Not of This World

[note: This is a sermon I preached at Dulin United Methodist Church in Falls Church, VA, on Sunday, November 25, 2018 in celebration of Christ the King Sunday. The texts preached on were Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 and John 18:33-37. ]


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The Text:

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
As I watched,
thrones were set in place,
    and an Ancient One[a] took his throne,
his clothing was white as snow,
    and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames,
    and its wheels were burning fire.
A stream of fire issued
    and flowed out from his presence.
A thousand thousands served him,
    and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.
The court sat in judgment,
    and the books were opened.

John 18:33-37
Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”


Vivat Regina!

I managed to find myself in Paris earlier this year. I was co-leading a trip of young adults on a pilgrimage to the monastery in Taizé, but we incorporated a two-day stay in Paris before taking the train into the countryside. I was excited because this was my first time in Paris, and I was looking forward to seeing all the sights and doing all the touristy things. You know. Walking by the Seine with a croissant in one hand and a glass of cabernet sauvignon in the other—living my best life and all that.

And to be fair, most of the other people on that trip were also excited to do all that. However, there were also quite a few people on this trip who were also excited because our first morning in Paris happened to coincide with the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan, the now Duke and Duchess of Sussex. See, France and England are a lot closer to each other time zone wise than the U.S. and England, so these folks were excited to be able to see the royal wedding live without having to wake up at 3 in the morning to do so.

Vivat Regina!

It was something that I just couldn’t wrap my head around. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not standing here judging anyone who is fascinated by the life of the royals. After all, I’m an ardent fan of football, so I don’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to judging people for liking problematic things. No, for me it’s more of a curiosity as to how we can, as Americans, be so fascinated by, of all things, the British monarchy. I mean, we fought a war over this! There was tea and everything!

Of course, it should be mentioned that the British monarchy today has nowhere near the same amount of power as the British monarchy did in the 18th century. In fact, save for a few notable examples, the same could be said for just about every royal family that’s still around today. Gone are the days of tyrannical monarchs ruling from a transcendent throne. Kings and Queens are largely symbolic these days. The age of Kings and Queens has come and gone.

Vivat res publica! Long live the Republic!

Perhaps this is why I have difficulty with the liturgical feast day we’re celebrating today: Reign of Christ, Christ the King. Today and throughout history, monarchs have been benign at best and despotic at worst.

Not exactly the imagery you want to associate with the object of our faith.

And yet I have to admit that we find this kind of imagery for God all throughout our scriptural witness.

The LORD is king, he is robed in majesty. (Ps 93:1)

Your decrees are very sure, holiness befits your house, O LORD forevermore. (Ps 93:5)

One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of the morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning gleaming from the rain on the grassy land. (2 Sam 23:3-4)

And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature...He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb 1:3)

The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying “Rule in the midst of your enemies!” (Ps 110:2)

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Ps 8:9)

But few are quite as powerful or as vivid as our Old Testament passage from Daniel.

His clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire flowed out from his presence. A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him…To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.

Now that’s a king I can get behind. Vivat! Vivat Rex! 

I have to admit that even I find some sense of comfort in that kind of imagery. After all, if God is sitting on the throne, then what do I need to worry about? Everything is going to work itself out in the end. God’s got this.

However, a problem arises when we seek out earthly rulers and leaders who emulate this kind of a reign. Because as easy as it is to sit back and say that God’s got this, it’s just as deceptively easy to sit back and say that the powerful elite are in control—so long as it’s our guy that is.

It should go without saying that no human being is God. We have only one savior and it’s not any human ruler, president, CEO, or king—past, present, or future. When we deify our rulers, it’s far too easy to look past the heinous actions they take under the guise of protecting the realm. And the problem is that by and large, these types of policies really harm the kinds of people who are already suffering and oppressed.

Take ancient Israel, for example.

Prior to the establishment of the monarchy, Samuel warned the people about what exactly they had to look forward to while living under a king:

He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day, you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

He will take

He will take

He will take

He will take

And what happened? Every king of Israel and Judah would go on to live up to that prophecy. David took Bathsheba. Solomon took conquered people and conscripted them to build the Temple. The kings took and took and took. They amassed more and more power for themselves at the expense of their people. And before long, the people would find themselves conquered and thrown into exile. Because of their king, who they had chosen for themselves.

