Citizens of the Kingdom

The scriptures referred to are Matthew 5-7.

Remember civics class? A lot of you are probably groaning inwardly. It was usually not the most exciting class. It covered the nuts and bolts of how our government is set up and how it works, as well as the rights and duties of citizens. The subject matter was important, if not very imaginatively presented. I had a much better exploration of some of these issues in a couple of history classes. One teacher had us debate positions as they arose in our study of history. That way we understood some of the issues our founding fathers faced in creating this country. The other teacher did not have us participate as much but would focus on specific issues and dissect them. He spent an entire class on Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, laying out all the arguments, pro and con. You felt the weight that fell upon the new president, who had been kept in the dark about the Manhattan Project by his predecessor, FDR. It's too bad our civics classes didn't deal with case studies like these, that vividly illustrated the principles of government in action and sometimes in conflict with each other.

We have been talking about Jesus as our King. In an absolute monarchy, the king sets foreign and domestic policy, makes laws, acts as judge, and acts as the mediator between his people and God. What we haven't dealt with is our duty as citizens of the kingdom of God. In the Old Testament, there is a charter for the Israelities. It begins in Exodus 20 with the 10 Commandments and continues for the rest of the Torah, interwoven with the narrative of the Israelites traveling to the promised land. Is there anything similar in the New Testament?

Actually, there is. Matthew gives us the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus acts like the new Moses, presenting the law of his kingdom to his followers. And what is interesting is that he doesn't so much lay out precisely how to carry out these rules as he does to what extent we are supposed to go beyond the letter of the law and why. So he continually refers to the Old Testament but encourages his disciples to look deeper into the meaning of what is stated and to discern God's intentions in laying down these laws.

We haven't enough time to cover these 3 chapters of Matthew in depth but let's take a quick overview of what it means in practical terms to obey Jesus as our King.

Whereas the Old Testament law begins with 10 commandments, Jesus begins with 8 beatitudes. (Matthew 5:3-11) A commandment tells you what to do or not do. The beatitudes are a mix of attitudes (the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart), actions (peacemakers, being merciful) and circumstances (those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake).

These 8 have two things in common. First, they are virtues associated with the oppressed and with underdogs. So Jesus calling them blessed is a paradox. It is a perfect introduction, however, to God's kingdom in which the values of human societies are turned upside down. The things that our culture sees as vital—the promotion of yourself and your personal interests, benefits and privileges—God sees as less important than the wellbeing of others and holiness. On the other hand, people don't always see these things as virtues. When was the last time anyone was praised for being meek or for mourning? Even being pure in heart is often seen as a way of saying someone is hopelessly naive. The world pays lip service to certain virtues but chooses vices if they get the job done.

Second, these are states of being. And that is a major difference between Christianity and ethical systems that are mostly compilations of laws. Jesus recognizes that what you do comes from what you are. So he is more interested in changing the nature of people. Most folks are virtuous when others are looking and when such behavior gains immediate rewards. The true test of character is, as they say, what do you do when no one is around to praise or scold you. The best way to understand the Sermon on the Mount is as a description of the kind of person who fits the role of citizen in God's kingdom.

So Jesus says that citizens of the kingdom are the salt of the world. (Matthew 5:13) Salt gives flavor. Contrary to popular belief, Christians aren't supposed to be bland. In fact, real Christians aren't. You can't be neutral about people like Mother Teresa or Paul of Tarsus or Francis of Assisi. They are either to your taste or not.

Salt is also used as a preservative. It keeps things like food from going bad. It also increases thirst. We Christians should increase people's thirst for justice and peace while working to keep the world from going bad.

Jesus says citizens of the kingdom of God are the light of the world. (Matthew 5:14) Light helps us see things as they are, which in turn helps us deal with them in the right ways. Light also helps us navigate properly through the world. We all know people who have a lot of problems because they are blind to some aspects of the world or some aspects of themselves. The result is they continually get tripped up by the same things again and again. If it's because they are in the dark about something, they may benefit from the light being shined on those things. If, however, they are still unable to see certain things no matter how often they are pointed out to them, then they may be willfully blind. (John 9:40-41) They don't really want to see the truth about the world or about themselves.

Jesus does specifically mention a number of commandments but always to get to the principles that underlie them. So Jesus traces the seed of murder to anger and contempt. (Matthew 5:21-22) He points out that adultery begins when you look at a person you're not married to as the legitimate object of your lustful attention. (Matthew 5:27-30) Even if you never follow through, you will never be able to look at that person the same way. It changes you. The seed is planted. So it is better to sacrifice anything in your life that triggers, entices, or enables you to sin, even if it feels like a part of you, rather than let it cause your destruction, and the destruction of your relationships and family.

Adultery is still one of the main causes of divorce. In Jesus' day, only men could initiate divorce and they could do it for the most trivial of reasons, like burning dinner, which, let's face it, sounds like an excuse. This left the wife and children in danger of poverty, which is true even today. The men hearing Jesus preach were probably shocked by his condemnation of what was a common practice. (Matthew 5:31-32)

A citizen of the kingdom doesn't need to take oaths. He is always as good as his word. (Matthew 5:33-37) A citizen of God's kingdom does not take revenge for wrongs done to him but turns the other cheek and goes the second mile. Thus he repays evil with good. (Matthew 5:38-42) A citizen of the kingdom doesn't just show love to those who love him but acts with love even towards his enemies. (Matthew 5:43-48)

A citizen of the kingdom of God is generous but doesn't advertise her charitable giving. (Matthew 6:1-4) She doesn't draw attention to the fact that she is fasting, either. (Matthew 6:16-18) Similarly she doesn't make her prayers into public performances. (Matthew 6:5-8) Her prayers are straightforward: praising God, asking that he carry out his will in this world, asking for her basic needs, asking for forgiveness in the same measure that she forgives others, and asking for protection against temptation and evil. (Matthew 6:9-15)

A citizen of God's kingdom doesn't believe that he who dies with the most toys wins. He treasures heavenly things that cannot be possessed or hoarded but only stored in his heart. (Matthew 6:19-21) He stays clear-eyed about his priorities and never puts money ahead of God. (Matthew 6:22-24)

A citizen of the kingdom of God doesn't worry about the temporary things of this life. She trusts God to provide for her needs. Instead she concentrates on the day at hand, not scary shadows of possible futures that will not necessarily become realities. (Matthew 6:25-34)

A citizen of God's kingdom doesn't pass final judgment on others, knowing that he would fail to meet his own standards. (Matthew 7:1-2) He is conscious of his own faults and wouldn't dream of trying to correct someone else's minor flaws without taking care of his own first. (Matthew 7:3-6)

A citizen of the kingdom is bold, knowing that God will give her what she needs and asks for, make available what she seeks, and open any doors on which she knocks. Because God is a good and loving father. (Matthew 7:7-11)

A citizen of the kingdom knows that the heart of God's law is treating others with the same respect and fairness with which we expect to be treated. (Matthew 7:12)

A citizen knows that entering the kingdom is tough and the requirements are demanding. You don't just stumble into it. It takes total commitment. (Matthew 7:13-14)

A citizen of the kingdom of God realizes that there are frauds passing themselves off as God's spokesmen. He looks beyond their words to see whether what they are doing is actually good or evil. (Matthew 7:15-20) He knows that just saying that you're a Christian won't cut it with Jesus if your behavior doesn't match your beliefs. (Matthew 7:21-23) He knows that you're only secure if you build your life on the rock-solid foundation of Jesus' actual teachings and commandments. (Matthew 7:24-27)

Jesus says other things about the kingdom of God elsewhere but the Sermon on the Mount is the core. And I just want to note two things. First, these are not ways of being a citizen of God's kingdom some day in some perfect future but right now in the imperfect present. Just as Jesus brought in the seeds of the kingdom while he was living in enemy-occupied territory, so we are to plant and nurture the seeds of the kingdom while living in a world that has rebelled against its rightful King. And just as Jesus did not come as a warrior, neither do we. We are to be his ambassadors. (2 Corinthians 5:20) We are bringing the good news of God's good will towards those who are open to his reign. And just as an embassy is not considered a part of the country where it is situated, but instead as a part of its homeland, so the kingdom of God exists wherever we do the work of the kingdom. And that's how we spread Jesus' royal reign.

