What Matters Most

    I recently heard an interview with author Nora Ephron about her latest book:   I Remember Nothing: Aging Gratefully.  The interviewer noted that the chapter titled “The O Word” (Old), has a wistful quality.  It suggests quite a clear vision of loss. 
Ms. Ephron, said, “Well, I think that, you know, we’ve all gotten to the point where we work out and we dye our hair, and we don’t look as old as we are, but you do get to a certain point in life, where you have to realistically understand that the days are getting shorter, and you can’t put things off thinking you’ll get to them someday.  If you really want to do them, you better do them.  . . I’m very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so that you can do a great deal of it. . . .You know, when my close friend died, we’d always sit around and play the game “What Would Your Last Meal Be?  You know, and it’s like this fun game where you go around the table and everybody says what it would be. Mine happens to be a Nate & Al’s hotdog.  But Judy was dying of throat cancer and she said,  I can’t even have my last meal.  And that’s what you have to know is, if you’re serious about it, have it now.  Have it tonight.  Have it all the time, so that when you’re lying on your deathbed you’re not thinking, oh I should have had more Nate & Al’s hot dogs.” 
“Life is short, and we have but little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel this way with us. . .” If you’re serious about it, do it now. . .
The gospel reading today focuses on last words, forgiveness and life poured out on a cross.  It is the last Sunday of our church year.  Next Sunday begins Advent, and with it the hope and expectation of new birth.  Today is the Sunday designated Christ the King.   Christ as “King” may be an image that for some of us is too triumphal.  And yet, if you notice that our “king” is a crucified king, it changes everything.  When we claim Christ King, we are envisioning power in a way that completely reverses conventional wisdom on power.
The reading for today shows the religious leaders, the Roman soldiers, and even a fellow inmate--crucified with Jesus--all mocked him.  They believed that a real king would save himself.  Today’s reading presents us with the challenge of believing in a crucified king.
We don’t have kings in this country, but we do have people with extreme power.  Remember some of the  big scandals in 2009?    Politicians using public funds from private benefits while calling for smaller government?  CEOs of major financial institutions accepting executive bonuses while at the same time asking for government bailout money on behalf of their companies?  In response that same year, The Kellogg School did research on the issue of power and hypocrisy.  According to their research, power and influence can cause a severe disconnect between public judgment and private behavior, and as a result, the most powerful are stricter in their judgment of others while being more lenient toward their own actions. . . The first indicators of corruption are attitudes of entitlement, pride and hypocrisy. . .
    Through a series of five experiments, the researchers examined the impact of power on moral hypocrisy.  For example, in one experiment, high power participants  tended to condemn the over-reporting of travel expenses.  But, when given a chance to cheat on a dice game to win lottery tickets (played alone in the privacy of a cubicle), these same powerful people reported winning a higher amount of lottery tickets then did low-power participants.  In contrast, another experiment demonstrated that people who don’t feel personally entitled to their power are actually harder on themselves then they are on others.
    Cartoonist Levni Yilmaz, did an animated short called “the position of power.” He noted, in the film, that a gorilla, which beat his chest and screamed at another gorilla who challenged him, wasn’t all that different from some bosses he’d had.  And he noted that while he doesn’t have the education to be a nuclear technician and to wield power by speaking of things people can’t understand, he could become an auto-mechanic and tell people that their “thrombonium XP215 extruding rentilation regulator isn’t phallanging properly and needs to be replaced.”
    I recently read an interview in which the Queen of England reminded her people that in her role as Monarch, her primary role was to serve her people.
How do we handle the power in our own lives? 
Our  power with our children?  Power with our mates?  Power at work?  With friends?  In our church?  For followers of Jesus, power  is entrusted to us as a part of our responsibility to serve others.  “Life is short, we have but little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us. . .”
 Perhaps the phrase “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom” should be inverted: 
When we are in our daily lives, remember Jesus, the self-poured out King.
Earlier, in Luke 22, when the disciples were arguing over who was to be regarded as the greatest,  Jesus said, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them. . . But not so among you, rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.  For who is greater, the one who is at the table, or the one who serves?  Is it not the one at the table?  But I am among you as one who serves. . .”
