Who Is Our King?
A Reading from the Book of Isaiah
"Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.”
Over the last few years, I've been fascinated by the
number of individuals who believe in UFOs.
I do, personally, believe, that the universe is vast,
if carefully calibrated for life,
but I find it disconcerting that
more people who have been abducted by aliens,
than there are Episcopalians.
This might explain our current state of political affairs.
Fortunately, we have been told that they are irenic and
don't mean us any harm.
Imagine with me,
that you are along the long stretch of highway on a dark evening,
when above you a series of bright pulsating lights appears.
You pull over, in your car that has
stopped in part because,
it just so happens that some aliens have lost their way,
and this is the way the story always goes.
An alien lands in front of you
and asks,take me to your leader.
And maybe for a moment you consider
the leadership of our fine land,
and wonder if this is an opportunity for you
to make things different.
Who leads us?
Who is our king?
How do we follow?
We have a propensity to make our leaders divine.
We want them to Save US. We want so eagerly to be saved.
Others want to be royalty to be granted a free pass,
to be adored and loved,
for no reason than their place of birth.
But Kingship comes with problems.
Kings consider themselves Gods.
On aspect of God is radical freedom.
The greek understanding of freedom,
was that you could take another person's life without consequences.
And that is reserved by the king, who can make the rules
and break the rules because, he is the rules.
It's not easy to do this.
So kings consolidate their power through fear.
The philosopher Thomas Hobbes,
proved that in times of fear,
we give our power to kings, releasing our own liberty.
And he thought this could be just and necessary.
We are easily captivated by bloodlines.
Even in the movie Davinci code,
we are invited to think that Jesus himself, had a long lineage,
represented by a hot French brunette.
And why not?
But it is so evident that we remain so willingly, captured
by the illusion of kings as Gods.
But Jesus kingship desanctifies all kingship,
replacing it only with his.
Perhaps we've become enough of a Christian culture,
We each seem to be masters of our own destiny.
We now are individuals,
With more self-help books so we can be our fullest selves,
but I wonder if there is the faint echo
the doubt that
we actually do decide for ourselves,
who we are or who we wish to be.
The illusions still remain.
We just have different sorts of kings.
We see on the cover of fortune magazine,
The best minds losing billions.
what were they smoking, the magazine declares!
These are the world's kings,
and not one of them will pay the consequences.
As least Fortune can identify a bad king.
Not that there isn't a place for a little nostalgia.
contemporary monarchies might be useful symbols,
checks upon the populace, with the its cultural amnesia.
Monarchies might represent the past, of tradition, of
place, location and identity,
resistance of quick cultural trends.
The kingship of Christ, is different.
And it begins with his resurrection.
That last thing a human king wants,
is his victim to return from the dead.
A king tortures to inspire fear.
A king kills to protect yourself from revenge.
But Jesus returns,
dismantling of the illusions
of human kingship.
holding our desire to make Gods our of men
under a stark, bright, light.
The light reveals the mechanations of authority
and how they often rest upon fear.
They are revealed to be the product of
human manipulation and desire.
The sanctification
of the power of Christ,
which forces us to look squarely at human culture,
and its propensity toward greed, envy,
rivalry and competition to say, this
is merely human.
With Christ, the illusion is revealed.
Behind kingship, is violence.
Behind the machinations
of our civilization, is brutality.
Take a look. Now let us choose a new King.
This destabilized the authority of all kings,
who based their power on might alone.
To say Christ is our king,
puts us in a strange relationship to the world.
We are constantly faced with aliens
inviting us to purchase things,
to follow quick fixes for happiness.
To follow leaders who probably don't have the power
to save me or you. Not really.
But this King is
holding the mirror back up at us.
What does it mean to declare Christ as King?
When we are faced with the stranger,
we do not run in fear.
When the storm troopers come,
we stand our ground as citizens of love's kingdom.
When we see torture and cruelty in the world,
we reveal its false justifications
but name it as the face of the enemy.
We are the witnesses.
We are prisoners, not of tyranny, but of hope.
We are not so desperate that our traditions are chains,
but reinvigorated by the new thing on the horizon.
And as the foundations of the world are destabilized,
broken, torn,
as Christians, we know there is no rock,
none except the bonds of human sympathy,
he restored as supreme,
the healing affection of love,
the quiet voice of encouragement,
the redemptive challenge of forgiveness,
We walk carefully over this new terrain,
with each other's hands,
We become the body of Christ,
The king,
resurrected.
Shout and rejoice o Zion.