The Church of the Advent - Sermon by Fr Gray, November 25, 2007, The Feast of Christ the King

I remember when I was a child growing up in Delaware, that my parents one summer, after getting tired of my incessant begging, agreed to take me to Hershey Park, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And if you know what I’m talking about, it’s basically a theme park structured around the idea of chocolate. M & M rides, Chocolate World, Mr. Goodbar walking around in costume, free Hershey kisses to sample – it sounded to me like one of the best places I’d ever heard of. Because most of the time, not always, but most of the time, children like chocolate, children love chocolate, and in that respect, I was very normal indeed. And to have a park, a created world, built around what I loved, well, that just made me happy thinking about it. I went on the internet and discovered that Hershey Park is celebrating their centenary this year, with the tag line – 100 Years of Happy! Happiness, a place where a child, where an adult, where people can find happiness. That sounds a little bit like Paradise, to the ears (and taste buds) of a child, Hershey Park sounded just like Paradise. That this is the way the world should be.

Now before the days of the Internet, before you could instantly find out what’s going on somewhere, before you could learn what you need to know before you go, before those days, you just assumed that the place you wanted to go was open. It was summertime, it was a weekend, what park wouldn’t be open then? And so we made the trip, I was excited, I was looking forward to entering what might as well have been called Paradise. But wouldn’t you know it. It was closed. Posted on a tree, right next to the main entrance: Closed – sorry for the inconvenience. That’s all the sign said. No explanation, no hint as to when it would be open again, if ever.

So you can imagine that being a pretty disappointing day for a kid. We went back home, it wasn’t a really long drive, and next week, my parents took me to Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey instead. And that was great fun. But I kept thinking about the sign on that tree. And even though Great Adventure was great and quite an adventure, it just wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the way the world should be. It wasn’t like Paradise, or at least the way I thought Paradise should be. And I was told, by a makeshift sign on a tree, that I could not enter into Paradise.

Now it wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t get in to Hershey Park. I was just a kid. The people who ran it were responsible, not me. And when you’re a kid, you learn eventually that people let you down all the time. Even parents, even friends. The way the world should be is certainly not the way it is. And people, all the time, are keeping you from getting into Paradise, as it were. They hurt you, they forget about you, they make your life miserable.

Now you may get it before you become a teenager, but it seems like it’s right around that time, when you, when you hit those teenage years, all of a sudden realize that you’re not just being put upon by others all the time. But that you, in fact, are responsible. That you let people down all the time. Even parents, even friends. You in fact seem to actively work against the way the world should be. And you, all the time, are keeping people from getting into Paradise, as it were. You hurt them, you forget about them, you make their life miserable.

It’s a vicious cycle, isn’t it? We do to others as they have done to us, and it’s usually not very pretty. But as with all cycles, they do start somewhere. And in the Judeo-Christian view, it started, of all places, in a park, an enclosed area. It started in a place called Paradise, paradise originally meaning a structured and cultivated environment, where the inhabitants obviously needed to be active and involved in its cultivation, but the work done was complementary rather than adversarial, harmonious rather than hostile. It was created by God, so of course it was good, it was the way it should be, but it wasn’t just the way it should be between people, but the way it should be between God and people. God’s voice was heard in Paradise. God dwelt with his creation. And God provided for the people. He gave them a river from which to irrigate the garden, and there was also a tree, a tree called “the tree of life,” and its fruit was the fruit of life, the sacramental means of conveying full life to people.(1) But the people in Paradise didn’t need to eat the fruit of this tree of life right away. They were in Paradise. This is the way the world should be, and they might eventually need to eat its fruit, but not right now.

And there was another tree in the garden, a tree sometimes called the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” And you know what happens; God tells the people not to eat the fruit of this tree, and they do anyway, and they try to blame it on the snake, they try to blame on each other, but they are culpable, they are responsible for their own disobedience. And God’s voice becomes harder to hear, and all of a sudden, the beautiful garden is gone, Paradise is lost. And even if they knew where it was, even if they had some inkling of what it was like, Paradise was closed to them. As if the tree that they knew they weren’t supposed to eat from, was right there in front of them, on the edge of Paradise, mocking them, with a sign attached to it, Closed. And the other tree, the tree of life, a distant memory. Now more than ever, they needed to eat its fruit, but it was too late. Their lives became hard and bitter, and they began to die.

Now if you were a first-century Jew, you knew this story, and it was a nice story. The way the world should be is always a pleasant idea, but you have to live in the way the world is; the world is thus, and you have to get by. And whether you were a devout Jew or not, there was a very good chance that you viewed the current religious structure as corrupt, that those who were supposed to give examples to the rest of the nation of Israel as to what being chosen by God actually meant, in fact took advantage of those very same people they were supposed to protect. The Temple in Jerusalem that was supposed to be the center of Jewish life, the place where God could once again be heard, was corrupt through and through. And why have anything to do with hypocrites.

