit or not, that you are following the king and standing up to the sin that has capture so much of the world around us?

Could it be that every time we open the Bible, and look into its wisdom and speak its words of grace we are following the king and standing up to shame that robs too many of us of the goodness of this life, the shame that commands the headlines?

Could it be that every time we embrace a friend in a moment of failure and we offer them a word of hope we are standing up to enmity – to the conflict that seems to rule the Earth?

Could it be that when we act in ways that world cannot expect we are in fact proclaiming the kingdom of the one who conquered by dying and who gave the profits of his power away?

VI.

Earlier this week, my wife met me in the kitchen and told me that she had just heard about the 5 year old girl in Fayetteville. A little girl savaged by the very people she was born to trust. We both got a little teary talking about it.

I must be honest with you and say that even in the terrible events at Ft. Hood, and the menace of recession, and the terrible complications of health care, that the horror that has played itself out in Fayetteville and in Lee County has shaken me more than the others as I am a father of very young children.

On Wednesday someone asked me what I thought about it and I said simply, “That is just the devil. Just evil. No other way to think about it.” And on Thursday my wife asked me about it in the kitchen. What is wrong with the world? Why do people give in to evil? How can this happen?

While there is no simple answer, here is what I do know, and this is akin to what I said – that while we are haunted by such evil, we are not controlled by it; we stand against it, we people of faith, every day and every time we help a child, or we say grace, or we create a safe and loving place in our homes or at our church for children to come and hear the truth and learn of goodness and Jesus and love. Every time we do such things we say no to evil and yes to Christ.

What I was saying was that we, those of us who see evil when a child is lost or a war has begun are out of this world.

And, best yet, we are in good company. Because the Jesus who is the leader of that effort welcomed the children and he blessed him and gathers them up when they lost from the clutches of safety. We stand with the rightful king who has landed, who makes a kingdom not of this world, a kingdom free from sin, and we march with him to goodness and to glory.

“My kingdom,” Jesus said, “is not of this world.”

VII.

This idea is of course is hard to grasp. This conversation with Pilate is among the most important of Jesus’ life and it is the most important of John’s gospel.

Pilate of course is looking for a king like that described in Psalm 132; a king of worldly power and political might. Jesus runs the opposite way, time and time and time again. In the political world, kings never sacrifice anything. Christ our king sacrifices everything.

As those of you who attended the Albemarle luncheon this week were reminded as Mrs. Dinny Sisley told the story of Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots and the murderous means by which they maintained power – kings and queens of this world, destroy rivals, they raise menacing armies, they enforce their will and don’t really care about who suffers in the process. What does King Herod do when he hears a rival child, a rival king has been born? Don’t remember? He rains terror upon the families of Bethlehem on the darkest day of Christmas and his armies murder many children in the chance of killing the child who would be king, Messiah, Emmanuel – the Jesus who we honor and worship even now.

Only Herod cannot end the reign of Jesus because Herod is protecting the wrong kind of kingdom. Jesus did not come to dominate our lives or collect our taxes – Jesus came to rule our hearts and shepherd our souls.

“My kingdom is not of this world.”

VII.

I for one am glad that Jesus is out of this world. If C.S. Lewis was right, then I’ll take my place in the army of the king the world does not expect. An army whose weapons are prayer, Bible study, worship, stewardship, and breaking of bread and the pouring of cup at the Lord’s table. After all, the only military order Jesus ever issues is to Peter on the night of his arrest – put your sword back in its sheath. Just like this pivotal conversation with Pilate, where Pilate can see neither the truth before him nor the kingly grace all around him – Jesus’ command to Peter, to act differently than the world expects, happens in John 18 at verse 11. That both of these moments should happen within twenty five verses of one another is no coincidence.

IX.

It is sometimes said that Rome, for all its power was not felled by Goths or the Visigoths or any one people.

Instead, Rome’s domination was slowly withered from within by a people who did the unthinkable: the Christians took in widows. They fed orphans. They would not deny their faith in the face of death itself. They believed in life eternal. They turned the other cheek instead of begetting violence for violence. In short, the Roman heart, long in love with domination and violence, was transformed by a king who was not of the world. They were bested by man they had killed in far off Jerusalem, a man whose name they could barely remember. I wonder, whose legacy has lasted longer – Jesus or Rome’s? Which kingdom are the lessons of history calling us to follow?

That Jesus is our king I have little doubt.

That he is out of this world I am assured. Let us follow Christ our king where he leads – to a kingdom not often from this world.

A kingdom that greets poverty with aid.

That says mission when there is need.

A kingdom that says with resolute courage and conviction, NO! to evil.

That welcomes children and gives them safe passage and teaches them the truth.

That prays in the face of loss.

That hopes in the midst of despair.

That says life in the face of death.

A kingdom which is, dare I say it?, even sweeter to the soul than Aunt Rosie’s cinnamon biscuits.

To arms!

To arms -- my friends.

We follow Christ our King because we, the baptized and redeemed, belong to him and we are called to follow in Godly allegiance.

Amen.