2 Corinthians 5:16-21 - Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Today’s readings drag us into the complicated world of relationships and dysfunction. It is, without putting too fine a point on it, almost assured that relationships will be,at least at sometime in their life, dysfunctional, one side or the other gets out of sync and slips into a place of its own, unable to relate or live with the other. It happens in marriages and friendships, in professional and work areas, on the international and national political stage – it happens in almost all areas of life.
It is the stuff which makes life the most interesting.
Somebody is alleged to have said that it is what makes making up such a challenge and a skill. How to begin again, how to re-mind ourselves, retool our minds, so that what was in dysfunction functions again? How do we see in what appears to be a lost cause the possibility of re-commencement, re-engagement of new life and hope?
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk suggests; “Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, AND then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.”
Often our approach to this kind of challenge is built around ‘either – or’, ‘one or the other’, resulting in one or more of the parties having to back down so the other wins, all in the name of reconciliation and moving on. Unfortunately reconciliation built on that type of ideology is only temporary, for it builds resentment and hostility in all parties. Those who have backed down resent the loss and those who win think they should have won more.
In Hanh’s suggestion we find the neat little word “and” – “Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, AND then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.”
And is one of the most useful words we have, unlike or which separates, and, unites – it brings together both sides of an argument and makes them one. It is about the ‘oneing’ of life in all its complexities. It makes one and when things are one they begin to work together to reconcile the differences.
My mobile phone synchronises with my computer. When I connect and hit synchronise the two reconcile or become one – what is on one is on the other – it notes the difference, the double ups and then either deletes or includes as appropriate, and after a few minutes you have the two, one. It reconciles the phone and the computer.
In our second reading today, Paul is battling to achieve the same result with the Christians at Corinth. Paul had, in a sense, raised these people in the faith, nurtured and brought them through only to find now that they are estranged from him because of the influence of other so called Christian leaders. We are not told who, but obviously they were persuasive in getting the Corinthians to follow them and to leave Paul.
Perhaps out of anger, but probably out of concern for those he ‘loved’ and a concern that they are receiving good teaching; Paul responds. He does so with some of the clearest theological teaching we find in the New Testament.
Paul's appeal for reconciliation arises out of a complex, messy human situation. Much as he desires the Corinthians to be reconciled to God, Paul also earnestly yearns for some kind of reconciliation between the Corinthians and himself. These are not two separate issues. Paul recognizes that what goes on in human communities, how we relate to one another, has implications for how we relate to God. It is not just about us; nor is it just about God. It is about how we understand ourselves to be in relationship with God and with one another, all in the same moment. The two are inextricably linked.
To illustrate this, Paul juxtaposes two ways of viewing one another, using the example of the Christ. At one time, he says, we looked at the one we call the Christ and saw, nothing special: perhaps a prophet, perhaps a fool. We judged on the basis of our human experience ("a human point of view"). Then something happened that allowed us to see in Christ the one in and through whom God reconciles the world to God's self. Paul does not specify what this "something is", and it is different for each of us. We experience the presence of God not only in our own lives, but come to recognize the presence of God permeating the entire cosmos. Our way of seeing has changed, as well as our understanding of how we are in the world, as Paul goes on to say "if anyone is in Christ, there is an (ongoing) new creation" (verse 17).
Ongoing, here, does not mean in the sense of evolution, but in the sense that creation, when it is sustained as we are in Christ, is in a constant state of renewal. This on-going act of creation, says Paul, occurs through Christ for it is "In Christ" we experience God reaching out to us and ourselves as creation restored; if we recognize ourselves as a part of this new creation, then we no longer view one another in the same way. Our vision has changed.
Reconciliation is not simply something to be desired; it becomes an imperative because we have experienced reconciliation with the one who has given us (new) life. If, in this most important of all relationships, we find that our "trespasses" (which can also be rendered "missteps") are not held against us, we too are challenged to reach across the boundaries and barriers that separate us, whether due to missteps, misunderstandings, or misconceptions, and find ways to renew our relationships as a part of the on-going act of creation.
Were Paul and the Corinthians reconciled? Holly Hearon suggests: “We do not know. The danger remains that one or the other side will confuse their status as ambassadors with the role of God, and reconciliation with conformity. As it stands, we are only left with the issues and the possibilities. Much as I like tidy endings, I am drawn to the open-endedness of this situation because it gives us room to consider what we might do in this, or any other, situation where we are still searching for the reconciliation that will open up the potential for the renewal of creation. It is in this act, says Paul, that we may become the righteousness of God.”
