November 24, 2024
How to Live in Turbid Times
John 18:33-38a
Rev. Caitlin Johnson
It is the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and this is also Reign of Christ Sunday, sometimes called Christ the King. In the scripture reading this morning, Jesus is on trial and stands before Pilate. And their conversation gets right to the heart of the matter of who Jesus is, what kind of ruler he is, and what his reign looks like. Listen now to God’s word:
Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Today outside this room, our hearts and minds are making or have already made a turn towards Thanksgiving that will then lead us almost simultaneously into the Christmas season. So today I’m going to ask us to make an agreement. I am going to ask us to set those things aside for these next few moments that we are here together. We’re going to take a pause so that we can pay attention to where we are in time and what we’ve been through.
Where we are in time matters, not just in this room, not because it is a church holiday that you’ve perhaps never really heard of, but because it matters for the lives we’re living, for the hearts we’re tending, and the plans we’re making. We have this innate urge to live ahead of time. And it keeps us from living fully in the in-between moment we’re in.
I’ll be the first to admit that staying here in this moment this is hard. Yet, when we take a moment maybe we can recognize that we don’t feel quite ready for Thanksgiving. Things feel too turbulent, too turbid, right now.
In just a few days Oxford University Press will close voting for the word of 2024. The top contenders are slop, romantasy, lore, brain rot, demure, and dynamic pricing. In Western North Carolina, though, I think we’ve already cast our vote. We here in Asheville have been waking, sleeping, eating, drinking (well, hopefully not drinking)…. turbidity.
I will not belabor the definition here, but in case you’re visiting from out of town this morning, turbidity, as the City of Asheville called to remind us every day in both Spanish and English, is a measurement of how cloudy the water is. The more particulates present, the cloudier the water, and the higher its turbidity. Turbid water isn’t clear. It’s the messy middle.
I wasn’t very familiar with this word until a few weeks ago, I’ve found “turbid” to be a helpful way of describing not just drinking water, but life. A contentious election, mental health crisis, a warming planet, the threat of war. The time we are living in is turbid. And in the absence of turbidity-reducing curtains, especially ones that work suddenly and much more quickly than anticipated, to help us see clearly the way through, we are stuck here. How can we live in turbid times?
We began our service singing Now Thank We All Our God. We tend to think of this hymn as a “Thanksgiving” hymn, one that comes at the recognition of God’s good gifts, when peace is at last accomplished, or the end of a time of trial. In our imaginations, songs of celebration and gratitude to God are written in moments like these.
However, the words to this hymn were first written in the middle of a war. At that time, refugees were streaming into the walled city of Eilenberg, Saxony, which is in modern day Germany. The army had encircled the gates of the city. There was no way out and no way for supplies to come in. Within the walls of the overcrowded city, fear hung heavy. People were dying in increasing numbers first of famine and eventually plague. One person who came to the city, Martin Rinkart, was a Lutheran pastor. Eventually he was the only surviving pastor within the walls, and the story goes that one time he conducted fifty funerals in a single day, 4,000 total in the year of the plague.
During that time, Rinkart composed this hymn. But it began even more simply, as a sung table blessing used when he gathered with his family in the midst of devastating loss and deep fear:
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices
Who wonderous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices.
Not a song for the end of strife or the inauguration of peace. It was a song for the middle. It was a song of praise for turbid times.
The conversation between Jesus and Pilate happened precisely at such a time. The powers that be were threatened. Jesus claimed his reign and kingship were “not of this world” but the religious leaders knew that the reign Jesus proclaimed was a real threat to the order of things. As he is questioned, Jesus offers Pilate a chance to embrace the truth, to hold onto the truth in a turbid world, to belong to the truth. But Pilate dismisses the opportunity, scoffing, almost at the mere idea of truth in the midst of a turbid time. And he sentences Jesus to be crucified.
That same invitation is made to Christians in every age: Will we embrace the truth in the midst of turbid times? Will we know the truth, the truth that Jesus say will set us free? Will we belong to that truth?
