In 1982 "Lawnchair Larry" Walters of Los Angeles made his historic voyage. He attached about a dozen weather balloons to a lawnchair and floated to 16,000 feet before shooting out a few of the balloons with a pellet gun and safely floating back to earth.

He said it was something he’d wanted to do since he was 13 years old, to float up into the sky, to be awed by the view and the calm, to drift lazily above the fray.

This Sunday the Church celebrates the end of the Christian year with the commemoration of Christ the King.

His kingship reminds us of the ways Jesus lives above the fray

And so the Gospel reading is that famous passage in which Jesus is led to his execution and actually prays for his assailants. He doesn’t say, ‘Hey, get me down from here!’ rather he seems remarkably calm through it all. He sees to the heart of the matter, which is that he must die knowing that, of course, he cannot be constrained by death.

His attitude forces us to ask why we’re so unwilling to join Jesus in living above the fray. Before each of us is a battle, a tussle, a conflict. And we are constantly getting too close, too involved, and too convinced that the fracas is where we have to put all of our energies.

When we are caught up in the details of life we are diminished. When we occupy ourselves with small worries we become small people. The scratch on the car, the spot on the carpet, the dirty dish in the sink – we can, and do, get preoccupied with these things but the world does not turn on them.

How can we live above the fray?