Interfaith Service
November 16, 2014Watching in the Darkness
November 30, 201423
Nov.
2014
Do We Have Use for a King?
Watch or listen to this sermon.
“Do We Have Use for a King?”
Today is Christ the King Sunday, this is the last Sunday of the liturgical year and the Sunday right before we begin advent. It’s a way that we mark our seasons in the church calendar. In 1925 Pope Pius XI proclaimed this last Sunday of the liturgical year as a feast day, in which we proclaim Christ as our King above all others. Yet in our Presbyterian tradition we don’t really talk about kings, except in our music and in this one Sunday.
I remember about 6 years ago, when I was working as an intern in the office of religious life at Denison University, I was talking with a student for whom king language was a strong part of his tradition. He wanted us to start a student group called the Kings’ club. And I had no idea what he meant. I asked him is this just for men? I’m confused, who are the kings? And he explained that he meant this as a group for people who gathered around this concept of Christ as our King. But I still remember my initial hesitation to identify with the royal language and titles.
If you’re like me back then, you too may not be used to thinking about Christ as King. In our context, how much does that even mean to us? Do we have any use for Kings? We don’t hold much stock in the term.
Our concept of kings often comes to us from stories passed down. Henry the 8th and his wives, the Louis’ of France… Even our most well known royalty of today, Duchess Kate and Prince William and his grandmother, the Queen. They seem to us more like celebrities to be admired, and read about in magazines, than someone to whom allegiance should be sworn with any sort of real power.
It seems so mythical, archaic, and so very distant from us. I only know that the word from the hymn we sang earlier, Diadem, means crown or Tierra—because of the Harry Potter series. Magical stories of Kings and power and honor and allegiances are made real to us through the Lord of the Rings and the Game of thrones, but not through any day to day interaction. Rarely are we asked to swear our allegiances to any sort of ruler. So this concept of claiming Christ as our king seems a little challenging. IN our tradition, it’s often only in our music that royal language enters our worship space. There is that moving anthem from the Messiah that names Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But beyond that we’ve run away from the concept of Kings and I think that’s okay. Because it doesn’t really hold any weight, it doesn’t mean something to us. But what we do need and respond to is a guide, a shepherd, a comforter—and a redeemer.
The gospel of john where our scripture comes from today focuses on identity and relationship. When the other gospels focus on a Jesus who teaches through parables and sermons, Jesus, in the Gospel of John, teaches about himself. He gives us these images and metaphors to better understand our relationship with him: I am the Good Shepherd, I am the vine, I am the way, I am the light. We’ve been unpacking these image in Adult education this month and we hear today, in the prayer spoken from the scripture, the reason for his such a focus on this identity. Jesus prays right before he is arrested.
“The world does not know you, [God] but I know you; … 26I made your name known to them, [to the world] and I will [continue] make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:25-26).
This prayer helps us to understand that Jesus came to reveal God’s love for humanity, and that grace offered to us through his love. But the way he talked about God was with a familiarity that folks weren’t used to, when he told the Pharisees as they questioned his teachings, that his power to heal and to teach came from God, they didn’t believe him. They couldn’t allow this man to defame God like this. Talking about God in new and different ways.
So they put him on trail for blasphemy. Which was a serious accusation claiming that he showed great disrespect to God, he was insulting God by claiming he had characteristics or attributes of God. This was a great dishonor. And that is what’s happening in the background when we come to this scene in the garden, reenacted powerfully by the chancel players. We don’t usually spend a lot of time on this particular scene during holy week, because we have so much of the story to tell right before Easter. But we take some time to come to this garden, Jesus had just finished his final meal with his disciples. One of his own friends led the Roman guard and community religious leaders to this place where they had often gathered to pray.
