Politics and religion
Commentary
Object:
Once King George and Queen Elizabeth went to a London theater to see a Noel Coward/Gertrude Lawrence production. As they entered the royal box, the whole audience rose to its feet to honor them. Standing in the wings, Gertrude Lawrence said, "What an entrance!" To which Noel Coward added, "What a part!"
What a part God has to play in the drama of time and space! Says Joan of Arc in the first installment of Shakespeare's King Henry VI: "Glory is like a circle in the water, which never ceaseth to enlarge itself" (I.ii). For human rulers, she pointed out, that was disastrous. Eventually the reach would exceed the substance. But not so for God! Each successive wave grows more majestic. Every element of creation, from the star-spangled skies to the thumb-sucking baby, stands and shouts at God's entrance.
Unfortunately, because so few people see God today, praise of the divine royalty has died on our lips. Jeremiah reminds us that God, in divine power, has to step into our world as the Good Shepherd who brings the sheep back into the fold when all of the political resources of our times are tearing us apart like wolves. Paul points out that the great unseen king becomes visible in Jesus. And our gospel reading is Jesus' horrible crucifixion scene, where petty panderings about the title to post are really echoes of larger realities: What do you do with a king you don't want?
In other words, our ability to see God is quite directly related to our understanding of ourselves. Those who carelessly toss aside human life will never worship God as they stuff blackberries into their mouths. John Calvin started his magnificent survey of the Christian faith, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, by reflecting that our knowledge of ourselves and our knowledge of God are so intertwined that the one has little power to grow without the other.
C.S. Lewis thought of that. He wondered why humans, who have so much to live for here, might ever be enticed to long for "heaven" or "eternal life." Often religion turns worship of God into a duty that exacts a tax of begrudging acknowledgment from us. We have to go to church. We must be good. We are obligated to pray.
But such feelings arise from the pagan notion that we can somehow increase the majesty of our tribal god in the clash of worldly power plays. Rather, says Lewis, echoing David, it is God's amazing thoughts about us that make biblical religion special. It is God who creates us in his image. It is God who loves us when we are unlovely. It is God who declares us to be kings and queens. It is God who thinks wonderful thoughts about us, even when we can't be bothered to think much of ourselves.
When the German prince, George II, became king of Great Britain, he had a special fondness for the music of his fellow countryman, George Frideric Handel. At the premiere concert of Handel's Messiah in 1743, the king and the crowds were deeply moved by the glory and grace of the masterpiece. When the musicians swelled the "Hallelujah" chorus, and thundered those mighty words, "And He shall reign for ever and ever!"
King George (whose English wasn't all that great) jumped to his feet, thinking they sang of him! The whole crowd followed suit -- for a different reason, of course, and a different king!
The comedy of that moment reflects our worship on this great Sunday. God in heaven claps his hands and shouts of our greatness. And in the expanding circles of God's glory, we rise, singing the "Hallelujah" chorus.
Jeremiah 23:1-6
The Bible begins with God creating a wonderful universe, which has, at its heart, a garden prepared for women and men to enjoy as home with their children. Around them the natural order shimmers in loveliness, and God comes daily as a marvelous friend, conversationalist, and partner. Quickly, however, the story tells about the intrusion of evil, and the damage that explodes around Eden. In a few short strokes, Earth becomes a battlefield in a galactic civil war, and every child is plagued by nightmares of monsters and bogymen tearing the goodness out of life.
The human race becomes homeless in its home. We are aliens in our own environment and increasingly disconnected from God. Our little shepherds march us around to our slaughter. Almost unknowingly we bleat for a greater Shepherd to come and make things right. This becomes the Word of the Lord for us through Jeremiah's prophecy.
George MacDonald helps us understand the heart-tug of these shepherding calls in his children's tale known as "Papa's Story." The children beg their father, one cold winter's night, to weave again around them the spell of storytelling as they sit by the fire.