But of course, you live with your own hypocrisy quite well. The world may be thus, but you help an awful lot in making it thus. You exploit, too. You lie, cheat and steal, too. You may try to justify it, you may not actually lie, cheat and steal from another Jew, only from the Romans, only from the Gentiles, but it is lying, cheating, and stealing, nonetheless.

And in the midst of this damaged and broken world that you contribute to in your own sinful way, you hear talk of another would-be Messiah. Messiahs come and go, and they all end up the same, executed by the Roman authorities, placed on a cross for anyone else to see who might have ideas of changing the way things are. This will be your fate, too.

But this one, this would-be Messiah, although he kept talking about God’s kingdom, and kept talking about himself as God’s Son, he didn’t seem to be interested in a violent, revolutionary uprising against the enemies of Israel. Which, in some respects, made him even more interesting, at least as a kind of curiosity. He healed the sick, he talked about finding those that were lost, and although he wasn’t violent, he didn’t seem to have much patience for the religious establishment, or at least for their hypocrisy. In fact, the revolution he seemed to be most interested in was calling the chosen people of God back to what they were chosen for in the first place – to be those who lived in a damaged and broken world in order to set God’s world to rights, to be conveyors of life to a world full of death, to bear fruit worthy of God, to participate in God’s reconciling work, because God had not given up on his creation, on his people, and God’s people had been chosen so that they could bring life to the world.

And so, after strangely riding “victoriously” into Jerusalem on a donkey, of all things, he went and cleansed the Temple. Now it’s one thing to speak out against the religious authorities, but this is something altogether different. This is a wonderful way to get yourself in trouble, even if it needs to be done. And just when you were thinking, “You know, maybe I’ll go and see for myself what this Jesus is all about,” your luck runs out. You’re caught. You’re convicted. And as the Romans are fond of doing, you are crucified for what you have done.

But you’re not alone. The one you hoped to see has been brought to you, as you find yourself crucified alongside this Messiah, alongside of Jesus. It’s not surprising that he was crucified, that the religious leaders would find some way to make Jesus less than appealing to the Roman authorities; because revolution, whether violent or not, was still revolution, and it should be stopped. But you can’t help but think that they got it wrong. Sure, you are guilty, but not this one. He’s not to blame. The world may be thus, and the world may have done this to him, but he did not make it so. His message, his actions, his life, may have reminded you a little bit of what you heard life in God’s kingdom should be like. And so you defend him against those who rail against him, you remind them all that all of us are guilty as charged, but that this one has done nothing worthy of this condemnation.

And then you say it. Who knows why you say it, because it’s almost all over for both of you, you’re both about to die. And yet you say, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” You finally found the one that you would gladly call your king, and you acknowledge that, you acknowledge that his life should have been your life, that the pattern you observed should have been one of healing rather than harm, one of love rather than hate, one of reconciliation rather than division. In fact, you might even look on him, just for a second, and see him, this Jesus, hanging there on the cross, but instead of a cross, you see a tree, you see that he has been put upon the wood of a tree, and for a second, that story you remember all too well, how we lost that tree, that tree of life, whose fruit would convey life to whoever ate it, you see that tree. You see the tree of life, right next to you, and you hear the one hanging from it speak to you, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Here, hanging on the cross, is the one who reopened the gates of Paradise, who is, in himself, the very tree of life, and its fruit is made available even to you there on your own cross, to all of us there on the cross, the irredeemably lost has been found, has been saved, has been healed, and communion with God has been restored. Paradise has been regained in this Jesus, the true King of Israel, the true King of all the world.

I’ve since lost my taste for chocolate, for sweets. I don’t know, maybe it has to do with being rejected by Hershey Park that put a bitter taste in my mouth for chocolate. Every now and then, I’ll have a piece, but I’ve lost the taste for it. But I am trying to learn to develop a taste for God. I can remember Fr. Blume, before he left, saying that the true miracle in the Eucharist is not the bread become the flesh of Jesus, but that the bread we use is actually bread in the first place. It doesn’t have a lot of taste. And any resemblance to the bread I normally eat is minimal, at best. But maybe that’s the way it should be. Because maybe this tasteless bread should remind us of the cross. That God in Jesus Christ who hung upon the cross is reconciling the world to himself, and the means by which he is giving us the strength, the courage to participate in this ministry of reconciliation is through his flesh, by eating his body and drinking his blood. But it’s done through the cross; sin is overcome, death is overcome, the works of the devil are overcome, and this food that we eat, this fruit is flavored by the cross, so it doesn’t taste the best, doesn’t taste like chocolate, but it is enough, it is more than enough, it is more than enough for us to live by, it is more than enough for us to start being conveyors of God’s life to others, it is more than enough for us to start participating in God’s reconciling mission for the life of the world.

So this day, my brothers and sisters, let us taste and see how gracious the Lord is. Let us hail him as our King, pattern our lives on his, and give thanks that he has opened the gates of Paradise.

Amen.

(1) John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology: Volume 1, Israel’s Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 119.