Psalm 15:1-3; John 18:33-37
Christ the King Sunday, November 25, 2012
Rev. Robert Shaw, Pastor
of Christ Presbyterian Church in Winfield, Indiana, has a sister who lives in
New Jersey. In the direct aftermath of
Super Storm Sandy, she and her home congregation met for worship despite the
widespread power outage. They huddled
together under blankets. Candlelight
illumined them. A piano guided them in songs of praise and
petition to God’s glory.
After sharing his
sister’s report with one of his congregation members, Pastor Shaw was given a
very good, faithful suggestion. He had
to have wondered how the congregation would feel about the idea; had to have
weighed in some measure what the majority response would be if he
followed-through. Being Presbyterian
and celebrating the priesthood of all believers, he wisely knew not to make the
decision on his own. So he presented it
to the congregation’s worship committee.
I’m happy to report the good, faithful, slightly radical suggestion was
agreed upon. And so, last Sunday, the
18th, Christ Presbyterian Church in Winfield, Indiana, voluntarily
turned the heat off, unplugged everything, and worshipped by candlelight. They did so, according to Pastor Shaw, in
order to “worship in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who might not yet
have power available in their homes or places of worship” and to take up a
special collection for Super Storm Sandy relief.
Faithful FPC friends, have you seen, have you seen Jesus our King? He’s here, on earth as it is in heaven, in
plain view.
Thousands
of civilians are hiding today, this very hour, in caves along the Nuba Mountain
range of Southern Sudan. The civilians
fled for their lives as the result of door-to-door killings, looting, destruction
of property, and aerial bombing carried out by Sudan Armed Forces. And this is the pulpit-ready, PG version of
what’s been happening following the command for a clean extermination of Nuban
people by their own undemocratically elected governor. “Don’t bring them back alive. We have no
space for them” were his devastatingly evil words. Genocide reporting journalists were
subsequently banned from the region, and humanitarian aid organizations were
forced to evacuate their workers.
Among the workers
ordered to evacuate was Ryan Boyette, nephew of our own Angela Mannion. He had moved to the Nuba region of Southern
Sudan in 2003, deeply motivated by his evangelical Christian faith and while working
with Rev. Franklin Graham’s aid organization Samaritan’s Purse. It’s where he met his wife, Jazira. As Nicolas Kristof reported in the New York
Times in October of last year, Ryan decided he could not flee despite being
ordered to do so by Samaritan’s Purse.
He told Kristof, “A lot of people tried to convince me to leave. But this is where my wife is from, this is
where I’ve lived for eight years. It’s hard to get on a plane and say, ‘Bye, I
hope to see you when this ends.’ ” He
stayed and founded Eyes and Ears of Nuba, a small team of full-time citizen
journalists who, in the face of very real danger, report on the day to day
atrocities being perpetrated by the Sudanese central government. You can get these reports – born of
tremendous faithful passion to end this horrendous injustice -- on line at www.nubareports.com.
Faithful
FPC friends, have you seen, have you seen Jesus our King? He’s here, on earth as it is in heaven, in
plain view.
A couple
years ago, there appeared a very positive and growing trend to report about
U.S. churches. It’s a response to the
reality of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and its consequential, often devastating
impact in the lives of our military veterans.
Here are a few highlights …
A nondenominational
church is offering professional counseling on its campus at an affordable
rate. The same church offers classes to
vets with PTSD and to their families, taught by the likes of Vietnam veteran
John Blehm, who, before his being diagnosed with PTSD in 1997 and his growth in
faith, said people had generally considered him, to quote, “a crazy
alchoholic.”
And there is a retired U.S. Navy Seal named
Mark Waddell who has reported that it was a church member who helped him most while
he was coping with PTSD. She did more
than pray for him, she spent many loving, supportive hours helping Mark and his
wife clear out and move on from their garage-full of military gear, with all of
its desert dirt and muddy, bloody boot triggers.
Here also the words of PTSD sufferer Nate
Self, a West Point graduate, former elite Army Ranger, recipient of a Silver
Star, a Purple Heart, and who sat next to President Bush in the 2003 State of
the Union. Active in his congregation’s
military ministry, he has offered this witness -- "If people think the VA
hospital will solve all the problems, they'll overlook the greatest source of
healing in any situation: Jesus. The
majority component for recovery is a spiritual solution, more than any secular
clinical answer."[i]
Faithful
FPC friends, have you seen, have you seen Jesus our King? He’s here, on earth as it is in heaven, in
plain view.
