A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.
When I worked as the on-call chaplain at Duke University Hospital, I would receive pages from patients who wanted a visit, and it was almost always because they received bad news. Upon arrival, we would read scripture, and share prayers, and go through tissues, but then I would have to leave to go to the next room and the next patient.
And it came to pass, after a particularly rough shift, I felt a deep desire for something comforting after so much discomfort. So I did what any enterprising young seminarian would do, I flocked to YouTube. At first I thought watching clips of comedians would cure my despair, but it was fleeting. Next, I considered blooper reels from famous television shows, but they only provided a brief salve. But then I stumbled across something that actually made a difference: cute videos of animals becoming friends.
There’s something almost miraculous about watching a monkey play with a dog, or a cat cuddling with a kangaroo, that left me changed on the other side.
Thousands of years ago, Isaiah provided a vision to the people Israel of a time in which various animals will dwell together as a sign of God’s grace. What we wait for this Advent season, is nothing short of the miracle of a rewritten cosmos where despair is vanquished forever.
If you have time today, I encourage you to spend some time on YouTube looking at cute videos of animals together. Oddly enough, those videos are a foretaste of God’s kingdom come.
I’ve long held that the mere writing of a sermon, words on a page, don’t actually make it much of anything. A sermon is only a sermon when it is proclaimed among and for God’s people within the context of worship. The prayers, music, and even presence of individuals make the sermon what it is because the Holy Spirit delights in making the words proclaimed from the pulpit God’s words for us.
And so, I have a sermon that is not really a sermon. I prayed over these words and put them together for the first Sunday of Advent, but became sick prior to Sunday morning and never actually preached them. Oddly enough, I am grateful that I didn’t preach this sermon because Isaiah’s insistence on God’s people beating swords into ploughshares, and my take on what that might mean today, was sure to upset quite a few in the pews. And yet, if we believe the church lives according to God’s future in the present, then perhaps every Sunday is an opportunity to proclaim the radical audacity of our hope in the God “who shall come to judge between the nations.”
Anyway, here’s the text and “sermon”…
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Isaiah 2.1-5
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord form Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
We begin at the end.
7 centuries before the Advent of Christ, before the little town of Bethlehem hosted the heavenly host, before the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head, the prophet Isaiah saw a word.
What an interesting turn of phrase.
The prophet doesn’t see a vision, he doesn’t hear a word, he sees the word.
In the days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and all people will stream to it. A king will come and teach the ways of the Lord, the instruction will command the attention of the masses.
And what does this king teach?
An eye for an eye!
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!
Life’s hard, get a helmet!
No.
The king will teach the way of peace. He will come to judge the living and the dead. And, in judgment, the people will beat their swords into ploughshares, their spears into pruning hooks. Their weapons of war will become instruments of agriculture.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
Even if you’ve never read from the prophet Isaiah, you’ve probably heard these words before. Or, perhaps better put, you’ve seen them, or some version of them.
We’re familiar with these words because they have captivated the imaginations of the faithful for generations, just think of the famous images during protests against the Vietnam war and all the people who placed flowers inside the barrels of guns.
And, interestingly, this prophetic proclamation from Isaiah is engraved in large letters on the wall directly across the street from the United Nations. There they rest, day after day, mocking our feeble attempts to make peace while we continue to lift up our swords against one another.
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Isaiah sees the word about the days to come. He does not know when, or even how, these things will come to fruition, but the prophet catches a glimpse behind the curtain of the cosmos and he seeds the end.
It’s a bit odd that we begin at the end. Today, after all, is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of a new year and we start with the conclusion. But, then again, it’s only right for us to do so because we are Easter people, we’re stuck squarely between the already but the not yet.
There’s a through line in the Gospels, frankly the whole of the strange new world of the Bible, about time. We sees these words about the past, the present, and the future, and it’s not altogether clear which ones are which. And yet, if there is a persistent proclamation, it is that we belong not to this age, but to the age to come. That’s why Paul can write in his letter to the church in Rome, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.
We are a people out of time. We live in the future because we know that the tomb is empty.
But the future we live in its not a future that we bring to fruition.
There’s a temptation, every time Advent rolls around, for us to feel like it’s our responsibility to make the world come out right; that its up to us to make the word Isaiah sees real.