Papa agrees and tells of a shepherd who brings his flock home late on a stormy night. One lamb is missing, however. So, after supper, the shepherd calls for Jumper the dog, and the two of them brace for the cold, wind, and rain. Out in the hills they roam, calling for the wee lamb.
Young Nellie is snug in her bed at home, says Papa, but every moaning of the breeze echoes with her father's distant voice, and every whining of the woods is a challenge from the darkness that he must fight. She is frightened, for him and for Jumper, and for the little lamb they seek.
But this is a good story, a story of courage and rescue, Papa tells the children. Suddenly father is home and Jumper too! They have found the little lamb and have returned it to safety in the fold. The tests of the night have taken their toll on father. How weary he looks, and how torn, cut, dirty, and bleeding is Jumper!
When little Nellie returns to bed, she begins to dream. She imagines that she is Jumper and the little lamb is her lost brother Willie. You see, says Papa, a year earlier young Willie left home. He wanted to get away because he needed his own space, he told his parents. Willie couldn't stand the discipline of his father and had to find his own fortune. Now Willie lives in Edinburgh and never writes. Nellie and her parents know, though, from the scuttlebutt of traders and friends that Willie has become only a shadow of himself, cruel and greedy, filthy of body and mind, constantly drunk and lost in a mad world of sex.
In Nellie's dream she is Jumper, searching through the storms of Edinburgh's wilder haunts for the little lamb with Willie's face. The dream swirls around her like a mist, calling her into its phantom darkness.
When she wakes the next morning Nellie knows what she must do. She acts on her dream and goes to Edinburgh to find her brother. Through hours of struggle and pain Nellie finally reaches him. He, of course, doesn't want to see her. Surrounded by his jeering and taunting pals, he laughs at his sister's foolish begging.
Nellie weeps at his harshness. Then she calls him by name: "Willie! Willie!" She tells him of his mother's broken heart. She gives him a letter of love, written in his father's hand. The scenes of home wash young Willie's mind, and the disease of wantonness sickens him. Before long, says Papa, Willie is led back home by his little sister.
The children enjoy Papa's nice story, as always. But there are two footnotes we need to know. First, the story Papa tells his children that night is actually the story of his own life. His name is Willie, and it was his own dear sister Nellie who, one day, years before, came looking for him in the shadowed dens of Edinburgh.
Second, George MacDonald gives the tale a subtitle. He calls it "A Scott's Christmas Story." And so it is, for the story of the Bible is not first of all a bland tale of pious peace or a study in theological ethics. Rather, it is a rescue story, always told best in the first person. God always comes looking for his sheep. Jesus declares himself to be the fulfillment of this passage when he rises up to call himself the Good Shepherd who came from home looking through the streets and alleys of earth's slums for me! For you!
Colossians 1:11-20
Dr. Leslie Weatherhead served as a chaplain with the British army in the Middle East during World War I. There, he says, he watched with fascination as a master craftsman wove colorful Persian rugs in the marketplace.
The loom was made of two poles with threads strung between them. The craftsman stood on one side of the loom, facing the crowds that gathered, and pushed his needles through to the other side.
Behind the rug his young assistants waited. When the master's needle came through, they pulled the thread tight and sent the needle back to other side. All the while, the master chatted with the crowds, making his work a performance.
What fascinated Weatherhead most was this: sometimes the young assistants pushed the needles back through in the wrong places. The errors were obvious to all in front, a blot on the fine pattern that was developing.
When he first saw this happen, Weatherhead assumed the master would scold the boys and push the needle back, undoing their mistake before continuing to weave his pattern. But he didn't. This man was more than a master craftsman; he was a genius. When the needles came through misplaced and the dark colors seemed to overtake the bright ones in the wrong places, he recreated the pattern. He transformed the dark mistakes into a more brilliant picture.
What a lovely image of the grace of our Master Craftsman, who, as Paul writes to the Colossians, has created beauty for us in spite of the dark spots in our lives. William Blake echoes these thoughts in his fine word: "Joy & Woe are woven fine/ A Clothing for the Soul divine."
