A Non-Camo King

A Non-Camo King
Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:9-20; Luke 23:33-43

A recent cartoon posted on Facebook showed the pilgrims driving off Santa Claus. In another, a Thanksgiving turkey was loudly addressing Santa saying, “November is my month. You just get out of here and wait your turn!”

A lot of us probably feel that way – and have for several weeks. A number of stores plan to open up on Thanksgiving. As someone who avoids like the plague stores on Thanksgiving Friday, why would I even want to shop on the holiday itself? I commend those stores whose management has resisted the urge to open up early.

I like Santa well enough. He’s a right jolly old elf with a nose like a cherry, but I’m with the turkey complaining that Santa is invading her month. And I’ll suggest that Santa has done a good job crowding Christ out of Christmas. Public relations attempts to sanitize Santa’s image by having him present at the manger are not enough to soothe my theological spirit.

All that said, Christmas is coming. In five fast-flying weeks we will be singing the words of the English carol, “What Child Is This?” The haunting refrain is appropriate for this last Lord’s Day of the church year as we think about the reign of Christ: “This, this is Christ the King who shepherds guard and angels sing; haste, haste to bring him laud, the babe, the Son of Mary!” We aren’t ready for the babe part, but we need to sing the king part. The English hymn writer William Chatterton Dix, who wrote the words for “What Child Is This?” is also the author of the words we sang at the top of the service, “Alleluia! sing to Jesus, his the scepter, his the throne.”

Most of us believers spend a great deal of our spiritual time being confused by Jesus: God – man; servant – king; prophet – peon; priest – sacrifice. Those of us who devote not only our private lives but also our public lives to Christ, often live a life similar to Nik Wallenda. Only we don’t walk tightropes over the Niagara Falls gorge or the Grand Canyon. We do it over the pit called heresy. We must walk on a thin thread of theological thinking which keeps the mystery/paradox of Jesus in balance lest we tip too far one way or the other and fall into the abyss.

We call Christ “king.” Yet his “kingdom was not of this world,” or so he told Pilate. He was mocked by the soldiers. He was parodied with a royal robe and a crown of thorns. About fifteen years ago Dave Matthews wrote a song entitled “Christmas Song.” A portion of the lyrics talk this way about Jesus:
“. . . So I’m told, so the story goes
The people he knew were
Less than golden hearted
Gamblers and Robbers
Drinkers and Jokers, all soul searchers
Like you and me . . . .” (1)

This Jesus is a radical king who hangs out with the poor and marginalized and then hung on a cross for the sake of God’s love for the world. Whether we read the words of the gospels or listen to a contemporary songwriter, the result is still the same: Jesus is not the kind of king most people expect. He is not a super hero. He is not an armored champion. He is not a military ruler. You won’t find him wearing combat boots and camouflaged fatigues.

There is a haunting and uncomfortable statue, depicting a darkly shrouded figure lying huddled on a long park bench. From a distance, the figure could be anyone, and only on close examination are the tell-tale “stigmata,” or crucifixion wounds, visible on its exposed feet. The statue, by Timothy Schmalz and entitled “Homeless Jesus,” isn’t your typical depiction of Christ. Its arresting imagery was too much some church leaders. The life-size bronze sculpture was rejected by two high-profile cathedrals, St. Michael’s in Toronto and St. Patrick’s in New York. Schmalz was told the piece “was not an appropriate image.” Like the newborn Jesus for whom there was no guestroom, and the Human One who had no place to lay his head, even though foxes had holes and birds had nests, the statue had no home until it was taken in by the Jesuit theological school, Regis College, in Toronto. (2)

In Jeremiah’s day, the term “shepherd” was used to refer to “king.” The Jeremiah passage which was read earlier was not a work of fiction. He, like any good op-ed columnist, directed his words to the kings he experienced in his lifetime. Jeremiah minced no words. The demise of Israel was directly connected to the poor leadership of the nation’s kings, including their blatant evasion of their responsibility to uphold justice for widows, at-risk children, immigrants, and those being pushed out of the middle class by the widening gap between the 1% and the rest of the population. The greed of a whole series of kings – Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Jehoiachin – was the ultimate cause for the destruction of Israel.

Jeremiah looked hopefully for a righteous king. His faith descendants know that king to be Jesus Christ. Instead of a military leader or Machiavellian statesman who stepped away from the people in an ego-filled elitism, Jesus modeled ultimate leadership by being present with all the people. He reached out to rich and poor, although only the poor responded. He prayed with churched and unchurched people, although only the unchurched understood the conversation. He ate with saints and sinners, although only the sinners experienced the meaning of grace.