So we’re left with these two competing perceptions of monarchies in our scriptures. On the one hand, we have all this powerful, positive kingly language used for God. On the other, we find a subtle, but nevertheless present anti-monarchic strain throughout the scriptures. So if we’re going to attribute kingly language and imagery to Christ, we have to ask ourselves what kind of a king Christ was while he was yet with us.

Luckily, we find the answer to that question in our Gospel lesson this morning.

It’s a familiar passage. Anyone who’s had any involvement with a production of Jesus Christ Superstar probably had the music for “Trial by Pilate” running through their head as the passage was being read…or was that just me?

And yet

And yet in this passage, we see a clear picture of the kind of king Jesus was while he lived among us. But if we’re honest, this isn’t the kind of king we see portrayed elsewhere in scripture.

In this story, the gospel writer makes a point of showing Jesus as less than or weaker than Pilate.

Pilate summons Jesus.

Pilate interrogates Jesus.

And eventually, Pilate would torture and crucify Jesus.

The Gospels give us a king who was a brown, homeless, itinerant preacher living under foreign occupation who would eventually be killed as an enemy of the state. The Gospels give us a king who constantly stood with the marginalized and oppressed and at every turn, stood opposed to those who used their power and privilege to enrich themselves. The Gospels give us a king who spoke truth to power, even though it would cost him his life.

That’s our king.

Our king forsook his place of ultimate power and privilege at the right hand of the Father to be with us and live as one of us. And the life he lived was a life of self-sacrifice.

That’s the Christ the King we serve, and that’s the Christ the King who every knee shall one day bow down to.

And so we have to ask ourselves, where do we see that kind of leadership today?

Or perhaps the better question is, do we even see that kind of leadership today at all?

By and large, the age of kings has come and gone. Most monarchies don’t have absolute power anymore, and many countries throughout the world hold elections to select their rulers.

And yet, around the world we see a frightening trend of people choosing rulers who employ nationalistic rhetoric, who create for themselves a strongman persona, and demonize a vulnerable group of people as an easy scapegoat for their subjects to cast their fears and anxieties on. Authoritarianism is, once again, on the rise throughout our world. And in the midst of all this, it’s really easy for us to become dejected and give up. What can we possibly do?

But as followers and subjects of Christ the king, that's a luxury we cannot afford.

There’s a key scene towards the beginning of 2012’s The Avengers in which the villain first reveals himself to Earth through terrorizing a crowd. After compelling them to kneel before him, he remarks:

Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power. For identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.

And then something unexpected happens.

Something powerful happens.

An old, unnamed man in the crowd stands up and says five words:

Not to men like you.

Not to men like you.

The Christ the King we find in the gospels unequivocally stands opposed to the values held and espoused by would-be authoritarians. As subjects of Christ the King, we too must align ourselves with Christ and actively resist these values ourselves in whatever forms they present themselves. Sure, that means voting. But it also means holding our elected officials accountable once they’re in office. It means having hard conversations with our families and loved ones, and not writing them off wholesale altogether “because they didn’t vote the same way I did”. It means standing up to the powers and principalities of this world who would have you kneel before them and planting yourself like a tree and responding “not to men like you”.

That’s what it means to proclaim that Christ is our king.

Vivat Christus.

Amen.

Review of Christ on the Psych Ward

I don't cry very often. Not because I think crying is wrong or that "real men don't cry" or anything like that. On the contrary, I absolutely think that there needs to be a space for openly expressing emotions in our understanding of masculinity, but that's another blog post altogether. I say all this because as I was reading through David Finnegan-Hosey's new book, Christ on the Psych Ward, on an airplane recently, I was brought to tears.

Christ on the Psych Ward is one part theological reflection, one part personal memoir about the author's experience with his own mental health struggles, and one part practical advice for the Church as it pertains to being in ministry with those who have mental health struggles of their own. Finnegan-Hosey does a beautiful job of weaving these three threads together into a single, compelling narrative that will simultaneously break your heart and wrap you up in a tapestry of affirmation, comfort, and conviction. All of this results in a challenge and a clarion call to action for those of us who find ourselves in the Church. We absolutely must be having conversations about mental health. We need to be willing to listen to those who are brave enough to share their stories with us, and we need to find the courage to be vulnerable ourselves to share our own stories with others. Christ on the Psych Ward is as good a place as any to start. Accessible to seasoned clergy and mental health professionals as well as the lay person who wouldn't know the difference between lithium and ibuprofen, this book does a phenomenal job of bridging that gap and serving as a conversation starter. 

