Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Text: Matthew 21:1-5
This last week I was driving along the Don Valley Parkway when all of a sudden a white van pulled in front of me very quickly and swerved. On the bumper of this van there was a sticker that simply said, “God allows U-turns.” Now at 110 kilometres per hour, going down the Don Valley it does not inspire confidence when the person in front of you has a sticker that says, “God allows U-turns.” Actually, I was only doing 90 kilometres of course!
Here, this van cut in front of me and I followed it all the way, and I was thinking to myself, “What on earth is this driver trying to tell us?” Then, it sort of dawned on me: a chance to turn around, to face in another direction, to go back to where you came from, to set straight something that previously had gone very wrong. God allows U-turns!
This Sunday we are looking at the kingly nature of Jesus. As I have done throughout this series, I begin by looking at the great banquet feast of heaven. It is a phrase that I coined a number of weeks ago when I talked about the fact that in the Bible there is this belief that when the Messiah comes, there will be this magnificent feast, and that all the saints will be greeted there by the Messiah, who will be the host: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all the greats of the Old Testament.
Two weeks ago, we looked at the prophets being there, having their own table in heaven with Jesus, the Messiah, with them. Last week, we looked at all the priests gathering around the table with Jesus coming over and talking to them. This week, it's the kings. The kings are there in heaven at the table, and there is a big sign, which says, “The Kings.” Unlike all the other tables, only some of them are present, while there are some kings who are sitting around enjoying the great festive experience with the Messiah, others are simply not there.
Josiah is there: the great king who was responsible for the reforms in Judah, the one who made sure that the people worshipped rightly. He was even responsible, many think, for what are the contents of the Book of Deuteronomy being published. Uzziah would be there in all the gold and the splendour of a royal monarch, there to enjoy the magnificence of the moment. But then there would be name cards with no one present. Zedekiah would not be there. Ahab, who had been responsible as a king for bringing the worship of idols and the Prophet of Baal into the nation, would not be there.
Hezekiah would be there, chatting away with the greatest king of them all David, and reminiscing about the glorious days when the nation was united, and the monarchs reigned supreme on behalf of God. They would have chatted about the halcyon days, when Israel could defeat its enemies and when the Kingdom was united. But then, there would be another name card, Jehoshaphat, not there - a shame really. Some of the kings were present; some of them not. Why?
It was because the monarchy in the history of Israel and of Judah was always a highly contentious thing. There were many of the kings who were not glorious leaders, not appointed by God. Many of them lived a life of profligacy. Many of them abused their power. Many of them brought the worship of idols into the camp. To be a monarch was not necessarily in Israel's history, one of the greatest and most wonderful things!
They were responsible for certain things. For example, they were the judge if there were disputes amongst the people. They would be responsible for leading the people into battle and into war. They were responsible for raising funds in order that the nation might continue to worship its God. There were wonderful things that monarchs were supposed to do. They were supposed to carry a sceptre, live in a palace, ride around in a chariot, and be supplied with the advice of civil servants.
To be a monarch in Israel or Judah was to be a very powerful person, but a secular leader. A ruler responsible for governing the nation, and making sure that the people lived in accordance with the law and the will of God. But, there was tension oftentimes with the priests and the rulers. There were the priests who wanted purity and religious rites and rituals to be performed properly. There were the prophets who often had the courage not to speak about other nations, not to address the powers that were out there in the world, but sometimes to address the iniquities of the monarchy.
Is it not interesting that in the passage I read from the Book of Hosea (8:4), Hosea challenges the people for having appointed kings and having chosen princes who were not abiding by the will of God? The prophets, then, often denounced the monarch, and said there was a need for something better and something more. So, there was a tension.
Thus, when we talk about Jesus as king, when we talk about Jesus as monarch, we have exactly that same tension in place. We are not quite sure how to talk about the Babe of Bethlehem in terms of the monarchs of the Old Testament, but I can just imagine at the great banquet feast, Jesus walking up to those who are around the table and saying, “You know, it is all right. I have restored the monarchy to its rightful place. I have brought the Throne of David and I have made it the great kingdom that it should be. I have made it right. Josiah, the reforms that were needed, I have made. Uzziah, the glory I have brought. Hezekiah, the kingdoms I have united that all the vision of what the monarch truly should be I, the host of this great banquet, have been able to achieve.”
But what is the nature of this sovereign power of Jesus? I mean, do we not still have problems talking about him as a king when the image that we have in the back of our mind is of many of the kings, from Jehoshaphat to Ahab? What is different about the reign of Jesus? How has he given a U-turn to the monarchy?
