November 20, 2016 (Christ the King) – Colossians 1:1-11; Luke 23:33-43
Colossians 1:1-11; Luke 23:33-43
Beautiful Saviour
Christ the King – Lectionary 34 – November 20, 2016
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Last week Michael Scholz was telling me about
a conversation he had with his three year old Evelyn.
She wanted to know what people meant by “beautiful,”
why were people always saying “beautiful.”
Thinking quickly, Michael responded, “The people we love are beautiful.”
She thought about it for a moment, and then said, “Pastor Michael is beautiful.”
The people we love are beautiful.
Love sees the beauty, love seeks it out, love is sure it is there.
Love sees the beauty – and reveals it.
To be beloved is to be beautiful.
In the beginning, we read in Genesis, God gazed at this world God had made and declared it,
“good.”
In Hebrew, the word is “tov,” meaning, good, or pleasing, or delightful, even beautiful.
From the very beginning, this world we live in was named “beautiful.”
And after that, after God takes a deep breath and fashions human beings, God looks at them,
and looks at the world they have been set in, and, with a satisfying sigh, says
“very good”: me’od tov. Very, very beautiful.
When John’s Gospel says that God so loves this world and every person in it,
we have to remember back to that day of creation, when God looked upon all that is and
named it beautiful.
God gazes at this world in love, with great great love, and sees its beauty.
This world God loves is beautiful.
God sees the beauty, God seeks it out, God is sure it is still there.
God sees the beauty, and seeks to uncover it in every person.
To be beloved by God is to be beautiful.
And since everything and every person in all creation is beloved,
everything and every person in all creation is beautiful.
God still sees the beauty.
God has created it and fashioned and formed it.
We are the ones who forget.
We forget the original naming of creation and of one another as beautiful.
We forget that each of us has a very first name, and that name is Beautiful.
But we forget.
We forget the beauty of creation and we forget the beauty of one another.
We exploit creation and we mistreat one another.
We forget that all is beloved, beyond our wildest dreams.
And so the creator comes, in person, wrapped in beautiful flesh, to remind us.
Jesus loves everyone.
Woman, man, stranger, friend, rich, poor, slave, free, foreigner and tribe member.
And Jesus loves creation, its flowers and its waters, its hills and its plains,
its birds and its trees, its food and its wine.
Jesus sees the beauty that God first created and Jesus is in love with it all.
And so he heals and he forgives, he feeds and he sets free, he prays for it all and he dies for it all.
Jesus sees the beauty and loves to the end.
And even at the end he continues to love and see the beauty.
To those who put him on a cross and mock him as king – he loves them.
He sees even their beauty, sure it is there, and forgives them when they cannot see his.
And in that moment, something happens.
The one on his right sees something he has not seen before.
Something that Jesus uncovers, a beauty he had not known existed:
the beauty of forgiveness, the beauty of acceptance, the beauty of love.
And in that moment, something happens to him.
Mindful of all this, he says, “Jesus, yours is the kingdom I want to be part of.”
The kingdom of love, the kingdom of beauty.
The reign of someone who loves without conditions, sure the beauty of everyone is still there,
just as God created it long ago.
This is a real king, the one on his right surmises.
This is what a real leader does: loves in order to reveal the beauty the creator made.
Today, with the one on his right, we name Jesus “King.”
It often seems strange, because Jesus does not appear kingly in the Gospel for this day.
Bloodied, dying, apparently defeated.
And yet, as the one on his right rightly sees, kingly all the more.
Royal in love, Royal in forgiving.
Royal in seeing the beauty in everyone and royal in seeing the beauty in everything.
Royal in seeing the beauty in each and every situation and
Royal in seeing the beauty in each and every moment.
To Jesus, each and every one of us is beloved, and so each and every one of us is beautiful.
Just as we are – each of us is making this day special by just being who we are:
Beloved and beautiful.
The people we love, are beautiful.
Jesus looks at us, and forgives us for forgetting the beauty of ourselves.
Forgives us for forgetting the beauty of others.
Forgives us for forgetting the beauty of him.
And Jesus loves us.
And loves us.
And loves us – and sees the beauty for us.
And sees the beauty in our neighbour for us.
Some people are easy to love and it’s easy to see the beauty in them.
And some people – some people are hard to love and it is hard to see the beauty in them.
But Jesus loves them just the same – and Jesus sees the beauty in them too.
It’s hard work – but Jesus sees it.
Can we?
When Christ is reigning, we do.
When Christ is reigning in this community, we do.
When you are grieving, Jesus sees the beauty in your love.
When you are tired, Jesus sees the beauty in your work.
When you are stressed, Jesus sees the beauty in your soul that so needs rest.
So come to him, you who are tired and grieving and stressed, and he will give you rest.
And when you are unsure, when you are anxious, when you cannot see the
beauty in you or the beauty around you, look on him.
See the concern, see the love, see the tireless gaze that looks and looks until
beauty is found.
And when you are weighed down by what you have done or by what you have not done,
look on him and see the forgiveness, see the limitless compassion, and be set free.
And with the one on his right, seek to be part of this kingdom, where love rules and
uncovers the beauty that is always there.
Like the law of physics that states that energy cannot be created and cannot be destroyed,
the beauty of the original creation is still there, always there,
waiting to be named, waiting to be uncovered, waiting to be loved.
So with Jesus, let us be sure that it is still there.
With Jesus, let us love this world and every person in it, certain we will find it.
Let us find it in ourselves, let us find it in others, let us find it at Sargent and Victor.
Let us find it where Christ is reigning in love – which is absolutely everywhere.
Faith, I read recently, is a matter of seeing that you are beloved by Jesus.
And, I would add, is a matter of seeing that you are beautiful and good.
And, I would finally add, is crucially a matter of seeing that your neighbour is too.
Woman or man, stranger or friend, rich or poor –
the people who put you on a cross or the person hanging on a cross beside you.
The people we love are beautiful – and there is nothing and no one that is not loved.
For the people Jesus loves are beautiful.
And the world Jesus loves is beautiful.
So with the one on his right, let us seek with all our hearts to be members of this reign.
Where love sees the beauty – in ourselves, in our neighbours, in this world.
And above all today – in this most beautiful saviour.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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