To use language from Stanley Hauerwas, we play at waiting this time of year. Advent, after all, is all about patience isn’t it. And yet, for us, it isn’t. We can’t help but make ourselves the main character of the story. We rejoice in this language of getting back to God, of climbing back up the mountain, of making the world a better place.
But, when was the last time we left church jazzed up to turn our swords into ploughshares, or transform our guns into garden shovels?
Did you know that there are more guns in this country than human beings?
The word Isaiah sees is not predicated on us finally getting everything good enough that we can be good enough for God. In fact, its quite the opposite. The end is made possible only as we come to grips with our badness and how badly we need someone to do for us, and to us, that which we cannot do on our own.
Isaiah sees swords turned into ploughshares, a people willing to relinquish their forms of control for forms of sustenance, a people of peace. The strange new world of the Bible is filled with impossible possibilities just like that. The Lord will bring the hills low, and raise the valleys up. The Lord will make the last first, and the first last. The Lord turns a sign of death (the cross), into the sign of life (salvation).
The end is not yet. We Easter people are oddly stuck living in the time of Advent. We exist in the time in between, the time being as Auden put it. We make it through this mortal life waiting and hoping for things not yet seen.
That’s why we sing of the hopes and fears of all the years. We know not all is as it should be, but we also know that the future is coming, and his name is Jesus.
“Building a better future for our children.” I saw that on a sign recently. And I hear those kind of words all the time. Here at church. The PTA. On the news. And, it’s a worthy sentiment. What can we do now to ensure a better and brighter future for the coming generations?
The only problem is, we are not creating the future, and certainly not a better one.
We know what we should and shouldn’t do, and for some reason we refuse to change.
It’s been almost ten years since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7, plus 6 adults were murdered. I remember being glued to the television and feeling this raw hopelessness in my heart. And yet, I also remember thinking, “This is so bad, we’re definitely going to make sure these types of things will never happen again.”
But we didn’t.
In just the last two weeks we’re seen horrific shootings in Charlottesville and Colorado Springs. Awful. And we just keep going forward as if nothing happened. We’ve become numb to the violence that we are.
And, sadly, I had to go back and edit this sermon because in between writing it, and preaching it this morning, there was another mass shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake.
These reports keep coming out, year after year, about how we have a problem with guns in this country. There are too many and the access is too easy. But we do nothing.
We were at the pediatrician’s office a few weeks back, patiently waiting. Talking about living into the Advent season, waiting and waiting and waiting. And what is there to do when you’re waiting in a doctor’s office? You start reading all the random posters on the wall.
Here’s the proper amount of medicine for a 6 year old. Here’s an example of a healthy diet for a ten year old. On and on.
But then I saw a word, a poster on the wall that chilled me to my core:
“Firearms are now the number one cause of death for children in the United States.”
We are not making a better future.
But, thankfully, the future is coming to us. From God.
God is creating our future and that future is our only hope. If it were left up to us, we would continue on paths that lead to destruction. But it is not God’s will that anyone should perish.
Isaiah sees a word that is staggering. Weapons turned into tools for food. People gathering at the mountain. And judgment.
We don’t do well with that word. It sits heavy on our hearts.
But the day of judgment that Isaiah sees is ultimately a day of hope, not of despair. It is a day of restoration, not doom. It is a day of judgment when sin will be no more.
That’s why we pray to God for help.
We need help that is outside of us. We need something done to us. We need this because we’ve had plenty of opportunities to change ourselves, to make things better, and the world keeps going down the toilet.
No wonder God had to send God’s son into the world. We need all the help we can get.
God is in the business of making all things new; yesterday, today, and forever. And the church, as Christ’s body in the world, is not some social club or gathering that provides a distraction from all that is wrong in the world. Instead, the church exists to call a thing what it is. Or, in other words, the church exists to tell the truth.
Advent starts in the dark. It always has and it always will. The texts, the hymns, the prayers, they all beckon our attention to the way things are knowing that that not all is as it should be. It is the season of honesty about who we are, but more importantly whose we are.
We are not making a better future but, as the church, we live according to God’s future in the present. We live, oddly enough, by grace. We practice trust and honesty and forgiveness in the midst of a time in which those things sound like fairytales.
The church is God’s weird and wild story for a time and place that is desperate for a new narrative, albeit one that runs completely counter to everything else in the world.
