The Academy Awards have increased the number of Best Picture nominees, an obvious ploy to get movie fans to go see more films and spend more money. They started this expansion last year with 10 nominees; this year there are 9, when for decades there were only 5 films to vote on. So if this were the “good old days” of just a few years ago, I’d be in good shape, because I’ve already seen 4 films on the list. I was charmed by “Midnight in Paris”; “Moneyball” satisfied my baseball passion as no other film has done since “Field of Dreams”; and the cinematography of “War Horse” was breathtaking – this is a beautiful film. But the one movie that stirred me to the depths was “The Help.” It’s the story of black maids in Mississippi who endure the Jim Crow bigotry of their white, Junior League employers, and who are swept up by the resistance to injustice and the demands for liberty and dignity in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s.

The story told in “The Help” stirred the depths of my faith, for the meaning of our Christian liberty and our Christian dignity is that men and women and children of every race and background, every position and orientation, every country and nation, can join as one in celebration because our God is a God of justice; our God is a God who frees us and forgives us; our God is a God who creates us good and endows us all with human dignity that not even our sinfulness can nullify – by giving us one holy faith in Jesus Christ, who cleanses and unites us. And in the joy of Christian liberty and dignity, we embrace the words of the prophet:

 “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice,

 and to love kindness,

 and to walk humbly with your God?” 

 So I'm tempted to get out the umbrellas to shield us from some of the cold water St. Paul rains down on our parade: “But take care that this liberty of yours does not become a stumbling block to the weak.” “Liberty” is a fairly rare word in Scripture, so when we find it we need to cherish it and protect it. For we know that it is a scarce and precious commodity. Yet here, Paul cautions us about it. He worries that liberty can be misunderstood by those who have trouble embracing it and extending it. Now, Paul says those troubled Christians are “weak,” so the true spiritual answer is not simply to refrain from embracing our freedom. But Paul worries that acting on our freedom may “scandalize” weaker Christians – for that's what “stumbling block” means. So Paul tells us to voluntarily restrain ourselves around “weak Christians,” lest we cause them to be “scandalized” and fall away.

 Now, on one level I can appreciate that. We don't want to cause other Christians needless spiritual pain. But is the ultimate answer to this concern for Christian harmony limiting our own Christian freedom, for the sake of others? Instead, should we not be committed to helping these so-called “weak Christians” grow in faith and become stronger in freedom, for the sake of others?

 In the era in which “The Help” is set, there were millions of Christians in our country who believed that God created black people inferior to whites. The Civil War may have taught them that slavery was wrong, but they still shackled freedom with segregation – and they did it in God's name. The black maids who served the Junior League bridge club their sandwiches and iced tea would not have been served a meal in a “whites-only” restaurant. They had to drink from “colored” water fountains, and relieve themselves in “colored” toilets their white employers built onto their houses, “because they have different diseases.” And on Sundays, those white employers heard their pastors preach this is the way God created it to be.

 Now, should the millions of other Christians who were “puffed up” with the knowledge and “built up” with the love to see that segregation was wrong and that God does not create “inferior” people – should they have refrained from working for civil rights to protect the feelings of bigots? For they did it in God's name! They challenged those Christians who thought they were “strong” in God's righteousness, but who were really “weak Christians” when it came to Christ's love. They told their stories, and organized and marched, and sometimes they even died, so that those who came after them would have greater freedom and never have to hear again, “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!” – as if it were the Gospel truth. “The Help” tells the story of unjustly treated black Christian women insisting on freedom and dignity in the face of resistance by the white women whose children they raised – bigotry “in the name of God” – their defeats and victories, and the promise of a new world where righteousness dwells. And it was good! 

 Paul's concern about not giving offense to “weak Christians” is wise counsel only to the extent that the example of Christian freedom being restrained does not demean any person's created dignity or Christian faith. Whether you eat certain foods or not doesn't make you a better person or a stronger Christian. But when self-righteous people put you down because of who you are, so you can’t eat their food or even use their toilets, you don't have to take that – in the name of God or anybody else. You don’t have to grovel, you don't have to conform, you don't have to feel ashamed or accept being made to feel guilty. And when we witness other people being put down by “weak Christians” for no good reason, it's not right – and it's not what Paul means – to keep silent and let such Christians slander each other and be cruel to each other, “in the name of God.” We don't remain uninvolved when people hurt other people, even when they do it in the name of misguided faith. We did not so learn Christ! For Jesus came in the Spirit of the Lord, teaching us with authority to “bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” And it is his ministry we must embrace and imitate.

“ For freedom Christ has set us free.

Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

For ourselves, or for others. It is never God’s will to bully others, or to submit to the indignities of the self-righteous. Jesus won our freedom from that on the Cross. It is our holy task to extend that freedom to all those who are oppressed: For we are “The Help” of the Lord. So let the oppressors be “scandalized,” for Christ’s love is the block upon which they shall stumble. For Christ’s love has the authority to set us free. All of us. And let the Church say: Amen.

There are some denominations that call this Sunday “The Reign of Christ,” instead of “Christ the King.”  One reason for the name change is sensitivity to male language – “king” being a “manly” title.  But another reason is that unless you’re European in general and British in particular, both kings and queens are relics of a bygone era; they are little more than figureheads with limited real power in today’s world.  They attract “fans” instead of commanding “subjects” – unless you buy into the whole antiquated, ceremonial protocol; some people must like to bow or curtsey.   

          So what does it really mean to call Christ “the King”?  Some of our sister denominations don’t even try to answer that question, so they use “The Reign of Christ” to carry the sense that the Risen Jesus somehow rules over us.  But that IS truly the point:  we aren’t “fans” of Christ; we are “subjects” of Jesus our Lord.

          And that must mean that somehow we arrange the priorities in our lives to give Jesus Christ the honored place.  If Christ is reigning in your life, if Christ is the King who rules in your heart, it means you are actively arranging the way you live to give your loyalty to the Risen Jesus and all that he represents.  He IS the priority:  the One who comes first.  That is how we must understand the purpose of this celebration, however we choose to name it. 

          So this is a holy day to focus on our priorities.  How do we see our lives – how do we live our lives – and where do Christ and the things that belong to Christ fit into our lives?  These are holy questions, divine questions; for they get at the very core of our belief:  our faith put into action.  Martin Luther said it best centuries ago, reflecting on the First Commandment:  “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”  It’s the very definition of our top priority:  “Whatever our heart clings to and confides in.”  To worship Christ the King, to place ourselves under the Reign of Christ, means that the very heartbeat and pulse of life are energized by his life transforming ours.  We depend on him and adjust our lives to him like I do my pacemaker – because I’d be dead without it.  Do we see Christ that way; is that how Christ fits into our lives?

          More often than not, the celebration of Christ the King Sunday coincides with our congregation’s Annual Meeting.  We need to embrace the holy linkage between the two, because we cannot honestly prioritize Christ without prioritizing Christ’s Church, which is his Body.  Too many Christians make the mistake of spiritualizing their faith to the point that they “disembody” it:  they think they can believe in Jesus without giving much attention to the place and the people where the Spirit of Jesus makes his home.  They try to cling to a God of the vapors.  Yet the Church has been given to us to condense the infinity of God into a sacred space for us.  The Church has been given to us to make flesh-and-blood the spirituality of God into a family of faith for us.  The unique truth of Christian faith is our belief in Incarnation:  God-made-flesh; Son of God becoming Son of Man; the One judged as criminal on the Cross becoming the Righteous Judge of us all; the things of this earth becoming vessels of the Divine – scripture and God’s Word; water and God’s Spirit; bread and Body/wine and Blood; an alien rabble and a Chosen Race, a Royal Priesthood:

“Once we were not a people,

but now we are God’s people;

once we had not received mercy,

but now we have received mercy.”

Again, Luther said, “It is the work and the glory of the ministry to make real saints out of sinners, living souls out of the dead, saved souls out of the damned, children of God out of servants of the devil.”  That is the work and the glory of this, our church, and this, our congregation.  It is necessary work, and necessary glory, and we must prioritize it, for this is our earthly extension of the Risen Jesus, and it is filled with his life – this is where we find it.  This is where we find him:  among us in this place.

We are reaching a crossroads in the life of St. Luke United Lutheran Church.  The uncertainties of this world are having their impact on us as ordinary people trying to live our lives – and as people of God trying to live our faith.  These worldly uncertainties have made this time seem particularly sad, particularly cynical, particularly selfish.  Anger and hopelessness are abroad in the land, and we respond by closing up and shutting out, by losing courage and abandoning reason.

Yet the God of our faith would remind us that this world always has its uncertainties, but that we are joined to a Savior who gives us a sure and certain hope, and whose perfect love casts out our anger and our fear.  This is the God whom St. Paul invokes for us today as we enter our Annual Meeting:

“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.”

Paul prayed that prayer confident that the Father of glory has put all the uncertainties of this world under Christ’s feet, and has made Jesus the head over all things for the Church, which is his Body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.  That is the true Reign of Christ the King, and we are under his reign when we prioritize our lives and our church in him, with him, and for him.  Every discussion we have, every motion we make, every vote we take, must respect and reflect this truth, or it is ungodly.  We have been given so much, and so much is at stake.  We must remember who we are and whose we are, that this glorious inheritance may continue working as a reflection of God’s great power for us who believe.  And let this Church say:  Amen.