End of Ordinary Time
So, the End of Time. Sounds apocalyptic. It is.
'Already, and not yet.'
This phrase sums up much of Christian thinking - ancient and modern - regarding time: both what time is, and how to measure it, and find where we are in it. 'Time' is a moving into the fullness of being as imagined and dreamed by what we call God - which is to say, 'Love,' as Jesus calls God. This takes place over a large scale of... well, time. What Jesus calls the kingdom of God is both already here - among and within you, as Jesus says - and also to be looked for, coming ever more fully among and within. When we glimpse the world as God intends, when we step outside of human-scale understanding (of 'time' and also of 'love' and 'forgiveness' and 'purpose' and ...), then we 'enter the kingdom of God'. Always fully. And, always coming more fully among us. There is always enough. And, there is always more.
Apocalypse means 'revealing.' What is being revealed among and within us?
'Kingdom' can feel like a word lodged in a time not our own, oppressively or charmingly, whether or not you've been watching 'The Crown.' 'Christ the King' as the name for this feast day at the end of the church cycle-in-time (call it a year) comes from a time of rising fascism and materialism in Europe, earlier in the 20th century. Not too long ago. The Roman Catholic Church wanted to make emphatic who it was who was 'king' (i.e. not Mussolini, not Franco, neither the stock market nor Lenin) - the 'Lord of Time' as some phrasings have it. Or, as Dylan put it -- you gotta serve someone. Whom and what do you serve? Who is 'as king' -- whose kingdom is it?
The feast day would serve equally well at any point in the church cycle of days and feasts -- indeed, the themes of many feast days underscore that the ultimate nature of reality is God's reality, is Love, and needs to be so. Humans are made to serve this reality, this Love, and to be transformed by serving this. Now, and 'forever'.
Some in more recent days have thus called this end-of-time feast day 'the reign of Christ' feast. Observing and practicing and giving thanks for the cosmos as made in the image of its creator, and becoming ever more the shape of Love, which is the shape of Jesus. We serve this reality. We are part of it. We are to 'grow up in every way' into the shape of this reality, as Paul writes.
Over what scale of 'time' (matter moving about in space, charged with energy, to get astrophysical...) does this take place?
Yes.
To bring it to the very human-scale cosmos, listen to the story Jesus tells about how this reality of Love comes more fully among us -- 'whenever you did these things to the least of those, the insignificant, among you, you did them to me.'
Or, as Paul writes to the little community in Ephesus: learn to see this with the eye of your heart, enlightened.
Over what scale of time, Paul? How many minutes a day must I (do X or Y or Z) to be enlightened thus by Love's indwelling?
Yes.
But, it's real. It's the only real thing there is. It is worth serving, and becoming this real-ness, like the Velveteen Rabbit, because, really, what else is there? When we serve and love those - and those parts in ourselves, too - who do not deserve it, who have no claim on it, who are 'insignificant,' then we open ourselves to glimpse the kingdom in and out of time, then we are transformed, slowly or quickly, into the enlightened heart of God-is-Love.
So, let's follow Jesus to the end of time. Or, let's follow Jesus in the end of time. For, it is always the end... and always the beginning. Always we begin again. And, this week, let us give thanks. For Love's indwelling, and coming ever more fully among us, for the life of the world.
More cosmic and real things tomorrow in the Eucharist. Every week.