Second, this is a tall order and we cannot do it on our own. Fortunately, we are not on our own. Jesus our King has sent a counselor, advocate and helper, his Spirit, to dwell in us, to give us the words we need and the power to obey his words and to do his works. (John 14:16-17; Luke 21:15; 1 Corinthians 12:4-7) And when we fail him, which we will at times, he intercedes for us and cleanses us and re-forms us, making us ever more Christ-like. (Psalm 51:10-12; Romans 8:26-27; 2 Corinthians 3:18)

In Luke 17:21, Jesus says, “The kingdom is within you.” Some translations render it, “The kingdom is in the midst of you.” I like how Biblical scholar N.T. Wright translates it: “The kingdom is within your grasp.” And so it is. Jesus has given us his words, his example and his Spirit. He's laid the groundwork. He's given us the tools we need. Let's get started. We don't have all the time in the world. Haven't you heard? The King is coming!

First preached on December 20, 2009. It has been revised and updated.

In What Sense Is Jesus Our King?

The scriptures of the day are Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7 and Luke 3:7-18.

I have lived under 13 presidents but I have only seen one in the flesh. Gerald Ford spoke at my college. I know what the others look like, thanks to photos and videos. In the past it was only possible, however, for the average US citizen to see the president's actual face from the term of James K. Polk onwards. Though John Quincy Adams was the earliest ex-president to be photographed, and a daguerreotype of William Henry Harrison was made while he was in office, Polk's was the first presidential photograph to survive. It was taken in 1849. Even so, newspapers didn't start printing photos until 1880. So up until then, most people only knew what their national leader looked like through drawings, paintings, sculptures, and for much of history, through their images on coins.

The reason I bring this up is to answer one objection that some might raise to Jesus being our king: he is not physically present. But not since the era of city states have people been ruled by leaders they all could actually lay their eyes on. Most of us will live and die without ever seeing at least 90% of the presidents, senators, governors and other people who make the rules we obey. And that includes the CEOs of any large corporation we might work for. Aside from brief clips in the news, we primarily know about those whose decisions have a huge impact on us by reading about them and reading their messages to us. And few of us think twice about never meeting them face-to-face.

So the fact that we will probably never, in this life, see Jesus walking down our street is something he shares with all national leaders. But since he has no official capital or legal jurisdiction, in what sense is he our king?

This gets tricky because we all live in nations to which we pledge allegiance. We are bound to obey the various civic officials and laws of this country. So is there room for Jesus as king? And what do we do when his laws clash with those of our earthly country?

This is a problem that arose very early in the history of the church. It is likely that Jesus called himself “the Son of Man” precisely because a more obviously messianic title would have gotten him arrested before his ministry got very far along. And, sure enough, his opponents tried to get him in trouble with the occupying powers. “Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” they asked him. The tax in question was the tribute tax, which was essentially acknowledging the inferiority of Judea to the pagan empire. There had been major riots over this tax in the recent past. Jesus knew what they were doing. If he said “No,” he could be denounced to Pilate, the Roman governor. If he said “Yes,” he would lose much popular support, not to mention that of the Zealots, whose slogan was “No king but God.”

Jesus asked to see a coin. He is given one with Tiberius Caesar's image on it. What's interesting is that no one on the temple grounds should have one on him. Jews minted their own copper coins that omitted the image of the deified emperor. To pay Roman taxes they had to use the gold and silver coins that did have Caesar's face on them. However, those coins were not used in the temple to make offerings. That's why moneychangers set up shop there to change the blasphemous Roman coins into the approved Jewish ones. These moneychangers set such unfair exchange rates that Jesus called them thieves. So if those quizzing Jesus were serious in their religious observance, they shouldn't have been able to produce the silver denarius they passed to him.

Jesus asks whose image and inscription, which said, “son of the divine Augustus,” is on the coin. When he is told that they are Caesar's, he replies, “Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” Some think Jesus was avoiding answering the question. But that's to assume that Jesus' admittedly clever response is also empty. But he is saying, among other things, that human government does have authority over certain things.

Despite what the Zealots thought, human government is necessary for keeping order and building and maintaining the common good. Things like the excellent Roman road system and the armies that enforced the Pax Romana, the long period of peace within the empire, were paid for by taxes. It's for this reason that Paul, who was able to travel safely throughout the empire and spread the gospel, wrote in Romans 13:1, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. There is no authority except from God and the authorities that exist have been appointed by God.” God did intend for humans to rule the earth as it says in Genesis 1:28. That we haven't done it well is one reason why he sent his son. Christian anarchy, however, is an oxymoron.

But what if God's commandments contradict the laws of a human government? In Acts 5, we learn that the apostles were thrown into prison for proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord. They had in fact been previously warned not to preach in Jesus' name. So when they were hauled up before the Sanhedrin, the high priest accurately pointed out that they had violated the council's clear orders. To which Peter and the other apostles reply, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

This sounds like a contradiction of what Paul writes but there is a different issue at stake. Paul was talking about the general principle that Christians should be law-abiding in matters of the common good. In the previous chapter of Romans, he said, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all people.” (Romans 12:18) However, Peter and the apostles were given a specific order that contradicts Jesus' command to preach the gospel to all. Jesus' law supersedes that of human authorities.

There is an analogous situation in our country. Most of the time the laws we obey are local ones—traffic laws, sales tax, signage, etc. But local laws cannot void state laws. Monroe County cannot ignore state laws on health and hygiene in local restaurants. Nor can state laws preempt Federal laws. Florida cannot revive slavery, for instance. If it tried to, the US Supreme Court would find that law unconstitutional.

This is roughly how Jesus functions as our king while we live on earth and are citizens of its nations. There is no Biblical body of traffic laws. Scripture does not tell us what is the right speed limit nor whether it is divinely ordained that we drive on the right or the left. We obey such earthly laws out of Christian love for others. Nobody wants our streets to look like something out of the film Road Warrior. For most of the mundane things that need to be ordered, human laws will do. But God's laws, like the Ten Commandments, and especially the two greatest laws, to love God and love others, take priority in the event of a conflict of real consequence. Such as when Christians decided not to obey the Fugitive Slave Act which required even people in the slave-free northern states to return escaped slaves to their masters in the south. Or when Christians in Nazi-occupied Europe, like Corrie Ten Boom, decided to hide Jews from the authorities. They were obeying Jesus' command to love others as they would themselves

Let's look at what Jesus said when given the coin. We cannot claim that the very principle of taxation is wrong. You need money to organize and run a civilization. But a Christian could discern that a particular tax was immoral if it fell unequally and unfairly on the poor, or if it was used to keep people from voting, as the poll taxes did, or if the tax was enacted to fund an evil action, such as putting people in concentration camps because of their ethnicity, or national origin, or religious beliefs. The Biblical principle of justice would supersede such an evil law. And the Christian who did this would otherwise submit to the justice system. The early Christians did not evade going to prison for acting on their faith. It was part of their witness.

A word of caution on this matter. The church has had a distinctly mixed record when it comes to upholding and defying laws. Christians were the major force in ending slavery in the US and in Britain. But other Christians opposed this, quoting scriptures to buttress what were essentially racist and self-serving arguments. During the Middle Ages, bishops and popes protected Jews from persecution—by other Christians. Throughout history Christians have protected and championed the oppressed—while other Christians have passed laws that oppressed and persecuted the same people. Christians have both opposed wars and started them.