One day God is going to get what God wants. Swords will be beat into plowshares, guns will be melted into garden shovels. Peace will reign. O church, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Drew Colby about the readings for the Second Sunday of Advent [A] (Isaiah 11.1-10, Psalm 72.1-7, 18-19, Romans 15.4-13, Matthew 3.1-12). Drew is the lead pastor of Grace UMC in Manassas, VA. Our conversation covers a range of topics including ASMR, lectionary cycles, spaghetti with maple syrup, The Muppets Christmas Carol, fear, the word of judgment, righteousness, ecclesial harmony, the magic of music, apple trees, the central advent character, and prophetic insanity. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: Stumped
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.
I’m a stickler for liturgical purity. That is, I feel very strongly about following the liturgical calendar because God’s time is not our time. Therefore, while the community still rests in the comforts of Thanksgiving this Sunday, we’ve already changed the colors in the sanctuary and shifted our theological mood – it’s Advent!
Advent is the great beginning of the Christian year during which we stand firmly between the already, but not yet. We explore the scriptures of the Israelites awaiting the Messiah, while also looking forward to the time when Christ returns to make all things new.
And yet, Advent for me started weeks ago. For as much as I might complain about the stores dragging out Christmas paraphernalia prior to Halloween, we decorate our house way in advance. We do so out of a practical concern since I am busier at this time of year than any other with various church responsibilities, but also because, as Christians, we’re always living in Advent – Advent is who we are.
When the prophet Isaiah paints a picture of the Lord’s house being raised higher than any hill, I think of the joy of the neighborhoods filled with twinkling lights in celebration of the culmination of this season. They provide a different light among times of darkness. However, even the brightest house pales in comparison to the light of the Lord that changes everything.
This Advent, let us rest in between the times, giving thanks for what God has done while also anticipating God making all things new, even us.
This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Drew Colby about the readings for the First Sunday of Advent [A] (Isaiah 2.1-5, Psalm 122, Romans 13.11-14, Matthew 24.36-44). Drew is the lead pastor of Grace UMC in Manassas, VA. Our conversation covers a range of topics including Handel’s Messiah, Chicago, Advent themes, the house of the Lord, church attendance, Fleming Rutledge, hopes and fears, worldly preferences, divine peace, Good Mythical Morning, progress, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who were handed there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you the not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned just, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
“Jesus for President.”
That’s what the sign said. I saw it when I was going for a run during a particularly contentious election season (aren’t they all?). In just about every yard there was a red sign or a blue sign, with one name or the other.
I’ve always found political yard signs to be problematic.
I mean, why do we put them up? Do we honestly think anyone has ever changed their vote because of a yard sign?
I think we put those signs up in our yards, and attach them to our bumpers, and post them on Facebook, not because we want to change anyone, but because we want everyone to know where we stand.
We want everyone to know what side we’re on.
And so seeing yard signs is fairly normative. In fact, its the houses without signs that seem strange. Until I saw, “Jesus for President.”
It was so shocking I remember stumbling over my feet and nearly wiping out on the sidewalk.
Jesus for President?
Perhaps someone thought it fitting to cut through the political paraphernalia that year with some sort of prophetic pronouncement. Maybe they really thought Jesus presiding in the Oval Office would be a good idea.
Except, “take up your cross” doesn’t poll well. Turn the other cheek is a strange campaign slogan. And that’s not even mentioning the first will be last, and the last will be first. That doesn’t sound like a milk toast soundbite from a politician, it sounds like a threat.
Jesus for President. It could never work. Particularly since Jesus is already our King – Jesus is Lord.
Today is Christ the King Sunday. A remarkable offering on the liturgical calendar. With Advent hovering on the horizon, churches across the globe gather today with proclamations about the Lordship of Christ. And yet, this is a recent addition to our liturgical observances, as far as those things are concerned. We’ve celebrated Christmas for centuries and marked Easter for millennia, but Christ The King only started in 1925.
Why? Nearly 100 years ago, Pope Pius XI looked out at a world in which Mussolini had been in charge of Italy for 3 years, Hitler had just published his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf, and the economic frivolity the led to the Great Depression was in full effect. And bearing witness to the world at that moment led the Pope to announce a new liturgical holiday – Christ the King Sunday would round out the year to remind Christians across the globe that we have our own King, and it is to him alone we owe our allegiance.
Over the last year we’ve read from Genesis to Revelation, we’ve encountered the living God who encounters us, we’ve been transformed by the Lord who transforms bread and cup, and all of it, all of the Sundays all of the studies all of the sacraments, they all pointed to one thing: Jesus Christ is Lord.