When we remember that, we can rediscover the melody of our lives -- into the dark harmonies of pain and despair, real as they are, but the strong melody of grace that brings out the best in us. The Maker of the universe can make that melody the theme of our lives.
Luke 23:33-43
"Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous!" said Winston Churchill. "In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."
Politics is about power. Dale Carnegie knew that and created his popular seminars on "How to Win Friends and Influence People." In his famous treatise on politics, The Prince, Machiavelli said, "All the armed prophets conquered, all the unarmed ones perished!" In the end, it seems, what matters is your ability to create your dream not the rightness of the dream itself. Napoleon even confided in his journals that "justice means force as well as virtue." Your ideal can be noble, but you must be able to force it upon others you consider less noble than yourself.
The tragedy of politics often lies in passions, not platforms. "Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never!" says Lamartine. That's why there's an unwritten rule in many communities that when all the in-laws and out-laws get together for the annual "family rebellion" you can't talk about politics or religion. Both grab a person so deeply!
But maybe, when it comes right down to it, politics and religion are much the same thing. The kingdom of God is very political. It's a perspective on all of life. It's a way of holding things together and giving them meaning. It's a movement that's out to change the world, to reclaim lost territory in the civil war of the universe.
That is certainly true of the picture in today's gospel reading. Yes, it is about the crucifixion of Jesus, and we ought to treat it with reverence and awe. But the point, on this "Christ the King" Sunday is that Jesus was crucified precisely because his message was political. That is the point of the discussions about what should be the title affixed above him on the machine of torture and death. Is he merely another wannabe political candidate in the ever-changing world of national intrigues? Or is he sentenced to death by those who were shrewd enough to understand that he challenged their right to rule? Is Jesus king or not?
This also becomes very apparent in the way that Jesus' early followers got into trouble with the political leaders of their day. Two visions of reality collided. Two perspectives on life challenged each other. Six times over in the book of Acts, the Christian community is called "The Way." Not "The Society," or "The Institution," but "The Way"!
The church of Jesus Christ is a political movement. It's on the way to somewhere. Every worship service is a political rally; a time when we refocus our energies, study our political platform and policies, and pay homage to the Party Leader.
Application
Someone has called Christopher Columbus, the fifteenth-century explorer of North America, the "forerunner of modern government." Why? Well, "Columbus didn't know where he was going when he started; he didn't know where he was when he got there; and he did it all on borrowed money." Sound familiar?
Government is always an easy target for criticism. "Being in politics is like being a football coach," said former US Senator Eugene McCarthy. "You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important."
And it is important. No society of anarchy has ever survived its own cruelty. Somehow, somewhere, there must be a personification of law, rule, and order that holds in check the evil passions of the collective human heart and fosters a sense of purpose, direction, and well-being. In one of the most powerful scenes from Robert Bolt's recreation of the life and times of Sir Thomas More, A Man For All Seasons, young Roper views the corruptness of King Henry VIII's government and says he would cut down every law in England to overthrow him.
But More's energies are fired up, and his words come slicing out: "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the devil turned round on you -- where would you hide, Roper, the laws being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast... and if you cut them down... d'you really think you could stand in the winds that would blow?"
Today's passages would agree. The strength, the safety, the blessing of the world comes when God rules on the throne of heaven and directs life on earth. And that's no mean feat. Two little girls were once overheard in conversation while staring up at a portrait of Queen Elizabeth. "What's she doing?" asked one.
"Oh, nothing, really," replied the other. "She's just reigning."
But those who know would agree that reigning is far more than just doing nothing. As the first United Nations General Assembly concluded its sessions, Chairman Paul Henri Spaak of Belgium stood to address the body. "The agenda is exhausted," he said. "The Secretary-General is exhausted. You are exhausted. I am exhausted. At last we have reached unanimity."
