Paul Walker, “Beneath the Chaos”
Switching up the homiletic flow in this short sermon morning and giving you the punch line up front. I’ll give it to you in the middle and at the end too, because I really hope you to remember this if nothing else. Beneath all the apparent chaos of the world, lies God’s redemptive order. One more time: beneath all the apparent chaos of the world, lies God’s redemptive order.
I know this not from wishful thinking, nor from meditating on deeper truths. I know this from the bible. Once again, “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”
That’s what we hear from St. John the Revelator in the inaugural chapter of the final book of the bible, read on the last Sunday of the liturgical church year. Today has been called Christ the King Sunday, hence the reference to Jesus as the “ruler of the kings of the earth.” Simply put, Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth and, as we sing in Handel’s Messiah, “He shall reign forever and ever.” The passage concludes with God’s own voice, proclaiming, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega”. He is the beginning, the middle, and the end. Hence, beneath all the apparent chaos of the world, lies God’s redemptive order, from start to finish.
We’ll get back to that, but most normal people are not thinking about Christ the King Sunday. Instead, most people have Thanksgiving on the mind, which is 4 days away. Thanksgiving is a joyous but reflective, even solemn holiday – one that calls for a speech.
And since I’m speaking, in honor of Thanksgiving I might say something like “The year that is drawing to a close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever- watchful providence of Almighty God.”
I might say something like that, but alert listeners will know that it has already been said by Abraham Lincoln. It was his 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation, pointing us to God’s beneficence right in the middle of the Civil War!!!!!! You think the world is chaotic now? After the president acknowledges the brutality of the war, and lists the further blessings of the year, he concludes “No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”
President Lincoln, a man of acute suffering and a man of deep faith, was given to see that beneath the apparent chaos of the world, lies God’s redemptive order. He knew that Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth. You very well may feel like the world we live in is chaotic right now. Or you very well may feel like your own personal world is chaotic and you are like a ship tossed on the tempest of the sea. Your family life or your health or your job or lack thereof may feel chaotic or broken. Some people feel these feelings deeply, especially when holidays roll around.
There is a growing trend of young couples who have chosen not to have babies; they feel that the world is too chaotic a place in which to raise a child. Or the wounds from their own childhoods run too deep. At yet, here, at Christ Church, we are baptizing 4 babies this morning. (We’re trying to get to 50 for the year if anyone is interested.)
These babies will be baptized with love and care – and trust. Not trust in the world per se, but trust in the Ruler of the earth. With some oil and the mark of the cross on the forehead, we pronounce the truth our lives in this world: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and you are marked as Christ’s own forever.” In other words, beneath the apparent chaos of the world, lies God’s redemptive order.
Who else knows this? Well Gandalf does. I would say Tolkien, but I’m convinced that Gandalf is a real being, just like Aslan. If you haven’t either read or watched the Lord of the Rings, then have a film festival in your own house over the Thanksgiving break. When Gandalf the wizard and Frodo the hobbit are lost in the dark mines of Moria, the threatening drum beat of nasty orcs thrumming up from the depths, Frodo carrying the ring of power he inherited from Uncle Bilbo, which slowly saps his very self away.
He has been malignantly wounded by the poisoned sword of the Undead Nazgul and is literally lost in the dark with no seeming way forward. Finally, Frodo cries out in despair about his neatly ordered life and world broken apart by chaos and doom. “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf replies, “So do all who live to see such times; but that is not for them to decide.” The wizard continues, “There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.” Once again, beneath all the apparent chaos of the world lies God’s redemptive order.
How do we know, I mean really know this is true? St. John the Revelator, Abraham Lincoln, and Gandalf the White notwithstanding, this claim could be construed as naïve conjecture, a Freudian/Marxian wish fulfillment/destructive opiate of the masses. We know this to be true, of course, by the mark we sign on babies’ foreheads at baptism. Was there ever a darker day, a more chaotic day, a more all hope is lost day than Good Friday? And yet beneath the chaos of the jaunt and jeer / the malice of the piercing spear / the twisting thorn in brow / the darkness of His final hour / the spurting of His sacred blood / this chaotic world calls this Friday Good/ Never has God’s redemptive order been on display / More deeply than on that Redeeming Day.
I’ll close with the words of St. John’s Revelation: “To him who loves us and freed us fromour sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to himbe glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” Amen.