Crucifixion Followed by Flyleaves

 

This morning, we have arrived at the end of the book. Reign of Christ Sunday is the last Sunday of the Church Year. The reading from Luke 23 is the last Word of the year. In the last chapter authors wrap up the lose ends of their story, draw final conclusions, and/or reveal the key to understanding the whole tale. The curators of the church year have ended the year with this story – the end of the book returns to a previous chapter that has already been read – the crucifixion of Jesus.

It is a bone jarring ending and one that is meant to settle into our bones. Just like when dampness or a change of weather is felt in the bones or joints, there is an ache, a stiffness, and a slowing down.

The last Sunday of the year, cuts to the bone, to prepare the foundation for a reflective Advent Season and focused journey to Christmas. The epic story of Jesus’ crucifixion is the exclamation point on a whole year of worship, prayer, and study. The end brings us, once again, to the foot of the cross. To suffering. To death. To an ache for wholeness, for reconciled relationships and a coming in fullness of God’s kindom. We stand at the foot of the cross with our stiffness in understanding and our stiffness in responding with the same love and grace we have received.

The final chapter is presented as the key to understanding who we are and what we are all about. Walk into almost any Lutheran worship space and you will encounter at the front of the sanctuary a large visible cross. In Lutheran theology, it is the cross - Jesus’ death on the cross- that is THE story. It is a story that rewrites power and glory to be actions of compassion and expressions of unconditional love: defying the powers of this world, identifying with the pain and sorrow of human existence, and accepting and liberating that which is broken. God with Jesus on the cross choose to redeem and heal all creation.

 

For every year of the three year lectionary cycle, the scripture texts have been correlated into a book to make it easy for our lectors. Each book is a unique set of voices who bear witness to God’s story. The Gospel good news is told through the lens of Matthew, Mark, or Luke. At the end of this church year cycle, we end with the crucifixion according to Luke. This means that we are also at the end of this lectionary book. What appears at following this story, at the end of the book, are blank pages.

 

I am a book lover. I am filled with joy when holding and reading through a well crafted, beautifully bond book – the kind with embossed spines and fanciful inner leaf cover paper that hastens the cover to the reading pages. In such a book when you reach the end of the story, there is more. There are endpapers, also called flyleaves. The blank pages.

Let’s take a look at the end of the red hymnbook. Open to the end of the book and notice how many blank pages there are. There are various practical and production reasons for the flyleaves. The endpapers connect the cover to the main pages, protect text from damage, and balance book folios. These placeholding and space-filling pages are a product of the printing and binding process, in one type like our hymnbook through folding sections into what are called signatures. I have often wondered about these pages and considered them a waste of space and paper. Could more hymns not have been printed on the pages? Or are the pages a suggestion that there are more hymns, perhaps our own songs, to add to the compendium?

 

Coming to the end of a book, especially one that has captured my imagination and emotion, always seems rather sad. I want to know the end of the story, but I don’t want the book to end for I have enjoyed it so much. This week I finished a book with lots of flyleaves. I appreciated their presence. I found that reaching the end of a deeply emotional story and then flipping through the blank pages – was a pause to let the beauty of the book sink in, and it was a material sign that the story continues beyond the words of the book. There is more to be written.

 

There is more to be written after Jesus’ death on the cross. The Bible has many books that carry on from THE story: resurrection accounts, the coming of the Holy Spirit, Paul’s travels, stories from early church communities, the persecution of Jesus’ followers. Those are the stories that have been collected into the Bible. How many other stories were and are there that continue on from Jesus’ death on the cross?

 

There are various versions of a story about a magical library. The story is about a child who discovers a hidden library. The child spends many days going to the library to discover the stories in the magical books, books that when opened took the child to fantastical places. One afternoon when leaving the wizened librarian gave the child a book. Inside, the first few pages of the book, were the adventures of their life, and the rest of the pages were blank waiting to be filled. The librarian explained that the book was a gift for those who truly believed in the power of stories. The gift was for the child to so appreciate the beauty and adventure of their own life story, just like the love they had for other magical books, that they lived their lives with a heart open to see that every day held its own magic and each person’s story was worth telling.

 

We stand at the foot of the cross. Turn the page and what was a blank page is your baptismal certificate, or a story of your seeking out who this Jesus on the cross is. In the waters of baptism, we die to ourselves, we die with Jesus, and then we rise with Christ to write the rest of our pages. As we grow in faith we are taught the Lord’s Prayer, and in each praying of it we say for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. In each praying, we are drawn back to the end of the church year, the exclamation point – the cross. In praying this line, we are reminded that in dying Jesus exemplified kingdom, and defined power as actions of compassion and glory as expression of unconditional love. Rising with Christ we are called to live God’s understanding of power and glory and kindom. God’s story becomes our story; our story is God’s story. These stories and adventures are what gets written on the blank pages of our books.  God’s power and glory which are actions of compassion and expressions of unconditional love, are as described in the story of the child, the magic held in each day. It is through the cross, God’s unconditional act of love for creation that accepts and honours each person’s story as one worth telling.

 

As we finish off the church year, you are invited to digest THE story of Jesus’ crucifixion. Let it grow in your bone marrow and strengthen your bones.  Keep the cross before your eyes as the key to understanding and experiencing Advent and Christmas. Bend on the prayer-bone offering your very bones to God for God’s use to bring the kindom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.