So when trying to discern the Christian position on an essential issue, we need to realize a couple of things. First, we must acknowledge that the laws and situations relating to theocratic ancient Israel may not apply to living in a modern secular country. God's covenant with us through Jesus is not identical to his covenant with the Israelites through Moses. America is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible and cannot be considered the new promised land of God's people. We are like foreigners and exiles in this world, as it says in 1 Peter 2:11.

Secondly, a Christian should honestly ask himself if he is seeking the mind of God and listening to his voice in scripture, or if he is merely seeking God's approval for something he already has in mind and using scripture to justify his own prejudices and positions. Are you being selective in which passages you refer to and ignoring the ones that go against your desires? One clue: if you think God always agrees with you, you are deluding yourself. The only person 100% in sync with God is Jesus. And you are not him.

But what if, after prayer and Bible study and honest self-appraisal, you decide a human law seriously contradicts God's law? How should a Christian honor the law of his divine king when it comes into conflict with a law of human devising? How should we respond?

How we function as citizens of the kingdom of God while living in the kingdoms of this world will be the topic of the last sermon on the last Sunday in Advent.

First preached on December 13, 2009. It has been revised and updated.

Should Jesus be King?

The scriptures of the day are Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 1:68-79; Philippians 1:3-11 and Luke 3:1-6.

In the first sermon in this series, I asked at the end whether we need a king. Last week I finished by asking if the absolute power of kings corrupted them, should we use that term of Jesus? The two questions are related and that's what we will be exploring.

Looking at the roles of a king and our need for a king, that is, a single authority to tell us what to do as Christians, is analogous to considering what a car does and why you need a car. But before you buy one, you still have to determine what kind of car you need. The size, features and price must be considered. Jesus encourages us to think about practical things before following him and to “count the cost.” (Luke 14:28-33)

Sometimes when determining what you need, it's best to start by deciding what you don't need. If you are looking at getting a vehicle, you may want 4 wheel drive if you are a lumberjack, or if you work somewhere that has a lot of ice and snow, like Minnesota, but you really don't need that if you are an urban commuter in Brownsville, Texas or the Florida Keys.

So what kind of king don't we need? We don't need a micro-manager. Human rule-makers rarely take into account all the variables that those who must carry out the rules have to deal with. As a nurse, I found that administering literally hundreds of pills to 2 or 3 dozen patients with varying abilities to swallow, and different levels of compliance, and doing it both accurately and in a limited amount of time, means that time management is a much bigger consideration than nursing home administrators realize. It is not helpful when they add tasks or when they specify that certain things be done in ways that assume we operate in an ideal situation. Some patients must have each pill crushed and poured down a feeding tube; some need to have their pills crushed and put in applesauce or ice cream and then they have to be spoon-fed; some patients may have to be hunted down because they might be in their room or in the lounge or in physical therapy. Adding more tasks can mean that the last patient will get their 8 AM meds at noon! Bosses always want quantity, quality and quickness. They don't realize that you can't have all three at the same time.

With Jesus as king, you wouldn't expect that kind of micro-managing to be a problem. Jesus knows what it's like to be human, something which ironically many human leaders seem to forget. Jesus knows what it is to obey God while having to factor in all the demands and limitations of living in time and space, as well as deal with certain political and social situations. So in healing people he used different methods in different situations. For instance in dealing with a deaf and mute man, Jesus explained how he was going to heal him by miming. (Mark 7:32-35) Sometimes he laid hands on people and other times he simply gave the word and healed them at a distance. (Matthew 8:1-13) Jesus did not rigidly stick to one way of healing people. He suited his method to the situation and the person.

And so Jesus' commands are refreshingly lacking in details. This horrifies human rule-makers and so they are always trying to fill in what they see as appalling deficits in our Lord's pronouncements. It is common for certain religious groups to lay down specific rules about how people should dress (or not dress), vote (or not vote), and exactly how certain tasks or rituals must be performed. They do this despite the fact that it rarely works. Because of their use in gambling and fortune-telling, the Christian college I went to forbid us to have traditional playing cards. This did not stop students from violating the spirit of the rule while observing the letter of it by using Rook decks instead.

Another problem is that, however well-intentioned, if the rules are too restrictive, people will come up with work-arounds. Orthodox Jews who interpret the Sabbath rules against work to include things like turning on the light switch often employ a Gentile to do those things for them. The work is nevertheless done and it is paid for by those for whom it is intended to be a spiritual discipline.

In addition, no rule, no matter how specific, can cover all contingencies and extraordinary or unexpected situations. They need to leave room for some discretion on the part of those carrying them out. Jesus had many run-ins with the Pharisees on such matters. Yes, the Ten Commandments forbid working on the Sabbath. But what if your work is healing the sick? (Mark 3:1-5) A righteous man should not let a promiscuous woman kiss him. But what if she were repentant and showing it by washing your feet with her tears and kissing them? (Luke 7:36-50) A man should behave himself in a place of worship. But what if those running the place were letting unscrupulous businesses exploit worshippers by overcharging them? (Matthew 21:12-13) The Pharisees, like all human rule-makers, had gotten so caught up in trying to close all the loopholes that they had forgotten the original intent of God's laws. Jesus said that loving God with all your being and loving your neighbor as you do yourself were the bases for all the other laws. (Matthew 22:36-40) If we come up with rules that harm those two relationships then there is something wrong with those rules or how we are carrying them out.

We also don't need a king who is partial or biased in his judgment. The seeds of destruction are sown whenever some people are either exempt from the rules or unduly favored. At one of the radio stations where I worked, a “super” salesman was hired. Instead of letting him prove himself by starting from scratch, he was immediately given several prime accounts—taken from other successful salesmen. Or rather, saleswomen who were outperforming most of the men. In the end they lost the women due to the sales and general managers' blatant unfairness. And the star salesman proved not to be so super. Had they not shown favoritism they wouldn't have lost so many valuable salespeople nor such a great amount of money. We see the same favoritism shown to popular entertainers and politicians. Folks cut them a lot more slack than they do others.

Jesus is consistent in his judgment. He said that on the last day, many would call him Lord but the only ones he would recognize were those who did his Father's will. In other words, simply identifying yourself as a Christian doesn't count, just like merely protesting your innocence doesn't determine the outcome of a trial. Jesus will look at the evidence. If it doesn't back up your claim that you actually follow him, Jesus will say, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers,” (Matthew 7:21-23)

On the other hand, we don't need a king who is rigid when it comes to those who break the rules, especially those who truly are willing to turn their lives around. Peter rebuked Jesus for saying that he would be executed by the authorities. (Mark 8:31-33) He later denied Jesus three times while our Lord was being tried. (Luke 22:54-62) Jesus forgave him. (John 21:15-19) Thomas could not believe his fellow disciples when they told him they had met the resurrected Christ. Jesus not only forgave him but invited him to feel his wounds. (John 20:24-29) James and John lobbied to be his right hand men, sowing dissention among the Twelve. Jesus forgave them. (Mark 10:35-45) Saul of Tarsus oversaw the stoning of the first deacon, Stephen. Jesus forgave him. (Acts 7:58-8:3; 9:1-6)

If they showed that they could and would change the direction of their lives, the real definition of repentance, Jesus forgave them. But Jesus went beyond that. He even asked forgiveness for his executioners, based on their ignorance of what they were doing. (Luke 23:33-34) Which makes you wonder what Jesus might have said to Judas had he come to the cross rather than deciding to be his own judge, jury and executioner by hanging himself. (Matthew 23:3-5)

We need a king who is fair, who gives us clear rules but lets us work out how to carry them out in specific situations and who forgives those who are willing to turn their lives around and who helps them do so. (Ezekiel 36:26-27) We need someone just and merciful like Jesus to be our king, the person who ultimately calls the shots in our lives.