The answer I believe lies in looking at how his sovereign nature was revealed. Jesus was unique, Jesus was different. He was continuing the line of the monarchs, but he was also making a break from them. You can see that in the birth of Jesus. The New Testament tries to capture the birth of Jesus in various ways, but there is a common element that seems to run through the birth narratives, and that is that a king has arrived, but the king is unique, unlike all those who have gone before him.
No one captured that for me better than the writer Max Lucado. In talking about Jesus being born in a manger, in this magnificent little passage, he wrote the following, and for me this is inspirational. I hope it is for you:
He came, not as a flash of light or as an unapproachable conqueror, but as one whose first cries are heard by a peasant girl and a sleepy carpenter. Mary and Joseph were anything but royal, yet Heaven entrusted its genuine treasure to these simple parents. It began in a manger, this momentous moment in this time. He looked anything but a king. His face prunish and red, his cry still the helpless and piercing cry of a dependent baby: majesty in the midst of the mundane; holiness in the filth of sheep manure and sweat. This baby had overseen the universe; these rags keeping him warm were the robes of eternity. His golden Throne Room had been abandoned in favour of a dirty sheep pen, and worshipping angels had been replaced with kind, but bewildered shepherds. Curious, this Royal Throne Room! No tapestries covering the windows! No velvet garments on the courtiers! No golden sceptre or glittering crown! Curious, the sounds in the court: cows munching, hooves crunching, a mother humming, a babe nursing. It could have begun anywhere, the story of the King, but curiously, it began in a manger. Step into the doorway! Peak through the window! The King is here!
This is the reign of Jesus, and the reign of Jesus is not just seen in his birth, it is seen throughout his life. The reason I chose our scripture passage from the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is to demonstrate that Jesus fulfilled what the Prophet Isaiah said. “Here,” they said, “comes the King, riding on the donkey, humble, gently, arriving in Jerusalem. Hosanna in the name of the King! Hosanna in the name of the Lord!” They knew. They could see his kingdom. They understood it was different, and they praised him.
Even at the very end of his life, even when this Babe of Bethlehem was crucified, and they mocked him, and they scorned him, and they laughed at him, and they called him what? “King of the Jews!” They didn't realize that for all their mockery, they had seen the Kingdom revealed. Jesus was right. His reign was not of this world; it was unique; it was different; it was humble; and it was ever so powerful.
For 2,000 years we have struggled as Christians when the Christ of the Bible has been wedded to what is known as the christus victor, the victorious Christ. It is because so often the images being used to describe Jesus are still the images of monarchs as earth would have it. Still the sceptres and the chariots and the palaces and the servants, still the King that rides on a horse in grandeur, still the victorious one, the powerful one, the one who sides with the elite. People look at the Jesus of the Bible and they look at the christus victor, and they say, “Which Jesus is it?” because it cannot be the same.
The Jesus that is revealed in the Scriptures is profound and different from any images of monarchy that we might have. It was profoundly different from the images of “Monarch” which they had before Jesus came. Jesus' kingdom is a unique kingdom. It is the Kingdom of Peace. It is the reign of God. It is the power of humility.
There is another side to this. The sovereign nature of the reign of Christ is also hidden from us. There is a sense in which the reign of Christ is a mystery, a mystery that we cannot fully comprehend. In the New Testament, there was a word that was used to describe Jesus in some of the literature: pantokrator. And, pantokrator, if it were to be translated most closely, in the Old Testament would be the word El-Shaddai. Pantokrator and El-Shaddai, what do they mean? They mean the all-powerful, all sovereign divinity.
And so, for Jesus, he is all-sovereign. He is all-powerful. He is, as the writer of the Book of Revelation calls him, “the King of Kings” and the “Lord of Lords.” Yet, as we look around we see that there are monarchies and rulers and powers on earth that seem to have no awareness of this Jesus. They act as if they can act on their own without any accountability to the higher power, and yet, the New Testament proclaims that amongst all these powers on earth and above all these powers on earth, is the reign of Christ, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
Before all powers, before all nations, before all forces, before all wealth, before all names that are vaunted on earth, there is the humble King of Kings. It is mysterious and hidden and, in a spiritual way, they are accountable to Him and Him alone. And, between the resurrection from death and the great banquet feast of heaven for which we wait, the Church bears witness to this fact, knowing that Christ is still at work in the world, although we do not fully see it and understand it and comprehend it.