God might be exhausted too, with the enormous burden of our planet. But scripture continually shows us also of God's reviving strength. It grows with the desires of his people to receive his directing rule. It increases with the delight they know in his protective care. And it expands in the ceremonies of decoration by which they affirm his right to reign.
In other words, life, health, strength, and peace begin with worship. And maybe that's not so surprising. After all, isn't worship a very political thing? It means, in its fundamental sense, the act of ascribing "worth" to some thing or someone capable of giving meaning to this madness.
On this "Christ the King" Sunday, let the "Pomp and Circumstance" marches roll!
Alternative Application
Jeremiah 23:1-6. Some years ago, Jack Glenn, pastor of a Presbyterian congregation in Mendota, Illinois, decided that the church's nativity scene needed a little repair work. The shepherd figures held staffs made of electrical conduit, bent and rebent and kinked over the years.
"Let's get real ones," he thought.
Yet no farm supply store had such a thing. Intrigued, Pastor Glenn asked around until he gained the name of a man who not only owned a large herd of sheep, but was also an expert on their care.
"Where can I get a genuine shepherd's staff?" he asked.
"Nowhere," came the reply. "You have to remember that here in the West, sheep are driven by dogs. It's only in the East that they are led by a shepherd."
Ours often seems to be a driven society. The ideals of the French Revolution have permeated our culture: Life! Liberty! Land! We North Americans have turned the last into a steady pleasure trip by translating it this way: the pursuit of happiness. All too often we're scrambling after more and better and bigger thrills.
One picture from the French Revolution, with its mob mania, perhaps best typifies the whole enterprise of Western life. A wild-eyed man comes charging up to a citizen pausing on a Paris street corner.
"Where's the crowd?" he cries. "Tell me, quick! Which way have they gone? I must follow them. I'm their leader."
Driven by madness! Driven by the dogs! The dogs of desire, the dogs of fame and fortune, the dogs of war... it's a dog-eat-dog world.
Maybe it's time to return to the East. Not the East of mysticism and transcendental meditation, helpful as they might be, but rather the One who grew up in the East, the One called "the good shepherd" (John 10:1-18), "the great Shepherd" (Hebrews 13:20-21), and "the Chief Shepherd" (1 Peter 5:4). Maybe it's time to stop being driven and be led again in the simplicity of devotion. Maybe it's time to stop with Jeremiah on the hillsides of Judea and sing the song of the Shepherd.
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Luke 1:68-79
Forgiveness. It is one of the truly unique qualities of our faith. The idea that all sins are forgiven through God's action in Christ was and remains a radical idea in our world. Moreover, the idea that forgiveness is the model for human behavior and community remains beyond the comprehension of nearly everyone. Forgiveness is not the first impulse most people feel. Usually, revenge and responding in kind are the ways in which things get handled in our world. From burgeoning prison populations to far flung and continuous warfare our impulse is to hit back and exact our pound of flesh. Yet at the core of Christian faith is this notion that Christ died for our sins. At the very heart of who we are as Christian community is this idea that we are redeemed; forgiven by God's self-giving act in Jesus Christ. This is one of the astounding reasons why our faith, when we actually practice it, is essentially countercultural.
All this calls forth a serious question for church communities today. How real is the practice of forgiveness in our church communities? When the pastor makes a mistake is there forgiveness? When someone messes up badly are they shunned? Or are they embraced? How do we deal with issues of behavior and morality in our churches? Do we judge and punish? Do we cast people into the outer darkness? Or do we practice a loving accountability laced with forgiveness?
This may seem harsh, but it's probably safe to suggest that the authentic practice of forgiveness is rare in our churches. It is likely that our churches are rather more like the culture in which they exist than they are like God's kingdom. Rather than being the community where people practice faith and strive to live lives of forgiving grace, our churches are often places where people consume religion. In other words, people come "shopping" for a church, and when they find the one they like, they settle in to consume good sermons and programs. But seldom do they come to have their lives transformed by God's forgiving grace. No. Change is not what folks seek when they come to church.