But our second question still is unanswered. Should anyone be trusted with absolute power? Isn't the concept of a king an inherently bad and corrupted one?

If Jesus were merely human, then, like all other humans, he could not be trusted with such power. But while fully human, he is also fully divine. And you can't tempt or bribe God. What can you offer him that he did not make and could not take back if he wished? Of course, we do try to bribe God. But we are like ants waving crumbs before someone who has prepared a banquet. “Grant this prayer and I swear I will go to church every Sunday from now on.” “Don't let me get in trouble for this and I will be good from now on.” The only thing Jesus wants from us is our love and loyalty and he is wise enough to know when they are being freely and sincerely given and when they are simply attempts to manipulate him.

Corrupt people want power so they can use it for their own benefit. But Jesus' motive is to put back together the world his Father created and which we have shattered through our arrogance, violence, selfishness and foolishness. The world was designed so that everything that is a part of it, including us, meshes and works in harmony with every other part. It is held together by trust and love. Ever wonder why the world seems to fit together almost, but not quite, perfectly? We have put grit in the gears. We have pulled out some parts and tried to use them for our own purposes. We have, each of us, tried to put ourselves at the center of the universe, thereby distorting its design and throwing it out of balance. What sometimes appears to be God moving against us is really him putting things right and putting us back in our proper places. And shouldn't the person leading us be the one person who knows exactly how everything should go together, something no mere human can do?

We need a king and he needs to be Jesus. But this leads us to another question. Jesus has yet to return and in the meantime we live in a world where we already have nations and governments. So in what sense can Jesus be our King, here and now?

That's our topic next week.

First preached on December 6, 2009. It has been revised and updated.

Who Needs a King?

The scriptures referred to are Daniel 7:9-10,13-14; Psalm 93; Revelation 1:4b-8 and John 18:33-37.

Last week we traced the development of the concept and office of king. However, the way ancient Israel got a king was a bit different. As a federation of tribes who could trace their descent from a common ancestor, the Israelites had no king. The tribes were allotted territories in the promised land and each handled its own business through tribal structures. But they were periodically attacked by the Philistines, a group of seafaring folks who came from Cyprus and Crete. They settled on the coastlands and continually pushed in towards the hill country which the Israelites controlled. They were pushed back by a series of charismatic leaders who would temporarily unite the tribes of Israel militarily. We call these inspired leaders “judges,” from the Hebrew word for those who dispense justice. But since the judges would only arise when things went bad for the Israelites, there was a feeling that the disunity that otherwise prevailed led to a lack of morale and morals. As it says in the book of Judges, “In those days Israel had no king. Each man did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)

So the people went to Samuel, the current judge. He was getting old and his sons were corrupt and the people were not looking forward to them succeeding him. They asked Samuel to “Give us a king to lead us like all the other nations have.” This would give them a strong and permanent military leader with a standing army. But Samuel warned them that this would be expensive. There would be taxes to support him and his family and his administrators, as well as the army. Their young men would be pressed into military service and their young women would be utilized as cooks and staff for the royal household. The king would get the best land, a tenth of their crops, and as many wives as he wished. Nevertheless, the people wanted a king. And though this meant a rejection of God as their king, the Lord told Samuel to anoint a human one. (1 Samuel 8)

As I said last week, the Bible is quite aware of the problems of kingship. You give one human being that much power and he will abuse it. As Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Our own form of government was a reaction against the abuses our founding fathers saw in the British monarchy. And yet there was a popular movement to make George Washington king! In general, it seems that people are only opposed to a strong leader when he is one of their political enemies. They want their own leader to be more powerful than that of the opposition.

So, in the light of the well-documented abuses of kings, should we even use the term “king” in regards to Jesus?

A lot of people think that not only the title of “king” but the whole concept of Jesus ruling over us is an outmoded way of thinking. They would rather see Jesus as a guide or an adviser. They don't like the idea of him being able to veto any of our ideas or desires. In his film Dogma Kevin Smith has a bishop introduce a replacement for the traditional representation of crucified Christ, which he calls a “bummer.” Instead, he unveils the “Buddy Christ.” a smiling Jesus, winking and giving a thumbs up to all. This is a satirical jab by Smith, a Catholic, at how America already views Jesus, not as Lord but as supportive “homie.” The “Buddy Christ” would never presume to tell you what to do or not to do. He's got your back, bro, no matter what you do.

And that's the problem. Studies have shown that self-identified Christians do not have lifestyles that are appreciably different from non-religious citizens of the US. Their divorce rate is the same. A Gallup poll found that white Evangelicals are disproportionately racist in their views of blacks. A Pew Research Center survey shows that a majority of white Evangelical and nonevangelical Protestants and Catholics see the influx of migrants as a crisis rather than a major problem. 46% of Christians overall think that poverty is due to a lack of effort rather than difficult circumstances. A host of outspoken Christian politicians have been exposed as adulterers. There have been scandals involving Christian clergy. In short, like the book of Judges says, by not seeing Jesus as king, everyone is doing whatever they consider to be right for them.

Obviously these are people who only hear the “Jesus loves you” part of the gospel and not the “repent” part. (Mark 1:14-15) They cheer when Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery that he doesn't condemn her but tune out before he tells her to “Go and sin no more.” (John 8:3-11) They don't let Jesus' commands to be godly, to be faithful and to love one's enemy veto what they want to do. (Matthew 5:44, 48; Luke 16:10) Rather they let their own inclinations and desires veto Jesus' clear commands.

Research by the Barna polling organization shows that the average American agrees with the Hindu leader Gandhi when he said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

When his disciples reported that they discouraged a man from casting out demons in Jesus' name because he wasn't part of their group, Jesus rebuked them. “He who is not against you is for you,” he said. (Mark 9:38-40) Yet churches are quick to condemn Christians who disagree with them on non-essential issues.

Jesus condemned hypocrisy. But as we have seen, a lot of high profile Christians have been doing the very things they condemn. And supporting others who violate Christian principles rather than properly correcting them. (Galatians 6:1)

Despite living under the thumb of an oppressive occupying pagan power, Jesus refused to get drawn into discussions of certain political issues. He said there were things that bear Caesar's image and belonged to Caesar and things that bear God's image—ie, people—and which belong to God. (Luke 20:21-25) He said his kingdom did not come from this world. (John 18:36) He refused worldly power when it was offered to him as a temptation. (Matthew 4:8-10) Yet the church has frequently flirted with taking on political power and, like a moth attracted to a flame, has suffered the same tragic results.

Jesus was executed unjustly. Yet the majority of white and Hispanic Protestants support the death penalty. Catholics and black Protestants are evenly split while younger Christians are less supportive of the death penalty. And this is despite evidence that some innocent people do get condemned and sent to death row. This is an area where an uncorrected mistake is always a fatal one. At least in this area, the Roman Catholic church's official position is consistent, saying that being pro-life means opposing executions as well as abortions.

These contradictions between the way our Lord spoke and the way we Christians act is apparent to the world, if not always to us. It has gotten to the point where some people, wishing to disassociate from a category that includes both Robert Jeffress and Joel Olsteen, don't call themselves Christians but Christ-followers. That doesn't seem to be catching on but I think those who coined the term are onto something. The label “Christian” has become diluted. It can mean as little as “I like some of the things Jesus stands for the way I like some of the songs in Les Miz.” Ironically, it no longer means “I take everything Jesus said as gospel.” It doesn't even mean “I seriously consider what Jesus says on issues first so I might even go against my personal opinions and desires if they are in conflict with Jesus' explicit commands.” Today the word “Christian” basically means, not “Jesus is my Lord,” but “Jesus is my mascot.” To some, Jesus is a symbol, not a savior.

