Christ the King Cycle B Proper 29 November 22, 2015
2 Samuel 23:1-7 Psalm 132:1-13, (14-19)
Revelation 1:4b-8 John 18:33-37
Preaching on biblical readings requires another level of translation which not everyone is willing to do. Obviously, we do not read the Bible in public in their original languages of Hebrew and Greek, we read them in English translation. But more than language translation has to occur when we try to teach and preach from the Bible. We not only have to bridge the language difference, we have to bridge the incredible differences in the details of ancient cultural practice. There is a great difference between ancient and modern cultural practices; but what are the universal principles for which we can find correspondences between biblical contexts and our modern situation? Sometimes ancient religious ideas create irony for modern people who find such ideas to be obsolete, if not downright cruel.
The notion of king and the form of government known as monarchy is foreign, particularly to us as Americans. Our very form of government is based upon getting rid of the notion of kings and monarchs. As Americans, we believe that monarchies are terribly inferior forms of human governance. Why? because no one person can be Omni-competent enough to be accorded such a lifetime position of singular power. Yes, there may be beneficent monarchs but the number of kleptocractic monarchs far out number the good monarchs. Monarchs usurp a disproportionate amount of the resources of any society or nation.
So on this feast day of Christ the King, how can we make sense of Christ fulfilling the role of an obsolete political office? A perfect King seems to us to be an oxymoron; a contradiction.
People in the time of Jesus did not think much about kings in their lives. In the history of Israel, we find that for a long time religious leaders such as Moses, Joshua and the Judges were the preferred leaders of Israel. When the people of Israel came to the land of Canaan, they observed that other nations had kings. Kings were functional leaders to establish armies and protect their people but for such protection taxes had to be collected and men had to be provided for the armies. The last great Judge Samuel reluctantly anointed Saul as the first king of Israel and this anointing process of making a king was the origin of the notion of the messiah. Messiah was the receiving of a divine commission for kingly leadership. Saul failed in his kingship and he was succeeded by David, who became the model for an idealized king. Israel did not have many good kings; even King David had plenty of faults but since good kings were so few and Israel enjoyed very few years of actual success as a nation, the Davidic kingship created nostalgia for people who had to learn to live under the siege of other world powers. The legend of David grew into an idealized messiah who could be a divinized human hero leader who could establish deliverance and justice for God's people.
The notion of the messiah was a rather inexact notion; it was inclusive enough to encompass lots of speculation, and to bring disagreement between those who remain within the practice of Judaism and those who came to know Jesus as the Messiah.
In the time of Jesus, Caesar was the actual king of the Roman world empire who had surrogate local figures like King Herod to rule on his behalf in Palestine. One can easily understand how people who lived under occupation for so long dreamed about a great liberator. And Jesus of Nazareth was not one who came to over throw the rule of the Caesar in Palestine.
So how can you and I relate to the notion of King and Messiah? First the notion of King and Messiah are not equivalent. A messiah is a divinized human person for specific leadership or providential purposes. Even a figure like Cyrus the Great of Persia was called a messiah because the prophet Isaiah regarded him to be one who providentially allowed for the continuing existence of the Jewish people even though he was a foreign conqueror.
The Feast of Christ the King is a relatively recent feast. It was declared by a pope who was wanting to assert the Christian aspiration for the practice of holy justice in the lives of people. This feast was instituted after the fall of the so-called Christian Tsars and Kings of Russia when atheistic socialism began to sweep Russia because "Christian" Tsars did not practice distributive justice and they were bad enough to bring the Christian belief in God into question.
We should understand this feast as the feast of Christ the Messiah. A messiah is different from a king. Christ as the Messiah can be a very valuable and relevant notion for us today. Why? There exists within humanity a universal aspiration for the perfect person and the perfect governmental form for the practice of justice.
Human perfection and perfect justice always stand before us beckoning us, luring us to surpass ourselves in a future state. You and I always need to be better. Human laws and government always needs to get better in approximating the practice of justice. And this is why the celebration of Christ as the Messiah is valid and relevant to our lives.
The notion of Christ as the Messiah is still a challenging notion. It is one thing for us to see the risen Christ in our lives as the model of the perfect person, but what does a perfect society look like? What kind of biblical model can we find for a perfect society practicing perfect justice? There is none.
Jesus told Pilate if his kingdom were of this world then his followers would fight. For human governance, God relies upon the messianic effect of Christ in the lives of people. God wants to win people one at a time and convince each to love one's neighbor as oneself. To force people to love and practice justice would be a violation of human freedom. As much as we often wish God would coerce people to be different, the reality of human freedom does not work this way. God commits the practice of justice to people. God expects people to be messianic in the way in which they practice justice with each other. Let us continue to embrace the direction of both personal and social perfectability which is affirmed in our celebration of Christ as the Messiah. In American language, we continually say that we seek a more perfect union in our practice of justice.
Today, I confess that I need to be better today than I was yesterday. Today as a parish, we confess that we need to be better at ministry than we were yesterday. Today, we confess as citizens that we need to be better in our practice of justice than we have been in our past. And today as a world community, we confess that we need to be better in the realization of justice in our world than we have yet achieved. As long as there is the need for personal improvement and improvement in the practice of justice, we will celebrate the feast of Christ the Messiah. Christ as the Messiah is the one who was given to us by God to set the direction of our calling to perfection as individuals and as those who need to practice social justice in our world.
