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Did you know that this is the last Sunday of the Christian calendar? Next week
we start a brand new year with the first Sunday of Advent. This Sunday is known
traditionally as Christ the King Sunday. These days, it’s usually called The
Reign of Christ. Whatever we call it, the meaning is subversive. Most of us
associate kingship with absolute authority and
the power to do pretty much anything
you want to do with your subjects. But
when the author of Colossians prays
that we “be made strong with all the
strength that comes from his glorious
power”, he’s referring to quite a
different kind of power (Colossians
1:11).
The “glorious power” is power
as exercised by the Christ. There’s a
story told by Thich Nhat Hahn, the
Buddhist priest, about the Buddha and
Christ getting together for a visit.
Buddha asks for permission to serve
Christ tea, but Christ insists on serving
tea to the Buddha. I’m sure they
worked it out, and I’m sure one or the
other graciously received the gift of the
other. The point is that the “glorious
power” is the power of love and
humility that issues in the desire to be
of service. There really are only two
forms of power: power as domination
and power as love. Every religious
tradition teaches that the spiritual
journey from the one form of power
to the other. The writer of Colossians
says it this way: “God has rescued us
from the powers of darkness and
transferred us into the kingdom of his
beloved Son…”(vs13).
The power of darkness is power
exercised as domination, whether by
kings and queens, corporate bullies,
deviant priests, abusive men,
manipulative women, or by bullies of
all stripes and colours. The other
reading for this Sunday is always the
story of the crucifixion, depicting the
apparent triumph of the powers of
darkness over the power of love. I say
“apparent” because the claim at the
heart of the Christian faith is that this
is precisely the event that unmasked
the powers – to use theologian ,Walter
Wink’s, phrase. This gruesome
execution was the best that the
domination system could throw at the
subversive love of Christ – and it came
up hopelessly short. It only served to
reveal the dirty little secret – that those
who dwell in the kingdom of darkness
serve the end of violence. They cannot
tolerate love because love topples
kingdoms based in domination.
The powers of domination are
alive and well within each one of us.
Pretty much our entire culture, along
with the world governance system,
Page 2 of 4 Canadian Memorial United Church Sermon November 25, 2007
currently functions from a place of
darkness. This is because we live in a
state of separation from God. In this
state of separation, we function from a
place within that author Bill
McKibbon calls “hyper-individualism”.
We think and act as though we exist
disconnected not only from each
other, but also from the earth, and
from the Divine Source. From this
mindset of disconnection, we live in a
world in which the only way forward is
competition for scarce resources, and
being “on guard” as our national
anthem puts it – both as nations and as
individuals. The enemy lurks at every
turn. We end up committing acts of
violence on all levels - physical,
emotional, mental and spiritual.
To be “redeemed”, using the
language of the writer, is to overcome
this false sense of disconnection. This,
in short, is the spiritual journey – the
sacred transfer from the powers of
darkness to the kingdom of the
beloved Son – the Kingdom of the
Christ. You may have noticed that
Jesus, as Sovereign One, committed no
act of violence at any time. The closest
he came was when he overturned
tables in the temple, an act of protest
against the religious establishment that
hurt no person. His mission was to
help us to dwell within an alternative
kingdom, what he called the kingdom
of God. This is an inner knowing that
we have been set free from the illusion
of isolation and can choose to act from
a place of love.
I suggest in my book dropping
the “g” and talking about the kin-dom
of God. This captures the spiritual
truth that there is no disconnection
anywhere in the universe. We are kin
with God, with each other and with all
creation. To “share in the inheritance
of the saints in the light” (vs.12) is to
understand this radical
interconnectedness. Those who are “in
the light”, are not just those that have
left this world. They are the
enlightened ones, those who have
come to this awareness. The reason I
like the metaphor of the Holy One
when referring to God is because I will
often in my own mind put the
emphasis on the second word – One.
The Holy One, or Holy Oneness is the
sacred unity; God in us, Us in God,
creation in us, us in creation; God in
creation; creation in God. This is our
inheritance, to know this divine
kinship for ourselves: to overcome the
illusion of radical disconnection and to
be in the light of radical
connectedness.
Leonard Cohen is a national
treasure. He wrote a song called You
Have Loved Enough. It’s a song that
conveys that he has been transferred
from the powers of darkness to the
kingdom of the beloved Son – the fact
that he’s Jewish matters not a whit. In
the song he arrives at a deep gratitude
that the Holy One kept him from any
kind of belief system until he could
learn the wisdom lesson that our
actions are intended to flow from the
heart of the Holy One, through us –
those actions and beliefs that originate
from our identity as disconnected
beings are inevitably tainted with fear.
