Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
It feels like it ought to be Advent already! Thanksgiving was a week ago and usually that means the next Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent. This year, though, we have this week after Thanksgiving to ponder Ordinary Time some more. In fact, maybe because of the way the days fall this year, we can really take this week to zoom in on the Feast of Christ the King. I feel that so often Thanksgiving overtakes the week of the Feast of Christ the King and the last week of the church year that we don't spend a whole lot of time with it. And yet, proclaiming Jesus as King is so crucial to our faith - so let's think about that some!
Kings and rulers make their power felt in so many ways. These days, of course, we don't have a literal king ruling over us. But we do have things that make their power felt in our lives. Our political system, for example - can there be a person in America who hasn't been impacted by our current political divide and by the vitriolic language that we all, regardless of party, have encountered or perhaps even used ourselves?
Or, for myself, I think of my fears about the world and how sometimes I let those fears rule me. I have a fear of failure, especially - and I work overtime sometimes in an effort not to feel like I've failed, even though it is simply the case that failure is part of being human.
To say Jesus is Christ the King is to recognize that these other things are not - or should not be - my own personal kings in my life. A friend of mine puts it this way: "Because Jesus is Lord, my politics are not. Because Jesus is Lord, my bank account is not. Because Jesus is Lord, my fears and failures are not."
So if we are willing to recognize Jesus as Lord instead of all the other stuff that rules our lives, how will we recognize Jesus' presence in our world? How will we know the presence of God himself?
In fact, we know it in very, very ordinary things. Today's gospel (Luke 21:29-33) shows how Jesus rules over even nature, even the very stuff of the universe. Jesus tells his disciples to pay attention to quite ordinary things like fig trees and flowers. When they open, we know that summer is near. In the same way, Jesus says, we will see evidence of the Son of Man in our own natural world - in the sun and moon, in the way the earth trembles, the way storms occur.
We do not have to go far to find Jesus, for he is right here in our midst. So the question for us today is: what other "rulers" in our lives do we have to denounce in order to proclaim these words? Jesus is Lord, and he is, in fact, very very close to us!
- Jana M. Bennett