That’s the thing about us Christians, everything starts and ends with Jesus. He is the first word and the last word.
And yet, we do well to remember that this King of ours is strange…
Listen, there was a man named Jesus who hailed from the town of Nazareth. He was poor and had no real standing in the world but he preached about the kingdom of God, and he usually drew a pretty good crowd. For centuries the people Israel had suffered hardship after hardship, persecution after persecution, and they waited for the One who was promised. And Jesus said, “I am he.”
Many signs and wonders were done, healings happened, bellies were filled, and the crowds grew until they didn’t. The more he talked the more he was rejected. The more he did the more people grumbled. And he was betrayed, arrested, and condemned to death.
By us.
Those two words are tough to admit, or even fathom. But they’re true. At the heart of the Christian witness is the fact that, when push comes to shove, we nail the Son of God to the cross. And, incidentally, it’s why we sing, every Good Friday, “I crucified thee.” The strange new world of the Bible refuses to let us walk away with our hands clean.
The soldiers place a purple robe on his shoulders, a crown of thorns upon his head, a cross on his back, and they force him to march to The Skull.
Jesus is painfully quiet in this moment. The gifted preacher and parable teller has no words left to share. The crowds, of course, are loud. Sick with anticipation. Hungry for blood.
And he’s nailed to the cross.
Only here, hung high for all to see, does Jesus speak his first words as king. Make no mistake, this is when Jesus is crowned our king and Lord. And what is his first decree?
Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
How odd of God.
With all the possible words of recrimination, condemnation, accusation, the first thing Jesus says is, “Father, forgive.”
Earlier he commanded us to forgive our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Easy to preach, hard to practice.
On the cross, Jesus dares to pray for his worst enemies. Us.
It’s rather strange that God units ignorance with forgiveness. We usually act and behave as if ignorance is the enemy of forgiveness. We want people to know they’re wrong before we forgive them. We want repentance before mercy.
And yet, for God in Christ, it is always preemptive forgiveness. Forgiveness is the first word.
Jesus doesn’t hang up on the cross until we realize we made a mistake. He doesn’t wait until someone from the crowds shouts, “Um, maybe we went a little too far this time. Sorry Jesus.” Jesus doesn’t forgive after we come to our senses, but right in the thick of our badness, Jesus’ offers his goodness.
Oddly enough, forgiveness is what it costs God to be with people like us who, every time God reaches out in love, beat God away.
Perfection in the Garden – We reject it for the taste of a little knowledge dangling from a tree.
Unified Community – We reject for selfish desires of power.
Covenanted Relationship – We reject it in favor of other hopes and dreams.
The story of the Bible is the story of our rebellion and foolishness. We worship at the altars of other gods, moving from one bit of idolatry to the next, over and over and over again.
And then, in the midst of our muck and mire, God arrives in the flesh.
Jesus Christ, the incarnate One, fully God and fully human, comes to make all things new, with promises of hope and peace and grace and mercy.
God looks at our miserable estate and condescends to our pitiful existence, God’s attaches God’s self to us sinners, and what happens? We nail God to the cross!
And look at us, with all the means at our disposal, with power and prestige, with sin and selfishness, what happens? We are forgiven.
The first word from the cross, from the throne, is forgiveness.
It’s strange! But then again, it should come as no surprise even though its the most surprising thing in the history of the cosmos. Jesus was forever walking up to people and, without warning, saying to those whom he met, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Have you ever noticed that almost none of them ever asked to be forgiven?
I’ve heard it said, and perhaps you have too, that this moment, when Jesus hangs on the cross, is when God is in total solidarity with humanity. The suffering crucified God.
And yet, that forgiveness is the first word is completely contrary to us. For us, if we forgive, it is almost always with conditions.
We wait around for an apology, we wait for amends to be made, and then (and only then) will we forgive.
Forgiveness is the currency of God’s kingdom. Forgiveness, as Dolly Parton notes, is all there is.
And it’s also the the hardest thing to do.
St. Augustine, theologian and preacher from the 4th century, once preached a sermon on forgiveness, and in the sermon he admonished his congregation because some of them, if not all of them, were omitting the phrase from the Lord’s prayer that said, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespasses us.”
They would let those words remain silent every time they came around, and they would just skip to the next phrase. They refused to say those words, according to Augustine, because they knew they’d be lying if they said them out loud.