So therein is the challenge. The work before us is the work of change and transformation; the job of changing our church communities into laboratories for God's forgiveness. For as the prophecy of Zechariah says, our salvation if found through forgiveness.
What a part God has to play in the drama of time and space! Says Joan of Arc in the first installment of Shakespeare's King Henry VI: "Glory is like a circle in the water, which never ceaseth to enlarge itself" (I.ii). For human rulers, she pointed out, that was disastrous. Eventually the reach would exceed the substance. But not so for God! Each successive wave grows more majestic. Every element of creation, from the star-spangled skies to the thumb-sucking baby, stands and shouts at God's entrance.
Unfortunately, because so few people see God today, praise of the divine royalty has died on our lips. Jeremiah reminds us that God, in divine power, has to step into our world as the Good Shepherd who brings the sheep back into the fold when all of the political resources of our times are tearing us apart like wolves. Paul points out that the great unseen king becomes visible in Jesus. And our gospel reading is Jesus' horrible crucifixion scene, where petty panderings about the title to post are really echoes of larger realities: What do you do with a king you don't want?
In other words, our ability to see God is quite directly related to our understanding of ourselves. Those who carelessly toss aside human life will never worship God as they stuff blackberries into their mouths. John Calvin started his magnificent survey of the Christian faith, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, by reflecting that our knowledge of ourselves and our knowledge of God are so intertwined that the one has little power to grow without the other.
C.S. Lewis thought of that. He wondered why humans, who have so much to live for here, might ever be enticed to long for "heaven" or "eternal life." Often religion turns worship of God into a duty that exacts a tax of begrudging acknowledgment from us. We have to go to church. We must be good. We are obligated to pray.
But such feelings arise from the pagan notion that we can somehow increase the majesty of our tribal god in the clash of worldly power plays. Rather, says Lewis, echoing David, it is God's amazing thoughts about us that make biblical religion special. It is God who creates us in his image. It is God who loves us when we are unlovely. It is God who declares us to be kings and queens. It is God who thinks wonderful thoughts about us, even when we can't be bothered to think much of ourselves.
When the German prince, George II, became king of Great Britain, he had a special fondness for the music of his fellow countryman, George Frideric Handel. At the premiere concert of Handel's Messiah in 1743, the king and the crowds were deeply moved by the glory and grace of the masterpiece. When the musicians swelled the "Hallelujah" chorus, and thundered those mighty words, "And He shall reign for ever and ever!"
King George (whose English wasn't all that great) jumped to his feet, thinking they sang of him! The whole crowd followed suit -- for a different reason, of course, and a different king!
The comedy of that moment reflects our worship on this great Sunday. God in heaven claps his hands and shouts of our greatness. And in the expanding circles of God's glory, we rise, singing the "Hallelujah" chorus.
Jeremiah 23:1-6
The Bible begins with God creating a wonderful universe, which has, at its heart, a garden prepared for women and men to enjoy as home with their children. Around them the natural order shimmers in loveliness, and God comes daily as a marvelous friend, conversationalist, and partner. Quickly, however, the story tells about the intrusion of evil, and the damage that explodes around Eden. In a few short strokes, Earth becomes a battlefield in a galactic civil war, and every child is plagued by nightmares of monsters and bogymen tearing the goodness out of life.
The human race becomes homeless in its home. We are aliens in our own environment and increasingly disconnected from God. Our little shepherds march us around to our slaughter. Almost unknowingly we bleat for a greater Shepherd to come and make things right. This becomes the Word of the Lord for us through Jeremiah's prophecy.
George MacDonald helps us understand the heart-tug of these shepherding calls in his children's tale known as "Papa's Story." The children beg their father, one cold winter's night, to weave again around them the spell of storytelling as they sit by the fire.
Papa agrees and tells of a shepherd who brings his flock home late on a stormy night. One lamb is missing, however. So, after supper, the shepherd calls for Jumper the dog, and the two of them brace for the cold, wind, and rain. Out in the hills they roam, calling for the wee lamb.
