Have you ever felt as if your world were coming apart? Well, that is precisely how a certain Mr. Sammler comprehended the harsh realities of his world. The old man had already witnessed the unspeakable horrors of this century. He even felt guilty because he had survived while nearly all his kin and culture had been cremated in the demonic ovens of the European holocaust. Fate had granted him the blessing and curse of survival. But his continued existence was a Pyrrhic victory. Now he lived in Manhattan with Shula, his disgruntled daughter. Mr. Sammler was terrified by the dangers of being seventy-one and vulnerable in such a raw metropolis. Even as he approached the parking garage near his own apartment, he was accosted by a pickpocket wearing dark shades and a camel's hair coat. Mr. Sammler had escaped the tortures of a Polish consecration camp, but now he inhabited this strange, hellish planet called Manhattan. Back in his cubical dwelling, Sammler read lines from his daughter's notebook on astronomy and space science in which she had asked, "How long will this earth remain the only home of Man?" The depressed father thought to himself pensively, "How long? Oh, Lord you bet!" Then, he paraphrased the lines of his own Hebrew wisdom tradition that he had recited in childhood at the synagogue: "Wasn't it the time -- the very hour to go? For every purpose under heaven. A time to gather stones together, a time to cast away stones." Then, Mr. Sammler thought the unthinkable: "Considering the earth itself not as a stone cast but as something to cast oneself from -- to be divested of. To blow this great blue, white, green planet, or to be blown from it."

Such were the alarming thoughts of Saul Bellow's pitiful protagonist in his probing novel, Mr. Sammler's Planet. There are moments in which we too do not feel at home in such a world as this. We too become unglued. We cannot make sense of it all. Impeachment hearings, interest rate uncertainties, violence in Jerusalem. Even the Panthers are not much fun any more. Everything seems to be coming loose. We wonder where there is some sort of spiritual glue to hold things together. We have become strangers around the family table. Everyone talks about family values , but there is no consensus that defines the term. Our families are, therefore, threatened by earthquakes of change which are endemic to a volatile culture. Everything is coming loose because our planet seems to be spinning out of control. We are living too fast. We are modelling for our children obsessive compulsive behavior. A recent study of thousands of children by the University of Michigan has disclosed that children under twelve are alarmingly over-scheduled and emotionally stressed.

A generation ago there was an all black cast which presented a Broadway play entitled Green Pastures. There was a memorable scene in which the angel Gabriel was sent to earth in order to investigate the havoc of Noah's flood. When he returned to the clouds of heaven, he reported to God, "Lord, there ain't nothin' fastened down there any more. Everythin' nailed down is comin' loose." Families. Mores. Marriages. Discipline has become a dirty word. Bad guys in movies and in life no longer wear black hats. Deception is practiced by prominent politicians. Captain Ahab, in Melville's classic novel, stole our line when he tightened a carpenter's vice and declared, "No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this slippery world can hold, man."

When everything is coming loose in our lives, we too long for some source of stability. I saw in a newspaper a few years ago a haunting photograph. A photo-journalist captured the tragic scene of a Bosnian child inside a bus. His tiny hand pushed against the glass. His father’s hand touched tenderly the outside of the window. His trembling, protruded lips and salted tears disclosed the wretched fears of a loving father. His son was being taken to a refugee camp. He was now returning to engage in fighting in a brutal civil war. He would soon become either a victor or a victim of ethnic cleansing.

Such senseless horrors are now occurring upon Mr. Sammler's planet. His planet is also our home. Things are not stable here in our global village. The world has become like a gigantic spider web. If it is touched in any one place, the whole thing is set trembling. We long for that which can hold things together.

The apostle Paul's environment was just as volatile and fragile as our own. There was certainly no security in being a Jew by birth and a Christian by choice. Many people of faith within the church of Paul's time were considering the option pondered by our contemporary Mr. Sammler. They wanted to cast themselves from this wicked world. Some chose to do so through a philosophy of mystical escape. Fledgling Christians in the small city of Colossae, for example, had concluded that this world and its people are not worth redeeming. Things of this world are too evil. These Christians began to see their faith as a release from involvement with the world and its problems. It was time to cast one's self spiritually from the world, like a precious stone.

A follower of Paul, writing in the theological context of his mentor, addressed these escapist Christians in Colossae. He insisted that the world is forever God's creation. Thus, he wrote the saints, " . . . in (Christ) 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."