It is in this sense that the Gospel story of the Prodigal Son is also an incomplete reconciliation story. It ends without the ends neatly tied up. We are not sure of the Son’s motivation for returning, was he really repentant and coming home for the right reasons, or just for a hot shower and a good meal? What was the father’s motivation for accepting him back, true love or an attempt to save face in front of the local community? Where was the older son? Did he ever get over his resentment and reluctance to accept his brother back or did he stay forever out in the garden, unwilling to join the party? And what did the mother think, and did it really matter? What work needed to be done to build on this apparent reconciliation to turn it into a new beginning or did the dysfunctional family remain just that, a work in progress?
Reconciliation is what brings us to the Eucharistic table where we realize the reconciliation between humanity and God wrought by the action of the second Person of the Trinity Christ, fulfilling his relationship with God. Christ’s action was relational, bringing into being the forgiving action of God. The cross and the Eucharist are not Christ’s work but God’s. At no time do they become ours for no action of ours will reconcile us with God.
God through Christ reconciles the world to himself, even though it often feels like there are a lot of loose ends. And there are. God likes it like that.
Showing posts with label Christ the king. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christ the king. Show all posts
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Saturday, 26 December 2009
Luke 2:1-14 - Christmas isn’t cute!
It’s Christmas time again – how it comes around so quickly – sneaking up on us benignly and full of niceness. Family, babies, furry animals, rotund ho ho’ing Santa Clauses and reindeers with red noses. What a sweet image Christmas has become for us and the marketing gurus.
Cute, Christmas has become cute and saleable, a hedonistic binge with the credit card hangover, and almost irrelevant in terms of meaning.
Yet the event we celebrate as the first Christmas was anything but cute and it was, indeed, full of meaning. There was no hint of the Hallmark Christmas card about it.
It had all the pathos and tragedy of the persecuted and the occupied, of the refugee and the downtrodden, of the forgotten and ostracised, about it.
☺ Take Mary and Joseph.
Here was a couple, one of which Mary, was in her mid-to - late teens caught up in, not only the demands of occupation and bureaucratic name taking and counting, but in the emotional minefield of pregnancy outside a formal marriage, a strange story of an angel announcing the baby was the offspring of the God of Israel and then stuck in an unknown city without accommodation or support.
Joseph had made the very difficult decision to take Mary with him to Bethlehem him because of the problems she would face if left at home and had the baby. The response from the community would have been less than favourable for a mother with a child out of wedlock.
So, even though there was no legal reason for her to be there, Joseph took her with him to safeguard her and the baby from local persecution. They stayed on in Bethlehem after the birth for the same reason but found themselves in a year or so, at odds with the local despot Herod, and fleeing for their lives.
☺ Take the innkeeper.
Compassion mixed with the desire to make a quid may have lead the innkeeper to utilise every square inch of his establishment, even the ground floor space in the inn where he kept his and his customers, animals. Or Mary and Joseph may have found a similar downstairs space in some distant relatives home, there is no clear evidence that it was the shed out the back of the Bethlehem Hilton.
It was, though, a place that smelt anything like the birthplace of a king. Yet it was compassion on the behalf of an unknown individual which made it possible for Jesus to be born undercover and in the midst of representatives of God’s creation. Not a great place but better than a refugee camp, a leaky boat or hiding from those who want to kill you.
☺ Take The Shepherds.
Now these blokes came into town because their sheep had all headed for the hills when the angels arrived and started singing. They came down to get their story straight and to have a gander, a sticky beak, a look, just in case what the angels told them was right. What they made of it, we are not sure, but they are moved enough to show their respects and be present. Whether it changed their lives or not, we will never know. But at least they went and had a look for themselves.
☺ Take The Three Wise Men.
Arriving later than the actual birth, possibly almost 2 years later, the wise men had a profound mixture of intelligence and innocence. They had divined through the stars a king would be born and quite rightly wanted to come and confirm that they were correct. They travelled, depending on where they came from, many thousands of miles to be there. Despite their obvious intellectual abilities they seem not to have been politically savvy and let the cat out of the bag to the tyrant ruler Herod.
Their arrival unleashes further carnage on the people in the area, “Herod slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under" (Matt. 2:16). As a result, Joseph and Mary become refugees in a foreign land just so Jesus survives.