Young Nellie is snug in her bed at home, says Papa, but every moaning of the breeze echoes with her father's distant voice, and every whining of the woods is a challenge from the darkness that he must fight. She is frightened, for him and for Jumper, and for the little lamb they seek.
But this is a good story, a story of courage and rescue, Papa tells the children. Suddenly father is home and Jumper too! They have found the little lamb and have returned it to safety in the fold. The tests of the night have taken their toll on father. How weary he looks, and how torn, cut, dirty, and bleeding is Jumper!
When little Nellie returns to bed, she begins to dream. She imagines that she is Jumper and the little lamb is her lost brother Willie. You see, says Papa, a year earlier young Willie left home. He wanted to get away because he needed his own space, he told his parents. Willie couldn't stand the discipline of his father and had to find his own fortune. Now Willie lives in Edinburgh and never writes. Nellie and her parents know, though, from the scuttlebutt of traders and friends that Willie has become only a shadow of himself, cruel and greedy, filthy of body and mind, constantly drunk and lost in a mad world of sex.
In Nellie's dream she is Jumper, searching through the storms of Edinburgh's wilder haunts for the little lamb with Willie's face. The dream swirls around her like a mist, calling her into its phantom darkness.
When she wakes the next morning Nellie knows what she must do. She acts on her dream and goes to Edinburgh to find her brother. Through hours of struggle and pain Nellie finally reaches him. He, of course, doesn't want to see her. Surrounded by his jeering and taunting pals, he laughs at his sister's foolish begging.
Nellie weeps at his harshness. Then she calls him by name: "Willie! Willie!" She tells him of his mother's broken heart. She gives him a letter of love, written in his father's hand. The scenes of home wash young Willie's mind, and the disease of wantonness sickens him. Before long, says Papa, Willie is led back home by his little sister.
The children enjoy Papa's nice story, as always. But there are two footnotes we need to know. First, the story Papa tells his children that night is actually the story of his own life. His name is Willie, and it was his own dear sister Nellie who, one day, years before, came looking for him in the shadowed dens of Edinburgh.
Second, George MacDonald gives the tale a subtitle. He calls it "A Scott's Christmas Story." And so it is, for the story of the Bible is not first of all a bland tale of pious peace or a study in theological ethics. Rather, it is a rescue story, always told best in the first person. God always comes looking for his sheep. Jesus declares himself to be the fulfillment of this passage when he rises up to call himself the Good Shepherd who came from home looking through the streets and alleys of earth's slums for me! For you!
Colossians 1:11-20
Dr. Leslie Weatherhead served as a chaplain with the British army in the Middle East during World War I. There, he says, he watched with fascination as a master craftsman wove colorful Persian rugs in the marketplace.
The loom was made of two poles with threads strung between them. The craftsman stood on one side of the loom, facing the crowds that gathered, and pushed his needles through to the other side.
Behind the rug his young assistants waited. When the master's needle came through, they pulled the thread tight and sent the needle back to other side. All the while, the master chatted with the crowds, making his work a performance.
What fascinated Weatherhead most was this: sometimes the young assistants pushed the needles back through in the wrong places. The errors were obvious to all in front, a blot on the fine pattern that was developing.
When he first saw this happen, Weatherhead assumed the master would scold the boys and push the needle back, undoing their mistake before continuing to weave his pattern. But he didn't. This man was more than a master craftsman; he was a genius. When the needles came through misplaced and the dark colors seemed to overtake the bright ones in the wrong places, he recreated the pattern. He transformed the dark mistakes into a more brilliant picture.
What a lovely image of the grace of our Master Craftsman, who, as Paul writes to the Colossians, has created beauty for us in spite of the dark spots in our lives. William Blake echoes these thoughts in his fine word: "Joy & Woe are woven fine/ A Clothing for the Soul divine."
When we remember that, we can rediscover the melody of our lives -- into the dark harmonies of pain and despair, real as they are, but the strong melody of grace that brings out the best in us. The Maker of the universe can make that melody the theme of our lives.