When I identify myself as a nurse, I see a more favorable reaction than when I identify myself as clergy. People know what a nurse stands for—healing and caring. People aren't always sure what a priest stands for. And it's the same when you identify yourself as a Christian. Often they think it's the same as saying you belong to a specific political party. Though neither party is 100% in sync with God's point of view.

This is not to say that following Jesus may not lead you to take positions on issues that people see as political. The Bible literally mentions our duty to help the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant, the sick, the disabled and the imprisoned over 800 times. It speaks of God as being interested in promoting justice, peace, and mercy. It condemns greed, deceit, arrogance, rage, envy, violence, being divisive and harmful speech. If those were the issues we voted on, how would we rate as a Christian nation?

Part of the problem is that we have so emphasized being saved by grace through faith alone that we have forgotten that being saved isn't just declaring you're on God's team rather than the devil's. It's about being transformed from a person with a fractured relationship with God and everything and everyone he has created to a person with a restored and healing relationship with God and everything and everyone he created. It's not so much about being on a different side; it's about being a different person, a person who is becoming more Christlike. Jesus is the incarnation of the same God who, in the words of Psalm 146, “upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free. The Lord gives sight to the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow...” (Psalm 146:7-9) If those are the priorities of our God and King, then they are our priorities as well.

We need a king because we need someone whom we must obey in such matters, not someone whose opinion we'll take under advisement. You can't say to a king, “Well, I'll obey you when what you say is in agreement with my opinion on the matter.” That's not obedience but disloyalty. You can't say to God, “I'll do the spiritual stuff: praying, worshipping, etc—the stuff that makes me feel good—but not the harder 'love your neighbor' stuff or the really challenging 'love your enemy' stuff.” That's not following Jesus. It's following your own desires. You can't do that with someone who is your Lord and King. What you can do is figure out how best to obey him in each circumstance.

But we still have questions to answer about kingship. Like this one: Given what we've said about the problems of an absolute monarch, who demands obedience, why should we choose Jesus as our king? Think and pray about that this week and we'll look at that next Sunday.

First preached on November 29, 2009. It has been revised and updated.

What is a King?

The scriptures referred to are Daniel 7:9-10,13-14; Psalm 93; Revelation 1:4b-8 and John 18:33-37.

It doesn't take a Bible scholar to figure out what theme runs through our 4 lectionary readings today. They are all about kingship. Our Old Testament reading is Daniel's vision of one “like a human being” (in the Hebrew, literally “like a son of man”). He is given an everlasting kingdom over all people and nations. In the Psalm we sing of God as king. The two New Testament passages explicitly call Jesus king. In Revelation he is called the ruler of the kings of the earth. In John 18, Pilate, the representative of the Roman emperor who called himself “king of kings,” asks Jesus if he is the king of the Jews. Jesus explains that his kingdom's source is not earthly.

This coming together of the texts is not accidental. This Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King. It falls on the last Sunday of the liturgical year and makes for a perfect transition to the season of Advent. It is a recent addition to the church calendar, having come from Pope Pius XI in 1925. It was in part a reaction to the rise of Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator, who in turn inspired Adolph Hitler to become the strong man leader of Germany. The pope wished to remind Christians that their ultimate allegiance is to Christ.

Today, though, it brings up several questions: What is a king? Do we need a king? What kind of king do we need? And in what sense in Jesus Christ our king? We will not get to all these questions today and so we will be looking at these topics throughout Advent. Today we will look at what a king is and what he does.

The word “monarch” comes from the Greek and is simply the combination of the words for “one” and “leader.” While monarchy has evolved over the years, during the times of the Bible it meant that the supreme power of the state was wholly invested in one individual who ruled for life. In an absolute monarchy the king rules by decree. His word is law. An individual with such power is outside the experience of most people living in the U.S. unless they previously lived in a monarchy. Even so, most monarchies today are either limited or constitutional, where the king or queen has few powers or is a figurehead, as in the U.K. Only if you have lived in Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Oman or Qatar would you know what an absolute monarchy is like.

Perhaps the best way to understand this form of monarchy is to contrast it with our form of government. While most monarchies are dynastic, with the king or queen being succeeded by their offspring, some countries do elect their kings. We elect our presidents but they do not have absolute power. The checks and balances built into our system by the founding fathers means that each branch of government has certain powers over other branches. So our president cannot declare war; only Congress can. He cannot make laws; only Congress can. He cannot spend the nation's money in whatever fashion he wishes; only Congress can. If he breaks certain laws, he can be held accountable by Congress.

Obviously a politically powerful president can try to get around such restrictions, as we have seen. He can't declare war but if the country is under attack or a serious external threat, he can, as commander in chief of our armed forces, order them into action. Still he is under the War Powers Resolution and Congress must grant him special powers in time of war. He can't pass laws but he can issue executive orders which are as binding on federal agencies as laws are. He can send drafts of laws and proposed budgets to Congress and then lobby hard to get them passed. But if Congress resists him, they can severely hamper him in doing certain things.

In addition, our president is still a citizen and subject to the constitution and the laws of the land. He can be removed for “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” according to the Constitution. In an absolute monarchy, however, there is an absolute division between the ruler and everyone else. He is not under the law; his word is law. The rest of the government just exists to carry out his will. If that scares you, that's understandable. So how did the idea of giving one person so much power develop?

Back when we were wandering family groups and tribes, a tight, nearly military kind of organization was important for survival. The tribe was solely responsible for its own food, shelter and security. Nothing was provided by anyone else. Nothing was taken for granted. Even if it was a group of hunter-gatherers, questions had to be decided, like when will the group go out for food, in what direction, how far and for how long. Who stays behind to guard the camp, the women and the small children? What should the group do if it encounters another group? Should they fight? Flee? Make peace? The most efficient way to organize this was around an individual who had proved himself to be a good leader. In perilous times, a warrior might be best. In peaceful times, a wise judge might be preferred. Hopefully, you got a combination of the two: someone who kept the group safe from external threats and who also kept the group working together smoothly.

Even a chieftain who held his position due to his strength and strategic intelligence as lead warrior had to be good at dealing with the tribe's internal conflicts. After a while, certain problems had arisen often enough that he could articulate certain principles and make them laws. The laws dealt with everything—property rights and ownership, respecting others, who could marry whom, how to determine and punish guilt, etc. You can see examples of this in the Torah, beginning right after the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. Of course, laws are general and in specific instances, conflicts might involve a clash between two principles, as when someone defending himself murders another person. Tricky situations and possible exceptions meant the chieftain not only made the laws but had to judge individual cases. When the group was relatively small, this was possible without taking too much time away from his other duties. And if the chieftain was wise enough to be impartial in these matters, it made things consistent.

Usually the chieftain was the father or alpha male of the group. This is simply because if you didn't have a wise and effectively protective father, the family or tribe either died out or was taken over by another tribe, often as captives and slaves. While we do know of tribes led by women, like Boudica, chieftains were typically male. He was leader by virtue of his wisdom and prowess, or by taking over from a weaker leader. If you had a good chieftain, your tribe was safe, prosperous and peaceful, at least among yourselves.

As tribes grew, intermarried, merged, developed farming, settled down, built towns and cities, established trade and gained control over larger areas and diverse peoples, the position of the King emerged. He was formerly a tribal chieftain, so strong militarily that he could fend off invaders or conquer neighboring tribes, and so good an organizer that the peoples under him prospered. If he was wise, he allowed former chieftains to be his vassals, ruling their peoples or lands for him. Thus we got an aristocracy, powerful lords who are not the king but who act as his representatives in ruling parts of his kingdom.

