Faith | Cats | Hope | Grace

When was the last time you wrote a letter? Like an actual putting pen to paper letter. Or when was the last time you were introducing yourself to someone and needed to reference a common acquaintance. Maybe you were mentioning that acquaintance so that the person would give you the time of day and you were worried that under other circumstances it would be difficult to catch their attention. Or maybe you were trying borrow a little of what you think makes this person special or important. Or maybe you were trying to point out that you too had recognized the attribute that made that person special, that set them apart from others, that made people want to be with them. While our Epistle reading from Revelations this week isn’t a letter like we often get, this passage of Scripture is still addressed to a community. The writer is trying to catch our attention and reference a common friend. And the Scripture writer in his opening greeting gives a variety of characteristics of Jesus. The writer is trying to point out what that thing was that set Jesus apart from others. He is of our time and yet beyond it. He is our savior from our sins. He is eternal. He is Alpha and he is Omega. And this is just one description of Jesus that we are offered in Scripture and other meditations on the nature of Jesus.

Jesus in just these few verses feels beyond our comprehension. Sometimes the past can feel easier to comprehend. It is “done” after all, right. We can feel that there is no newness there. We can read and hear about the ministry of Jesus 2,000 years ago and we “know” what happened. The present and future become a little harder to wrap our minds around. What does that past mean for our present. And Jesus is also part of our present. He is an active part of our current existence. And he will also be part of the future we are yet to see. And this is where things can get complicated. If the past is done and settled (and is now just there for thinking about what *did* something mean), what do we do with an active presence of Jesus? If Jesus is the coming again in the future, that opens the floodgates of when will that be, what will be the signs, are we sure about those signs, are their ways we can hurry things along. The nature, reality, and essence of Jesus is one of those knowable and yet unknowable truths.

I think so much of faith is like that. Sitting and wrestling with the unknown and the unknowable. [How do we sit with that unknown? What do we do with the mystery in our lives and in our faiths?] Can we even sit with that mystery, or do we try to shoehorn the mystery into something less mysterious? Something we can fully wrap our minds around. Something we can touch. In trying to make Jesus understandable, do we diminish him? With our discomfort with mystery, do we diminish the work of God in our world. But God will not be domesticated.

The other description and image of Jesus we get in Revelation is that of a king. He is the ruler of kings. Someone who has brought us together to form a kingdom. The kinghood of Jesus is also referenced in Pilates’ question to Jesus as he is brought to answer the charges.

The divine is often beyond our understanding, so we need to find a way to put it into terms and language and shapes that our human understanding can comprehend. So we talk about the divine using the words of human understanding. And that’s ok! Because, let’s be honest, what else do we have. But there are shadow sides to using human language to describe the divine.

Our language, no matter what that language is, puts limits on God and his work in the world. Our understanding of kings and kingdoms are necessarily limited by the human expression of those concepts. They also have baggage. How do we accidently, and sometimes purposely, align a heavenly kingdom with an earthly one? Our earthly language can sometimes try to borrow a little of the “shine” of a heavenly kingdom. There can be a danger of trying to align faith and temporal power. Our faith can become corrupted in those pursuits. Jesus has a kingdom, as he tells Pilate, but the reality of it is different, larger than what we have personal experience and language for. We have the opportunity in our lives to reflect on what the coming kingdom may look like. And with a lifetime of reflection, we will only scratch the surface.

In our Gospel reading this morning, Pilate is asking Jesus to answer the charges that he has set himself up as a king. There was a hope for the arrival of a Messiah that would change the fortunes of the Jewish community. The hope for the renewed fortunes of the Jewish community was sometimes expressed using the words of kings and kingdoms. There was precedence in their past for strong rulers and this was a concept that the community could understand.

But our God is a god of the unexpected. The people might have expected a ruler and what they got was a pastor. They might have wanted a confirmation of the existing hierarchy and a clear delineation of who is in and who is out. What they got was radical welcome and inclusion. What they might have wanted was a show of force and what they got humility and self-sacrificing servanthood. They might have wanted a king and what we got was a savior. What we expect is sometimes different from what we get. Or what we think need.

As we continue to move through Advent, I invite us to live into two opportunities this season. The first is to meditate on mystery. What are the questions you have had before relating to your faith? Do you have closure or acceptance of that mystery? What new mysteries have developed for you? The goal isn’t answers. Let the goal be to sit with the unknown. If we allow it, we can be delighted by the wonder of those mysteries. Their beauty shimmers and glints and comes in and out of our view. The other invitation of the season is to look for the ways that God in breaking into our world. The ways that God is surprising us. Doing what seems to us as unexcepted. God breaking into our world is not just a thing of our past. It’s a thing of our present and our futures. Let us spend this time saying come, Lord Jesus.