John 18:33-37
During the week, I get to spend time serving as a hospital
chaplain. This means I go from room to room asking patients if they would like
to have a conversation. Sometimes, they reply with “but I’m not religious” but
I explain that the chaplains visit everyone and we provide space to talk about
anything on their mind whether or not they are religious. When I knock on the
door of a hospital room, I may have a name and a birthdate but beyond that I
have no idea what to expect behind the door. It could be someone who just
received a devastating diagnosis, it could be someone on the phone fighting
with their spouse, someone happily dressed and ready to go home or someone
prepared to scream at anyone who walks through the door. It really doesn’t
matter because every time I enter into a patient’s room, I see them as a child
of God, no matter what may be happening around them.
But I had an experience the other day that distracted me a
bit. I entered the room and the patient was restrained and next to the bed
stood two armed police officers. Now, this is not a particularly unusual scene
to find- I have visited with plenty of folks who have been incarcerated and
plenty who have had someone in the room to monitor their safety- but for
various reasons I found this room particularly distracting- maybe it was because
my mind naturally kept wondering why the person was incarcerated? Maybe because
during the visit the guards changed shifts which created a bit of a scene. For
whatever reason, I left that room feeling uncomfortable. At first I thought maybe
it was because of all of the distractions, but it wasn’t until I read today’s
Gospel passage in preparation for today, that I realized, that visit wasn’t
sitting right with me because I let all that was going on distract me from the
child of God that was in front of me. I did not fully see and fully focus on
the person and allowed myself to be swayed by all of the things in the room that
took away from their humanity.
As a pastor, I have visited parishioners in prison or jail
before. It’s always a heart-breaking process. There is this person that you
care about and in the situations I was in, they were behind a glass, talking
through a telephone and surrounded by people watching them closely and even for
me, on the other side of the glass, it felt confining- being led through various
steel doors that required ids to open – it felt like a very constricted
environment in many ways, and with many barriers to genuinely connected with
the person behind the glass. So many people watching, so many things in place
to separate.
These are the memories that came to my mind when I read the
Gospel passage for today … Christ the King. Because the Jesus we encounter in
this passage from John is Christ the Prisoner. This part of the Gospel lesson
comes right after Jesus is arrested and “bound,” right after his disciple Peter
denies being his disciple, right after Jesus is smacked in the face and right
after Pilate asks Caiaphas why the religious authorities don’t deal with Jesus
themselves and he says “because they can’t put anyone to death.” And so here we
meet Jesus today. A bound, beaten, chastised and denied prisoner. And right
after this passage he will be flogged and beaten. Our Christ the King is Christ
the Prisoner.
When you think of a population that is most despised, most
looked down on and most hated … it’s usually prisoners. And that’s what Jesus
is in this passage. The one we worship and bow to is the one who is bound and
beaten. The one who we call ruler, King, Savior … is ridiculed, mocked and
despised. It’s all flipped over, topsy-turvy, messed up, askew, not right,
nonsensical. Christ the Prisoner is Christ the King.
The Gospel has a way of doing that, God has a way of doing
that- flipping things around, the last shall be first, the humble lifted up, the
mourning are blessed … the crucified is the savior.
Surely then, those who worship Christ, those who follow the
Gospels will be a people who value the lost, the lonely, the dehumanized, the
poor, the suffering, those cast aside and not the powerful, wealthy and
arrogant … right?
Surely then, those who worship Christ, those who follow the
Gospels will know that when they are downtrodden, rejected, despised, cast out,
thrown away that Christ is with them … right?
Surely then, those who worship Christ, those who follow the
Gospels will know that they do not have to be perfect by the world’s standards,
flawless, without sin and never wrong in order to know Christ’s deep and
endless love … right?
Surely we will know that in the darkest parts of ourselves,
in our shame, in our despair in the parts of ourselves that are too dark, too difficult,
too embarrassing, too imperfect … in those places the light of Christ dwells.
The light of the one who was judged, despised, bound, accused and mocked.
Surely we will know that Christ our King can see behind the masks that we wear-
to the child of God underneath, despite all the distractions, all the chaos,
all the societal standards, all the mistakes and all the flaws. Jesus says “Everyone who belongs to the truth
listens to my voice.” He says this not when he is raised in Glory on the
throne, but when he is bound and beaten and the world has turned against him.
This is the voice that holds the truth. Can we listen?
Can we see beyond the labels and the standards and the
expectations and the distractions and see the light of Christ in one another,
can we see the love of God in our very imperfect world, can we see the Holy
Spirit that dwells within us in our flawed bodies?
There are many different types of people that I encounter
in the hospital and in the world. I see people of all different backgrounds and
religions, people with a criminal background and those who have led a life of tremendous
love and generosity. People who have been lifelong Christians and devoted
themselves to the church and people who have never set foot in a church. One
thing that I find over and over again in all types of people of all ages and
from all backgrounds is that it can be really hard to convince people that they
are loved- like truly loved. I think this is the most heartbreaking part for me
of being a chaplain and it was definitely the most heartbreaking part of being
a youth pastor at our last church and a pastor before that … people are
carrying so much shame. It is not nearly as hard to convince others that
someone else is deserving of God’s unconditional love- even if that person has
done terrible things- but to convince someone that they do- that’s a challenge.
A challenge God was so invested in that God sent God’s only son here to this
world to see us face to face, to endure suffering, to be beaten and bound to
tell us that God loves us … not just them, but us, you and me. The prison
uniform does not distract God from seeing the beloved child within. Your
mistakes and wounds do not distract God from seeing the beloved child you are.
So this is how we end our church year. Next week we begin a
new liturgical year with the first Sunday of Advent, we go back to the
beginning of the Gospel story, but today we come to the end, the last Sunday in
our yearly walk through the Gospels … and our beautiful conclusion is a
prisoner proclaiming the truth before being flogged. This is the hope of the
world, that our brokenness is not the final answer, that our mistakes are not
who we are, that our labels do not define us before the one who created us,
that our hatred and divisions and attempts at dehumanizing one another will
fade and give way to a much greater love, that we are not hopeless, we are not
thrown away, we are not forgotten …. We are made whole, we are forgiven, we are
loved by Christ the Prisoner. This is Christ the King.
No comments:
Post a Comment