King of the Jews or King of Kings?
A sermon by Rev. Douglas Olds
Sojourner Truth Presbyterian Church, Richmond, CA
Ezekiel 34. 11-24 For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself
will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12 As shepherds seek out
their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my
sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered
on a day of clouds and thick darkness. 13 I will bring them out from the
peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own
land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and
in all the inhabited parts of the land. 14 I will feed them with good pasture,
and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie
down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains
of Israel. 15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them
lie down, says the Lord GOD. 16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the
strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but
the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
17 As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord GOD: I shall
judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats: 18 Is it not enough for
you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the
rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest
with your feet? 19 And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet,
and drink what you have fouled with your feet?
20 Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will
judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21 Because you pushed with
flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until
you scattered them far and wide, 22 I will save my flock, and they shall no
longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.
23 I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David,
and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. 24 And I, the
LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I,
the LORD, have spoken.
Ephesians 1:15–23 15 I have heard of your faith in
the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason
16 I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.
17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may
give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18 so
that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to
which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among
the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us
who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20 God put this
power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his
right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and
power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age
but also in the age to come. 22 And he has put all things under his feet
and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his
body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Today is the
last Sunday in the Church’s lectionary year A, as Presbyterians read through
the Bible in a three year cycle. Next
Sunday begins the Season of Advent and the start of Lectionary Year B. Advent
starts with the church empathizing with Judean peasants anticipating
deliverance from oppression and looking out for a deliverer.
As we move
from Advent’s anticipation, we weekly read through Jesus’ revelation as the
miracle working Son of Man and teacher of subversive wisdom, later hear his question
to his disciple Peter, who do you say that I am? (Mt 16.15).
After the
Cross, Peter is confronted by a servant-girl who accuses him of being in league
with the Crucified one. Peter denies,
saying “I do not know the man.” (Mt 26.74).
The
Lectionary year climaxes with the Resurrection and then the church goes on in
the rest of the yearly reading cycle to try to make sense of it all:
the
prophecies, the teachings, sin, grace and mercy,
the creation of the church, and the prediction
of an end time where God transforms the earth with the promise of judgment, the
triumph of justice, and the life after death.
So now, we
are at the 52nd Sunday of Lectionary Year A and here is where the
church of disciples concludes with its answer to Jesus’s question to his chief
disciple,
“Who do you
say that I am?”
We in the Presbyterian Church use many names for God and many
names for the Trinity power of the Son.In the
Bible, Jesus is called by many names and titles.
Jesus is Rabbi, Master, Word, Son of Man,
Suffering Servant, Son of God;
Christ is
Prince of Peace, Lord, Savior, God Incarnate, Bread of Life, Ancient of Days,
Bridegroom, Cornerstone, Emmanuel, First and Last, High Priest, Lamb of God.
Yet this
Sunday in the yearly cycle, our Church has named, “Christ the King, or Reign of
Christ” Sunday where our church confesses:
“Christ Jesus, we say that you are
King over all.”
Naming
Christ Jesus as a King--a King of Kings--involves a political as well as
religious commitment. It is a dangerous act which risks in the world a different
kind of politics for the sake of a different kind of world.
After a pastor in Texas was shot by the husband of a woman in
the congregation with whom the pastor was having an affair, a group of pastors last
year debated whether it was permissible or even prudent for pastors to carry
concealed guns.[1] Some conservative pastors agreed that it was
okay to carry a gun and conceal it under their robes and garments, and to arm
their congregants likewise during worship.
I argued
otherwise.
One pastor proposed
that Jesus indeed carried a weapon.
Ps 144
starts off, Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who
trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.
The gun
wielding pastor argued that this is David speaking, and that David is a “type”
for Christ, so that Christ is trained for deathly battle. This
argument goes along with the idea that the Book of Revelation describes an
earthly battle and a Christ bloodied with the stains of his enemies.
A retired general
who leads a conservative organization asserted elsewhere that Christ comes back
to earth blazing an AR-15 assault rifle.[2]
King David was a military leader who felt that he had escaped
so many deaths in battle that he attributed his life and leadership to God whom
he calls his Rock to which he could flee in danger. After all of his violent
battling and serial murders,[3]
David’s later years were haunted by chronic sin and family dysfunction.
