Christ the King Sunday - B Grace St. Paul s - 11/25/12 On the eve of our general election three weeks ago, in the dead of the night, someone was caught red-handed, removing articles from the front of our church property, right out here. The culprit was...your Rector. What I was doing was pulling up all of these things that had suddenly grown there in the hours since dusk. While Grace St. Paul s is a voting location and candidate advertisements are permissible outside 75 feet of polling sites, these same ads are NOT permissible on church property. Churches that would like to keep their tax exempt status in America cannot endorse any candidate. The next day during the election, I also ended up running one candidate and other backers of particular candidates, off the property for handing out their own paraphernalia. None of them had any idea that they were breaking the law and what they were doing could get us into a heap of trouble. At the end of the evening though, our own Grace St. Paul s member and state Representative, Steve Farley arrived. He had decided to make GSP his last stop of the night and I was so happy he did. We stood outside together, talking to his constituents after they had voted. Many of them Steve already knew and they just exchanged pleasantries. Others he thanked in his wonderfully gentle way for voting. I was proud and grateful for the opportunity to be there with him. Flashback eight years. It was October 31, 2004, on the eve of another general election. The Rev. Dr. George Regas, stood in the pulpit at All Saints Church in Pasadena, Ca. The Rev. Regas was a guest preacher that day, but the spot high up in that huge pulpit was nothing new to him. He was the former Rector at All Saints and on this Sunday the present Rector, Ed Bacon, invited George to come back and preach again. No one in the congregation was particularly shocked by the content of The Rev. Regas sermon. They were used to having their preacher challenge them to live into
and carry their faith into every aspect of their daily lives. On this day, The Rev. Regas did that by setting up a hypothetical political debate among President Bush, Senator Kerry and Jesus. He stressed Jesus role as a peacemaker in discussing the war in Iraq and the development of nuclear weapons. He talked about Jesus ministry to the poor and the oppressed and suggested that Jesus understood poverty as a religious issue. He suggested that morning that the Jesus who stood in Nazareth and proclaimed that God had anointed him to preach the good news to the poor, the Jesus who would go on to feed 5000 people, had been hijacked, and replaced in our society with a pro-rich, prowar, pro-american Jesus. He stated that the real Jesus had been stolen and that the one being evoked during that presidential campaign was a guardian of privilege rather than the champion of the dispossessed. The Rev. Regas concluded his remarks with this sentence. When you go into the voting booth on Tuesday, take with you all that you know about Jesus, the peacemaker. Take all that Jesus means to you. Then vote your deepest values. Amen. In June of 2005, All Saints received a certified document from the Internal Revenue Service. We are sending this letter because we believe it is necessary to resolve questions concerning your involvement in activities which may constitute political campaign intervention prohibited under IRC section 501 (c)(3). Intervention in a political campaign could cause you to lose your tax exempt status and it could subject you to an excise tax under section 4955. Our concerns are based on a November 1, 2004 newspaper article in the Los Angeles Times and a sermon presented at All Saints Church. The article states that the sermon given to a congregation of 3500, delivered a searing indictment of the Bush
administration s policies in Iraq, criticism of the drive to develop more nuclear weapons, and described tax cuts as inimical to the values of Jesus. Very interestingly, the IRS chose to step up its investigation of All Saints in the months leading up to the 2008 election. At one point during that process, All Saints was informed by the IRS that they would drop the case against them, if All Saints would apologize and never do it again. The Rev. Ed Bacon not only refused to apologize, but if anything, increased his preaching against the war. From the standpoint of the American government, the lines remain fuzzy between a church s freedom of speech and the outright endorsement of a political candidate. It is not entirely clear whether something would have happened if I had not pulled up those advertisements. It is not clear whether the IRS might not still approach us because of what many could have interpreted as my endorsement of Representative Farley. Certainly you have all heard from this pulpit statements that could easily be considered an even stronger indictment of our government or our political leaders than what the good folks at All Saints heard that day from George Regas. But the question I would like to pose today has nothing to do with what the government should decide is acceptable for a preacher to say from the pulpit. Someone needs to cover our treasurer, Tom Pitello s ears right now, but to be perfectly frank, I couldn t give a flying flip what the IRS constitutes as legal or illegal. You and I have a much higher calling. Our job is to come to terms with what what Jesus, our religious tradition, and our conscience calls us to do. The majority of churches across this country believe that what George Regas did and Ed Bacon continues to do is not only illegal but antithetical to the Gospel. Those churches would never dream of talking about politics on any level within the confines of the church walls. They believe that the church has no place in politics and if we are to
be a moral example to the world, we must always remain completely separate from the political sphere. So which is it? What does the Gospel really say to us about the relationship between politics and religion? Are we called as Christians to keep the church pure by staying out of the political realm or are we asked to change the political spectrum based on our faith? Most of you know that the feast day we celebrate today is not a favorite of mine. For the most part, it seems to me that the metaphor of Christ as King is unhelpful to 21 st century Americans, who spent this past Thursday giving thanks for our freedoms and the fact that we are not subjects of a king. This is even more true for American Episcopalians. After all, our church was formed by many of those same individuals who created the US Constitution. Immediately after doing so, they literally walked across the street in Philadelphia and set up the American Episcopal Church, whose first order of business was to go through the Prayer Book and eliminate every reference to a king. The word King remains a pejorative term for nearly all of us. How then is it helpful to see Christ as a King? Though I continue to find this metaphor so unhelpful in so many ways, I must admit that when it comes to understanding the relationship between church and state, Christ the King says a lot to us. In fact, it seems to me that understanding Christ as king tells us everything we need to know. When we remember that Jesus is referred to as a king in the Gospels by both his friends and his enemies, it becomes clear that his movement had to be more than just a religious one. This is never more apparent than it is in today s Gospel from the passion narrative of John. Jesus is not brought before the Roman governor Pilate because he s caused a religious crisis. He s there because he s threatening the political world of Jerusalem. In the Gospel of Luke we hear the three