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Here are a few lines from the
song that expresses his awareness:
“ I am not the one who loves;
it’s Love that seizes me.
When hatred with his
package comes, you forbid
delivery”
And when the hunger for Your
touch rises from the Hunger,
You whisper “you have
loved enough, now let Me be the
lover.”
Using Christian language, the
author of Colossians attempts to
describe the same ineffable mystery.
The language is foreign to our ears
because we don’t understand
cosmology in the 21st century.
Cosmology can be defined as the big
story we tell ourselves about ultimate
reality. Modernism has given us many
gifts, but it stripped us of the Big
Sacred Story. So, let’s reacquaint
ourselves with some of this 1st century
cosmology: the author of Colossians
says that the Christ is the “image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of
creation” (v.15), Christ is the Creator
of all things visible and invisible (v.16).
“Everything, whether thrones or
dominions or rulers or powers, were
created through him and for him”
(v.16). He “holds all things together”
(v.17). And finally, he was raised from
the dead so that all powers would
know that he is “first place in all
things” (v.18). All of this complex
cosmology can be boiled down to the
last phrase. He is establishing that the
love of the Christ already is the first
principle; this love created the
universe; the love of Christ already is
the truth, already is the way. Our job is
to wake up, over and over again, until
we have put “first things first”.
Leonard Cohen awakens to the
truth that his hunger for the intimacy
of another human being arises from
the Hunger (capital H) – that is, the
Hunger for intimacy with the divine.
Then, and only then, the Holy One is
able to get the message through to
him. She whispers to him: “You” –
meaning his disconnected self – “have
loved too much, now let Me be the
lover.” In other words, step aside for
just a moment, so that the love you are
seeking to give and receive can flow
from the Love that is the source of
your yearning. Let the One who is first
place in all things – the Holy Oneness
- take the helm.
So many romantic affairs occur
because this yearning for intimacy with
the Holy One is confused with the one
who triggered this yearning. I was
listening to a song on my I Pod last
week. A truly heartbreaking song about
a young man who is high on drugs and
spots a woman on the street with
another man, but who smiles at him as
they pass. He is smitten. Her beauty
seems otherworldly. He falls in love
with her in an absolute fashion,
knowing that he will never be with her.
The song is excruciatingly beautiful
and poignant, precisely because his
longing for a Transcendent Love, for
his first love, was awakened. His love
Page 4 of 4 Canadian Memorial United Church Sermon November 25, 2007
for her had risen from his hunger for
Love in Absolute form. Chances are
that if he could have been with her, he
would have very quickly begun to
notice her flaws and blemishes. His
disenchantment would have been
acute. There is so much beauty in the
world, in people and in creation,
because God is so beautiful. All life, all
love, all beauty, all goodness, all truth,
all human longing is sacramental. It’s
all a visible manifestation of the
invisible love of Christ who is the First
Principle. But these visible
manifestations are icons; we should
look through them on to the heart of
the Holy One. Don’t expect your
spouse or your boyfriend, or your
painting or your book or the piece of
music you wrote, to fulfill the longing
in your heart for the Oneness from
whom all these blessings flow. It is too
much for any single creature to bear.
We are all beautiful, but partial,
intimations of the Holy One with
whom our hearts long to realize our
unity. Only when we love the Absolute
are we able to truly love the partial.
This is why Jesus concurs with the
heart of the Jewish faith that the
greatest commandment is to love God
with all our heart and soul and mind –
then love our neighbour as our self.
The author of Colossians says
that Christ was the one in whom “all
the fullness of God was pleased to
dwell” (1:19). This is the radical edge
of Christian spirituality – the claim that
Love itself, the First Principle, took on
flesh in order to help us make this
journey is from the powers of darkness
to the kingdom of the Beloved Son.
The one we call the Christ experienced
life in all its glory and agony – the
beauty and the violence, the dignity
and the disaster of humanity, the
goodness and the evil, and had only
compassion – compassion for our slow
and halting attempts to come home to
the heart of God. On the cross, his
outstretched arms embraced each and
every one of us, saying, “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what
they are doing”. It is this unfailing love
that draws us, that encompasses us,
and that reconciles us to the very heart
of God.
To confess that the Christ
reigns in our life is to follow our
yearnings back to the Source and
surrender our small and fearful selves
to the Love that is our alpha and our
omega, our beginning and our end. It
is to give the Christ the rightful status
of being “first place in all things”.
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