Forgiveness is hard, and it always has been.
Perhaps that’s why Jesus preached about it so much, told so many stories about grace, and tossed around forgiveness every where he went. Even on the cross! With nails in his hands, with thieves at his sides, abandoned by his closest friends and disciples, before asking anything for himself, he asks something for us, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
Our King rules not with an iron fist, but with an open hand. The first word of the kingdom is forgiveness.
And if that were all, it would be enough to pop every circuit breaker in our minds, it would leave us scratching our heads bewildered at the outcome. We don’t deserve it one bit. Frankly, we deserve nothing. And instead we get everything.
But the story isn’t over!
The first word is forgiveness, a prayer within the Trinity, and then Jesus speaks to the criminal on his side.
The One who was forever accused of consorting with sinners now hangs next to one. The One who ate with sinners now dies with them.
One of the criminals looks at Jesus and says, “C’mon King of the Jews, it’s miracle time! Save yourself and us!”
But the other replies, “Are you not afraid? We deserve what we’re getting, but this guy has done nothing wrong.” And then he looks over to Jesus and says, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Is the thief confessing his sin? Perhaps. At the very least, he owns up to getting what he deserves. But confession has nothing to do with getting forgiven. It is not a transaction, it is not a negotiation. Confession is nothing more than the after-the-last gasp we offer when we know the truth of who we are and whose we are.
We don’t confess to get forgiven. We confess because we are forgiven.
Forgiveness surrounds us, beats upon our lives constantly. Preachers proclaim it. We sing about it. We pray for it. And, miracle of miracles, we receive it.
When we confess, we confess only to wake ourselves up to what we already have.
Perhaps the thief is bold to ask Jesus to remember him because he was the first person to hear Jesus’ first word from the cross, “Father, forgive.”
It was almost 100 years ago when Christians across the globe needed the first Christ the King Sunday. They needed a day set apart to reflect on how the Lordship of Christ outshines even the most powerful of dictators and the most devastating of depressions.
Today, we need it just as much. We need Christ the King Sunday because it reminds us, beats upon us, that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. It forces us to confront the strange reality that our King rules from a cross. It compels us to hear the Good News, the very best news, the strangest news of all: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners; that proves God’s love toward us. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven! Amen.
Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Christ the King Sunday started in 1925 when Pope Pius XI instituted it through a papal encyclical. Mussolini had been in charge in Italy for three years, a certain rabble rouser named Hitler had just published his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf, and economic frivolity that led to the Great Depression was in full effect. And it was at that moment the Catholic Church decided they needed a Sunday, every year, to remind the Christian community that we have our own King and it is to him alone that we owe our allegiance.
Today, nearly one hundred years after the institution of Christ the King Sunday, it is usually overlooked on the liturgical calendar in order to celebrate themes of Thanksgiving. Instead of reading about the lordship of Christ, churches talk about the blessings made manifest through turkeys and potatoes. And, to be clear, that’s all good and fine. However, Christ the King Sunday is a rare and blessed opportunity for the church to be unabashed in our convictions about power, allegiance, authority, and a host of other aspects of our discipleship.
It is the perfect time to be reminded that Jesus Christ is Lord, and everything else is bologna.
The first time I traveled to Guatemala for a church mission trip, we stopped briefly in the town of Chichicastenango, known for its traditional K’iche Mayan culture. We were told to explore for a few hours before returning to the various vans that were taking us to our final destination. And, after only a few minutes of wandering down a variety of streets, I realized I was completely lost.
So I did what anyone else would do: I looked for a higher vantage point to get my bearings. Eventually I found myself on the steps of a very old church. I trudged upward and yet, before turning back to look over the town, something (read: the Holy Spirit) drew me inside the church.
The sanctuary was damp, dark, and devoid of just about anything. The ground under my feet felt like soft soil, the walls were covered with black soot from centuries of fires, and the paintings of the walls were so smudged that I couldn’t even tell what they were portraying. The smell of melted candle wax filled my nostrils and I crept closer and closer to what I imagined was the altar.
Frankly, it was one of the least churchy churches I had ever experienced.
Without the help of lighting, I stumbled over a rickety wooden pew and fell on the floor right in front of the Lord’s Table. And there, hovering above my head, was the most pristine sculpture of Jesus that I had ever seen. The Lord stood in complete contrast with everything else in the space. Jesus stood with robes draped over his shoulders, his hand was outstretched as if inviting me closer, and upon his head rested a crown of thorns.