reasons why this happens. We found this fellow subverting the nation, opposing payment of taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is a King. All three reasons are not religious, but political. This is a classic clash between two kings and two kingdoms, Caesar and Jesus, the kingdom of Rome and the kingdom of God. Pilate rightly realizes that when Jesus says today that his kingdom is not of this world, he does not mean that his kingdom is purely spiritual, or that it is contained in another plane of existence. He realizes that Jesus has preached bringing about this kingdom of God on earth, a kingdom that would not be ruled over by thugs like himself. Pilate has Jesus killed because he is a threat to the Roman form of government and because he has preached a Gospel of insurrection. And it would be that message that the followers of Jesus and the next generation of Christians would use as their rallying cry. Not Caesar, but Jesus. Caesar is not king, Christ is. Caesar is not God, Christ is. Before that happened, the opposite cry occurs in today s Gospel. Pilate brings out Jesus to the crowd and says, Here is your king. Shall I crucify your king? And the crowd yells, We have no king but Caesar! The critical thing here though is that no matter what side people are on, the issue is always political. Is it Caesar or is it Jesus? And just to make sure, when Pilate crucifies Jesus, he insults the Jewish people one more time by fastening that notice to the cross, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, as if to say, there you go, you scum Jews. I ve just killed your King. How s that for ending your little political rebellion? After Jesus was killed, his early followers continued to understand their mission as political. In Philippians, we learn that early Christians were not only accused of cannibalism because of their eucharistic practices, but they were also cited for sedition because of the political implications of their confession of a kingdom of God and a citizenship in heaven. According to the Book of Acts, this trend continued. In Phillipi,
a mob dragged Paul and Silas before the city magistrates, where they were stripped, beaten and imprisoned. These men, they said, are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice. Then in Thessalonica, Jason and other believers were taken before city officials, shouting These men, the crowd yells to the political officials, who have caused trouble all over the world, have now come here...they are all defying Caesar s decrees, saying that there is another King, one called Jesus. Next week we will enter the season of Advent. During it, we will also be reminded that even before Jesus was born, his mother would declare the political nature of her son s mission in the Magnificat. He will bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly. There is absolutely no doubt that Jesus came to preach against the political structure of the day that brought suffering to others. There is no doubt that he saw his mission as one that would have to clash with the political authorities. The early church responded similarly, constantly preaching against any and all systems that brought oppression to others. In today s first reading from First Samuel, we are reminded of the connection the people see directly from their king to God and how the good ruler makes all political decisions through that connection. Again in our reading from Revelation, we hear that Jesus is the ruler of all the kings of the earth. From the beginning, the Hebrew people saw Yahweh s role as political. Finally, let us remember the words of the prayer that Jesus taught us, perhaps the most subversive political statement of all time. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. If we truly are to live into those words that we pray each week, then not only must our actions be political, but we must remember that our
allegiances can never be to Caesar, they can never be to Obama or Romney or Congress or to the Republican or Democratic party or to capitalism or socialism or communism. We submit to the rule of Christ, a rule that mandates that we do all in our power to bring the kingdom of God here on earth, no matter what the law says. If is for this reason that we at Grace St. Paul s stand with our sisters and brothers at All Saints and with all churches who boldly speak a prophetic Gospel, who remain outspoken critics of any policy that continues to bring death and suffering and oppression to anyone. From the standpoint of the Gospel, from the standpoint of our leader Jesus, we have no choice but to stand in the way of any administration and any government that is not bringing full life to all God s people and all God s earth. King may not be the most helpful metaphor for Christ for all of us gathered here today. But it does make it clear where we need to be on the issue of politics in our church. Regardless of what the IRS may or may not say, we will not be silenced when the top 1% of households in America now have more wealth than the bottom 95%. We will not stop preaching about economic policies that make the wealthiest richer and the poorest poorer. We will not be quiet while people continue to have to choose between eating or going to the hospital. We will continue preaching it, as long as there is a need to keep our food pantry and social ministry programs open. We also cannot and will not remain silent as millions of Sudanese quietly starve to death when we know that 5% of our defense budget would be more than enough to feed all of those people and keep them fed for their entire lives. We will not be quiet in the face of those politicians who make believe that climate change does not exist, while God s creation continues to be destroyed right before our very eyes. Your threats will not keep us silent while this country continues to allow brave Americans to stand in the middle of a war in Afghanistan while we stand idly by as
thousands of innocent people, including many children, are facing genocidal massacre and unspeakable atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We will continue to follow the example of Jesus no matter what the law says, no matter what the consequences bring. Next Sunday, we enter together the season of Advent, a season of anticipation and hope for the future. Beloved, the kingdom of God is possible, but only if we never give up that hope, never lose sight of the fact that Christ is our king, and never worry about tax exemptions. Amen.