This message is precisely the word of hope for all of us today who feel that our lives are coming loose! In Christ, all things hold together. This is the word of assurance that I want each of us to appropriate in our hearts. Carefully note that I am not suggesting that the good news is that you can hold together your fragmented life. I am not suggesting that by reason each of us can make sense of the nature of things. To the contrary: I am insisting that it is the power of Christ that glues together this fragmented world. It is the love of Christ that empowers us to keep on keeping on in a world that sometimes seems so hopeless. Christ is King. Christ is supreme. Through the resurrection, God has conquered death by dying. History is, consequently, headed toward reconciliation, not brokenness. Time moves toward Christ, not chaos. There is a glue which holds together a cracked creation. That glue is the love of God made manifest in Jesus of Nazareth. It is the grace of Christ that holds together the world in which we abide. It is the spirit of Christ that is the tenacious adhesive which connects the brokenness of family and marriage. It is the tender touch of Christ which heals our emaciated selves.

On this Sunday before Thanksgiving, therefore, we gather here at Providence United Methodist Church to acknowledge that Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords. It is the risen Lord who enables us to make sense of this disjointed world. Christ who holds all things together is the reason for our gathering in thanksgiving around tables with turkey this week. Every family table has its brokenness. There is the chair in which grand-dad once sat. There is the chair inhabited by a sister with whom we have exchanged words of bitterness. There is the chair used by a father who has broken his vows of marital fidelity. The thanksgiving table is a banquet of tarnished hopes and crushed dreams. But we gather in unity and forgiveness and hope because we invoke the name of Jesus Christ. In him , all things hold together, even in this tormented and tattered world!

Christians in every era have been held together emotionally and spiritually by trusting in the promises of Christ the King. Lord Ashley, for example, was a courageous social crusader in the British Parliament during the last century. His bold legislation calling for reform emanated from his commitment to Christian principles. He experienced a resounding defeat one afternoon upon the floor of a reactionary Parliament. He wrote in his journal that night, "'Cast down but not destroyed.' I feel no abatement of faith, no sinking of hope, no relaxation of perseverance. The stillest and darkest hour of night precedes the dawn . . . . Although (we) may pass not the stream of Jordan, it is something that God has permitted (us) to wash (our) feet in the waters of the Promised Land."

On this Christ the King Sunday we gather to proclaim that, despite the fragmentation of this world, the love of God reigns supreme. Thus, no situation is hopeless. Not even death. The risen Christ holds our lives together with threads of binding hope.

Many of us have enjoyed the epiphany opera by Menotti entitled, Amahl and the Night Visitors. The magi are depicted in their route toward Bethlehem. They stop at a humble abode where a peasant mother and her crippled child live. These oriental aristocrats disclose that a great king has recently been born and they are searching for his place of birth. Upon hearing about the anticipated qualities embodied by this royal child, the mother responds with these words of wonder: ‘For such a King I’ve been waiting all my life.’

Kings, parliaments, presidents, and political parities fail. Humanity, like Humpty Dumpty, has fallen. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men / Cannot put Humpty Dumpty bach together again. Our brokenness can only be healed from above.

In a volume entitled Picking Up the Pieces, Clyde Besson tells about a woman counselee whose life had come unglued. She had not finished high school but had spent her best years in labor to pay for her husband’s education as an aeronautical engineer. After many years of marriage, he kicked her out of the nest, traded wives like a replaced automobile, and got on with his new direction. This woman’s world fell apart. Yet, through the miracle of Christian community, she received the encouragement to arise from the ashes of despair in phoenix form. She enrolled in school, entered an exciting vocation, and forged a new future. Though this horrendous experience was painful, she confessed, ‘It was good. It was the best thing that ever happened to me because it caused me to become a whole person.’

Christ is the glue which holds our fragile lives together. Nothing can prevent his ultimate purpose for our lives and for the future of Mr. Sammler’s planet. ‘For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell . . . .’

1. Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler's Planet (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1970), p. 50.

2. Nadya Labi, ?Burning Out At Nine?Time Magazine (November 23, 1998), p. 86.

3. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.; or, The Whale (New York: Viking Penguin, 1972), p. 581.

4. Colossians 1:16 NRSV

5. Colossians 1:17 NRSV

6. Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury (New York: Cassell & Company, vol. 2, 1886), p. 50.

7. Clyde Colvin Besson, Picking Up the Pieces: Successful Single Living for the Formerly Married (Milford, Michigan: Mott Media, Inc., 1983), p. 10.

8. Colossians 1:19 NRSV