The king was not only the leader of the people politically but religiously as well. This probably went back to the time of the chieftains. The patriarch not only organized the security and work of the tribe, he not only made and enforced the laws, he also acted as the tribe's representative to the power or powers who ruled and organized nature, ie, the gods. He expressed thanks for the regularity of seasons, harvests, the migration of herds, and all the things outside human control upon which the tribe relied. The patriarch led the prayers, made the sacrifices, read the signs, and asked for blessings on events in the life of the tribe, like births, maturity, marriages and deaths.

Eventually kings might claim to be divine or to be descended from gods. Even Israel used the title “son of God” for the Davidic ruler. (Psalm 89:26-27) Because of their fierce monotheism it did not mean the ruler was literally divine but that God had adopted him as his own. (2 Samuel 7:12-14) The ideal was always David, a man after God's own heart, who represented God's strength, wisdom and justice. (1 Samuel 13:14)

So ideally a king was a person strong enough not only to protect his people from external threats but to ensure that the group lived and worked harmoniously so as to secure their continued survival and prosperity. He made just laws and acted as judge, resolving disputes and balancing the competing claims of justice and peace. He represented the people before God, giving thanks, asking forgiveness and securing blessings for his people. Good kings were beloved. It is interesting to note that the word “king” comes from the same word as “kin.” At least in the early days, before large nation-states, he could literally be the father of his people.

Those of us raised in the democratic tradition may find our hackles rising in response to the idea of one human being having that much power, especially if his main qualification was his physical or military might. It's why we separated the power to make laws and to judge cases from the presidency and gave them to Congress and the courts. We have the advantage of looking back at history and seeing all the flaws in human monarchies. Yet we can also see how kingship arose and why it was seen to be needed at that time. It is, in some ways, more efficient than democracy. And, when facing a military threat, we also give our president added powers to fight our enemies. Yet we have seen how our system also has flaws. And the Bible itself is not blind to the flaws in kingship. We'll talk about that next Sunday.

Today we celebrate Christ as our King. But what does that mean? We will get to that and other questions in the coming weeks. And this week I am going to leave you with some questions to ponder. Use them as the focus of your prayers and devotions this week.

Ask yourself: if Jesus is my King, how does that affect my relationship with him? How should I treat his words? How does this affect my loyalty to other things?

Use Jesus' words from today's gospel as a jumping off point: “My kingdom is not from this world.” Note that Jesus does not say of this world but from it. What difference does that make?

Next week we will examine the question: Do we, in the 21^st century, need a king? Or would he just be a royal pain?

First preached on November 22, 2009. It has been revised and updated. 

What Hasn't Changed

The scriptures referred to are Daniel 12:1-3 and Mark 13:1-8.

We've heard a lot of language recently that makes it sound like we are facing an apocalypse. Unfortunately, we use the word “apocalypse” wrongly. The Greek word means “unveiling,” a revelation of heavenly secrets. But the most sensational aspect of apocalyptic literature, like the books of Daniel and Revelation and today's passage in Mark (cf. Matthew 24 and Luke 21), is God's supernatural breaking into history, when he brings the current evil age to a close and inaugurates his kingdom. So the word “apocalypse” has come to be associated with the end of the present world order and that's all it means to most people. It is not even an exclusively religious term these days. After the world saw the power of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it realized that God's wrath was not the only thing capable of bringing about such destruction. Now any worldwide catastrophe is called apocalyptic. It is routinely faced by fictional heroes in TV, movies and in science fiction and fantasy novels. In one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Giles, Buffy's source of information on demons, announces solemnly that the world is going to end. Buffy and her friends look at him in amazement and say, “Again?” In another episode, her boyfriend says he's going to have to learn the plural for “apocalypse.”

Living in the shadow of a nuclear world war that hasn't yet come to pass, we have become a bit jaded and we make jokes. But the fact is that apocalyptic literature arose from a grim situation for God's people. After Solomon's reign, the kingdom of David split into two nations. The northern one kept the name Israel and the southern one, ruled by David's descendants, called itself Judah after David's tribe, though it also included the tribe of Benjamin. Surrounded by much larger neighbors, the two kingdoms were frequently threatened and sometimes were vassals of the empires that contested for control of the Middle East. Then the Assyrians conquered Israel's capital at Samaria and took its royals, nobles, and other elites into exile. The Assyrians resettled other conquered peoples in their place. These people intermarried with the poorer Israelites left behind and became known as the Samaritans. Israel was no more.

You can imagine the shock to the people of Judah. One of the kingdoms of God's people had been obliterated. Their cousins were swallowed up by the Gentiles and they never returned. They became the legendary “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.” Then, nearly 150 years later, the successor to the Assyrian empire, the Babylonians, did the same thing to Judah, just as the prophets had warned them. It felt like the end of the world for God's people.

The Jews spent 70 years in exile. Then Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon and let the Jews return home. Scholars think that it was during and after the Babylonian captivity that many of the historical books of the Bible were edited and put into their final form. Examining their history, the Jews came to agree with the prophets that their downfall could be attributed to their spotty record of only occasional faithfulness to God and obedience to his word.

Empires came and went. Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, the descendant of one of Alexander the Great's generals, conquered Judea and tried to make the Jews adopt Greek culture. He forbade circumcision and observance of the Sabbath. He commanded that all copies of the Torah be burned. He demanded that the Jewish priests make a sacrifice to Zeus and then he had a pig, the ultimate unclean animal, slaughtered on the altar of God's temple. This was the appalling desecration prophesied by Daniel and which was later used by Jesus as an archetype of a future abomination. (Daniel 11:31; Matthew 24:15) The very existence of Jewish faith and worship were threatened. This is the environment that gave birth to apocalyptic literature.

Apocalyptic literature was a successor to the prophetic writings. In the absence of prophets, religious writers put down visions of how the present evil age would be interrupted by God's judgment in his own good time. Evil would be defeated and those people who remained faithful to God would be rewarded. These visions were meant to encourage and comfort God's suffering people, who were living in a culture that didn't merely disapprove of them but was aggressively intolerant of them. Society rejected them so in apocalyptic writings God rejects that society. Apocalyptic literature rarely offers ethical instruction because they portray the gulf between the faithful and sinners as being too vast.

Because they come out of and depict times when God's people were persecuted and even killed, apocalyptic writings appeal to those who identify with these martyrs. I'll bet they resonate most strongly with our Christian brothers and sisters in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where persecution of the church still exists. But there are Christians in the developed West who also see our culture as hostile to Christianity and who show a keen interest in the Last Things. Some of them show too much interest. Because I see the true danger of our current times as not one of confrontation with those who want to destroy our faith but of dealing with those who want to co-op and corrupt our faith. Our culture is not trying to wipe out the gospel but to dilute, tweak and amend it. Our problem is not that of being asked to denounce Christ and bow instead to certain idols but of being asked to invoke Christ to bless certain non-Christian ideas. It is an altogether subtler temptation.

This temptation started when the emperor Constantine the Great endorsed Christianity. But he only made it a legal religion, albeit a favored one. When Theodosius 1 made it the official religion of the empire the church acquired political power and authority which corrupted its moral power and authority. It condemned heretics to death and eventually split into factions. In trying to serve both God and the emperor, it confused which things it should give to God and which it should give to Caesar. (Mark 12:17) And it lost its independent voice.

In ancient Israel there wasn't any separation of church and state. But there were schools of prophets who criticized both kings and priests for not acting in accordance with God's word. The twin themes of the prophets were holiness and justice. They were just as concerned with the people's conduct before God as they were with the way they treated the poor. The two are connected. You show respect and love for God by also showing respect and love for the image of God in yourself and others.