His son
Solomon inherited David’s throne, got off to a good start, but in his later
life he participated in the idolatries and false worship of his harem wives and
indulged in militaristic display, trading with arch enemy Egypt to amass chariots
and horses.
300 years after Solomon, the last good king of Judah, Josiah,
was presented a rediscovered book of the Covenant in the Temple, which was what
we call Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy Chapter 17 details a law for the
King. There, we
learn that the ancient Israelites were concerned with overweening , aggressive,
and wealth seeking in their leaders. This critique of kingship is one of the most
important themes of the Deuteronomic scriptures. From the foundation of the
institution of kingship in Biblical Israel, kings were judged for their failure
to bring in God’s blessings of security and sustenance to the common people which
was living worship of a living God.
According to
Deuteronomy 17, the Law of the King, the King must not have too many horses,
wives, or gold. He must study the Torah law daily under the instruction of the
priests. Yet few kings or political
leaders drawn from the rich and powerful have complied.
From our Old Testament reading this morning, we see Ezekiel’s
prophetic critique of the political leaders who are the shepherds of the people. The Israelite shepherds-- its political
leaders--played favorites with the rich and overstuffed sheep, allowing them to
take all the pasture and befoul the water of the deprived sheep.
Ezekiel
notes that God himself will search for his sheep. And he will judge between
sheep. God will appoint a shepherd over
his sheep to feed them. This role
for the just king is consistent with what we read in Psalm 72:
Ps 72. 1
Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king’s son.
2
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
3
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
4
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor.
Jesus throughout the Gospels identifies with the poor, sick,
and oppressed (Luke 4),
and gives
his disciple Peter the task to feed his sheep (John 21). Jesus exceeds the requirements of the law of
the King by forgoing wives, military arms, and money. He practices
the virtue of asceticism—forgoing earthly pleasures and the fortified walls of
security. Jesus is the ultimate
trustworthy leader by the values of the Old Testament. The New Testament is relaying the shocking
good news, “the story of a new king, a new kind of king, a king who has changed
everything, and a king who invites us to be part of his new world.”[4]
In the Letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul makes the
claim that Jesus is now seated as the Christ, the anointed king, at God’s right
hand. The right hand of the host was a
place of honor at a banquet, yet also the right hand held the sword in
battle.Christ, not
David, is at the right hand of God and is the implement of God’s victory.
Earlier I noted that Psalm 110 sings that David’s lord sits at the right hand of God, as
part of his enthronement as King. Paul
in his Letter to the Ephesians is identifying David’s lord as a superior king,
the King of Kings, the real right hand of God.
It is not
haunted militarist David but the sinless and whole Jesus Christ who holds the
weaponry and applies the mercy of God. David’s violent military power is
subservient to Christ’s power, which is the power of non-violence and forgiveness.
Paul in Ephesians identifies Christ in charge of all powers
and principalities, so that forgiveness follows military action carried out to
feed the shepherd’s sheep. Who are the Shepherding King’s sheep? Ezekiel 34
notes that the common good of the nation has been ruined by the excesses of greedy
sheep. Christ as King of Kings in
control over the powers and principalities of nations subjects them to judgment
for their effectiveness and justice in establishing the common good, which
includes feeding and watering the deprived and undernourished.
Therefore, I think that all political power--whether kingly
or constitutional, whether military or angelic--is subject to the requirement
of the just shepherd to feed all of Christ’s sheep:
Ezekiel 34.15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and
I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD.
16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed,
and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak,
but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them
with justice.
War and violence in furtherance of further enriching the
greedy sheep while neglecting the deprived sheep fail the test of righteous
leadership. Wars of aggression to enrich corporations while letting battlefield
veterans to return to joblessness and homelessness fail the test of leadership.
This is the King of King’s message for societal justice and the common good.
Ezekiel says to the wealthy masters,
34.18 When you drink of clear water, must you
foul the rest with your feet?