“So,
you are a king?” inquired an incredulous Pontious Pilate of Jesus on
behalf of Caesar Augustus and the Roman Empire. “My
kingdom,” Jesus replied, “is not from this world, is not from here. You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into
the world, to testify to the truth.”
What a dramatic
exchange! It invites us to ask -- What
sort of kingdom belongs to Jesus and where
oh where is it? What does his royal reign
have to do with such actions as showing solidarity to those displaced by life’s
storms, supporting those risking their lives for justice in remote parts of the
world, honoring those who have clashed with world powers in defense of human
freedom and come home traumatized?
Talking about Jesus’
kingdom not being from this world can be really problematic. It can lead folks to believe Christ’s kingdom
is strictly otherworldly -- up and out there in “heaven,” remote from our very
real and relevant life experiences. It can further lead to the assumption that
God, through Jesus, will only sort out this world’s mess at some distant point
in the future. In this understanding,
Christ will only be king on the day of a second-coming.
Now, the Bible does teach us about the
eternal, the “cosmic” aspects of Christ.
And it’s quite faithful to affirm that His power is far vaster than we mortal,
sinful human beings will ever be able to comprehend. We do
also rightly confess our belief in His coming holy return. However, we should wonder … according to all
four Gospels, was this what Jesus himself first and foremost focused on when he
preached about his fully, finally bringing about the kingdom of God?
I’ve been studying this intently
over the past month, companioned by the writings of a greatly respected New
Testament scholar named Tom Wright. You
may recall I talked a bit about him a few weeks ago, after I heard him lecture
in Princeton for three days. There are
very long, interesting, solidly academic answers to the question about what
Jesus’ preached about God’s kingdom. And
it is absolutely necessary to understand all the ways the Bible teaches that He
is the fulfillment of Israel’s historic, prophetic expectations. But we don’t need to explore too much of
this here this morning because it all really does get summed up perfectly in
our Lord’s Prayer. The long-prophesied,
rescuing, redeeming, fully loving reign of Christ exists on earth as it is in heaven. Faithful FPC friends, He’s here in plain
view. Jesus is at one and the same
time cosmic and intimately connected!
The Gospels are clear
about this. There is no question that Jesus was speaking “of a kingdom in and
for this world.”[ii] It’s not from
this world because in our sin humans have from the very start equated power
with violence, oppression, injustice. It
is instead from Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth. Jesus, God in the flesh, defines this holy kingdom
in a radically different way. The
Gospels report His teaching that it is a slow growing, nonviolent seed that
produces unexpected reversals of power and privilege. This is the truth He testified to in front
of Pilate, that firm biblical figurehead representing the way of worldly
empires.
So the kingdom of Christ
glorifies God’s sovereignty. It’s a
reign of power built from our loving all God’s children as we want and need to
be loved and in ways born of great humility, selflessness, and bold
service. Our Lord modeled this way of
living all the way to the Cross and in His resurrection, and continues to live
it through the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us. Here, on earth, as it is in heaven. Jesus most simply and precisely defined holy
kingdom living when he preached, “Anyone who wants to be great among you must
become your servant.” (Matt. 10:43).
It’s worth concluding this
biblical point, for today, with a good quote from Tom Wright. It’s from his book Simply Jesus, which
I would love to lead a study of here at FPC (just let me know if you are interested!)
and it sums up the ongoing work of Jesus as our King with words that celebrate
(among a world full of other strong examples) the faithful actions of Pastor
Shaw and his congregation, Ryan Boyette and his team, and veterans like Nate
Self. Rev. Wright writes --
“This, then, is how
Jesus puts his kingdom achievement into operations: through the humans he has
rescued. That is why, right at the start
of his public career, he called associates to share his work and then to carry
it on after he had laid the foundations, particularly in his saving death. It has been all too easy to suppose” Wright
reinforces for us, “that is Jesus really was a king of the world, he would, as
it were, do the whole thing all by himself.
But that was never his way – because it was never God’s way. It wasn’t how creation itself was supposed to
work. And Jesus’ kingdom project is nothing if not the rescue and renewal of
God’s creation project.”[iii]
So let us commune now
with our King. Let us recommit
ourselves to be led on, until, as our triumphal closing hymn wonderfully words
it, “sin’s fierce war shall cease, and holiness shall whisper, the sweet amen
of peace.” Hearing that holy whisper,
all God’s children gathered here today, say, “Amen.”