For too long, the Church has done an abysmal job at being in ministry with those who live with mental health challenges. We have used our language to perpetuate a harmful stigma surrounding mental health. Mental illness is not a moral or spiritual failing. People who live with mental health challenges bear the same divine image of God as everybody else. It's high time that the Church repents of its shame-mongering and open itself up to radical vulnerability through being in ministry with—not ministry to or ministry for—those who live with mental health challenges. "There is not one Christ for those with mental illness and another for the rest of the world," Finnegan-Hosey writes, "there is one Christ for all. There is not one church or ministry for those with mental illness and another for the rest of the world. There is one church for all."

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David Finnegan-Hosey's book, Christ on the Psych Ward (Church Publishing, 2018) is available for purchase through Church Publishing and Amazon.

The Redemption of All

[note: I preached this sermon on 12/31/2017 at Asbury First United Methodist Church in Rochester, NY. If you're the type who would rather read a sermon, the manuscript is below. If you're the type who would rather watch, the video is embedded below too. If you're the type who would rather listen, well here's the link to just the audio]

Luke 2:22-40

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”2

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
    according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
    which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
    and for glory to your people Israel.”

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

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They call them Roses

But if you didn’t know that they were there, chances are you would miss them

            You’d think that they were a mistake

                       

                        Some paint fell off a truck

                                    Or some painter got careless or  something

photo credit: myself
Sarajevo, 2015

But if you kept looking and paid attention, you’d start to notice that these Roses—these Sarajevo Roses—are scattered throughout a war-torn city

            Red resin poured into scars in the concrete

                        Scars formed by mortar shells

Mortar shells that ripped holes in the concrete as they ripped families apart

These public works of art serve as memorials to lives lost to urban warfare—to the nearly 14,000 lives lost in the Siege of Sarajevo—their blood forever calling out to us from the ground

Something ugly transformed into something beautiful

It’s how a community has responded to and copes with tragedy and trauma

Rather than trying to hide the scars that reveal their communal loss and sacrifice, they turned them into signposts

Beacons that still—over twenty-five years after the start of the conflict—cast a light on the world’s brokenness and in so doing transform the ugly and profane into something sacred and beautiful

We need these Sarajevo Roses, because let’s be honest, if it were up to us, we’d rather cover up the cracks

            The cracks in the sidewalk

                        And the cracks in our lives

Deep down though, we know that no amount of concrete or drywall or rebuilding efforts will ever be able to fully fill those cracks

            To bring back the lives lost

But if we’re willing to keep our eyes open and pay attention, the cracks that betray the brokenness of our world can reveal to us a profound truth that can transform the ugliness of our broken world into something inexpressibly beautiful

We don’t need to look that long or that hard

            These cracks transcend space and time

Any given generation in any given location has its own cracks to contend with

Take Anna—the prophet Anna; we heard about her this morning—the daughter of Phanuel of the Tribe of Asher

The concrete of her life bore cracks and scars given to her by the brokenness of her world

Eighty-four years old and a widow living in a time and place where the death of a woman’s husband might as well be a death sentence. In a day and age when literally every aspect of a woman’s identity was connected to—inextricably tied to—her husband or father, the death of Anna’s husband meant the loss of whatever financial and social security she had

And prior to her marriage, it’s not like she had much of that to begin with anyways. See, we’re told that Anna was a daughter of the Tribe of Asher

Now, for those of us who aren’t scholars of the Jewish diaspora following the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests of the 700s and 500s BCE chances are that’s a piece of trivia that means absolutely nothing

But bear with me because it turns out that—as my seminary professors are ever so fond of saying—the biblical authors never wasted ink

            There’s no such thing as an insignificant detail in the biblical texts

So I did some digging and it turns out that the Tribe of Asher was one of the ten tribes of Israel considered to be forever lost after the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom 700 years before the events of our Gospel lesson this took place. In the interest of time, I’ll spare you the nitty gritty details of ancient Assyrian foreign policy—you’re welcome—but suffice to say that by the time Luke’s Gospel was written, the Tribe of Asher was widely known as one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

In short, it’s more likely than not that after the death of her husband Anna had absolutely no family to lean on

The only inheritance she probably ever received from her family was a knowledge of the world’s brokenness

            Anna was a widow who came from nothing

                        As far as society was concerned, Anna was nothing

It’s likely why she gravitated to the Temple and spent her days in prayer and in fasting