Christ’s leadership was not from the top down. It was not hierarchical or vertical. It was horizontal and shared. “If I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you too must wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example: just as I have done, you also must do” (John 13:14-15). Jesus called all his followers to be servant-kings.

The servant-king is one of the ways in which we are to look at Christ’s ministry, which he gave to us to be our ministry, our engaged living in the world. As leaders we are not called to blindly follow. We are called to look beyond the headlines of political clashes and calamities to find the underlying issues that erupt into the crises that fuel media frenzy and populist pablum. At times we are even called to speak God’s “Yes” into the whirlwind of the world’s “No” in order to empower and validate the least, the last, and the lost with whom Christ identified. It is not by brute force but by caring for those who are oppressed that we can communicate the leadership Christ practiced, and with it the power and love of God for all people.

Christ was not a military king. He did not wear camouflaged fatigues to show his role. He was a non-camo king. We too are called to shun camos. We are called to wear the ordinary attire of the people of our time and place so that, like Christ, we may share our lives with people who are “Less than golden hearted / Gamblers and Robbers / Drinkers and Jokers, all soul searchers / Like you and me.”

Cincinnati Presbyterian pastor Thom Shuman writes the following about the king who is Christ. He calls it “oxymoron”:

King of kings
Lord of lords
Glory Hallelujah!
really?
are these word just
a neat, peppy praise song,
fun to sing
but empty of meaning?
no kings around here
that I know of,
but a lot of politicians
who act as if folks
are agin’ ‘em
if you are not with them;
no lords around here
except those who
think they can
lord it over everyone else,
but debt and worry and fear
control my life;
glory seems to be
in short supply these days,
and hallelujahs
don’t seem to mean much
to most folks;
but you
you are a mystery solved
in the impossibilities of life;
an enigma wrapped
in wonder;
a majesty born
in humility;
a life blossoming
out of death.
and you
you I could follow
forever. (3)

May it be so. Amen.

(1) Dave Matthews, “Christmas Song,” from the album, Live at Luther College, © 1999. http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Christmas-Song-lyrics-Dave-Matthews-Band-and-Dave-Matthews/B1EE5C1D3DA9630148256BD1000CE73E
(2) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/15/jesus-the-homeless-sculpture-rejected-catholic-churches_n_3085584.html
(3) Thom M. Shuman, © 2013;  http://www.prayersfortoday.blogspot.com/2013/11/oxymoron-reign-of-christchrist-king-c.html

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

There Is Nothing Pedestrian About Being Presbyterian

There Is Nothing Pedestrian About Being Presbyterian
2 Thessalonians 1:1-12; Psalm 119:137-144; Luke 10:1-10

I grew up in another Ohio county seat town, which in those days had twice as many people as all of Pike County. It was founded before 1800. The town was laid out around a square block on which sat the Court House. It dated from just before 1900, having replaced one which had burned down, which was the lot of many early court houses.

Opposite the west side of the court house square was a piece of parkland which ran along the river bank. It was the site of a number of war monuments and other historical items. Across the southwest corner was the Second National Bank building, about 12 storeys high with the local radio station’s studios on the top floor. The south side of Market Street had several shops including a Thrift Drug and an S. S. Kressge store and finished with the Strouss Department store on the corner. Then opposite the southeast corner was the Union Savings and Trust Company bank. The east side of Park Avenue was shops and offices. Then opposite the northeast corner was the Trumbull Savings and Loan Company. On the north, on High Street, across from the Court House main entrance was the Public Library, the then new county administration building, the YMCA and the Elks’ club in an old mansion of a house.

The southwest, southeast and northeast corners of the square were standard cross-street intersections. The northwest corner had only one street going out of it at a 45 degree angle. Three streets met for the intersection. In those days the traffic light was on concrete platform in the middle. Because of the traffic pattern, the crosswalks were  marked with walk lights and signs.

What you need to know is that at this three street corner stood the Presbyterian Church, a handsome brick and stained glass building with a very tall spire. It couldn’t be missed.

I was entering high school when I finally realized that the crosswalk signs said “Pedestrian Crossing” and not “Presbyterian Crossing.”

When we here the word pedestrian, most of the time we think of walking and people who walk – like me, frequently spotted on foot around town. The word comes from Latin, pes, foot, and we have a host of related words: pedestal, podiatry, pedal, paw, pedicure. My Merriam-Webster Dictionary actually lists that definition second. The first definition is: “commonplace, unimaginative.”

