Tension and Transition

Summary:

Different types of tension, such as interpersonal conflicts and societal pressures, are examined, with an emphasis on addressing these tensions constructively. The sermon underscores the importance of living in accordance with Jesus' teachings amid societal challenges and recognizing Jesus as Lord and King. It recounts Jesus' trial before Pilate and his teachings about his kingdom, which emphasizes humility and service rather than worldly power. Christians are encouraged to embody the values of Jesus' kingdom through love, service, and prayer, even in ordinary times, and to trust in Jesus as the Alpha and Omega, representing the reconciliation of beginnings and endings.

Transcript:

I don't often get to talk about Revelation. It's kind of a scary book. And we're not going to hang out too much in there today, not because I'm scared of it, but because I think that this, I am the Alpha and the Omega, which is above us, is all the way through Scripture. So this letter starts off, he's writing to the seven churches, and just so we're clear, seven doesn't mean like seven churches specifically, all the time. It's a prophetic book, so there's a lot of imagery and stuff in there, but seven is perfection, the entirety of the church, all of the church. So that's to them, to us, to those who come after us, the entirety of the church is who John is writing to in this letter. And so as I was thinking about this kind of in-between Sunday, so we had three months of the narrow way, which we worked through the Sermon on the Mount, and then we have, coming up next week, Advent.

And so this in-between Sunday is a transition Sunday in some ways. And so I started thinking about transitions, and what comes with transitions, and that's tension. Transitions and tensions kind of go hand in hand. And, you know, why would we talk about that on this day? Because it doesn't really feel always like a transition in the church. In society, it kind of does. We have Thanksgiving coming up, which kind of means the beginning of Christmas season, right?

It's finally, hopefully, maybe tomorrow, supposed to get colder in this area. It's supposed to be 80 today, I don't know, but it's supposed to start getting colder in the world. This season, Starbucks has put out their red stuff, so that's another transition that we can celebrate and walk into. But in the church, it's a bigger transition than all of those things. In the church, it is the last day of the church year. So that would make Advent the what of the church year? If you were here at the Advent kickoff yesterday, you would know that Advent is the beginning of the church year.

Yeah, it's the beginning of the church year. So we have a lot of different new starts kind of in the calendar. But us as a church, we recognize this Sunday as the end of one year, getting ready to start the next liturgical year, which is year C, if you follow along the Revised Common Lectionary, which is, as Jonathan said, I think last week, is a way to read through the Bible every three years to have the whole story. And so I was thinking, how do we celebrate New Year's? I don't know if you've had any influential or memorable New Year's celebrations in your life.

One that immediately popped into my mind was Y2K. I was in high school at the time, I think. Oh, actually, I was in eighth grade, so sorry. I was in eighth grade, and I remember the panic and the chaos and the confusion that came along with that New Year's. I remember some of the ones I had in college that got to celebrate new things. But every time we had a New Year's, we got to celebrate. We got to do new things.

We got to reflect on the years that had gone by. We got to be excited about something new. A lot of us started resolutions or didn't, and a lot of us broke resolutions. We did the same one next year over and over again. But that's a transition period in the calendar. So everybody celebrates New Year's. Not everybody celebrates the new church year.

So it's important for us as a church to do that because it keeps us focused on the consistency of who God is. It helps us to recognize different seasons. It helps us to take a moment to stop and celebrate the year of the church that has passed before us and to look forward to the next year. But it also culminates in this Sunday called Christ the King Sunday, which we recognize as Christ came, Christ is the King, Christ is the Lord of all, and yet Christ is coming again. So there's this weird tension of Jesus came on Christmas time. That's what we celebrate at the end of Advent. But also was crucified, but then was born again, and then we wait yet again.

So this Sunday is important to slow down and to remember and take stock and if we have followed Jesus Christ as King throughout the year previous before us. Because as we celebrate, we know that next Sunday, at least here at Journey, we really try to slow way down because Advent is a season of anticipation and a season of waiting and expectation. So we try not to do a lot of things. We just try to be in the moment, the tension that we know Christ is coming again. And that's really easy to lose sight of for us because we already know that Jesus came once. That's what we celebrate at the Christmas story. That's why I read the gospels going all the way up through to it.

We see the story, we see the beginning, we see the alpha. Well, we see actually alpha in Genesis, but we see Jesus Christ coming to earth. And so we know that's a good thing. And we see his life play out and we know that he's born again. But it can be difficult to fully embrace and settle into the waiting and expectation of Jesus coming again because we really want that to happen. We really want Jesus to come back. I think that heaven will be near, new creation will be done, everything will get put in its right place.

So we're really excited for the next coming of Jesus. Sometimes we forget to slow down and wait in expectation of the everyday and of the ordinary that we live in today. And so in the church, how do we reflect and how do we look forward to the next year? Well, part of the transition that we're living in is we have to just slow down, always. And it's not just about Advent season, it's about slowing down in all things. Like today, for example, is a prayer Sunday. And a prayer Sunday is a once a month thing we do here the fourth Sunday where we slow down.