Yet in this
country and state, clean water is being fouled by the industry of fracking.[5] Clean water, historically a plentiful
resource, is being turned into a scarce resource by the greedy exploitation of
corporate and government powers. Detroit,
a city split along racial and economic lines, is suffering a clean water crisis
as costs escalate out of the ability of its unemployed poor to pay.[6]
God gives rain
as grace to the just and the unjust alike (Mt 5.45), Jesus says, yet some who
consider themselves righteous by the standards of wealth and power deny God’s
grace of clean water to those who are unable to pay. The CEO of mega-conglomerate
Nestle proposes to privatize water for corporate profits.[7]
This is how finance intensive capitalism is functioning: creating
scarcity through pollution, while proposing to allocate the now scarce resource
according to the standard of willingness to pay weighted by ability to
pay. The corporate animals are dirtying
the water of the deprived sheep as they make it more expensive.
Their wealth
is increased by others’ “illth.”
A second implication of our calling Christ King is what
Martin Luther called “Two Kingdom” theology.
That is, the sheep of Christ live by the non-violent and prayerful ethic
of the Sermon on the Mount, while those who don’t identify with being the sheep
of Christ are ethically subject to the judgment of kingdom of Heaven for their
use of state violence and war.
The
principle of justice for those outside the peaceful flock is their answer to
the Judge’s question: does this warring action help the poor, the blind, the
imprisoned, and the oppressed?[8]
Political leaders with access to the
state’s monopoly on violence will be judged for their violations of justice and
the common good.
For the
designers of war, it is good and necessary to keep in mind that Jesus said in
John 10.16,
I have other sheep that do not belong
to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.
I believe since God is the God of the whole earth, it is
imperative never to target non-combatants who are following the Sermon on the
Mount ethic of non-hostility— for they may be the non-violent sheep of another
fold.
The
collateral targeting of wedding parties and family members of insurgents in
Pakistan and Yemen by U.S. drones[9]
fails this two kingdom theology of Christ the Shepherd King of the Peaceable
Kingdom. This violation of the peaceful and meek brings forth Christ the
Judging King of the Warrior class. Political leaders plotting to target for
assassination practitioners of non-violence like the Occupy Movement[10]
and Martin Luther King[11]
face the same judgment.
These are the two kingdoms with Christ lord overall: the non-violent world subject to the hope of grace
and the subservient kingdom of the weapon subject to the judgment of justice.
I congratulate this community of Richmond by turning away the
political designs of Chevron in the recent election. I believe this country needs to turn back the
grant of power to corporations and return it to democratic community.
I am given hope by the California voters for passing
Proposition 47 that reduces prison terms for certain non-violent crimes.
I hope we
see may see Christ our King working through these victories.
A third implication of calling Christ our King comes from a
theology of the Cross.
Usually we
speak of the Cross as the place where Jesus’ pronouncements of abandonment
accompanied by forgiveness triumphed, and/or where Jesus took on the penalty of
the accumulated sin-debt of humanity in some manner of substitution or sacrifice
to an angry God.
But I think
there is another facet to a theology of the Cross, which is how the Roman
imperial power validated Jesus’ earthly ministry by condemning it.
Pontius
Pilate turned Jesus’s question to Peter around, by asking him, “Are you the
King of the Jews?”
Jesus
answered, σὺ λέγεις You yourself say so
(Luke 22.70).
Pilate thus
places his answer to Jesus’ identity on the sign he ordered hung on the Cross:
INRI, Iēsus Nazarēnus, Rēx Iūdaeōrum (Mt
27.37).
INRI, dead,
is how violent imperial power saw Jesus:
As a teacher
of subversion, a would be but failed king, hanging dead for the world to see.
This is how
violent power will always see Jesus on the Cross:
as their
victory—
Jesus is INRI,
King of the Jews: a failed, dead, would be king.
From the Cross we learn that Jesus’s teachings were recognized
by established and oppressive power as subversive and thus dangerous to its
continuing.From the Cross, we learn that Jesus’ earthly teachings were
the foundation of the deadly opposition from worldly power to his spiritual and
political Kingship.
Christ says we will see him in his glory.