The author of the second Thessalonian letter doesn’t use the word pedestrian. Yet it is very clear from the wording that the writer is definitely convinced that faith in God and in God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is anything but commonplace, unimaginative, prosaic, dull, pedestrian.

People don’t brag about the ordinary or the mediocre. The letter writer says that he and his fellow believers are “bragging” about the Thessalonian church people to all the churches they visit. “We tell about your endurance and faithfulness in all the harassments and trouble that you have put up with.” When was the last time someone bragged about you?

We forget that being Christian was an oddity. People and governors were afraid of Christians. They were perceived to be the terrorists of the first century. There is nothing pedestrian about that. What if you had to skulk around to come to church? What if you had to go to an unmarked door on a nondescript street and tap a secret code, and answer with a password? It would be just like going a speakeasy during Prohibition. Christian’s didn’t want to live that way, but they often had to for safety’s sake.

The Christian calling is seldom to a vocation of ease and comfort, but to a unity with Christ in suffering. As Paul wrote the Roman believers,

Don't you know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried together with him through baptism into his death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too can walk in newness of life. If we were united together in a death like his, we will also be united together in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:3-5)

Many of us may actually be troubled by such a statement. Our culture is one of seems to do everything it can to avoid suffering and deny death. Our sister and brother Christians who live marginally in our own country or in less developed countries of the world find Paul’s words a source of comfort. It is the same as Jesus speaking to Zacchaeus and inviting himself to the tax collector’s house for lunch, an act which totally transforms Zacchaeus by bringing him to repentance and to Jesus’ affirmation: “Today, salvation has come to this household.”

The Thessalonian letter writer says that the people’s faithfulness under duress “shows that God's judgment is right, and that you will be considered worthy of God's kingdom for which you are suffering.”

Suffering is suffering. Except for a few people who seem to groove on dark linings to silver clouds and almost seem to thrive on being put upon, we don’t take easily to suffering. Our general rule is to innoculate ourselves against suffering. And if that doesn’t work, then we over-medicate. Alcohol, shopping, gambling, legal drugs, illegal drugs, pornography, arrogant authoritarian ego power trips, to name just few. People in the world suffer horrible physical, mental, economic trauma as Christians. We cannot pray enough for our Christian brothers and sisters in Middle East, in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Sudan in particular. Suffering for the faith is not isolated to that part of the world. Wherever there are Christians, there will be suffering.

We suffer – not brutally – but we do suffer. We suffer because we want people to join us in knowing Christ, yet few come. We suffer because we feel guilty because we don’t know how to speak of Christ’s love to others. We suffer because we live in ghettos of our own making and we interact less and less with people we don’t know and have little reason to know. We suffer because we feel as if the world is closing in on us and we are developing a pessimism that is like a polarized lens preventing Christ’s light to shine powerfully into our lives. We suffer because we are clinging so desperately to what little we think we have that we cannot open our hands to receive the vast quantities of Spirit gifts that a gracious, inviting, merciful, forgiving, saving God is seeking to heap into our individual lives and the life of our community.

Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters — yes, even one’s own life — cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Psychotherapist Carl Jung said that a lot of unnecessary suffering comes into the world because people will not accept the “legitimate suffering” that comes from being human. Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, suggests that life is a crucible, a vessel that holds molten metal in one place long enough to be purified and clarified. We work very hard trying to lower the temperatures of our lives so that we never get molten enough, long enough, to let God’s grace purify and clarify us. Jesus said that the truth will set you free. Rohr says that “before the truth ‘sets you free,’ it tends to make you miserable.

Rohr goes on to say that creation itself already believes the gospel and lives the pattern of death and resurrection, even if unknowingly. Necessary suffering is the daily cycle of day and night, the changing seasons, the lives of predators and prey.

The letter writer and his friends pray for the Thessalonian believers. They pray for their endurance. By its very nature, endurance is not something that we can develop in a hurry. It takes a lifetime, and even then we are only partly on the way. Through endurance we can gain a unique relationship with God, see God’s imprint on the world and on our lives, and move on to transcend deadly despair on the one hand or naive optimism on the other as we move in faith to an abundant joy, an enduring hope, a faithfulness in little, with much, with all.

On this All Saints Sunday, we remember not just the friends and family members who died in the last twelve months. We remember all the faithful believers who directly or indirectly have made it possible for us to believe and to act on our belief. Salvation has come to our lives. We are children of faithful Abraham and Sarah. We believe in a loving, sovereign God who rules with grace and with justice. There is nothing pedestrian about being Presbyterian. Christians are out of the ordinary.

Thanks be to God!

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.