Weekly HOMILY for November 24, 2013: Feast of Christ the King, Cycle C -- Who's Your Jesus?

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Feast of Christ the King

St. Mark’s Church, Fallston

November 24, 2013

Who’s Your Jesus?

By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato

Who’s Your Jesus?

Each of today’s three readings offers us a different picture of power: (1) In the OT, we have a king with unquestioned authority. (2) In the second, a savior God. (3) And in the Gospel a crucified criminal, tortured for his efforts on behalf of the powerless.

Which one is your Jesus: King, Savior God, or Crucified Criminal? Which one calls to you, “Come, follow me?”

I’d like to suggest that what we name Jesus may not be as important as how we understand his power in our own lives.

It will matter if we understand Jesus as a (1) Political Power, (2) As Spiritual Power or (3) As a power more immediate and applicable to our life today.

Understanding Jesus’ Power

Let’s look more closely at this third kind of power.

In the Gospel, we believe that Jesus is revealing the power that comes from his death and resurrection, a power that God shares not only with Jesus, but also with each of us.

Let us call it the power to transform what is destructive in our lives into what is constructive.

Yes, kings can have this power, but you don’t have to be a king, a president or a prime minister to exercise it.

Such power speaks to us of the coming of God’s Kingdom, but you don’t have to be among the saints in heaven to practice it.

            One Thief Not Delivered

We have an example of this third kind of power in the conversation between the two thieves and Jesus as the three hung dying on their respective crosses.

In their conversations we learn what it means to be delivered from the power of darkness – or not.

What would it be like to hang on a cross, your flesh and bone ripping from their moorings, your very skeleton unable to hold its shape?

And next to you hangs one who is said to be the Messiah, the long-awaited anointed one, the one who could possibly save you from all your pain and agony.

As one thief does, we might cry out, “Are you not the Messiah? Then save yourself and us!” meaning, “For God’s sake, get me out of this.”

That surely is one approach.

The Other Thief Delivered

The thief hanging on the other side of Jesus has something different to say, but notice that his cry is for his brother thief, not for himself.

His cry comes from a different place inside him.

He urges his brother thief to get right with himself and with God. This “good thief,” as he’s come to be known, is already shifting from a criminal into someone who wishes to redeem and be redeemed, however clumsily.

This shift in values and choices is part of salvation.

And this is the power that Jesus’ death and resurrection reveal on that tragic Good Friday: Evil does not have to get the last word in our lives.

By the grace of God, working in and through our own transformation, all is redeemable.

Application

Why is it that some of us merely endure in the face of all forms of pain, while others seem to grow?

They are transformed. They are able to hold out hope to others, including us.

Ø  I think of a parishioner with cancer in Hospice Care who is ministering to her teenage children and giving them hope.

Ø  I think of the young adult with birth defects who is the joy of his family.

Ø  I think of the elderly senior who was vibrant and energetic until two strokes in a month left him seriously debilitated and yet, he’s full of joy.

Ø  Or I think of the good thief hanging on his cross and facing death and what he is able to do in today’s Gospel.

Conclusion

The cross and resurrection are a single power which means that in the very act of suffering, you can experience hints of a victory borne of faith in Jesus.

The cross and the resurrection together name our capacity for transformation, which is the only adequate remedy for human tragedy.

Transformation does not deny the pain or messiness of our reality; transformation redeems that pain and messiness.

This is the power revealed by Jesus, whether he’s called mighty king, faithful God, or common criminal.

Jesus alone has the ultimate power and gives us that same power to transform our lives and ourselves as persons.