Luke 23:33-43
"Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous!" said Winston Churchill. "In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."
Politics is about power. Dale Carnegie knew that and created his popular seminars on "How to Win Friends and Influence People." In his famous treatise on politics, The Prince, Machiavelli said, "All the armed prophets conquered, all the unarmed ones perished!" In the end, it seems, what matters is your ability to create your dream not the rightness of the dream itself. Napoleon even confided in his journals that "justice means force as well as virtue." Your ideal can be noble, but you must be able to force it upon others you consider less noble than yourself.
The tragedy of politics often lies in passions, not platforms. "Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never!" says Lamartine. That's why there's an unwritten rule in many communities that when all the in-laws and out-laws get together for the annual "family rebellion" you can't talk about politics or religion. Both grab a person so deeply!
But maybe, when it comes right down to it, politics and religion are much the same thing. The kingdom of God is very political. It's a perspective on all of life. It's a way of holding things together and giving them meaning. It's a movement that's out to change the world, to reclaim lost territory in the civil war of the universe.
That is certainly true of the picture in today's gospel reading. Yes, it is about the crucifixion of Jesus, and we ought to treat it with reverence and awe. But the point, on this "Christ the King" Sunday is that Jesus was crucified precisely because his message was political. That is the point of the discussions about what should be the title affixed above him on the machine of torture and death. Is he merely another wannabe political candidate in the ever-changing world of national intrigues? Or is he sentenced to death by those who were shrewd enough to understand that he challenged their right to rule? Is Jesus king or not?
This also becomes very apparent in the way that Jesus' early followers got into trouble with the political leaders of their day. Two visions of reality collided. Two perspectives on life challenged each other. Six times over in the book of Acts, the Christian community is called "The Way." Not "The Society," or "The Institution," but "The Way"!
The church of Jesus Christ is a political movement. It's on the way to somewhere. Every worship service is a political rally; a time when we refocus our energies, study our political platform and policies, and pay homage to the Party Leader.
Application
Someone has called Christopher Columbus, the fifteenth-century explorer of North America, the "forerunner of modern government." Why? Well, "Columbus didn't know where he was going when he started; he didn't know where he was when he got there; and he did it all on borrowed money." Sound familiar?
Government is always an easy target for criticism. "Being in politics is like being a football coach," said former US Senator Eugene McCarthy. "You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important."
And it is important. No society of anarchy has ever survived its own cruelty. Somehow, somewhere, there must be a personification of law, rule, and order that holds in check the evil passions of the collective human heart and fosters a sense of purpose, direction, and well-being. In one of the most powerful scenes from Robert Bolt's recreation of the life and times of Sir Thomas More, A Man For All Seasons, young Roper views the corruptness of King Henry VIII's government and says he would cut down every law in England to overthrow him.
But More's energies are fired up, and his words come slicing out: "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the devil turned round on you -- where would you hide, Roper, the laws being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast... and if you cut them down... d'you really think you could stand in the winds that would blow?"
Today's passages would agree. The strength, the safety, the blessing of the world comes when God rules on the throne of heaven and directs life on earth. And that's no mean feat. Two little girls were once overheard in conversation while staring up at a portrait of Queen Elizabeth. "What's she doing?" asked one.
"Oh, nothing, really," replied the other. "She's just reigning."
But those who know would agree that reigning is far more than just doing nothing. As the first United Nations General Assembly concluded its sessions, Chairman Paul Henri Spaak of Belgium stood to address the body. "The agenda is exhausted," he said. "The Secretary-General is exhausted. You are exhausted. I am exhausted. At last we have reached unanimity."
God might be exhausted too, with the enormous burden of our planet. But scripture continually shows us also of God's reviving strength. It grows with the desires of his people to receive his directing rule. It increases with the delight they know in his protective care. And it expands in the ceremonies of decoration by which they affirm his right to reign.
