WHO RECEIVES YOUR LOYALTY?

(Preached on Sunday, November 25, 2007)

There was also an inscription over him, AThis is the King of the Jews.@                                                                                            -Luke 23:38

 

ADid you turn to the wrong page, preacher?@ some of you might be wondering this morning.  ADoesn=t that passage belong in the spring?@  What is this passage doing in our worship on this Sunday after Thanksgiving, after we have been feasting and counting our blessings, and looking ahead to the Christmas season? 

 

Well, its the final Sunday of the Church worship year, the Sunday on which we celebrate the reign of Christ.  You still look puzzled?  That explanation doesn=t do it for you?  The passage still doesn=t make sense?  What, you ask, does the cross have to do with the reign of Christ?

 

Oh sure, I know you would rather have a passage from Easter Sunday, with the stone rolled triumphantly away and the guards mortified.  Or a parable of Jesus in which he anticipates his glorious and victorious return.  Even moving up by a few weeks the story of the wise men looking for the one born to be king would be more sensible, wouldn=t it?  But this passage, with Jesus naked and helpless on a cross?  A victim at best, and a criminal at worst?  What does the cross have to do with Jesus reigning supreme?

 

It is a paradox.  A paradox exists when a statement contains seemingly contradictory ideas or facts.  The celebration of the Reign of Christ presents the paradox of our faith more clearly than any other.  In this case, how can we celebrate the reign of Christ by remembering his crucifixion?  How do we proclaim Christ=s reign in a world still plagued with all the things his gospel sought to end?

 

Pilate meant the sign he placed on the cross to mock the man hanging on the cross, and to mock the Jewish people C King of the Jews C HA!  The Jews, a people bitterly oppressed by the Romans, had no king.  Furthermore, what a mocking thing to say of this whipped, bleeding, and horribly suffering Jew named Jesus, to call him AKing.@

 

Yet the church believes that in a peculiar twist of divine providence, that sign on the cross of Jesus is true.  Jesus is king.  To acknowledge, and celebrate, yearly this truth, that Christ is king, gives the church an opportunity to reflect upon the political, powerful implications of Jesus for today.  In Jesus, God is making a statement about power, about who has power and to what end.  In Jesus, the one whom the rulers of this world nailed to a cross, we see an image of what God is doing in the world.

 

The use of political vocabulary in the church, especially in the setting of worship, often troubles some people.  Yet we sing about Jesus as king in our hymns and we use regal language in our prayers.  Why is it okay to sing and pray into the kingdom, but not talk about what it means that Jesus is king and what that might mean in terms of how we live our lives and what God might want us to be doing?  If we were to hold an election here today and ask people to vote on a ballot that listed Jesus among the other potential candidates for top ruler in our nation, we could well be arrested as subversive and jailed according to the limits established by the Patriot Act.   Yet, is not our very worship service each week a declaration of our voting habits?  I don=t mean whether we vote Democrat or Republican, but who we proclaim is ultimately in charge and who really receives our loyalty.  Today we say that Jesus lives and rules and that no president or parliament, no congress or convention, no governor or general, no mayor or majority has precedence beside or over him.

 

Of course, the kingdoms of this world demand our ultimate allegiance.  Our governments, rulers, dictators, legislators, presidents, prime ministers, corporations, all insist upon controlling our vision of what can and what cannot be in the world.  But Jesus, in the first century, taught us that God is the one who controls our vision of the world.  It was Jesus who said, APray this way: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.@  Jesus is the source of this radical idea that God=s kingdom must become a reality on earth as it is in God=s heavenly realm.  This is not a left-wing or right-wing agenda: it is God=s agenda.  We are all to be working for justice, mercy, love, goodness, truthfulness, empathy, beauty.  If that is not our commitment, then there is no compelling reason to be in church on Sundays instead of sitting comfortably at home with a cup of coffee and the newspaper.

 

Evangelical author Ron Sider, in his book The Rock Is Ready to Roll, raises these questions: AIs Jesus Lord of the Congress just as much as the Church?  Does Jesus care as much about how you vote as how you pray?  As much about how you work as how you worship?  As much about public life as private life?@

 

William Wilberforce thought so, and he made a dramatic difference in the course of history and human relationships because he acted upon that belief.  His story was recently detailed in the feature film AAmazing Grace.@  As a young, wealthy aristocrat in 18^th-century England, Wilberforce lived a rather wild, immoral life.  Then he was powerfully converted in the revival movement started by John Wesley.  He forsook sexual immorality and entered politics.  He did so because he felt called by God to a political career.  He ran for parliament and for almost 40 years was the leading crusader against slavery in the British House of Commons.

 

Wilberforce believed that God had brought him to political power to end the ghastly evil of the slave trade and slavery.  In 1787, when Wilberforce began his crusade, slave ships from AChristian@ Europe carried 100,000 captured Africans to the Americas every year.  In fact, his own beloved England was the leader in this savage tyranny, with British ships carrying one-half of this human cargo.  The huge profits represented a significant part of the British economy.

 

But Wilberforce knew slavery was a terrible sin against God and neighbor C even though almost all respectable people of his time quietly accepted the prevailing view that slaves were just property to be bought and sold like coal and cattle.  Wilberforce prayed and lobbied.  In fact, his small circle of friends regularly prayed three hours a day for their many tasks, including their crusade to abolish the slave trade and slavery.  Along with his prayers, Wilberforce was also a brilliant political organizer.  He had to be, because the opposition was fierce.  His opponents insisted that abolishing the slave trade would destroy the British economy.  (Sort of like those voices today that loudly shout that we will destroy our country if we provide a path to citizenship for the 12 million immigrants currently in this country without proper documents or legal standing.)  Wilberforce=s response was that persons and ethics matter more than money and profit.

 

After a 20-year struggle, the British parliament finally abolished slave trade in 1807.  Twenty-six years later, in the very year Wilberforce died, the British parliament abolished slavery itself.  Slowly, over the next century, the rest of the world did the same.  Wilberforce was the central player in this momentous change in world history.  He did it all because of Christ C because he knew Jesus was lord of politics and economics, and of his life.  He knew that Jesus deserved to receive his loyalty.