So Jesus comes forward to meet them. There is this questioning that reflects the very beginning of the gospel, when Jesus first gathers his disciples. The disciples ask him about himself and who he is and he invites them to Come and See, and they end up journeying with him through out the years of his earthly ministry learning about his true identity. But here in the garden when he is asked for his identity he responds, I AM he. Much like the I AM statements throughout the gospel. It’s important to note, that the language he uses is powerful. By saying I AM, he’s not just raising his hand and saying, it’s me. He is using the divine name, I AM. Naming himself what God named God’s very self when Moses asked the burning bush, God responds, “I am who I am.” It’s with the same I AM that he speaks throughout the gospel, before Abraham was, I AM, I existed. Before these fathers of your faith, I AM.
This ironically causes the soldiers who came to arrest him for that very blasphemous claim, to fall on the ground before him, recognizing the power in that name. It seems almost comical. Because he asks them again, who are you looking for? They must have gotten up rather quickly and seizes the disciples, because he then requests that they let his companions go. And Simon Peter is readying for a fight. Because he draws his sword and attacks one of the men.
At this point, Jesus, rebukes him, ‘Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?’
He tells them, no, we’re not going to resist this arrest and within that there is a sense of inevitability.
He knows that this is the hour, his time has come. Only through his death comes the revelation of the resurrection. And in his resurrection, God’s redeeming love is made known.
It’s a dramatic story, and maybe a little gruesome right before we begin to think about advent and a little baby Jesus in a manger. But it’s good to be reminded of the story and why it’s important. At Christmas we hear the familiar words of John, that the light shines in the darkness but the darkness does not overcome it (John 1:5). That’s this story too! Christ, the light of the world, is not overcome by the darkness of sin and death. Without the cross we don’t have hope in eternal life. Without his death, we wouldn’t know about eternal life.
The whole story in the gospel of John is like he’s on trial, testifying to this truth between the relationship of Jesus with the father and through that comes our understanding our relationship with the father. Through him. Because that’s how we learned about God’s love for us. The hope of life eternal is revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
On that day, he was condemned as a blasphemer. Sentenced, tried, executed. And in the whole story of the gospel of John the question remains, was it true? That’s where the question comes to us. Do we believe it? Does this story affect us, does this story become part of my story?
The story is known, but needs to be re-heard, and re-lived, to remind us that it is for us to decide if we want to live a life of grace and mercy. To accept that God loves us.
Knowing what we know, changes everything! Or nothing at all. You get to decide.
This reign of Christ doesn’t look like our image of a high court somewhere, with jewels or crowns. We pick this king who flips the concept of power on its head and says, God loves you anyway! So we can choose is to take on belief. Believing in the hope of eternal life, believing in the mercy of God, of the love that God has for each of us. Believing that the testimony is true. In so doing we work alongside one another to be part of the kingdom, the one where love is the most important and neighbors and wanderers are offered a seat at the banquet table.
When we take ourselves out of our deeply rooted individualistic mind frame we begin to see that the kingdom, the reign of God is larger than any individual, even Christ himself.
“The kingdom is present wherever Jesus is present. It is present wherever we experience God through God’s invitation, healing, and restoration.”[i] And we are all invited to belong to this community, to participate in it. We come together to ask, how can we best follow the example set for us? By the one who taught us to pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. By praying this prayer and by listening to the call God has placed in each of our lives, we are working towards thy kingdom come, a peaceable, upside down kingdom based on mercy and grace and forgiveness. Not only in the future, but for right now. In our daily bread. In thy kingdom, God’s rule of love is written on our hearts, to praise and to glorify the one who saves us from the finality of death.
One of you shared a story with me this week. She was teaching Sunday school several years ago, and telling the children the story of Jesus, his life, and death and resurrection. And at the end of it, one of the boys in the class, sincerely asked:
“Wow! Do you really believe all that stuff?” and she was taken aback by the honesty and reality of the question. She told him, “Well you know I try really hard to.”
And that’s what we can do. Because in so doing, we are making a piece of that kingdom more real, more hopeful, more joyous because uniquely YOU have become a part of it. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Amen.
[i] Robert A. Bryant. “Exegetical Perspective on John 18:33-37” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4. (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville: 2009), 337.