Christ the King.
What kind of king is Jesus? In that Guatemalan church I was confronted with the stark reality of what it means to confess Jesus as Lord. For, while I was surrounded by decay, desolation, and even disregard, Christ stood firmly in front of me as the King of the cosmos. Just as the psalmist proclaimed, I was still before the Lord, and saw God’s exaltation above all things; even death.
Our King reigns from a throne not made by the blood of his enemies, but with his own blood spilled on the cross.
Our King wears a crown not of gold, but of thorns.
Our King rules not by the power of judgment, but through the gift of mercy.
On Christ the King Sunday we confess the truly Good News that our King reigns not above us, but for us, beside us, and with us. Thanks be to God.
This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Mikang Kim about the readings for the 23rd Sunday After Pentecost [C] (Isaiah 65.17-25, Isaiah 12, 2 Thessalonians 3.6-13, Luke 21.5-19). Mikang is the pastor of Epworth UMC on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Our conversation covers a range of topics including itinerancy, the prophet Isaiah, pandemic preaching, joy, skepticism, Pauline discomfort, deadly sins, apocalyptic imagery, ecclesial hatred, and the difference Christ makes. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: Chosen By The Word
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
Don’t mix politics with religion.
We’re told to keep these seemingly incompatible things as far away from one another as possible. Whatever political proclivities we hold and whatever we might believe are meant to remain in the private sphere and the world has no right to interfere with either.
And yet, we confuse them all the time! We put up American Flags in our sanctuaries and frighteningly blur the line between church and state, we view one another through the names on our bumper stickers rather than through “the name that is above all names,” we believe that what happens on a Tuesday in November is more important than what happens every Sunday.
Whether we like it or not, the so-called “Separation of Church and State” actually looks more like an extremely complicated marriage in which neither partner knows why they are still together.
It then becomes increasingly difficult for Christians to think and speak theologically about what it means to be Christian! Such that our faith has become so privatized that it is relegated to Sunday mornings and only Sunday mornings.
This is a rather strange proposition considering the language of faith articulated to and by Christians who confess Jesus as Lord.
Or, to put it another way, if we believe that Jesus is Lord then all of our assumptions about who we are and whose we are cannot remain the same.
The psalmist writes, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.” What a wonderful word for a people who are running amok drunk on democratic idealism! I have heard, more times than I can count, that each subsequent election is the most important election in history. Well, here’s a controversial and theological statement: This is not the most important election in history – the most important election in history was Jesus electing us.
The psalmist’s words echo through time and they indict us. We worship our politicians in a way that Jesus would call idolatry and we keep believing that so long as our candidate gets elected then everything will be fine and good for us. But politicians (princes) and political ideologies have come and gone with failed promises again and again.
The democratic practices we hold so dear are fine and good, but they will not bring us salvation.
Stanley Hauerwas puts it this way: “Voting is often said to be the institution that makes democracies democratic. I think, however, this is a deep mistake. It is often overlooked but there is a coercive aspect to all elections. After an election 50.1% get to tell 49.9% what to do.”
Perhaps the proclamation from the psalmist is beckoning us to remember that our unending desire for power is but another way of falling prey to the practice of idolatry. If we take our Christian convictions seriously, then we are bound to a life of loving our neighbors just as we love God, regardless of their political affiliation. Which is just another way of saying, the Lamb is more important than the Donkey or the Elephant.
Therefore, as we continue to wrestle with what it means to be faithful, let us pray that the Lord will grant us the grace and peace necessary to bear with one another in love, knowing full and well that there is no hope in us, but that the hope of the world has come to dwell among us. That hope is named Jesus Christ whom we did not elect.
This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Jason Micheli about the readings for the 21st Sunday After Pentecost [C] (Habakkuk 1.1-4, 2.1-4, Psalm 119.137-144, 2 Thessalonians 1.1-4, 11-12, Luke 19.1-10). Jason is the senior pastor at Annandale UMC in Annandale, VA. Our conversation covers a range of topics including staying interested in ministry, God’s timing problem, the folly of pride, answering questions with questions, Godfather responsibilities, comedy in subtitles, VBS curricula, colluding with empire, and the unjust justice of God. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: The Folly of Pride
think and let think 