The reality of the times we are living in is lurking in the voice every person who whispers to friend, “Are you guys drinking the water yet?” That reality is hovering in every committee meeting as we wonder when we’ll feel “normal” again and regain the momentum we were feeling just a few months ago as a church. The reality is between the lines of every test score and attendance record at school as teachers and administrators grasp to catch up. That reality is aggresssively in your face every single time you open your news app or check your social media feed. It’s that twisted up feeling you get when you look towards the first holiday since your parents separated or since your grandpa died or your mom moved into assisted living, or you finally got that diagnosis. What do we do?
In his poem “For the Time Being,” a poem that feels especially relevant to us in 2024 approaching Advent waiting and January reality all at once, Auden writes,
to those who have seen
the Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying
time of all.
This is true. And it is also true that it is in the most trying times of all that Christians have found a deeper voice of praise and the courage to point to the truth embodied in Jesus Christ. This Sunday, Reign of Christ Sunday, is the final Sunday of the church year. It was born in turbid times, established 99 years ago, at the end of World War I. Amid rising nationalism, the Church saw the importance of reminding Christians to whom their allegiance was due. Now, that might, to us, feel like a very contemporary topic. But it was just as relevant then. Hitler had just published his political manifesto and only a year later, 30,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan would march on Washington for, among many things, immigration restrictions based on nationality and race. This day, then and now, is intended to remind Christians that our first and foremost allegiance is to Jesus. And that the reign of Christ prevails over all time and all circumstances. It is not just for a hoped for future or relegated to days gone by. Jesus is Lord now: when the heartache, the hurt, and the harm in the world feels crippling.
It is the promised reign of Christ that shapes how we live in turbid times. For those of us who follow Jesus, who have seen him however dimly, who know that the reign he describes sounds so unlike any place we have ever visited or even heard about. While around us the powers and principalities of this world boast and rant, brag and bluster, we know that this is not the kingdom of Jesus.
Jesus compared his reign
to a tiny seed that is sown in the soil, tended, and grown
to a pearl of great price, that is worth selling everything for
to a coin that when lost is worthy of turning the house
upside down until it is found
it is like yeast hidden away in three measures of flour until it is ready to rise.
And that knowledge sends us out to not only wonder what could be in this world if all was made well and God’s reign was real. But to work for it, at our kitchen tables, when we read bedtime stories to our kids and grandkids, when we walk our neighborhoods, when we engage in conversations in our classrooms, when we vote in our cities, when we make choices about healthcare, and yes, in our policies, in our nation, in our world.
This time is trying for those of us who have caught sight of what could be, who have perhaps even dimly glimpsed the reign of Christ where peace and mercy and justice and steadfast love are the only banners waving, perhaps it is the most trying time of all. To compose hymns of gratitude and praise with our lives, to Jesus the Christ, who reigns, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the way, the truth, and the life, the One who invites us to receive the truth, to belong to the truth and to belong to him.
And so in this turbid time being we roll up our sleeves and pray with our frail hands, with our shaky voices, with our uncertain bank statements, with our imperfect caregiving, and with our hard conversations.
In another week, we’ll walk again into the Advent darkness, a darkness that comes each year, every year in the circle of the church year. It refuses to let us live ahead of time. Thinking that God’s kingdom can be now, that everything can be tied up neatly today. Every year we begin again, actively watching and waiting for the light.
As Auden wrote, we live in the “Time Being.” In this middle time, we need Sundays like Reign of Christ to remind us of the truth, and songs like Now Thank We All Our God to strengthen our faith. When empty chairs at the table bring painful memories, when the candle is burning low, when the glass is all but empty, when the air is still and silent… that is when Jesus is Lord, not with the power and might of business as usual, not with a victorious win, nor a triumphant overturning. Jesus is Lord in the first cry of a newborn baby in an occupied land and the last breath of an executed man on the cross. Jesus is Lord and he has, and is, and will do anything to meet us right where we are, to be God-with-us, redefining authority, reconceiving power and incarnating truth yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
As Martin Rinkert wrote, nearly four hundred years, amid his own turbid time:
All praise and thanks to God
the Father now be given,
the Son and Spirit blest,
who reign in highest heaven
the one eternal God,
whom heaven and earth adore;
for thus it was, is now,
and shall be evermore.
Jesus is Lord. Amen.