Let us always keep the Risen Christ the Messiah before us as a continual calling to our better selves both as individuals and in the more perfect unions of governmental practices toward better justice. Amen
The notion of king and the form of government known as monarchy is foreign, particularly to us as Americans. Our very form of government is based upon getting rid of the notion of kings and monarchs. As Americans, we believe that monarchies are terribly inferior forms of human governance. Why? because no one person can be Omni-competent enough to be accorded such a lifetime position of singular power. Yes, there may be beneficent monarchs but the number of kleptocractic monarchs far out number the good monarchs. Monarchs usurp a disproportionate amount of the resources of any society or nation.
So on this feast day of Christ the King, how can we make sense of Christ fulfilling the role of an obsolete political office? A perfect King seems to us to be an oxymoron; a contradiction.
People in the time of Jesus did not think much about kings in their lives. In the history of Israel, we find that for a long time religious leaders such as Moses, Joshua and the Judges were the preferred leaders of Israel. When the people of Israel came to the land of Canaan, they observed that other nations had kings. Kings were functional leaders to establish armies and protect their people but for such protection taxes had to be collected and men had to be provided for the armies. The last great Judge Samuel reluctantly anointed Saul as the first king of Israel and this anointing process of making a king was the origin of the notion of the messiah. Messiah was the receiving of a divine commission for kingly leadership. Saul failed in his kingship and he was succeeded by David, who became the model for an idealized king. Israel did not have many good kings; even King David had plenty of faults but since good kings were so few and Israel enjoyed very few years of actual success as a nation, the Davidic kingship created nostalgia for people who had to learn to live under the siege of other world powers. The legend of David grew into an idealized messiah who could be a divinized human hero leader who could establish deliverance and justice for God's people.
The notion of the messiah was a rather inexact notion; it was inclusive enough to encompass lots of speculation, and to bring disagreement between those who remain within the practice of Judaism and those who came to know Jesus as the Messiah.
In the time of Jesus, Caesar was the actual king of the Roman world empire who had surrogate local figures like King Herod to rule on his behalf in Palestine. One can easily understand how people who lived under occupation for so long dreamed about a great liberator. And Jesus of Nazareth was not one who came to over throw the rule of the Caesar in Palestine.
So how can you and I relate to the notion of King and Messiah? First the notion of King and Messiah are not equivalent. A messiah is a divinized human person for specific leadership or providential purposes. Even a figure like Cyrus the Great of Persia was called a messiah because the prophet Isaiah regarded him to be one who providentially allowed for the continuing existence of the Jewish people even though he was a foreign conqueror.
The Feast of Christ the King is a relatively recent feast. It was declared by a pope who was wanting to assert the Christian aspiration for the practice of holy justice in the lives of people. This feast was instituted after the fall of the so-called Christian Tsars and Kings of Russia when atheistic socialism began to sweep Russia because "Christian" Tsars did not practice distributive justice and they were bad enough to bring the Christian belief in God into question.
We should understand this feast as the feast of Christ the Messiah. A messiah is different from a king. Christ as the Messiah can be a very valuable and relevant notion for us today. Why? There exists within humanity a universal aspiration for the perfect person and the perfect governmental form for the practice of justice.
Human perfection and perfect justice always stand before us beckoning us, luring us to surpass ourselves in a future state. You and I always need to be better. Human laws and government always needs to get better in approximating the practice of justice. And this is why the celebration of Christ as the Messiah is valid and relevant to our lives.
The notion of Christ as the Messiah is still a challenging notion. It is one thing for us to see the risen Christ in our lives as the model of the perfect person, but what does a perfect society look like? What kind of biblical model can we find for a perfect society practicing perfect justice? There is none.
Jesus told Pilate if his kingdom were of this world then his followers would fight. For human governance, God relies upon the messianic effect of Christ in the lives of people. God wants to win people one at a time and convince each to love one's neighbor as oneself. To force people to love and practice justice would be a violation of human freedom. As much as we often wish God would coerce people to be different, the reality of human freedom does not work this way. God commits the practice of justice to people. God expects people to be messianic in the way in which they practice justice with each other. Let us continue to embrace the direction of both personal and social perfectability which is affirmed in our celebration of Christ as the Messiah. In American language, we continually say that we seek a more perfect union in our practice of justice.
Today, I confess that I need to be better today than I was yesterday. Today as a parish, we confess that we need to be better at ministry than we were yesterday. Today, we confess as citizens that we need to be better in our practice of justice than we have been in our past. And today as a world community, we confess that we need to be better in the realization of justice in our world than we have yet achieved. As long as there is the need for personal improvement and improvement in the practice of justice, we will celebrate the feast of Christ the Messiah. Christ as the Messiah is the one who was given to us by God to set the direction of our calling to perfection as individuals and as those who need to practice social justice in our world.
Let us always keep the Risen Christ the Messiah before us as a continual calling to our better selves both as individuals and in the more perfect unions of governmental practices toward better justice. Amen
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