Our founding fathers made sure we had a separation of church and state by putting it in the very first amendment to our constitution, along with freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble with others of like mind. They knew that European countries had official state religions and they wanted to make sure the United States did not. The concern, said James Madison, was for the freedom of religion. He remembered Baptists and Quakers being thrown into jail for preaching their beliefs in the days before the constitution. The government should not be able to tell anyone how to think about God, let alone punish them for following their conscience on the matter. People could not be persecuted for their faith, Christian and non-Christian.

So people with dissenting views have the right to express them. They may voice, print, broadcast and stream their viewpoints. I may not legally shut them up, let alone threaten them with harm. I must tolerate them expressing their views. But I do not have to approve of their views. I can in turn voice, print, broadcast and stream my views. We must tolerate the expression of all views but we needn't approve of them. No one has the right to approval.

This is something that has been forgotten in this country. Ours is a diverse land. We have people of every race, national origin, political view, and sexual orientation. The constitution gives each the right to their own views and the freedom to express those views. Our national unity is not based on uniformity but on mutual commitment to the constitution and the rights it guarantees. That does mean, however, that our unity has been tested by extreme views. At times we have even done things that contradict our stated beliefs in individual rights and freedoms. The Sedition Act, the Dred Scott decision, the forced relocation of Native and Japanese Americans, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and other regrettable actions have gone against the principles upon which this country was founded. But we usually recover our senses, prodded by those who call us back to those basic principles. We have survived and corrected many of those mistakes.

Both parties in the recent election have made it sound like the other side winning would spell the end of the world as we know it, or at least the end of the country as we know it. This is not the first time an election has been spoken of in apocalyptic terms. So it is important that we listen to our Lord in regard to such things. In our gospel passage today he says, “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” Really bad and scary things will happen, Jesus says, but this is not yet the end. And we can take comfort from that.

Just 40 years after Jesus said this, the nation of Judea rose up in rebellion against Rome and was defeated. The temple was destroyed, Jerusalem was burned and its walls were demolished. The Jewish historian Josephus estimates that over 1 million people died from violence and from starvation. To the Jews it must have felt like the end of the world. Yet the Jewish people survive to this day.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected, the southern states left the union and the Civil War broke out. Historians estimate that 1.5 million Americans died in that war, more than have died in any other American war and in fact more than have died in all the other American wars combined. The US, however, survives.

Jesus warns us not to confuse him with other false Christs who will arise. And we must not confuse the kingdom of God with our country. As Jesus tells Pilate, his kingdom does not come from this world. (John 18:36) As evidence, he cites the fact that his disciples were not fighting to save him. In fact, when Peter pulled out his sword to save Jesus from arrest, Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52) And then Jesus healed the man whose ear Peter had cut with his sword. (Luke 22:50-51) That is the hallmark of Jesus' kingdom: healing, not violence. Peacemaking, not war.

Will things change after this election? Undoubtedly. But you know what will not change? Our duty as Christians to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves. (Mark 12:28-31) Our duty to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. (Luke 6:27) Our duty to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe those who need it, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned, and welcome the foreigner. (Matthew 25:34-40) Our duty to help women who have lost their husbands and children who have lost their fathers. (Jeremiah 5:6) The commandments not to murder, commit adultery, steal, say false things about others, or want things that belong to others. (Exodus 20:13-17) The commandment to go and spread the good news of God's love and forgiveness and to make disciples of Jesus. (Matthew 28:19-20) None of those have changed. It's not the end of the world. And even if it is, when Jesus returns he wants to catch us doing those things, the work he has given us to do. (Matthew 24:45-46)

For the first 300 years of its existence, the church lived under emperors, some of which persecuted Christians. Yet they prayed for the emperor and showed him due honor, as both Peter and Paul instructed them. (1 Peter 2:17; 1 Timothy 2:1-2) Whether it was Nero, Caligula, Decius, Valerian, or Diocletian, they were to acknowledge him as emperor. But Jesus was their King. They lived by Roman law. (Romans 13:1-7) But if there was a clear conflict between the laws of men and the law of the Spirit, they obeyed God rather than men. (Acts 5:28-29)

We are Christians who happen to be American, not Americans who happen to be Christian. Our ultimate allegiance is to Jesus, who is not American. He is our King. We are his ambassadors. (2 Corinthians 5:20) And our King commands us to love one another. (John 13:34) We are to love our neighbors, which is anyone we encounter, and we are to love our enemies. So there is no one we can hate. And we must remember that this country, like every country, will one day pass away. Heaven and earth will pass away. (Matthew 24:35) Jesus' kingdom will never pass away. (Daniel 7:14) So let us not put our trust in mortal rulers. (Psalm 146:3) We trust in Jesus Christ alone.

First preached on November 15, 2003. It has been revised and updated.

The Story of the that Saints

It's as if Christmas Eve eclipsed Christmas Day: Halloween has become better known than the holy day it's named after. Halloween is just a contraction of “All Hallow's Evening.” It refers to “All Hallows' Day,” the old name for All Saints Day. Celebrated since the late 4^th century, All Saints Day reminds us of how important the saints used to be. Statues and icons of them were found in most churches. Prayers were made to them. The saints became specialized, with each having an efficacy over certain areas of life. Thus if you wanted protection against fire or lumbago, you prayed to St. Lawrence of Rome. If you were a sailor, you might pray to St. Elmo. If you had disappointing children you prayed to St. Clotilde. Pilgrims went to shrines of saints. Bits of their bodies were venerated. How did this state of affairs come about and why do we on the 1^st of November have a holy day devoted to all the saints?

The word “saint” in the Bible meant someone set apart by God for his purposes. So in the New Testament, all Christians are called saints. (Acts 9:32; Romans 1:7; 1Corinthians 1:2; Ephesians 1:1, etc) All were saved by Christ and set apart by God to live by his Spirit and spread the gospel. But as time went on, the apostles were considered saints with a capital S, especially since most of them became martyrs. “Martyr” is just the Greek word for “witness,” someone who testifies to the truth. In the early days of the church, testifying to the truth of Jesus as the risen Messiah and Savior could, in times of persecution, get you killed by the authorities. So the term martyr took on the added meaning of someone who dies for the truth. You can see how the first Christians, those who died for the faith, came to be honored as superstars of the church.

Not only were many of the apostles martyred, but so were many of their successors, whom they had appointed to oversee the church. The Greek word for “overseer” is episkopos, from which we get the word “bishop.” Originally a bishop was one of many elders of a house church. He was chosen to preside over the Eucharist (Communion) and baptisms. As the faith spread and the number of churches in the bishop's city grew, so did his jurisdiction. But he couldn't visit all of them every Sunday so he ordained (which means “listed”) elders to act in his stead. The Greek word for elder is presbyteros, which eventually became the word “priest.”

One of the most famous martyr bishops was St. Ignatius of Antioch. Antioch was the site of the first major church founded outside Judea. It was the church that sent Paul out as a missionary. (Acts 11:26; 13:1-3) Under the emperor Trajan (reigned 98-117 AD), the first one to make Christianity an illegal religion, Ignatius was arrested. As he was transported to Rome, a trip that took months, Ignatius wrote a series of letters to various churches. Seven of those letters still survive. In them he offered encouragement and corrected theological errors and contemplated his approaching death. What is remarkable is his anticipation of his martyrdom. He even writes to the church at Rome not to try to prevent his execution, which will deliver him to God. This is alien to us but Ignatius was not alone in seeing martyrdom as a glorious goal. It was seen as following in the footsteps of Jesus, the ultimate form of discipleship. The alternative was to deny one's faith or hide it from others. So Ignatius embraced his martyrdom. One can see how this heroic stance impressed other Christians.

