We have told our faith stories
since the beginning of the last Advent Season
and it is asked of us today
to recognize that there are 2 kingdoms:
- two powers which seek our allegiance
- two ways to attempt to find
meaning and purpose for life.

Today, the contrast between these 2 kingdoms
couldn't be more obvious.

We have the primeval collision
illustrated for us in the Gospel encounters
between Jesus and Pilate.

"You aren't making any claims here, are you,"
asked Pilate,
"If so, I shall have to kill you."

So it is that the dominant culture
demands our complete loyalty.

Jesus thought quite the opposite.
And, down deep,
so do we.

For a lot of years, now,
I have listened to people
talk about loved ones who have died.

I have noticed
that people usually tell stories at such times,
and that these stories
illustrate attributes of the deceased.

The stories we choose to tell at such times
expose our core values
lay open for all to see
that which we truly believe
even if not always practice.

Rarely do we hear stories
about a loved one who has died
which illustrate avarice, greed, or unkindness;

We don't often hear stores at such times
of mis-use of power, or violence against any person.

We choose our stories well
and expose our hearts, our deepest values, thereby;
as we tell, for instance,
of the deceased persons love of children
or kindness,
or self-lessness.

If I may be personal for a moment,
My dad died just 2 years ago,
and I remember the stories
people told about him
as we gathered in the parish hall
after the funeral.

People were full of stories
that made me proud,
that perhaps, made God proud.

One old friend
actually paid an unspecified sum
to have a newly-discovered star
named after Dad.

Those were fine stories.
They revealed our deepest values.
They constituted a nice vision to follow.

Men and women need a noble purpose,
and, in spite of the apparent wealth
and power offered,
we seldom find it in Pilate's kingdom.

Such personal moments of loss and pain
are writ large
in the momentous stories of the Faith Community
contained in each of Today's Bible readings.

Those in Daniel and Revelation
are written as apocalyptic stories
- a form often used by Hebrew story tellers
- to express ultimate truth.

In 167 BC, Judah was enveloped
by the armed might
of Antiocus Epiphanes,
the Selucid King.

Antiocus walked into the Temple
- the identity and heart of the people -
and entered the Holy of Holies,
where only the High Priest went
once each year, blindfolded, on his belly.
There, Antiocus set up a statue of himself.

This profane act
tore the heart out of Judah.

It was a profound challenge to the faithful.
Can our identity and vision
as a people of God
hold up under the powers
of this world?

Which Kingdom will win?

The book of Daniel
was written
to deal with that specific horror.

To us, it seems to be frightening,
but it is not a vision of terror,
the people already knew all about that.

Rather, the book
Tells us of a night vision - a dream -
in which God is seen in great majesty;

-not with hundreds of servants
like Antiocus,
but with 10 thousand times 10 thousand,

And, in this dream,
the Beast which had desecrated the Temple
approaches the presence of God
and immediately bursts into flame.

Early hearers of this story
would have laughed uproariously.

Still watching in visions of the night,
the writer sees one as a Son of Man
- a new Israel -
come into God's court,
where he is given sovereignty and power
in place of the Beast.

With this vision
- this alternative view of Kingdom -
is the corporate identity
and the assurance of God's favor
restored to the faith community.

Truth is vindicated.
Hope abounds.
God reigns.
The stars sing.

Our second reading today,
from the Apocalypse of John,
is the same.

A persecuted people
(this time in Asia Minor)
is faced with death and destruction,
and is given dreams which show God
as the ultimate victor in the cosmic struggle.

In such stories, People of Faith are given hope
with which to hold on to their birthright,
their identity and purpose
as God's special community
in a hostile world.

If it were easy,
or accepted by the dominant culture
to live as did Jesus,
Jesus would not have been killed.
As with our other loved ones
we tell stories about Jesus
which illustrate that about him
for which we most long:

- Courage to stand for something
- Vision to know what it is
- Connectedness with our God
- Christ-like compassion in the world
- and real companionship along the way.

In rising from death,
the Christ of God
vindicates those qualities and purposes
as being of God

and provides us with all we need
to be fully human,
a joy to God
suitable companions one to another
and successful in our sojourn on this earth.

On this, the last Sunday of the Christian year,
we look around
and see the world still threatening.

We catch ourselves doing things
far from the mind of Christ;
disclaiming responsibility for things
in which we, in our society together
are implicated.

We continue to face our own mortality
and wonder what it is
we were given life to do.

How and with what stories
will we be remembered?

What, in the end,
is truly important?

On this last Sunday,
when we have completed a year
of telling our faith stories
and being fed
in this Eucharistic place,

We have, laid before us,
an alternative way
of understanding who we are,
and how we are to be together
and what we are to do.

We have a vision of God's will for us
and the call
to accept our place in the stars.

Go, now,
into this new age
with this vision,
and make God proud.