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So, behold King Jesus. Crucified. Hanging between two thieves as if he were a criminal. A sign was over his head that read, “The King of the Jews”. The Romans put it there to insult the Jewish people implying that a person they judged to be a blasphemer was actually their king, and also to remind them that this is what happens to all those who would challenge the authority of Rome; not that Jesus had done that. The only authorities he had challenged were the religious leaders of his own people. The Romans themselves had judged him innocent of any crime but crucified him anyway to avoid trouble among the Jews. During the trials before both the Temple authorities and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, Jesus stayed mostly silent saying nothing in his defense. They say in a relationship if you ever have to defend the quality of person that you are which should be obvious, then it’s not love. All the charges against him were false. He was innocent. God’s people should have recognized that, but they didn’t. They didn’t love him enough to see him for who he really is.
Jesus’ acts were obvious, done right out in the open. They were wonderful acts of power that only God could do. He healed people not just of colds and flus and fevers. He restored sight to the blind, even those who had been born blind. He restored mobility to paralytics. He restored hearing to the deaf, voice to the mute. He healed lepers and didn’t have any fear of touching them and so regarding them as people. On several occasions he even raised the dead.
Jesus had power over evil. He cast out demons; even out of this one man who had more than 1,000 of them in him. That’s as many as there were soldiers in a Roman legion. That’s power over evil that only God has. Interestingly, the demons knew he was the Son of God and shouted it out when he confronted them. The religious authorities who should have recognized him, were not so forthcoming. Instead, when Jesus held them accountable for their false teachings and spiritual abuse and for their abuse of power, they plotted to kill him.
Jesus did a few other obvious God-things. Twice he fed crowds of over 10,000 people with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish. In the presence of his disciples, he literally walked on water and calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee that was threatening to kill them. Truly, only God can do that.
As a teacher, well, his teachings were a bit subversive with respect to the world and every kind of power in it. He proclaimed the Gospel: “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Turn around and get on board with this good thing that God is doing.” As Jesus went about, he did the above-mentioned acts of power that made the presence of the Kingdom obvious. He called people to follow him as students of him and his way of life, not as arms-bearing revolutionaries. He taught nothing that was against the teachings of Moses and the Prophets. Unconditional, self-denying love topped his list. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind and love your neighbour as you love yourself.” He taught his followers to be compassionate, merciful, non-judging, generous, hospitable, faithful morally upright, and…forgiving. He taught his disciples that the greatest of them would be the one who serves them all and modelled this by washing their dirty, stinky, well-fungused feet before their last meal together. He taught that “life” (true life, abundant life) is found in laying down one’s life for others, and in denying oneself, taking up one’s cross (there’s that pesky cross and they all knew what it meant), and following him in his way of hope, healing, and love.
With respect to how his Kingdom would spread by means of those who followed him, Jesus told his followers not to bear a sword but to wish peace upon every house they entered. He told them they would be persecuted because of him. He told them that after he died, he himself would be with them always…always. Moreover, God his Father would empower them by sending the Holy Spirit to dwell in them. The Holy Spirit would tell them what to say and enable them to do the things that he did. He told them to go into all the world and teach and invite people to take up his way. He definitely told them to avoid wealth. (Sorry. I know that’s not easy to hear.)
With respect to the kingdoms of the world, never did Jesus call his followers to take up arms and overthrow governments or become the government. Instead, he simply predicted that he would be killed by the powers that be, but that he would raise from the dead and go back to his Father. And then after “awhile”, he would return and he would himself establish his throne. They could expect the same treatment themselves for as the world hated him, so it would hate them. Yet still, his followers must remain faithful, loyal to him and steadfast in living according to his way. Until he returns, their, our, greatest form of power is prayer. When he comes will he find faith, will he find his disciples faithfully praying and living his way.
Jesus was innocent. He had done only good. He truly was the King of the Jews, indeed the Lord of All Creation. But he died on the cross. The words spoken by him and by bystanders while he died are telling. Among his last words were, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” Who does that? Who pleads for the forgiveness of those wrongfully murdering them? On the other hand, the people, common people and powerful people, soldier and thief alike mocked him saying, “He saved others. Let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, the Chosen One…If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.”
That Jesus didn’t act to save himself should raise some eyebrows. By the mighty hand of God, by the power of God – the God who created, ordered, and sustains everything – Jesus had healed people, cast out demons, raised the dead, fed thousands, calmed a sea. It could have been, “Jesus of Nazareth. Come on down. The Price is right.” He would have obviously had the power to save himself…but he didn’t. Jesus isn’t that kind of king. The nature of his power isn’t like that. In this world where political power is most often exhibited as SYA (save your own bottom) or CYA (cover your own bottom), Jesus would have fit right in if he had saved himself.
Instead, Jesus chose the way of faithful obedience rather than self-assertion as Paul writes in the great Christ Hymn in Philippians: “Who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
Basically, though Jesus was God he didn’t exploit that and come here and act like a god; the way we act like we are gods to ourselves. He emptied himself, denied himself, humbled himself and did what was right in God’s eyes. That’s what true power looks like. True power is self-denying, unconditional, sacrificial love…not saving oneself, not looking out for only yourself and those like you, not seeking one’s own interests at the expense of others.
Paul also writes about this love in 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter that we hear at just about every wedding: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
Paul prefaces the Christ hymn of Philippians in a way that pertains to us. He says: “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who…though he was…”.
Let the same mind be in you, in us that was in Christ Jesus. We have the same mind or mindedness of loving humility that Jesus has. It came with the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and we discover and foster it in prayer and as we go about the difficult task of humbling ourselves to selflessly love the people God has placed in our lives extending out to everybody.
We live in a crazy, self-interested world. You know, what starts wars? Not religion, but rather it’s self-interested people who start wars. Self-interest, selfishness destroys community, relationships, families, marriages, friendships. In this self-interested world people are crying out for God to come fix it, but it seems like God isn’t showing up. There will come a day God puts things to right, but, for now, where is God when this world needs him so much?
It’s Christ the King Sunday. The day we talk about how he reigns in this crazy world. Honestly, on any given day these days it’s a hard topic to sell. That there is no God would seem the more obvious. But, you know, the problem is that we are looking for God to act in power, but we forget what true power is. God is acting. God truly is. God’s reign is in effect wherever we find people are prayerfully and humbly acting in and according to the mind of Christ – humbly acting according to self-denying, unconditional, sacrificial love in whatever form that takes. There in those acts the reign and power of God is manifest. Whenever there is healing, reconciliation, restoration of relationships there is the reign of God. Whenever we look past our own selves and try to understand where others are at and seek their good, there is the reign of God. In this selfish world, acts of the true power, acts of love can and will look and feel like dying on a cross…but…let us not forget that death is not the final word in God’s Good Creation. God’s final word is Jesus and his resurrection which will raise all of God’s Creation to new life. Let us empty ourselves and love at all cost, for that is the path past death to resurrection and new life. Choose the path less traveled. Amen.
