Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC
Christ the King B - Sunday, November 21, 2021
Another Bostonian, former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, is famous for having said: “All politics is local.” And perhaps the coming of God’s Kingdom, like all politics, is also always local, situated in time and place, in the lives and experiences of concrete persons and communities. At the very least, the Kingdom starts this way, and it is never less than local no matter how cosmic or universal or timeless it may become.
Thy Kingdom come, says our prayer, but it also emerges, beckons, invites, and develops here and now, emerging and developing and beckoning until the second coming of Christ, until the Parousia, until the end of time, until Christ becomes All in all, until the universal restoration of all things, until everything has been gathered up into the very heart of God.
The Kingdom is, of course, God’s. It is God's work, God's will, and God's crown. But you and I are co-operators with God in this great endeavor, co-workers or co-conspirators with the Holy One in this noble process. Yes, perhaps it can come without us, but I think God wants it otherwise.
How does this happen? How do we assist God in the advancement of God's reign and the establishment of God’s Kingdom? It is quite simply by our own acts, small or great…repeated acts of love and kindness and joyful hope, sometimes very small indeed, but never, I repeat never, ineffective in this cosmic process of the establishment of God's dream for the earth and for us.
As I've reflected on this, I've returned again and again to a homely image from my high school years. I was a good student, but never great in the sciences, never a star in biology or chemistry or physics. But I remember well a classic demonstration that has probably been repeated in chemistry labs throughout the decades, if not centuries. It has to do with supersaturated solutions. A supersaturated solution—and here I quote from the internet:
… is a solution that contains more than the maximum amount of solute [or component] that is capable of being dissolved at a given temperature. The recrystallization of the excess dissolved solute in a supersaturated solution can be initiated by the addition of a tiny crystal of solute, called a seed crystal…. Recrystallization from a supersaturated solution is typically very fast.
Superstrated solutions look like other liquids, if sometimes cloudy, and not particularly special. But they are filled with potentiality. And as the teacher or student adds one or two more grains of the chemical, suddenly a tipping point is reached, and the entire solution crystallizes, and what was once clear or cloudy liquid now is, in the twinkling of an eye, a solid. It is now changed, and it refracts light in the most marvelous ways and looks quite transformed.
I wonder if the world we live in is not also, in some sense, a spiritually supersaturated solution, already filled to the brim and seeded by God, waiting perhaps for that one small action, that one loving deed or change of heart, that one seed of ours which contributes in an invisible but powerful way to a tipping point which has the potential of transmuting the whole thing into something quite new and remarkable. I wonder if, when Jesus says: “The Kingdom of God is among [or within] you” (Luke 17:21) we are meant to understand this as an invitation to add the seeds of our lives, our own particular and often hidden acts of love or kindness or intentionality, large or small, which can become a tipping point for the larger entry of God's reign. No, this or that one act might not be the seed which brings about the cosmic transformation of everything into a new creation, but it might well play an immensely critical role in laying the conditions for the possibility of the breaking in of God’s Kingdom in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine, nor would have been possible had we not acted. If this be true—and I think it is—what an amazing and awesome potentiality it is and what holy power we share.
In the First Letter of Peter, we read: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (I Peter 2:9) What if we took that seriously? What if in fact we are a royal priesthood, a kingly people? And what if our royal priesthood, connected as it with Christ’s eternal priesthood, is precisely to sow seeds into the supersaturated reality of our present day, filled as it already is with invisible seeds of divine grace? And what if in doing this, we participate in the advancement of the Kingdom in all its glorious diversity and rich variety?
We catch glimpses of or experience these seeds being sown around us all the time all the time. Last week I was at the Walgreens in Kingston, accompanying a brother from our assisted living wing as he received his COVID booster shot and flu vaccine. He had some difficulty and needed assistance, and a young woman employee, whom I assumed to be an assistant manager, came to our help. As we were going along, she turned to me and said, “I don't know if anyone's told you this before, but you're doing a great job.” I was stunned. It was as if I was being blessed and acknowledged without either looking for it or expecting it. I don't know what possessed me, but I just said to her: “God bless you.” And she said with a big smile: “And God bless you.” I later thought: what was that all about? No, the heavens didn't open, trumpets didn't sound, the Second Coming had not quite occurred. But in those few remarks, unsolicited and surprising as they were, the Kingdom was advanced, and I—little ‘ole me—caught a glimpse of it on Broadway in Kingston, New York. I realize now that I was approached that day by royal priest, a kingly woman, one of God’s own people.
I don't know much about royalty. The model of sovereignty that I am most familiar with is, of course, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom—long may she reign—but that doesn't really say much about the royalty of Christ nor about our own royal priesthood. In today’s gospel passage from St. John's gospel, Jesus stands before a powerful ruler of this world, Pontius Pilate, and simply states: “My Kingdom is not from this world.” No, it's not, but it is in this world if not from it or of it, and we catch glimpses of it all the time if our eyes are open and our ears attentive and our hearts unguarded. This world is a supersaturated solution waiting for you and me to drop seeds of loving kindness and mercy and justice and reconciliation until that moment when the created order is crystallized and transformed into a new community or order of love and truth and wholeness: “Thy kingdom come.”
Dear royal people, dear kingly brothers and sisters, dear priests of Christ, all of us: we must do our part. Let us share boldly and unashamedly in the ministry and work of Christ our King. Let us scatter seeds of love and hope, however we may, wherever we are, whenever we can. God is waiting for you and me to do the next right thing. And so is this supersaturated world.
Amen.
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