In other words, life, health, strength, and peace begin with worship. And maybe that's not so surprising. After all, isn't worship a very political thing? It means, in its fundamental sense, the act of ascribing "worth" to some thing or someone capable of giving meaning to this madness.
On this "Christ the King" Sunday, let the "Pomp and Circumstance" marches roll!
Alternative Application
Jeremiah 23:1-6. Some years ago, Jack Glenn, pastor of a Presbyterian congregation in Mendota, Illinois, decided that the church's nativity scene needed a little repair work. The shepherd figures held staffs made of electrical conduit, bent and rebent and kinked over the years.
"Let's get real ones," he thought.
Yet no farm supply store had such a thing. Intrigued, Pastor Glenn asked around until he gained the name of a man who not only owned a large herd of sheep, but was also an expert on their care.
"Where can I get a genuine shepherd's staff?" he asked.
"Nowhere," came the reply. "You have to remember that here in the West, sheep are driven by dogs. It's only in the East that they are led by a shepherd."
Ours often seems to be a driven society. The ideals of the French Revolution have permeated our culture: Life! Liberty! Land! We North Americans have turned the last into a steady pleasure trip by translating it this way: the pursuit of happiness. All too often we're scrambling after more and better and bigger thrills.
One picture from the French Revolution, with its mob mania, perhaps best typifies the whole enterprise of Western life. A wild-eyed man comes charging up to a citizen pausing on a Paris street corner.
"Where's the crowd?" he cries. "Tell me, quick! Which way have they gone? I must follow them. I'm their leader."
Driven by madness! Driven by the dogs! The dogs of desire, the dogs of fame and fortune, the dogs of war... it's a dog-eat-dog world.
Maybe it's time to return to the East. Not the East of mysticism and transcendental meditation, helpful as they might be, but rather the One who grew up in the East, the One called "the good shepherd" (John 10:1-18), "the great Shepherd" (Hebrews 13:20-21), and "the Chief Shepherd" (1 Peter 5:4). Maybe it's time to stop being driven and be led again in the simplicity of devotion. Maybe it's time to stop with Jeremiah on the hillsides of Judea and sing the song of the Shepherd.
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Luke 1:68-79
Forgiveness. It is one of the truly unique qualities of our faith. The idea that all sins are forgiven through God's action in Christ was and remains a radical idea in our world. Moreover, the idea that forgiveness is the model for human behavior and community remains beyond the comprehension of nearly everyone. Forgiveness is not the first impulse most people feel. Usually, revenge and responding in kind are the ways in which things get handled in our world. From burgeoning prison populations to far flung and continuous warfare our impulse is to hit back and exact our pound of flesh. Yet at the core of Christian faith is this notion that Christ died for our sins. At the very heart of who we are as Christian community is this idea that we are redeemed; forgiven by God's self-giving act in Jesus Christ. This is one of the astounding reasons why our faith, when we actually practice it, is essentially countercultural.
All this calls forth a serious question for church communities today. How real is the practice of forgiveness in our church communities? When the pastor makes a mistake is there forgiveness? When someone messes up badly are they shunned? Or are they embraced? How do we deal with issues of behavior and morality in our churches? Do we judge and punish? Do we cast people into the outer darkness? Or do we practice a loving accountability laced with forgiveness?
This may seem harsh, but it's probably safe to suggest that the authentic practice of forgiveness is rare in our churches. It is likely that our churches are rather more like the culture in which they exist than they are like God's kingdom. Rather than being the community where people practice faith and strive to live lives of forgiving grace, our churches are often places where people consume religion. In other words, people come "shopping" for a church, and when they find the one they like, they settle in to consume good sermons and programs. But seldom do they come to have their lives transformed by God's forgiving grace. No. Change is not what folks seek when they come to church.
So therein is the challenge. The work before us is the work of change and transformation; the job of changing our church communities into laboratories for God's forgiveness. For as the prophecy of Zechariah says, our salvation if found through forgiveness.