            It was the only place of security she had left

Anna knew about the ugliness of the world

But an encounter with the newborn Christ would transform that ugliness into something beautiful

Now, who can say for certain what it was exactly that Anna saw in this child that completely turned her world upside down

Who knows, maybe he was just especially good looking—a first century Palestinian Gerber Baby model if you will

            Probably not

But we know for certain that it wasn’t based on anything Jesus had done, because at this point in the story, Jesus hadn’t really done, well, anything

            He hadn’t walked on water or calmed any storms

                        He hadn’t restored sight to any blind persons

                                    He hadn’t told any sermons or delivered any parables

                                                And he sure hadn’t been resurrected from the dead

Beyond being born, which as I understand it was more of something Mary did anyways, Jesus hadn’t done anything

And yet, an encounter with this child—

This, in the words of great 21^st century theologian/fictional NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby, eight-pound, six-ounce newborn infant Jesus don’t even know a word yet—

Was enough to transform Anna’s entire outlook on her situation

            Something ugly

                        Transformed into something beautiful

At that moment she came, and she began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem

            The redemption of Jerusalem

Whatever it was that Anna saw in that eight-day old baby born to a peasant teenager out of wedlock and born into a broken and hurting world is ultimately irrelevant

            What matters is that she did see it

            She opened her eyes and paid attention

She didn’t see this child as the mistake any other person would see, but rather as the one who would bring about the redemption of Jerusalem

            The one who would bring about the redemption of all

Do you see? This is what an encounter with Christ does. It completely and totally changes our perspective on everything. It shifts the way we perceive the world around us.

Through Anna, we see a woman who bore the scars from a broken and ugly world and yet freely and eagerly left her last place of comfort—her last place of security—to go out and proclaim the good news that this child would bring

Her world was just as broken

            The baby Jesus didn’t bring her husband back or change her familial lineage

She’s still just as much a widow from a nothing family at the end of this story as she was at the beginning

Her encounter with Christ didn’t pave over the cracks in the concrete in her life that brought her a lifetime of suffering

            Instead, the baby Jesus gave her something far more powerful

                        A new outlook

                                    New vision

Anna’s encounter with the Christ child showed her that the cruelty and ugliness of the world with which she was so accustomed was not the way it had to be

The cruelty and ugliness of the world with which she was so accustomed was not the way it ought to be

                        Another way exists

                                    A better way

And I think that’s a message we could all stand to hear on this New Year’s Eve, because friends

            It’s certainly

                        Been

                                    A year

We’ve all come to this space for different reasons

Maybe some of us have had an encounter with Christ at some point in our lives and are trying to make sense of it

Or maybe we’re still searching for that encounter with Christ

Regardless of what brought us here this morning, we stand on the precipice of a new year and can’t help but reflect back on a year that has seen mass shootings, an ever-widening partisan chasm, devastating natural disasters that have left parts of our country under water and burnt others to the ground and that’s just what’s happened on the national level of our consciousness

I suspect there are plenty in here or listening on the radio or watching on the livestream who are bearing scars brought on by the ugliness of our world in personal ways that will never be broadcast on the nightly news

There are plenty of cracks in the concrete of our world calling out to us

Cracks that reveal the brokenness and ugliness of our world and ask us well what are you gonna do about it

And quite frankly, I don’t think that I can answer that question with any certainty

I don’t think anyone who stands in this pulpit—or any pulpit for that matter—can answer that question with any certainty

But the miracle and the scandal of Christmas is that we can do something about it

Christ came down to us—Emmanuel, God is with us

Christ comes down as one of us and meets us in the cracks of the world and shows us that absolutely no one and absolutely no thing is beyond redemption in the sight of God

Christmas shows us that at the center of all our grief and suffering

            In the center of our own very rose

                        We find Christ

                                    The lamb of God

                                                The Alpha and the Omega

                                                           

                                                            God—with—us

He comes to show us that no matter how ugly and broken our world may seem, an alternate reality is within our reach—can’t you just taste it?!

We can pave over the scars and try to hide the pain and suffering

            Or we can shine a light on it

                        Turning those scars into roses

            Roses that cry out it doesn’t have to be this way

This world, long thought to be lost, is not a mistake

            It’s worth redeeming

                        It’s worth saving

The beauty is there, we just have to open our eyes and pay attention.