We get out of our own ways to, you know, those of us who preach and get to talk in front of everybody, we take away time. And that's okay because we slow down to make way for us to pray together and to pray over each other. And so that's a good habit and a good thing to be able to do not just during the Advent season or not just during seasons of waiting, but in all our lives to just slow down and to recognize the presence of God wherever we are at and whatever situations we find ourselves in. And so with transition, always, I shouldn't say always, but for me transitions, changing, always comes with tension. Tension because it's change. Change does something to us mentally. Change does something to us physically.

Change does something to the people around us. And I want to say, though, that tension doesn't always mean bad. So some ways we're already familiar with tension, I'm sure. You know, a lot of us are probably thinking, I would imagine, like, interpersonal conflicts, societal conflicts. But, you know, as I'm getting older and not moving as much, I have a lot of muscle tension that causes me sometimes to not move as well. If you come to my house first thing in the morning, you will see a very different Jeremy walking around the house than after a couple hours. But we have muscle tension.

If you start working out again for the very first time, you have extreme soreness in your muscles. That's muscle tension expressing itself through lactic acid and all that stuff. But so muscle tension. We have tensions. We all, most of us, I would say we all have had adults.

We all were kids once. And so we all had adult figures, parental figures in our lives that we probably had some tension with, that we argued with, we thought we knew better than. We thought that we could figure out the world without their help. That causes tension, which allows us to change and be molded and be formed by the people who are in charge of us. If we have kids, if you have kids, you know there's sometimes tension with the children you are trying to lead because they think they know better and they think they can figure it out without us. We have interpersonal tension. Those of you who have jobs, those of us who have jobs, we have co-workers.

Sometimes there's tension. We have different ideas about things or very strong opinions. We have a boss who sometimes is asking weird things, not weird, but too much of you perhaps. There's tension there. I'm in school right now, so there's a lot of tension balancing my time of being able to do a lot of reading and even more writing and then also doing stuff like being with my family or being here at the church. There's sometimes just tension of seasons or tension that you have to figure out how to navigate that. If you don't treat it and you don't pay attention to the discomfort and address it, eventually tension can turn into breaks or rips or tears or destruction of the thing that is being pulled tight.

The easiest way you can think of is a rubber band. A rubber band you can stretch really far until you cannot stretch it any further and then it snaps. I was going to do that example, but I did not want to get slapped in the fingers today showing you how a rubber band can be over-tensioned. But it will cause us to be uncomfortable. Another one is difficult. Sometimes I hesitate to say this because I don't want us to necessarily have a persecution complex as Christians, but there is tension in navigating the world as people who are following the ways of Jesus. Amongst people who are not following the ways of Jesus, but also people who are claiming to follow the ways of Jesus, but their actions and the fruit of their lives does not show that as well.

So there is tension in navigating that as well. That can be very difficult to work through, but to recognize it and to address it is important for our health and for the health of our church and for the health of Christians around us and the world around us. Because last week we have these changed lives and this amazing gift of grace and regeneration and rebirth for ourselves, which is great, but also for the benefit of our neighbors, the people around us. We have changed lives and we live differently, not only for ourselves, but for the people around us. So that they too can know the love of Jesus. They too can see a change to life and that there is grace for them as well. So if we are celebrating, if we celebrate the birth of Jesus, how then do we celebrate then the return of Jesus, the coming back of Jesus?

I think the first is we have to be okay and comfortable with declaring that Jesus is Lord. Very easy to say, but as Americans, especially as Texans, we don't like the man. So to declare somebody is the Lord over my own free will and my own life can be very difficult to do. And we can come into a moral tension, a conscious tension that I'm saying one thing, but I want to live my life in another, also in the framework of a society. So we have to declare and act like that Jesus Christ is the Lord and the King of our lives. That we are not beholden to the judgment of the world around us, but from the judgment of Jesus Christ. And so one of the reasons again for this Sunday, and we get to celebrate this Sunday, is that Jesus is King, even if other people, even if other people do not see it.

So we all kind of know the story of Jesus. He came into earth. He came onto earth and into the world as a persecuted young man. You know, King Herod was not happy with him. Beheaded John the Baptist and Herod's family did the same.

They were not happy. They had all the boys killed. And Jesus came into this world already in tension, already in a world that was not favorable to him because of the prophecies about him. We see his life lived out and being persecuted and being chased around and religious leaders going after him and the crowds turning against him to run him off, try to push him off a cliff, speaking to crowds and slipping away through the pillars until eventually he is betrayed by one of his friends and turned over to the Roman authorities and put on trial. And so Jesus stands in front of Pontius Pilate and he's getting asked about who he is. Why is he being brought before this person? And Jesus answers this.

He says, John 18, 33-37, Pilate went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, Are you king of the Jews? And so he's asking this question because this is what he's been accused of. And so this is what I'm talking about. We can declare Jesus as king, the king of us, and at this time they're saying he's the king of the Jews. That was put as his charge against him. So we could say Jesus is king, but we could also not really mean that. We could use it as he's the king, but we don't really want to follow him, or sarcastically.

So, are you the king of the Jews? And then Jesus says, is that your own idea? Or did others talk to you about me? Am I a Jew, Pilate replied? Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done? Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world.