As I said before, the story is not cute, it is real. Jesus, God Incarnate, God amongst us, did not avoid the nasty reality of humanity at its worst. He came right in the centre of it. God, being God, could have ordained an entirely different scenario, which was his prerogative. But he didn’t.
He came in the person of a vulnerable baby, to two lost and alone people, estranged from their families, in the midst of violence and powerlessness, and became a refugee fleeing with his family to safety in Egypt.
This is a modern story and it is the modern story we need to embrace. Is our world, the world we live in any different to that in which Jesus found himself? Have we addressed the issues that impacted on Jesus, his family and his people?
I fear not.
A quick glance across the newspapers, the tv news and the internet will confirm those issues are alive and well in the world today.
☺ More than 74,000 Africans, fleeing civil war, political instability, poverty, famine and drought in the Horn of Africa, crossed the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea on smugglers' boats and reached the shores of Yemen this year. This figure represents a staggering 50 per cent increase over last year's 50,000 arrivals, itself a record.
☺ Livestock farmer flees deadly drought and insecurity in Ethiopia and Somalia only to face climate change-linked flooding in Kenya's Dadaab refugee camps. The climate change which destroyed his livelihood through drought is now destroying his future through flood, alongside the violence of vigilantes and terrorists.
☺ Zimbabwean teenage asylum-seeker learns the high cost of freedom. All 17-year-old Tsitsi wanted to do was go to school and earn a living – but the men transporting her to a better life had other plans for her, they raped her and she now finds herself the mother of an unwanted child, no job and no place to go home to, ostracized by her own family and the society she finds herself in.
Sound familiar? What went wrong? Wasn’t that why Jesus came into the world, to bring peace to all, to make peace possible, to bring about the kingdom of God?
Yes but……..
But it’s a shared kingdom. We have a role in this kingdom as well. Remember the words of the angel, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!”
Jesus makes it possible, we make it present.
Ian Cutmore, my Salvation Army Training College principal once said, ‘If it’s not happening where you are, it’s not happening’.
Jesus makes it possible, we make it present!
Jesus makes it possible by his birth, his example as found in the New Testament, by his death on the Cross and by his resurrection.
We make it present by our acceptance of that birth, life, death and resurrection in a way that radically changes how we live and how we relate to others; in how we celebrate Christmas; how we respond to those who are less well placed than ourselves, how we respond to refugees, the poor – how we respond to the other.
It is not about being guilty about how we are, who we are or where we are in this world. Guilt does not lead to the kingdom of God. What leads to the kingdom of God is the honest reflection on how we live on earth as peacemakers, as bringers of hope to others, and ourselves, as people who take seriously our place in this world.
If life was about individuals, if it was all about us, there was no need for Jesus to be born. There was no need for God to come into the world. We could just go on the way we always had.
Yet it is not about you or me as individuals. It is not about us. It is about what we do and become together. It is about how we respond to the carnage of global warming, the violence of the fundamentalist, the appealing lure of possessions and stuff we seek for ourselves – it’s about what we value and what gives us value.
Jesus was born an unlikely revolutionary, a vulnerable baby who survived because others, mostly unknown others, took great risks to ensure that he did.
The measure of our world, and of each of us, is whether we are prepared to take such risks everyday. It’s the only way the Kingdom of God will come.
Cute, Christmas has become cute and saleable, a hedonistic binge with the credit card hangover, and almost irrelevant in terms of meaning.
Yet the event we celebrate as the first Christmas was anything but cute and it was, indeed, full of meaning. There was no hint of the Hallmark Christmas card about it.
It had all the pathos and tragedy of the persecuted and the occupied, of the refugee and the downtrodden, of the forgotten and ostracised, about it.
☺ Take Mary and Joseph.
Here was a couple, one of which Mary, was in her mid-to - late teens caught up in, not only the demands of occupation and bureaucratic name taking and counting, but in the emotional minefield of pregnancy outside a formal marriage, a strange story of an angel announcing the baby was the offspring of the God of Israel and then stuck in an unknown city without accommodation or support.
Joseph had made the very difficult decision to take Mary with him to Bethlehem him because of the problems she would face if left at home and had the baby. The response from the community would have been less than favourable for a mother with a child out of wedlock.
So, even though there was no legal reason for her to be there, Joseph took her with him to safeguard her and the baby from local persecution. They stayed on in Bethlehem after the birth for the same reason but found themselves in a year or so, at odds with the local despot Herod, and fleeing for their lives.
