A Different Kind of King. 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132:1-12 (13-18); Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37

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1 A Different Kind of King 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132:1-12 (13-18); Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37 When Jesus was born, according to St. Luke, the powerful political people up at the palace missed it. The angeloi, the heavenly messengers from God, came to none of them. Rather, the heavens split open and songs filled the air. An angelic army appeared to poor shepherds out in the fields working the night shift. That's strange. Even stranger was what the angels said: "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!" The phrase on the angels' lips is an almost direct quote from the decrees of Caesar Augustus, one of the world's most effective dictators. When some imperial decree was made by the Caesar's occupation forces in the Near East, this was how it began: "Glory to the most august Caesar (otherwise known as God in the Highest), and peace on earth to those with whom the god Augustus is well pleased," the implication being that there will be hell to pay for those with whom god Augustus is not pleased. Do you see? Luke has put Augustus's imperialist words on the lips of the angels. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, there was a royal decree: "There's a new King on the throne. Jesus Christ is King. Therefore, Augustus, or anybody else, is not King." Today's text is a long way from that glad beginning - that grand angelic power play. Today's text, John 18, has that once heavenly heralded "King" standing bedraggled, beaten, whipped, and bleeding before almighty Pontius Pilate, protector and pawn of Caesar's empire. Pilate looks at this forlorn-looking rabbi and asks with a sneer, "So, are you 'King of the Jews'"? Are you the king of the captives? And though Pilate is holding all the cards and can, with a wave of his hand, unleash a little "shock and awe" on these poor Palestinians, though Caesar still sits secure on the throne, something within us senses a subtle shift, as if some of the sovereignty is 1

2 seeping from the throne, as if the head that wears the crown is becoming increasingly uneasy. Today is Christ the King Sunday, named so by the Catholic church in the last century, and among the most politically charged of days in our year. A question is on the table this morning: Who sits on the throne? Will you bow to the politics of Pilate, or to the cross of Christ? That is the question. Every time the church gathers, even when it's not Christ the King, wherever the church gathers, even if it's Ottawa, we can't escape politics. Just when we try to make the Christian faith all personal, some hymn, some scripture or prayer is going to end in "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth just like heaven," and somebody is going to get suspicious about who really sits on the throne and once again the church slips past the merely spiritual into the pushy political. We all know the church is in transition, but are we transitioning to? Who is on the throne? A New York Times reporter visiting one booming megachurch outside Phoenix recently found the typical scene: a drive-through latte stand, Krispy Kreme doughnuts at every service, and sermons about "how to discipline your children, how to reach your professional goals, how to invest your money, how to reduce your debt." On Sundays children played with church-distributed Xboxes, and many congregants had signed up for a twice-weekly aerobics class called Firm Believers. A list of bestsellers compiled monthly by the Christian Booksellers Association illuminates the creed. It includes texts like Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen, pastor of a church so mega it recently leased a 16,000-seat sports arena in Houston for its services, which even the normally tolerant Publishers Weekly dismissed as "a treatise on how to get God to serve the demands of self-centered individuals..."- Excerpt from Dance Lessons for Zombies by Peter Hiett Is that what church success is really all about? Is this the kind of sovereign we serve? Peter Heitt says we live in a market society with a management economy - hundreds of 2

3 companies with the same product. (So often in the United Church I hear that the only churches that are growing are the evangelical churches.) It buys into the philosophy that the one that markets and manages the best wins. But what was Jesus' management scheme: He chose twelve guys to be with Him - twelve guys the world and religion considered losers. (As far as we know, not one of them chose twelve more guys, duplicating the scheme!) At one point the crowd tried to make Jesus king, and basically he ran away. How's that for management? In the New Testament, Jesus healed people, raised the dead, and then commanded people not to tell. (If we think there's a miracle, we market it and manage it.) A few years ago, a national survey ranked seventy-one professions regarding their perceived honesty and integrity. The TV evangelist ranked sixty-eighth, right after prostitute and right before organized crime boss (The Day America Told the Truth: What People Really Believe about Everything That Really Matters by James Patterson and Peter Kim). It seems the more we market ourselves and manage our churches like big business, the less people believe, the less we must look like Jesus, and the less it must seem that we're relying on Jesus. Maybe that's why the church in [North America] is not growing. However, the church in Russia, Africa, and China is growing like crazy... where marketing, management, and professionalism are often illegal! Heitt says: I'm absolutely inundated with literature and conferences on "How to Build a Successful Church" and "How to Manage a Successful Discipleship Program." Discipleship is not a program; it's a life that rubs off on another life, seasoning, flavoring, and permeating that life like salt. - Excerpt from Dance Lessons for Zombies by Peter Hiett "Are you King?" Pilate asked, backed up by the largest army ever to occupy the Near East 3