When we claim Christ as our “king”, we are pledging loyalty to what is most important.  And our model is one who poured himself out in love, on the cross, between two “malefactors”, wrongdoers.
As we look at the cross between two candles, we hear from today’s reading, that Jesus crucified, between two  criminals.  In Mark and Matthew, they are referred to as “thieves.”  But in Luke the word is malefactor, meaning criminal or wrong-doer. Through public crucifixions, the Romans aimed to deter anyone who would threaten Roman order.
What might have been their crimes?  Given that Jesus and the two were crucified together, it may have been that the two “criminals” next to Jesus were some of his followers.  We don’t really know what the crime, but their crimes may have been more about treason than theft.  And those criminals responded differently to Jesus.
The one criminal, mocking, clings to his notion of power and freedom:  “If you are the Messiah, why don’t you get us down from here?” There is no room in his heart, even in these last few hours, for him to receive what Jesus is offering.
The other criminal, recognizes Jesus, and the loving power of God that is hanging next to him.  He says:  Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.
“This day, you will be with me in Paradise.”
Philippians 2:4ff reads:
Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:  who being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!
    Maybe you marched with others this past Tuesday, the day of Homelessness Awareness, or maybe you read about it in the Oregonian.  Scott Dalgarno was with other religious leaders who marched through downtown Portland, along the route that many of the homeless use in the early morning hours.  One of the speakers was  the Rev. Brian Heron from Eastminster Presbyterian Church.  (Also, our member Erik Huget, who is in lay ministry training) has been assisting there for the past two years.   Eastminster, which was thriving in the 1950s, saw its membership rapidly shrinking.  A couple of years ago, they were discerning whether or not to close their doors.  But at Tuesday’s march, Brian remarked, “When we changed the question from :  What do with do with so few members? To What can we do with all this building space?  Something new was born.”  The church is now a warming center for the homeless.  When they opened at the beginning of this month, there were under a dozen people coming.  In just a couple of weeks, there are now more than forty people coming for shelter, most of them women and children.
    In a similar way, Mt. Tabor Presbyterian church has been struggling with declining membership and a large building.  That congregation also decided to open its doors to the community, and now shares Tabor Space, a coffee shop, run by neighborhood volunteers.  People come for coffee, tea, free wifi and music concerts and  community.
It’s a hard time.  A time of change for all of us.  What these communities have shown is that power entrusted to us is to be used to serve others.
A recent editorial by Robert Ellis Gordon:   He was disturbed that in all the discourse leading up to the last election, discussion on extending tax cuts to everyone boiled down to this:   Would it help or hurt approval ratings?  Having just read a biography of Bobby Kennedy, Gordon noticed that not one of a number of distinguished panelists raised the very first question Bobby Kennedy would have asked:  “Would this policy be moral?”  Gordon wrote that we need “to remember how this Kennedy turned his personal suffering on its head and became, in his final years, the embodiment of compassion.  He was transformed from the embodiment of ruthlessness to the embodiment of compassion. . .
. . .Was his transformation authentic?  As Bobby Kennedy lay on the floor that night he was assassinated, he repeated these words:  “Is everyone all right?  Is anyone else hurt?”  Over and over until the darkness set in.  
I don’t think a man can lie about his essence at a time like that.”
Seven years ago, here, on Nov. 23, David Hutchison and I were both installed as your associate pastors.  At that service, my friend Esther extended a “charge” for me.    As we are a priesthood of all believers, I’d like to offer this as a charge to all of us, called to follow Jesus: 
“Your call first and foremost is about maintaining an intimate relationship with God, then yourself, then with your family and then with the congregation.   I invite you every day to ask “How am I BEING with love, with my relationship with God?”   Call is the Spirit wooing you to offer your life and in so doing to find your life.  
Your call will always be touching the reality of what is, while envisioning what could be.  Your primary call is to help bring about the dream of God:  to heal the wounded, to unite what has fallen apart; to bring home those who have lost their way; to invite others in your world to join you in striving to be people of mercy, forgiveness, truth, love, nonviolence, right relationship and peace.   So I invite you, each day to ask:  “Was I faithful today to the call God has placed on my heart?  How have I today helped bring about the dream of God?  
To close, I offer these final lines from Mary Oliver’s poem, “Summer Day”:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?