Jesus as King

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 25:31-46:

Today is Christ the King Sunday, the day we celebrate and recognize that Jesus is the Christ, the messiah and King, or that he is the King of king and Lord of Lords, a phrase most of us are familiar with from the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah, but actually is found in the 1st letter to Timothy and also in the book of Revelation. And so this title of King is an early title given to Christ, and not just by the church, but even by others, even if ironically, remembering that the charge that appears over the cross, the reason why the Romans sought to crucify him, was that he was said to be King of the Jews. And of course in Matthew’s gospel this claim about Jesus being a king goes all the way back to the nativity story when the wise men come seeking the one who was born King of the Jews, which is the reason that Herod sought to have him killed. And so this was a title not only that was applied to Jesus, but which had significant ramifications in proclaiming it, and still should today. Because although there are lots of people who say that we should never talk politics in church, the simple truth is that is impossible, because to proclaim Jesus as King, Jesus as Lord, is a political statement. It was a political statement in the first century, and it is a political statement today.

Because to proclaim Christ as King means is to claim where our allegiance belongs, and also where our allegiance doesn’t belong, to the things of the world. As I said, the reason I decided to do this series talking about the offices of Christ after the election was to help us remember that neither political party holds a monopoly on truth, nor is any politician going to save us. We have a savior and he is not running for election. Christ is our hope, our salvation and our King, and that is a political statement, even if we don’t comprehend that as much today. But what we have to understand is that most of the titles that got applied to Jesus, also happened to be titles that were applied to Caesar Augustus, including that of Lord, Son of God, bringer of peace, savior and even the beginning of good news, to name just a few. Even more importantly, even though we talk about the Roman Empire, that’s not how they referred to themselves. Instead it was called the Kingdom of Rome, which also makes the emperor a King, whereas Jesus was talking about and proclaiming the Kingdom of God, and of course a kingdom needs a king, whom was found in Christ. And so the question the early church posed to its followers, and still poses today, is who are you going to follow, Jesus or Caesar? Who is Lord, Jesus or Caesar? To whom do you pledge allegiance, Jesus of Caesar? That is not a rhetorical question, because it demands an answer.

Jesus as Prophet

Here is my message from Sunday. The scripture was Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12  and Luke 4:14-24:

In his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul says that he didn’t come to them using lofty words or wisdom, but instead to make known amongst them only Christ and him crucified. And yet, that term Christ had a lot of meaning that eventually would have to be unpacked. Because Christ is a specific term. Even though we talk all the time about Jesus Christ, Christ is not his last name, and H is not his middle initial. Christ is a title, coming from the Greek word Christos which is the Greek word used for the Hebrew word Messiah, which means the anointed one. And so in proclaiming Jesus as Christ, Jesus as messiah, Jesus as the anointed one, there was a lot of understanding that went along with that. Or we might say that there was a lot of explanation that the early church had to do to come to understand who Jesus was that encapsulated his life, his death and most especially his resurrection. Jesus did not match the role that people expected of the Messiah, and so a new interpretation had to be given about Jesus, and one of the first titles was that of Christ. But when people asked “who is Christ”, or when the disciples and apostles set out to explain who Christ was, they didn’t seek to talk about his nature, but instead about his function. What does Christ do? Why is he important? How do we find salvation in his acts? How do we understand him as the Messiah?

And so the church spent years and years trying to answer some of those questions. And one of the ways that explanation was done was through assigning certain offices, or positions to Jesus, namely that of prophet, priest and king. And we have these titles and ideas appearing early on in the church. In the mid-first century, Justin Martyr was writing about these three offices, and just as an aside, like Jesus, Martyr was not Justin’s last name, that was given to him after he was martyred, otherwise that would be a rather unfortunate circumstance and heavy burden to carry. Later, Eusebius, the father of church history, would do the same. In the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas took up the topic, as did John Calvin in the Protestant Reformation, and John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement encouraged the preaching of Christ in all three of his offices.

Christ the King

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text is John 18:33-37:

Today is Christ the King Sunday, the day that we celebrate and proclaim Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. It also represents the end of the Christian year, so happy New Year, as next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, and we begin to prepare the way, again, for the coming of the Christ child. Today sort of encapsulates one of the things that at the heart of our faith, and that is the dichotomy of things that we have to hold in tension, such as loving God with our head and with our heart, which can be opposite of each other. But the other and more important one is holding the tension between this Sunday and next Sunday, that is that Christ has already come, that Christ is already here, and that Christ has yet to come. Or as we say in the communion liturgy, Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. We pledge our allegiance to God who is with us, and cry out Maranatha, which means “Come, Lord Jesus.” But today, we celebrate Christ with us as our King, which concludes the series we have been doing on who Jesus is by looking at the three offices that he is said to hold, which are prophet, priest and King.

All three of these offices are historic positions found in the Hebrew Scriptures, and all of them had huge expectations for someone in each of these positions who would come to introduce, or bring about, the completion of creation, the fulfilment of the law, and the reign, or kingdom of God. When we talked about Jesus as prophet, we talked about the expectation that there would be a great prophet to rise up like Moses or Elijah, but this person would not be just any prophet, or just a prophet, but instead would be the prophet, the one who would fulfill prophecy and be the last prophet. It is clear that those who knew Jesus viewed him as a prophet, but in light of the resurrection it is this role as the prophet that the disciples and the early church claimed for Jesus.  And so in light of that, we should see everything that Jesus says and also what Jesus does as a prophetic witness, as the words of God come to us and to be treated with the seriousness that entails. Seeing Jesus as prophet, or even thinking of Jesus as the prophet is probably the least known and talked about aspects of Jesus’ three roles.

With Great Expectation

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Revelation 1:4-8:

When I was growing up, every Thanksgiving my brother and I would wake up and then go curl up with our parents in their bed and watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on television.  Santa making his triumphant entry at the end was always the best part because that meant we could “officially” start listening to Christmas music, and so we would all climb out of bed and my mom would get out the Christmas records, and it’s nice with this group because we all know what a record is, and then we would begin getting ready for the trek to my grandmother’s house for dinner, although since it was Phoenix, it was not over the river or through the woods  Being curled up in my parents’ bed watching the parade is one of my fondest childhood memories.  In working to create our own family traditions, by tapping into the traditions that Linda and I had as children, we too watch the parade each year, and when we lived in Boston we twice went down to New York to see the parade in person.

But watching the parade live is very different than watching in on television.  When you are there in person, there is a lot of waiting.  First there is the fact that in order to get a good spot to watch you have to show up by at least 6:30 am in order stake out your location.  The parade itself doesn’t start until 9, and then doesn’t get to where we are sitting until 9:30.  That means we have at least three hours of sitting or standing on the streets of New York waiting for the parade to arrive.

Our first year the crowd was singing songs, and led by the police officer “guarding” the route, he had each side of the street chanting back and forth to each other.  It was a lot of fun.  Our second time there, the crowd was more subdued and there was no police officer to keep up under control, so we were left to our own devices to occupy our time.  But, of course, the longest period of time seems to be once you can see the beginning of the parade, you know its right there but it doesn’t seem to be getting any closer.  The anticipation and the excitement build and you know the end is in sight and yet it’s not there just yet, there is still a delay of time, and it is in times like this that we realize we have to hurry up and wait.