Ray Bakke tells a true story about how during World War II there were two Scots captured by the Germans near the end of the war. One of them was an academic from the University of Glasgow whose name was MacDonald and the other one was a chaplain from one of the churches in Scotland. The two of them were arrested and put into this camp, which was divided down the middle by a fence. On one side of the camp were the Americans, and on the other side were the British. So, they decided to put MacDonald, the academic with the Americans, and they put, I am sorry to say, the chaplain with the British, because they felt that they needed him.
In he went with the British, and so, these two men lived in separate camps with just a fence between them. But something remarkable occurred, and that is that the Americans built a little radio and were able to receive the news through the BBC. Every day, MacDonald would go to the fence and he would be met by the chaplain from the British side, and in Gaelic, so the Germans wouldn't understand what he was saying, MacDonald would tell the chaplain what was going on.
One day, there was one particular piece of news: mainly that the war was over, that the Germans had capitulated and surrendered. MacDonald went to the fence and in Gaelic talked to the Scottish chaplain, and then the Scottish chaplain disappeared into the British barracks. All of a sudden, there was laughing and joy and dancing and the banging of cans and tins and euphoria. The German guards had no idea what was going on.
Then, the British came out and started hugging the Germans, started playing with the guard dogs, telling jokes, having fun. The Germans had no idea what was going on, the word that the British had received: victory had been won, hadn't yet reached the enemy. They hadn't heard. And, no one had told them.
To all the powers on earth who think they are so great and so mighty, and who use military power, who use avarice, who use all manner of message to subjugate people: they haven't yet heard that the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords has won the victory and he still rules and some day they will hear it for themselves. There is a mysterious power to Jesus Christ.
What should the Church be in response to this? To Jesus, the great prince, the great priest, the great prophet, what should we say? To the world prophetically we say: “Listen to the Word of God.” Above all words, above all poetry, above all human wisdom, the Word of God speaks power and truth. It speaks in a priestly way to those who need holiness, forgiveness, peace and justice. It speaks the word of God's redemptive and saving grace.
I don't know about you, but over the last two weeks, profoundly saddened am I by what I have seen and heard about Tiger Woods. I suppose what saddens me as much as anything is that what you hear about him are jokes or judgement: either it is a source of amusement or it is something terrible that has happened. But you know what is needed and what he needs is Jesus. That is what he needs! He needs a U-turn! He needs an opportunity to have a new birth, a new life, a new hope to become a new person.
The King of Kings and the Lord of Lords is that very thing. Just as the kings of the Old Testament were not perfect, just as some of them were not at the table during the great banquet feast, because of Christ, the return is possible. What does the Church then say? What are the words of the Church in the midst of a broken world of broken relationships, of conflict between nations, of environmental destruction and injustices, what is the word that the Church proclaims? It proclaims that, in Christ, God allows U-turns, the chance for hope through Christ.
It also has something mysterious to say, because the Church needs to be the embodiment of the Servant-King. The Church needs to have that servant mentality to the world. I couldn't help but think of that on Wednesday night. At a magnificent HandiCapable dinner, where they have the best turkey dinner in Toronto… trust me, I know, I had three helpings, no four - it was a wonderful, wonderful meal!
We brought in people from all over the city, and one of the men who was there who I have befriended, or I should say he has befriended me, called Gordon, sat down over dinner, and we talked about the great sadness in his life. He had lost his beloved grandfather, and he was grieving. He wanted to talk to somebody about it, so we talked about it: how his grandfather was called Gordon, and he was named after him, and it tore him apart inside. Here is a man who is challenged in many ways in this life, but had great love and evidently spoke at his grandfather's funeral. Amazing!
Anyway, later on in that particular event, I actually dressed up as Santa - not the real Santa, I just dressed up as Santa - and I gave gifts to people. It is the highlight of my Christmas as I think I have said before. This year, Gordon came over to me and he's a big lad, and I said to Gordon, “Would you like to sit on my lap?” I didn't think he would say “Yes” but he did, and he nearly killed me! As he was sitting on my lap, he whispered in my ear, “Santa, I know who you are.” He got up, winked at me, and walked away, and others came.
I think the Church is like Santa. I think the Church is to be the Body of Christ on earth. We wait for the consummation of time and history. We wait for something glorious to happen. But, maybe through the words we speak, maybe through the service and the kindness we offer, maybe by embodying the servant nature of the prophet, priest and king, people will whisper in our ears and say, “We know whose you are!” that we may be this Christmas for somebody a sign, a word, a symbol of the glorious Prophet, Priest and King, Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord of Lords. Amen.