☺ Take the innkeeper.
Compassion mixed with the desire to make a quid may have lead the innkeeper to utilise every square inch of his establishment, even the ground floor space in the inn where he kept his and his customers, animals. Or Mary and Joseph may have found a similar downstairs space in some distant relatives home, there is no clear evidence that it was the shed out the back of the Bethlehem Hilton.
It was, though, a place that smelt anything like the birthplace of a king. Yet it was compassion on the behalf of an unknown individual which made it possible for Jesus to be born undercover and in the midst of representatives of God’s creation. Not a great place but better than a refugee camp, a leaky boat or hiding from those who want to kill you.
☺ Take The Shepherds.
Now these blokes came into town because their sheep had all headed for the hills when the angels arrived and started singing. They came down to get their story straight and to have a gander, a sticky beak, a look, just in case what the angels told them was right. What they made of it, we are not sure, but they are moved enough to show their respects and be present. Whether it changed their lives or not, we will never know. But at least they went and had a look for themselves.
☺ Take The Three Wise Men.
Arriving later than the actual birth, possibly almost 2 years later, the wise men had a profound mixture of intelligence and innocence. They had divined through the stars a king would be born and quite rightly wanted to come and confirm that they were correct. They travelled, depending on where they came from, many thousands of miles to be there. Despite their obvious intellectual abilities they seem not to have been politically savvy and let the cat out of the bag to the tyrant ruler Herod.
Their arrival unleashes further carnage on the people in the area, “Herod slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under" (Matt. 2:16). As a result, Joseph and Mary become refugees in a foreign land just so Jesus survives.
As I said before, the story is not cute, it is real. Jesus, God Incarnate, God amongst us, did not avoid the nasty reality of humanity at its worst. He came right in the centre of it. God, being God, could have ordained an entirely different scenario, which was his prerogative. But he didn’t.
He came in the person of a vulnerable baby, to two lost and alone people, estranged from their families, in the midst of violence and powerlessness, and became a refugee fleeing with his family to safety in Egypt.
This is a modern story and it is the modern story we need to embrace. Is our world, the world we live in any different to that in which Jesus found himself? Have we addressed the issues that impacted on Jesus, his family and his people?
I fear not.
A quick glance across the newspapers, the tv news and the internet will confirm those issues are alive and well in the world today.
☺ More than 74,000 Africans, fleeing civil war, political instability, poverty, famine and drought in the Horn of Africa, crossed the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea on smugglers' boats and reached the shores of Yemen this year. This figure represents a staggering 50 per cent increase over last year's 50,000 arrivals, itself a record.
☺ Livestock farmer flees deadly drought and insecurity in Ethiopia and Somalia only to face climate change-linked flooding in Kenya's Dadaab refugee camps. The climate change which destroyed his livelihood through drought is now destroying his future through flood, alongside the violence of vigilantes and terrorists.
☺ Zimbabwean teenage asylum-seeker learns the high cost of freedom. All 17-year-old Tsitsi wanted to do was go to school and earn a living – but the men transporting her to a better life had other plans for her, they raped her and she now finds herself the mother of an unwanted child, no job and no place to go home to, ostracized by her own family and the society she finds herself in.
Sound familiar? What went wrong? Wasn’t that why Jesus came into the world, to bring peace to all, to make peace possible, to bring about the kingdom of God?
Yes but……..
But it’s a shared kingdom. We have a role in this kingdom as well. Remember the words of the angel, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!”
Jesus makes it possible, we make it present.
Ian Cutmore, my Salvation Army Training College principal once said, ‘If it’s not happening where you are, it’s not happening’.
Jesus makes it possible, we make it present!
Jesus makes it possible by his birth, his example as found in the New Testament, by his death on the Cross and by his resurrection.
We make it present by our acceptance of that birth, life, death and resurrection in a way that radically changes how we live and how we relate to others; in how we celebrate Christmas; how we respond to those who are less well placed than ourselves, how we respond to refugees, the poor – how we respond to the other.
It is not about being guilty about how we are, who we are or where we are in this world. Guilt does not lead to the kingdom of God. What leads to the kingdom of God is the honest reflection on how we live on earth as peacemakers, as bringers of hope to others, and ourselves, as people who take seriously our place in this world.
