The Still Point of the Turning World

 Blessed be God who animates our lives and calls us to be Kingdom bearers of the extraordinary kingdom of love and peace and justice. AMEN

We gather together this morning to celebrate the end of one liturgical year as we anticipate the beginning of another with Advent Year C. We call this Sunday’s celebration the Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday. It is no ordinary Reign or Kingdom and no ordinary King. It is the still point of the turning world.

Amidst the gathering time of Thanksgiving when all is safely gathered in before the winter storm begins, before the Christmas swarm begins, we as Christians pause on the arc of our liturgical year. Ordinary time comes to an end, paradox and irony abound. We are somewhat consoled at this arrival or at least in this pause; yet there is an anxiety still. Language of kingship and kingdom can be disconcerting. We know more than we did about divine power as contrasted with secular human power.

In this non liturgical year the physical and the chronological aspects of our lives have been almost too difficult to bear. We have lost loved ones…We have drastically altered our lives, even our homes and our jobs…We have sheltered in place, ventured out in public, protested en mass or virtually…a shroud of caution covers our lives. 

Yet God remains and some mysterious transformation is occurring.

In our liturgical year there is a certainty in the absurdity of the underlying surety. In God’s time and in God’s space it is still and always the Kingdom, of love and light and life eternal. The blessed assurance today is that God’s Kingdom is not from this world and thus Christ’s Kingship is similarly reassuring as it signals the Ruler not of might but of Love and of Truth and of Beauty. 

Today we pause to remember the King of that Kingdom who is the Living Christ. We sing the words of holy difference between this world and the next: Where streams of living water flow and goodness faileth never. May our love never cease…

Today we exhale before the long held inhale of Advent. We exhale that we might relax and rely on the promise of Love, the kingdom here and yet to come, and on the leader of that Kingdom, the King of Love, the King of Glory, the King of Peace.

This “KING” is here with us even as He ventures out into the infinite possibility of God’s time, of kairos. This “king” is extraordinary in his ordinariness. This “king” will come again…

This confusion and collaboration of time and space, of possibility and hope, causes me to try as best I can to exit typical expectations and to inhabit even if just for a moment, this glorious regal splendor.

This is what is known as an inflection point! This is the point at which the curve flexes almost imperceptibly to crystalize and point to the end of times, the ultimate, the alpha and the omega. AND we know that this is not the end of times yet…we still have work to do and it is work in the fields of a blessedly assured kingdom with a caring master/shepherd. 

We return again to Advent, to a stillness in a wilderness, we now know contains an abiding Love.

Today we glimpse the testifier to all Truth whose reflection radiates toward us and fortifies us to begin again…next week…to listen and wait and prepare for that baby who is also a King, to be born again in a stable and in our hearts anew. 

This moment causes me to revisit T.S. Eliot’s excerpt about turning points. I invite you to ponder it with me:

Excerpt from BURNT NORTON (No. 1 of 'Four Quartets')

by T.S. Eliot

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

These incredibly beautiful and profound words of Eliot’s not only cause me to remain in some mystical still point of the turning world which is out of expected time but also reassure that no matter what, no matter what, there is a divine dance taking place and we are partners in that dance.

Perhaps it is that whirling dervish dance of God in Trinity, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier in perpetual motion creating a wind or flow of grace in and through all life. 

The Kingdom and hence the King are here and yet to come. The Kingdom and King are within and without. 

We know this by faith

If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to be born both within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we  all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers.(Buechner)

This King of Love is all of us! We, of course, have a hard time seeing ourselves as God sees us. Stuff gets in the way. But were we to see clearly instead of dimly we would indeed realize that we are not striving not being formed to be regal omnipotents, we are majestic messengers of a Kingdom of love, here and yet to come.

This is the essence of the gospel; the King of Love is the Author of our lives and the only authority whom we ought to follow. AMEN