So the first capital S saints were martyrs. And not all of them were bishops. Ordinary people who stood up for their faith and were executed were also designated saints. However, when the emperor Constantine made Christianity a legal religion in the year 313, martyrdom was largely a thing of the past, unless you were a missionary to the barbarians. So the term “saint” was bestowed on any extremely holy or charitable Christian. Such a person was held up as an example to other Christians. As the faith spread, every region could boast at least one superstar Christian who was designated a saint by local churches and bishops.

When the faith spread outside the cities, it came to the pagans. The word “pagan” originally meant a rural peasant, just as “heathen” used to simply mean someone who lived on the heath, or uncultivated land. Since Christianity first spread from city to city along the excellent roads of the Roman empire, the first Christians were usually urban. Rural people were considered, then as now, less sophisticated and, at that time, more barbaric. (Which is why “villain” derives from the word for a farm servant, one who works on a villa.) Rural people were also more conservative, not willing to change their ways, which meant still holding onto the polytheistic faith of the old Roman pantheon. Agricultural life is hard and they had a difficult time giving up reliance on the gods of the harvest and the rain and fertility. How could one God do it all?

Rural folk also saw the spiritual realm as set up in much the same kind of hierarchy as the empire, where the local landlords and officials were the only contacts one had with authority. Most would never lay eyes on the emperor. In the same way, there may be one supreme god like Zeus or Jupiter, but you usually dealt with the lesser gods who were in charge of the particular departments of life that were your everyday concerns, like safe childbirth or good weather. The idea of having direct access to God Almighty was a strange and probably a frightening one. It would be like a local matter going all the way to the emperor himself. The idea of going through intermediaries was more comfortable. So the form of Christianity that developed in those parts was one where the saints took over for the old gods and took up specialized oversight for the common concerns of the peasants, who vastly outnumbered city dwellers.

Sometimes it was a stretch to connect a saint with some activity, illness or profession and so their lives were ransacked for any link, however tenuous. So if you were a wheelwright, a craftsman working with wheels, your patron saint was St. Catherine of Alexandria, presumably because she was sentenced to be tortured and broken on the wheel. If there wasn't an appropriate saint for the occasion, a pious legend might supply one. My favorite is St. Wigglesfoot the Unencumbered. There were many tales of Christian virgins who prayed to God to protect them from lustful pagan princes. In the case of St. Wilgefortis, God supposedly caused her to grow a mustache and beard overnight. The next day was to be her wedding day but she was rejected by her groom. So St. Wilgefortis, whose name devolved into St. Wigglesfoot, became the patron saint of women who wanted to get rid of their troublesome husbands!

It is said that sometimes a popular local deity was merely “baptized” and reborn as a saint, so to speak. St. Brigid of Ireland may have been a pagan princess converted by St. Patrick. Or she may have been the powerful pagan goddess repurposed. Or the attributes of the goddess and the real woman might have been mixed together in popular lore. In this and other alleged instances of pagan gods turned into saints, it's tough to know for sure since the stories predate writing in most cases. Often our knowledge of certain pagan gods are only available to us because they were written down by Christians in the same way the story of Beowulf was. We know that pagan shrines were often cleansed and repurposed as churches. Was the same done to the former object of worship?

Another reason for the mixing up of at least the functions of the old gods and those of the saints was the incomplete conversion of barbarian tribes. Often what happened was that the missionaries managed to convert the king or tribal chieftain, who would then decree that all his subjects were to be baptized and become Christians. The average member of the tribe was not doing this out of personal conviction and often was in near total ignorance of the tenets of the newly mandated faith. Again, letting go of familiar gods was hard and so the saints were substituted for them in the hearts and minds of these new “converts.” Certainly the spirit of Christianity was often lost when the outer forms of the faith were adopted by tribes whose chief characteristics were the virtues of warriors, not peacemakers. A lot of the problems of the so-called “Dark Ages” did not originate with the church but with the breaking up of the Roman empire into a roiling mass of warring tribes who did not care much for learning the gentler teachings of Jesus.

Eventually the cult of saints degenerated into regional veneration of certain persons whose bodies were considered to be imbued with holiness and miraculous powers. Though some saints were merely great teachers or preachers or charitable souls who helped the poor and suffering, miracles became the primary signature of sainthood. And if the saint didn't display any wonder-working power in this life, then he or she might suddenly manifest this ability after death. He could do this by granting cures to those who pray to him. Or he might do this by simply refusing to rot. If you wish to see how powerful this phenomenon was, google “incorruptible saints” and look at the images. They aren't creepy because they look like they are merely sleeping. At a time when the art of embalming was lost, you can see how a body that did not decompose inspired awe.

The problem was the saints were superstars and like Elvis and Graceland, they attracted pilgrims. And pilgrims brought money. People would pay good money to see and have their prayers offered to a saint. There weren't enough saints to go around so monasteries and churches competed for relics, which were often bits of the saint's bodies.

The cult of the saints became a prime target for the Protestant reformers. The trafficking in saints literally commercialized the sacred, cheapened the idea of God's grace and put a price tag on answers to prayer. In addition, saints were seen, at best, as the objects of superstition and at worst, as objects of idolatrous worship. The whole idea that through Christ we have access to God was lost when people's primary religious devotions were directed at secondary figures of the faith. The church even said that asking a saint to pray for you was akin to asking a fellow Christian to pray for you. Of course, it was felt that since a saint was extraordinarily virtuous, this was like having cash in the heavenly bank, and being continuously in the presence of God gave the saints a much better chance of getting what they asked for than just having your neighbor pray for you. To the reformers, the cult of the saints was basically paganism redux. In addition, people like Henry VIII found it very profitable to denounce the practice and to seize the property and money of monasteries who made a mint out of the saints. Many beautiful works were destroyed in the zeal to purify churches. And few Protestant churches are named for saints, nor do they talk about them much. Unfortunately, that means they don't tell the stories of some truly remarkable Christians.

If we look at the saints as they were originally seen by the early church, as exemplars of Christian living, we can find a lot to appreciate. A former slave, St. Vincent de Paul started organizations for the poor, nursed the sick, and found jobs for the unemployed. St. Rose Venerini founded and oversaw 40 schools for girls despite violent opposition to them being educated. St. Richard Pampuri was a doctor who treated the poor for free, even setting up a dental clinic for them. St. Bridget of Sweden was the mother of 8, one of whom became a saint as well, and yet Bridget found the time to be a counselor of theologians, popes and royalty. St. Raymond of Penyafort gave up law and refused to be made an archbishop to do parish work instead and to start a school teaching the culture and languages of Spain and Northern Africa to missionaries. The first book written in English by a woman came from St. Julian of Norwich, who was widely recognized as a spiritual authority and who wrote of God's love at a time when the world was rocked by the Black Death and peasant revolts. St. Francis of Assisi was a spoiled rich kid and soldier who renounced his inheritance and tried to end the 5^th crusade by going to Egypt and speaking to the sultan. There is a wealth of stories of heroic faith to be had here.

So let us reclaim the saints, their extraordinary lives and the lessons in faith and service they can teach us. But let us also remember that we too are saints, people saved and sanctified by God. We too serve him, even if we don't always get noticed. The hallmark of saints is not miracles but humility. The greatest of the capital S saints would admit that they could accomplish nothing without the grace of God. They all realized that they were ordinary sinners, rescued by God and called to imitate Jesus Christ and continue his work. If they are different from us it is perhaps the extent to which they put God before self and the needs of others before their own. To paraphrase Dag Hammarskjold, saints are those who say “Thanks” to God for all he has done and “Yes” to all he will do. To be a saint, then, is to decide which voice to listen to, your own or Christ's, and which you will obey.

What is Jesus saying to you right now, right here? What are you going to do about it?