If life was about individuals, if it was all about us, there was no need for Jesus to be born. There was no need for God to come into the world. We could just go on the way we always had.
Yet it is not about you or me as individuals. It is not about us. It is about what we do and become together. It is about how we respond to the carnage of global warming, the violence of the fundamentalist, the appealing lure of possessions and stuff we seek for ourselves – it’s about what we value and what gives us value.
Jesus was born an unlikely revolutionary, a vulnerable baby who survived because others, mostly unknown others, took great risks to ensure that he did.
The measure of our world, and of each of us, is whether we are prepared to take such risks everyday. It’s the only way the Kingdom of God will come.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
The King with Scars
If any of you are searching for job security, don't become a king or a queen. Although Queen Elizabeth of England is paid millions of dollars a year and has been a monarch for more than 50 years, she is an exception. Looking back over history, some historians estimate that the average length of a reign for a queen or a king is only 3½ to 4 years. And for the most part, royalty has had a violent, murderous history throughout the centuries. A little flick through the Old Testament for one will make it plain, being a King is no guarantee of a long life!
King’s rule by power and violence. They brook no opposition. They have others killed for simply being different. They conquer and kill for their own ends and have little compulsion in sending others to die on their behalf. And while kings in a royal sense are few and far between these days, the kings and queens of secular society, those we raise up through the democratic process differ little from their predecessors. They follow the type despite all their efforts to look different. The emperor indeed has no clothes.
Ironically, from the earliest days of the infant, persecuted church, the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth was given the title "King of Kings." In Luke's Gospel, Jesus is pictured as a king even before he was born. When the angel Gabriel informs Mary that she will bear a son named Jesus, he adds, "…the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." (Luke 1:32-33)
Later, the three Magi ask, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?" (Matthew 2:2)
In Mark's Gospel Jesus begins his public ministry by stating that "the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near." (1:15) The very core of Jesus' message is the coming of the kingdom of God.
As Jesus enters Jerusalem for the last time, the people gather in the streets and see him as the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah: "Behold your king is coming." (Zechariah 9:9, Matthew 21:5, John 12:15) The crowds shout with reckless abandon, "Blessed be the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" (Luke 19:38) Jesus purposely enters the city signaling a different kind of kingship. He insists on entering Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, a sign of reconciliation and peace.
And then as the events unfold in Jerusalem, leading up to Jesus' horrific and torturous crucifixion, He is either hailed or mocked as a king. In the final hours of Jesus' life on earth, we witness his famous interrogation by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. The interrogation is a classic:
"Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate asks Jesus.
Jesus answers with a counter question, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"
In John's Gospel, Pilate seems to be the one being interrogated and on trial.
Pilate pushes:
"What have you done?"
Jesus:
"My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Judeans. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."
Pilate must have been both confused and infuriated! True, Jesus and his followers did not seem a threat to the Roman Empire. But who is in control here?
Again, Pilate pushes his questioning, probably thinking that he has Jesus trapped in his words:
"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."
It must have been obvious to Pilate that either Jesus of Nazareth was crazy, or He, Jesus, was unlike any king he had ever known. The truth is that Jesus was and is to this day a unique king, who reigns over a unique kingdom.
First, Jesus is the servant king. Jesus was not and is not a king who rules through raw power, greed and manipulation at the expense of others. He did not conscript any army to dominate the minds and hearts of people by force. He lived and modeled a far different style of leadership in life among His people.
In Luke 4 Jesus himself says: 18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus' reign as king is revealed in humility, self-emptying and service to others. According to the world's standards, Jesus is a very strange king, one who serves, heals, and uplifts His followers.
Second, and amazingly, Jesus is the servant king with scars. Charles Colson, says it like this: "All the kings and queens I have known in history sent their people out to die for them. I only know one king who decided to die for his people."
In a reading from the Celtic Daily Prayer, we have this simple but profound question and answer:
"Question: What are the only human-made things in heaven?
Answer: The wounds in the hands, feet and side of Christ."
One of the most fascinating facts about the New Testament story of Jesus is that after his resurrection he is revealed with his scars. When his disciples doubt who he is, he shows them the scars in his hands, feet, and side. Those scars are five signs of the most compelling love the world has ever known-complete, self-emptying, utter love for all of us. In other words, God the Father chooses to reveal Jesus in a perfect, resurrected body with the healed, gruesome wounds from the crucifixion. To this day, we still know Jesus by his scars.