4 until now, Pilate so powerful, yet, we suspect, about to be exposed as impotent. And though that day nine out of ten average citizens, when polled, screamed in answer, "We have no king but Caesar!" we suspect that their kingdom is in peril. Jesus doesn't answer, "Yes, I'm King. Your reign is in peril. Your empire is on the skids." Jesus doesn't answer because that's our job as followers of the Lamb, as folk who on this day are made by the church to sing, "Jesus shall reign." We're just people who know one little thing that many of our fellow citizens do not. We know who sits on the throne and it should cause us to live differently. Fred Craddock writes: A few years ago in a church in Oklahoma where I was worshiping with my family, I had an afternoon engagement and had to leave quickly. I said goodbye to them after the benediction. In order to leave the parking lot quickly, I cut through the back, through the choir room. I said to one of the women in the choir as she was putting away her robe, I appreciated very much the anthem this morning. She said, I hope so, because that s it. I said, What do you mean? She said, That s it. I m hanging it up. She was putting away her robe. I said, Are you retiring? She d been in the choir 103 or 104 years; I thought she was retiring. She said, No, I m quitting. I said, You re quitting. She said, I m quitting. Oh, you re not quitting. I m quitting. Well, why are you quitting? She said, I sat up the in the choir loft this morning and looked around at the other choir 4

5 members. I looked at the minister and looked at the worship leader. I looked at the ushers and just looked out over the congregation. I said finally to myself what has haunted me for years. I said, What s that? She said, Who cares? Well I was in a hurry, I had to make a speech, so I said, Oh you ll be alright. Take an aspirin, you ve got a headache, all right? I went to the parking lot, but all the way to my engagement and all the way back I thought of that indictment. I was a member of that church at the time, and she was indicting me and all the members. In fact, if it were true, what she had said was, This is not a church. If her opinion after longtime membership there, as an active participant in that church, was that the sum gesture of that church was a shrug of the shoulders, then it was not a church. When I got home that afternoon, I called that lady. I said, I want to talk to you. She said, If you want to. I said, I want to. I went over there; we talked, and brusquely we disagreed. I finally asked her Well what would we have to do to show that we cared? And this was her definition; She said, Take me seriously. That was a strange way to put it, especially for her. She was a kind of comic, a sort of stick of peppermint; she was always playing practical jokes. She would pin tails of choir robes together. She would go early and put some big cartoon on the pulpit so that when the minister came out in all his sobriety, he d look down and be blown out of the water. She was that kind of person, so I said, You can t be serious! Take you seriously? What are you talking about? You re always joking, laughing. And she said, You bought all that? I thought it was rather transparent, my self. I like to be taken seriously. When I left that lady s house, I said to her, You re wrong, you re wrong. 5

6 She said, I m not. I said, I get to travel to churches all over the country, and everywhere I go there are people who care for each other. They take care of each other. She said Where? I said, Everywhere I go, there are people who care. She said, Really? She said, Name some. She wants names. May I use your name? May I give her your name? Craddock stories p. 61 The Apostles' Creed links Pilate to the strange virgin birth of Jesus. "I believe in Jesus Christ, his holy son our Lord, who was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate..." I wonder if that linkage is more than coincidental. "Born of the virgin...suffered under Pontius Pilate." Now it s true that many modern folk have trouble believing in the virginal conception of Jesus. That's not how babies come into our world. I wonder at all the fuss in your average, modern, sophisticated, enlightened, educated congregation over the weird way Jesus was conceived - was Jesus really born of a virgin and had no human father? Hard for modern, scientific, critical folk like us to swallow such a superstitious- sounding claim. But still it might be a whole lot easier to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin than it is to believe (and to live like it) that Jesus sits on the throne. Thanks be to God. Amen. 6