If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders, and now my kingdom is from another place. You are a king then, said Pilate. Jesus answered, You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on this side of truth listens to me. So, I don't know if Pilate is being accusatory here, or agreeing with being seen sarcastically, but he makes that proclamation, and Jesus says, I am not of this world. My kingdom is different than the kingdoms that you're trying to think of, and you're trying to experience.

So, if we declare Jesus as Lord, we submit to following his ways. We follow the ways of Jesus. That's one of the things we say all the time here at Journey. Until he returns again. We say that during communion. We take the bread, we drink the juice, until he comes again, in the anticipation that Jesus will return. And why?

So we can, as Christians, have a lot of power in this world. That we can shape society from the top down, and demand that everybody is a Christian and follow Jesus, because we're little kings ourselves, representing the king. Is it for influence, that we can just have everybody come along and love us, and we can make them serve us, and buy things for us, and support us? Is it for the fame and the fortune? I do think there are people who do that. Grifters, if you will. I think also that, because Jesus said the kingdom of God is near.

He said that when he physically walked on this earth. The kingdom of God is near. But also, when Jesus comes back, and he says, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit to each of the people who believe in me, the kingdom of God is not only near, but the kingdom of God is in us, that then we get to live out into the world. So through our actions, then again, the kingdom of God is near.

And how do we do that? That's why we spent three months in the narrow way. We spent three months going through the Sermon on the Mount. I told Carly on Wednesday evening that, I was listening to a guy talk on one of the social media platforms, and he said something. He said, you should read through the Sermon on the Mount every day. It only takes like 15 minutes. And I laughed at that.

I said, well, he would not like what we did to the Sermon on the Mount, because we took three months to go through that. But it is important to know how Jesus lived, so we can follow the ways of Jesus. It's very easy to say. It boils down to love the Lord God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul. And

likewise, love your neighbor as yourself. That's what everything, all the law, all the words of the prophets, boil down to that. But how do you do that?

Well, you follow the steps of Jesus. You interact in the tension, you interact in the transitions, in the chaos, and you find love there. And so here's an example of how not to do it. In Mark 10, this is James and John. They are asking to be in charge. They come to Jesus in another gospel. Their mom comes to Jesus and says, hey, can my boys have a position of power?

James and John, we can do everything you do. And Jesus says, are you sure? They're like, yeah, we can do what you do, Jesus. We can do it. And he says, are you sure? And they're like, yeah, yeah. And he's like, okay, I don't think so.

They want power. They think that Jesus is a king, like the kings they see of the world. And he's telling them, again, this is not an uncommon story or an uncommon refrain throughout gospel, but he's telling them that it's not what you think it is. The way of my kingdom is different. So in Mark 10, 42 through 45, this is how Jesus answers James and John or how he addresses this problem to them. He says, Jesus called them together, the disciples, so all of them, not just the two that were trying to get power and said, you know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord over them and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you.

Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be slave to all. For even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. That is such an upside down way of being a king that we even read about when he was answering the way of Pontius the Pilate that my kingdom is out of this world. It's so different. People aren't going to lord over me. I am here to serve the people. I came here for the people.

To live in the tension that we might find ourselves in, whether that's we're trying to figure out how to follow the ways of Jesus in weird situations or difficult situations or we don't know how to act and we've prayed and we haven't gotten answers, then we just continue to live following the ways of Jesus, again, which we spend three months looking at in the Sermon on the Mount. To live in the tension is to live in the mundane, the ordinary time. Going back to the church calendar, we have the end of the year today. Next Sunday starts the new church year, Advent, and then we have these different seasons in there. We have Advent, Lent, Easter, and then everything else in between that is called ordinary time. Ordinary time is, I was going to say boring time, but it's not because it's following the ways of Jesus, but it is the mundane and the everyday situations we find ourselves in where we still have to act like Christians even though there's not a holiday that celebrates Christianity. In the everyday, in the mundane, Jesus says, I am the Alpha and I am the Omega.

We've seen the beginning a couple times. Like I said, we saw it in Genesis where everything was created. We see Jesus come to earth as a baby and we see Jesus rise again. We've seen the Alpha. We have not seen the Omega. But we know if we believe that God is eternal and God is forever that we can see glimpses of that when we act and follow the ways of Jesus and the world around us. I think it's fitting to have Prayer Sunday on the week which we talk about Christ the King.

I have this quote from one of the commentaries. In Christ, Genesis the Alpha of the Old Testament and Revelation of the Omega of the New Testament meet together. That's Jesus. The last book presenting to us man and God reconciled in paradise as the first book presented man at the beginning, innocent and in God's favor in paradise. We started in paradise with God as people. We will end in paradise with God as God's people. We are existing in the in-between time and that is difficult and that is hard and I don't have always a good answer except to continue to follow the ways of Jesus and to pray and to lay your burdens down at the feet of Jesus and to trust that Jesus is King even when we cannot see Jesus physically present in front of us.

That through the interactions of the church and the people who believe Jesus around us act that way and through our prayer lives which we are shaped by the Holy Spirit of just being there. Jesus is King even in the in-between spots.