This Sunday is the last Sunday of the Church Year.  In the past there was a countdown at the end of the Church Year–the third last Sunday, the second last Sunday, and finally the last Sunday–as if the footsteps of doom were drawing closer and closer.  The readings for those Sundays were of impending judgment.  Finally, someone recognized that at the end of life the one waiting to receive us is the Jesus that we have always known.  Rather than a time of trepidation, shouldn’t this be a time of celebration?

I don’t know whether you have been paying attention to the world of physics. Sometime between my senior year in high school and the present, the world changed. The Newtonian laws with which I was familiar somehow morphed into quantum physics. In a sense quantum physics is easy to understand. Every bride is familiar with the fact that the aisle is much shorter going out than it was coming in. On the other hand, quantum physics deals with a world so incredibly complex and so small, the quarks and neutrinos and all of their kin, that their behavior is contrary to our understanding. Think of string theory with its eleven, or maybe twenty one dimensions, some of which are curled in upon themselves. I’ve always wanted to ask a string theorist to name his dimensions. Yet quantum physics lies behind so much that is part of our daily life, like LEDs and lasers, and the microprocessor in your computer and medical imaging like MRIs, and it accounts for many biological and physical phenomena. Some day it may help us to understand dark matter and dark energy, because the observable universe doesn’t account for all that is.

Herb Brokering conducted workshops on worship for the Advanced Course of the Navy Chaplains School all three years that I was on the staff. I must admit, the first year I didn’t have a clue of what he was doing. The second year I thought maybe there is something to this. And the third year I thought “Wow, he really has something to offer.” Herb Brokering gathered up the things of this world and used them to praise the Lord. He could take youngsters into a junkyard and pick up pieces of scrap to sculpture a cross or the face of Christ. Look at what he has done with the hymn Earth and All Stars, number 438 in our hymnal.

Jesus speaks often of the Kingdom of God as composed of those who follow him. He explains it to the scribes and Pharisees, not as something within them, but as something coming into being in their midst. It’s happening, he was saying to them, but you don’t seem to be aware of it. This kingdom is not geographical. It is not of this world. It encompasses everything in all creation. It is eternally present. And all of it relates directly to Jesus Christ.

I’ve always had a deep and abiding love for the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament. Think of them as dealing with real people confronting critical human problems—problems in relationship to their God. I would agree with the many scholars who see the Book of Daniel, from which our first lesson was taken, as being written during the time between the Old and New Testament rather than at the time of Daniel himself. If it was written during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Selucid ruler, it was written for a people who truly needed a hero figure, someone who dared to stand up for his faith in the midst of dangerous times. Mothers in those days who had their infant sons circumcised could expect to have the child killed and hung around their neck as a warning to others. Antiochus Epiphanes sought to destroy the religious faith of the Jewish people. He erected an idol in the midst of the Temple compound and had hogs slaughtered to desecrate the altar of burnt offerings.

As opposed to a worldly powerful king like Antiochus, the author of the Book of Daniel describes God in the midst of his heaven. The throne is engulfed in fire and the fire flows outward from him. In place of the paltry number of attendants that Antiochus could command, this sovereign is surrounded by a hundred million—ten thousand times ten thousand. And this court sits in judgment and the journals are opened.   The judgment is that of the Beast. Surprise Antiochus, there is someone who is much more powerful than you are—someone who can destroy you and all your minions [yes, they did have minions in those days]. All of this we would expect in a book written to encourage people in the midst of overwhelming tragedy in their lives and opposition to their faith.

The amazing part is that in a night vision, a dream, the author sees “one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven.” A human figure is given dominion, and glory, and kingship that all peoples, nations, and languages, should serve him.   To the one who heard the story of Daniel at that time, I would suppose that he would understand this figure as the righteous person who dared to stand firm in faith in spite of opposition and danger. But as God’s revelation progressed, I believe we would see in this figure Jesus Christ himself.

The child born in Bethlehem, the one who fulfilled all of the requirements of God’s law, the one crucified and buried, the one who rose from the dead is the one to whom finally everything is subjected. The very one whom God sent into human flesh, the one who assumed responsibility for our faults and failings, the one who died in our place, is the one who sits in judgment at the end of our time. That’s the startling thing. There is no surprise at the end of life. The one who sits in judgment is not a stranger. He is the very one who has been intimately involved with us throughout our lives.

This Sunday is the last Sunday of the Church Year. The Church Year is designed to tell us the story of Jesus Christ, and our response to this gift of God. In the past there has been a countdown at the end of the church year—the third last Sunday Church Year, the second last Sunday, the last Sunday—as if the footsteps of doom were drawing closer and closer. The readings scheduled for those Sundays were of impending judgment. Finally someone recognized that at the end of life the one who is waiting to receive us is the Jesus that we have always known. Rather than a time of trepidation, shouldn’t this be a time of celebration? Our Lord will receive us home, and the kingdom which we will experience is simply a continuation of the kingdom of which we are already a part.

We began the Church Year last fall with anticipation of the gift of a Child. Advent was a time of preparation—preparation for Christmas. Not simply a time of decorating the Christmas tree, hanging the lights, tacking up the wreath, it was a time to prepare ourselves to receive the gift of God. Now at the very end of the Church Year once again we focus on the child who became a man—we acknowledge that we have received the most expensive gift conceivable—the gift of a life—His for ours, and we celebrate the extent to which we have been loved.

I don’t know about you but I rejoice in a constantly expanding universe a quantum universe—a universe of black holes, quarks and neutrinos, a world of constant discovery. Even more I rejoice that I and you live in a kingdom of grace that is far beyond our comprehension, ruled by someone we have known all of our lives. On this last Sunday of the Church Year, let’s celebrate Christ the ever-living king.