I have a few hobbies that I'm nervous to tell you about in case you think I'm boring. But this is the only way I can think of starting this sermon, so I'm afraid I'm going to risk your judgment and face it. Being boring is a serious indictment. My first boring hobby is stamp collecting. I know it's really dull, but when I grew up, we didn't have computers, so I had to do something.
My second hobby is cricket now, not that kind of cricket. This cricket has nothing to do with insects and everything to do with the second most popular game in the world after football, sorry, soccer. The reason that cricket never took off in the US is that top class international games last up to five days each day lasting from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM at one o'clock.
All the players leave the field for a 40 minute lunch, and at three 40 they leave for tea for another 20 minutes. And at the end of those 30 hours of play, you can still have a draw. In the US, sports fans would struggle with games that have meal breaks, let alone sleepovers. And my third boring pastime is cryptic crosswords.
I have collections of them taken from the times of London. They are cunning, devious, and infuriating. Each clue is a word game all of its own. Now, these collections contain 200 cryptic crosswords, uh, which makes it much cheaper than buying the times every day for 200 days. But there's one problem with these collections.
The times scrimp on binding. So after I have spent months plotting through these crosswords, the glue perishes and the books just fall apart. It happens every time I take about a year, uh, to get to puzzle number 120, and then the pages just start falling out. So I put a rubber band, uh, around the book to hold the pages together.
Boring, absolutely, but worthy of starting a sermon on Colossians one. Definitely. Because when the glue expires and you start to fall apart, what will hold you together? He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in Him, all things in heaven and on earth were created things visible and invisible.
Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers, all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church, he is the beginning, the first born from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
For in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things. Whether on heaven, in heaven or in earth by making peace through his blood on the cross. When the glue expires and you start to fall apart, what will hold you to He is before all things, and in him, all things hold together.
When your family fights over Thanksgiving, dinner again and begins to fall apart, he himself holds all things together. When a church has a dispute about a doctrine or a protocol or an event, and it threatens to splinter in him, all things hold together. When a nation becomes so polarized that people predict the breakup of the country in him, all things hold together.
Jesus is the glue. Now, show him what's broken. Is it your heart, your marriage, your relationship with your kid or your parent? Is it your mind, your patience, your resolve, your courage, your hope, your faith? He himself is before all things and in him, all things hold together. God is in the glue business.
I never quote poetry in sermons. Because preaching is hard enough to understand as it is without adding poetry to it. But there's a phrase that was on my mind as I wrote this sermon. It's a phrase you hear a lot these days, and it's often applied to western culture. At this moment in history, the center cannot hold.
It's from a poem by WB Yeats predicting the challenges facing civilization. After World War I, the falcon cannot hear the falconer things fall apart. The center cannot hold the best lack or conviction. While the worst are full of passionate intensity, things fall apart. The center cannot hold. But Yates has hope.
And that hope is in the title of the poem. The Second coming, Christ is Before All Things, and in Him all things hold together. Today is called Christ the King, Sunday. It is the final Sunday of the liturgical year. Next week unbelievably is advent already, and today we bring down the curtain on the year that started December the first, 2024, with a bold declaration that Jesus is Lord.
He is the image of the invisible God in him. All things in heaven and on earth were created, visible and invisible. All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Not that you'd know that from the gospel lesson, Jesus is on the cross dying, and along with him, the hopes that he would save his people.
It looks like craziness or a sick joke that the people who chose this reading did so for the feast of Christ, the king, a king on a cross. The cross is a vision of utter powerlessness. Total failure. There can be no king on a cross. That's what we'd think if we didn't know the end of the story. It's what we'd think if we believed that God was going to save the world through power, through war, through politics.
Instead, God redeems the world through weakness, through rejection, through the unjust death of God's son on the cross, God put the world back together through Christ the unrecognizable. King. King,
as well as never quoting poetry. I never talk about science in a sermon because I just don't know any, but I'm gonna break that. Rule two this week, I read about Lamin in. Uh, laminin is a protein in our bodies, which holds our cells together. Lamin literally keeps us from falling apart. But here's the thing about laminin.
If you look at it through a microscope, as I know you will all do when you get home, or at least you'll google a photo of it, you will see that laminin is in the shape of a cross, and not across like an X, but across like a crucifix. The protein that literally holds us together is shaped like the cross of Christ.
He is before all things, and in him, all things hold together.
On Good Friday this year, I was one of a group of local clergy who were invited by the Chapel of Baptist South Hospital to lead some meditations. And after I'd given my talk at the chaplain, gave me a thank you gift. It is a photo of the three wooden crosses that stand outside on the grass outside the hospital taken at nighttime.
And I wondered why not? Why did they give me a photo of the three crosses? The answer to that is obvious. Uh, they are very nice people at Baptist South now. Why three? Why does Baptist South have three crosses on their lawn? They could lose two of them and still make their point. It occurred to me that I don't often encounter this In our Episcopal tradition, we don't really make a big thing of three crosses.
I mean the one in the middle. Sure, absolutely. It's the one in the middle that's really important. Uh, that's the one that bore the son of God. That is the one that is the focal point of human history. The meeting place of all mercy, all sin and all grace. That's the one worth depicting, isn't it? The middle one.
But this week I read something that suggested that the other two might actually be worth depicting also. The reason is because I am on one of them and it's up to me to decide which one. I am either the thief who hurled insults at Jesus and rejected him, or I'm the one who lamented his own sin, turned to Christ and pleaded to be remembered in God's kingdom.
Oh Lord, when the nails are driven in, may I be on the right cross, so I'll never visit Baptist South again with the same attitude in Christ. All things were created and all things hold together. Jesus is the reason behind the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets. Christ is the reason behind the 50 billion galaxies we can see.
The reason behind the 10 Ian Stars in the universe that's won with 17 zeroes after it. Christ is the reason behind light and its speed of 186,282 miles per second. Christ is the reason betw be behind the five and half thousand species of mammal, the 6,000 species of amphibian, the 8,000 species of reptile, the 10,000 species of bird, the 17,000 species of butterfly.
The 24,000 species of fish, the 91,000 species of insect, and the 422,000 species of plants on Earth. Christ is the reason behind human beings and all the 75 trillion cells in each person, the 127 million light sensitive cells in your eyes, and the 25,000 receptor cells in your ears, Christ is the reason behind the greatest of all computers, the human brain and the 100 million messages it receives every second, and the 5 trillion chemical operations that take place in it each second.
Christ is the reason behind the greatest philosophy, the most gorgeous art, the most profound poetry, the most inspiring music, the most exciting architecture, the most satisfying theater, the most beautiful prose ever to come from the human soul. Christ is the reason behind this expanding universe and all that is within it, but there's more.
The reason, this image of the invisible God, this first born of all creation, did not remain aloof from our universe. The author and sustainer of the world did not sit passively by why we and all creation suffer. The Lord of all there is did not merely watch as his pride and joy. The human race threw away our status as friends of God.
The word the reason became flesh and dwelt among us. The architect of human life became a single cell inside a young woman, then two cells, then four, then 8, 16, 32 until he too had 75 trillion and was ready to be born. The word became flesh and dwelt among us, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. This is a Christmas message.
Today we celebrate Christ the king. Who holds all things together and gives us the mission of spreading his news. No rubber band, no cheap adhesive, because God is in the glue business. Amen.