For the stunned and frightened disciples and now for us, we remember how his wounds and sacrifice have forever transformed that hideous and torturous method of capital punishment, the cross. As Christians, every time we witness a baptism, receive the Lord's Supper, wear a cross, celebrate the resurrection of a dear one at a funeral service, we remember his scars and the hope that they bring us.
St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, "We always carry in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body."
Jesus is the servant king with scars, and He is alive, scars and all!
(John 18:33-37 Christ the King)
(Apologies to: Bishop Ronald Warren, Day 1, 2006.)
King’s rule by power and violence. They brook no opposition. They have others killed for simply being different. They conquer and kill for their own ends and have little compulsion in sending others to die on their behalf. And while kings in a royal sense are few and far between these days, the kings and queens of secular society, those we raise up through the democratic process differ little from their predecessors. They follow the type despite all their efforts to look different. The emperor indeed has no clothes.
Ironically, from the earliest days of the infant, persecuted church, the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth was given the title "King of Kings." In Luke's Gospel, Jesus is pictured as a king even before he was born. When the angel Gabriel informs Mary that she will bear a son named Jesus, he adds, "…the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." (Luke 1:32-33)
Later, the three Magi ask, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?" (Matthew 2:2)
In Mark's Gospel Jesus begins his public ministry by stating that "the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near." (1:15) The very core of Jesus' message is the coming of the kingdom of God.
As Jesus enters Jerusalem for the last time, the people gather in the streets and see him as the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah: "Behold your king is coming." (Zechariah 9:9, Matthew 21:5, John 12:15) The crowds shout with reckless abandon, "Blessed be the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" (Luke 19:38) Jesus purposely enters the city signaling a different kind of kingship. He insists on entering Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, a sign of reconciliation and peace.
And then as the events unfold in Jerusalem, leading up to Jesus' horrific and torturous crucifixion, He is either hailed or mocked as a king. In the final hours of Jesus' life on earth, we witness his famous interrogation by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. The interrogation is a classic:
"Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate asks Jesus.
Jesus answers with a counter question, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"
In John's Gospel, Pilate seems to be the one being interrogated and on trial.
Pilate pushes:
"What have you done?"
Jesus:
"My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Judeans. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."
Pilate must have been both confused and infuriated! True, Jesus and his followers did not seem a threat to the Roman Empire. But who is in control here?
Again, Pilate pushes his questioning, probably thinking that he has Jesus trapped in his words:
"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."
It must have been obvious to Pilate that either Jesus of Nazareth was crazy, or He, Jesus, was unlike any king he had ever known. The truth is that Jesus was and is to this day a unique king, who reigns over a unique kingdom.
First, Jesus is the servant king. Jesus was not and is not a king who rules through raw power, greed and manipulation at the expense of others. He did not conscript any army to dominate the minds and hearts of people by force. He lived and modeled a far different style of leadership in life among His people.
In Luke 4 Jesus himself says: 18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus' reign as king is revealed in humility, self-emptying and service to others. According to the world's standards, Jesus is a very strange king, one who serves, heals, and uplifts His followers.
Second, and amazingly, Jesus is the servant king with scars. Charles Colson, says it like this: "All the kings and queens I have known in history sent their people out to die for them. I only know one king who decided to die for his people."
In a reading from the Celtic Daily Prayer, we have this simple but profound question and answer:
"Question: What are the only human-made things in heaven?
Answer: The wounds in the hands, feet and side of Christ."
One of the most fascinating facts about the New Testament story of Jesus is that after his resurrection he is revealed with his scars. When his disciples doubt who he is, he shows them the scars in his hands, feet, and side. Those scars are five signs of the most compelling love the world has ever known-complete, self-emptying, utter love for all of us. In other words, God the Father chooses to reveal Jesus in a perfect, resurrected body with the healed, gruesome wounds from the crucifixion. To this day, we still know Jesus by his scars.
For the stunned and frightened disciples and now for us, we remember how his wounds and sacrifice have forever transformed that hideous and torturous method of capital punishment, the cross. As Christians, every time we witness a baptism, receive the Lord's Supper, wear a cross, celebrate the resurrection of a dear one at a funeral service, we remember his scars and the hope that they bring us.
St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, "We always carry in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body."
Jesus is the servant king with scars, and He is alive, scars and all!
(John 18:33-37 Christ the King)
(Apologies to: Bishop Ronald Warren, Day 1, 2006.)
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