Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
This Sunday is a significant milestone, marking our first full Christian year together.
A year in which we have journeyed through “extraordinary time,” waiting with expectancy in Advent, celebrating God’s enfleshed presence with Christmas, walking the Way of the Cross during Lent, finding new life through Easter, receiving a fresh anointing of the Spirit at Pentecost: “extraordinary time” where we celebrate those “mighty acts of God.”
But the year has also included the long slog through “ordinary time,” moving not from season to season, but from Sunday to Sunday—after Epiphany and after Pentecost, the latter stretching from late May to late November to the last Sunday after Pentecost where we crown the year with this feast of Christ the King: “ordinary time” where we learn to be disciples of Jesus, not only on the mountaintops or even in the valleys but in the choices and actions of everyday life.
Discipleship is living in an intentional, disciplined way. By daily discipleship we grow more and more into the full stature of Jesus Christ. Discipleship reveals what we believe, who really is King for us.
So on this final Sunday of the church year it is meet and right that we get a spiritual check up, have a look at our spiritual vital signs, see just how this discipleship thing is working out for us.
Other than by our church attendance on the Lord’s Day (and at times maybe a little shaky), what would our lives reveal about our belief and how it has changed us?
Would that change be seen in the conduct of our business? Discernible in the office, out in the field, at our school? Has discipleship changed us?
Is it seen in the way we are eager to forgive others, in our unflagging zeal working for peace? Can that change be seen in the way we treat the person who has just really ticked us off? by what we do especially to him or her would others know we follow the one who from the cross, cries out “Father forgive them. . . .” Has discipleship changed us?
Is that change clearly present in how we speak of others when they are not around? Is it found in the respect we give to every person without regard to position, class, wealth, race, religion, country of origin, sexual orientation, political affiliation? Has discipleship changed us?
Is it seen in both our willingness to and restraint even as we “speak the truth in love”? Would our gentle and loving correction, exhortation, encouragement reveal a discipleship that has changed us?
Or could a clue be found from the way we spend our time and our money? Assuredly there is no better barometer as to what we actually believe than our bank account and where we spend our time. Has discipleship changed us?
In our adult class we have been talking about the place of feeling in discipleship, and we may not have as yet complete agreement. But I will assert again that feelings have little meaning or significance as to what change has occurred in our life, for feelings (however wonderful at times they may be) wax and wane with the vicissitudes of life.
And this is true even and especially with those feelings we feelare “spiritual.” But the real change found in a disciple of Jesus should be manifest in whatever situation we find ourselves, however stressful, for that peace which passeth understanding does not evaporate when we need it most.
Discipleship is about that: change—real, substantive, demonstrable:
- a change of character, the who I am in Christ;
- a change of relationship, the whose I am as a member of his body, the church; and
- a change of action, the what I do because I love Jesus and follow him as my Lord.
Discipleship is about change in who I am, in whose I am, and in what I do because of who and whose I am.
This change does not arise out of a vacuum (few things do). This change does not come simply by willing it into existence (the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, is it not?).
Real comes in faithful response to what God has done, what has been attested to this very morning in our scripture readings.
We have a loving God who
- gathers scattered sheep
- gives faithful shepherds
- raises up a mighty savior
- shows mercy
- gives inheritance with the saints in light
- rescues us from darkness
- transfers us to a kingdom of light
- reconciles all things, on earth or in heaven
- makes peace, peace by the blood of the cross
The church therefore proclaims Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords. And we who are disciples of the Lord Jesus are to proclaim by our changed lives that Jesus is King.
So here at the end of the church year, it is right that we ask
- Has being a disciple changed us?
and
- Has it changed how we actually live?
For our daily choices reveal who is king . . . for us.
And if in your year-end spiritual check-up you find yourself needing a tune-up, some more time for exercise, maybe some spiritual medication, or perhaps, like me, in some need of good hospice care, if that’s where you are or I am, then the church has planned for just that thing.
You see, in one week’s time, with the First Sunday of Advent, the church gives us a “Do Over.”
A “do over” so we might yet be changed as disciples of Jesus and through that change proclaim through our lives that Jesus is indeed King of kings, Lord of lords, even my King and my Lord.
That is if we make it to next Sunday. . . . We never know!