The kingdom and the cross are linked, where we
see Christ in his earthly kingly glory, a mix of suffering and triumphing, refusing
to curse and therefore never oppressing.
Did Peter really know who Jesus was when he blurted out, “You
are the son of the living God” (Mt 16.16)?
Did Pilate know really know Jesus, when he placed his sign: Jesus the
king of the Jews? Or rather does Peter’s three times denial after the
Crucifixion demonstrate that he really didn’t know who Jesus was?
Peter’s
claim under duress, “I don’t know him,” may be more truthful than we often
preach. Peter expected something from Jesus besides his crucifixion.
What does Christ Jesus the King look like?
For me,
these lessons have us look for him on Earth from those currently experiencing the
drama of Cross, suffering and forgiving. Christ reserves to himself revealing
his heavenly glory as judge when we come, as promised (Rev 22.4), face to face
with him.
Are we like
Peter, thinking we know what a King of Kings looks like, but we don’t really
know the inner thoughts and judgments of the person who is destined to become
King of Kings?
Some Christians I know say they just want others to see Christ in them. I have learned it may be more important to try instead to point out Christ in the world, sometimes suffering, sometimes
triumphing.
I take the Holy Spirit’s call to diligently
try to find Christ in the scriptures, follow his words that point out that he
lives in the world in the powerless and oppressed today.
On earth, our king is the unkempt and homeless
stranger,
emaciated by malnutrition and illness,
haunted by
solitary confinement,
traumatic
stress, overwork, and mental illness.
“Crown him with many crowns…Crown him the Lord of Love…Crown
him the Lord of peace, whose power a scepter sways
“From pole to pole, that wars may cease…his reign shall know
no end.”
In Jesus’ day, there was no distinction between religion and
politics. I think as we look to the Kingdom of Heaven, we recognize for the
King’s disciples that there is no distinction between religion and politics.
Being disciples of the one we call King of Kings is a political and religious
act and has political as well as religious demands.
We Christ’s
disciples use the methods of non-violence to loosen the concrete grip of
self-serving, greedy mammon over the resources needed for living by the
majority of Christ’s people, the people who are undergoing the drama and trauma
of the Cross on a daily basis. King language accepts and acts on Jesus’s risky political
involvement and messages.
Thanks be to God that we who are blessed with life and living
hope from our faith and the testimony of a cloud of witnesses (Heb 12.1-2) to the resurrection of the Son of Man who has
become King of Kings:
Jesus Christ
who is revealed to be the author and bearer of human salvation, the redeemer
from the curse of death.
He is risen
and living among us and with God, who sends the Holy Spirit from unseen
light for guiding and sustaining our mission to love and assist others into his
Kingdom.
Trinitarian
power, mysterious and wonderful.
“Arise,
shine, for your light is come!
Fling wide
the prison door,
Proclaim the
captive’s liberty
Good tidings
to the poor.
Arise, shine
for your light is come,
Rise up like
eagles on the wing,
Bind up the
broken-hearted ones.
God’s power
will make us strong!"
[1] http://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2013/10/does-your-pastor-carry-concealed-weapon.html
[2] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/boykin-when-jesus-comes-back-hell-be-carrying-ar-15-assault-rifle
[3] Baruch
Halpern, David's Secret Demons: Messiah,
Murderer, Traitor, King. 2003
[4]
N.T. Wright, How God Became King: The
Forgotten Story of the Gospels.
[5] http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Waste-Water-from-Oil-Fracking-Injected-into-Clean-Aquifers-282733051.html?utm_content=buffer8df11&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
[6] http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/10/detroit_faces_humanitarian_crisis_as_city
[7] http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/05/nestle-ceo-water-is-not-a-human-right-should-be-privatized.html
[8]
What John Rawls in The Theory of Justice
calls the “maximin” principle of distribution of scarce moral goods.
[9] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/18/media-outlets-continue-describe-unknown-drone-victims-militants/
[10]http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/redacted_fbi_document_shows_plot_to_kill_occupy_leaders_20130629
[11] http://www.thekingcenter.org/assassination-conspiracy-trial
