Jesus Rules

Jeremiah 23:1-6   Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord. Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord. The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Luke 23:33-43      When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

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There was a time in my life when I declared myself sovereign ruler of my home, and the kitchen was my throne room.  It was a wide open room in the back of the house, from where I could survey my domain.  I had a clear view of who entered or exited the front or back door.  I could see anyone coming up or down the stairs.  I could stand at my counter chopping vegetables or peeling apples and maintain command over the household.  I called it mission control.  I called out orders as I kneaded dough.  I answered questions while I flipped cookies onto the cooling racks.  And you can be certain, nobody was getting any forbidden snacks, or failing to clean up their messes, while I was in my place. 

For a time, when they were small enough, I actually extended my kingdom to anywhere I happened to be with my children.  They were, the four of them, essentially, my realm.  One day I was walking with my children, carrying Henry and schlepping bags, Joe running ahead of me as he always did.  I never took my eye off him, though, and when he reached the end of the sidewalk, about to step into the street, I called out in an authoritative voice, “STOP.”  He stopped on a dime.  A stranger who observed this whistled appreciatively and said, “Great verbal control.”  I simply nodded at his recognition of my power.  Of course.  I am the ruler of this realm. 

In those days and those places, I was sovereign.  My will and my desires determined what would happen and what would not happen.  Those were the days, my friends.  It is good to be king.

We don’t have kings, of course, in our nation.  That’s what the United States is all about – our desire to distance ourselves from monarchies.  We have democratically elected leaders and systems of checks and balances, and that sort of thing, because we worry about power in the hands of any particular individual.  Absolute power is a dangerous thing in the hands of men and women.

The people of Israel experienced this over and over again.  God never wanted to give them a king in the first place, because they should have known God is the only king they would ever need.  But they had a serious case of keeping up with the Joneses.  Israel looked around and said, everyone in the neighborhood has a king; we want one too.  And finally, they got their way.

This is where that old saying, “Be careful what you wish for,” seems apt.  For hundreds of years, between the occasional benevolent monarch, they were beset with cruel, careless, and malevolent leaders.  The problem with absolute power was absolutely clear.  But the only ones speaking up about it were the prophets, including Jeremiah, calling out those shepherds who destroy the flock.  A shepherd who destroys the flock!  Shameful, isn’t it?  To allow the destruction of those you have been entrusted with care of; to abandon the least powerful and most vulnerable of the flock for the sake of your own gain.  These are, as the Lord says, evil doings.

No one but the prophets were speaking out about it, because no one really wanted to put themselves at risk by challenging the ultimate authority in the land.  Most will choose to rally around the ruler because it is the safer thing to do, thereby making it many times worse for the one who would protest.  Not only will they have the wrath of the king but they will have the wrath of the whole kingdom coming down on them for the crime of disturbing the peace.

And when Jesus challenged the authorities of his day, this is what happened.  It did not matter that he made no claims to be king of Israel.  It did not matter that he voiced no intentions of revolting against kings or emperors.  It did not matter that he broke no laws of the empire.  It only mattered that he questioned the conventional wisdom.  He shone a light on the cracks where evil seeped in.  He peeled away the veneer of law and order, showing the corruption that lay beneath.  This just would not be tolerated because we all, every one of us, wants to believe that the system is ok, that the benefits we carve out from it, however small they might be, are safe.  My tax cuts, my job, my cheap goods are safe.

So it wasn’t just the empire that could not tolerate someone like Jesus.  The Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Chief Priests, who had all carved out their little realms of power could not tolerate Jesus.  The people who just lived day to day, hand to mouth, a breath away from homelessness, who had carved out their tiny realms of what little they had, who heard the authorities warn he was a threat to their safety – they could not tolerate Jesus.  Jesus had to be cast as a criminal, an enemy of the state. 

So they mocked him as king, oblivious to the truth of what they were saying.  They hung him on the cross, alongside two other men who had been charged and convicted in their courts.  And one of these men turned to Jesus and said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Remember me when you come into your kingdom.  This one hanging alongside him recognized him for who he was.  He saw in him what so many others could not see, the kingdom of God.  And this man wanted to be a part of this kingdom. 

Perhaps the only reason this man could speak this way was because he had nothing left to lose.  

The truth is that for most of us it is a hard thing to proclaim Jesus’ kingdom because so much of what we value stands as a barrier to it.  The truth is that we may not want to recognize the kingdom of Jesus because it bids us come and die along with him.  The truth is that if we live in fear we won’t be able to see that his kingdom is not just pie in the sky in the sweet by and by, but is also here and now.  The kingdom is in our midst. 

The kingdom of Jesus is here as well as there.  It is now as well as then.  The kingdom of God is present to all who can see it and live into it, and living into it means dying to all that resists it.

Christ is the king of both heaven and earth, of here and now and always, of this realm and the realm of eternity.  He is the one who would be called, in the words of Jeremiah, The Lord Is Our Righteousness.  And we cannot make light of this kingship.  It does not serve us or this world well if we try to reduce his realm in time and place to one hour on a Sunday morning, one room in one building. 

It does not do to reduce his rule to the lord who puts Band-Aids on my wounds, the lord who is my cheerleader, I shall not lack self-confidence.  It does not do to pit him against others because he is my Jesus.  It does not do to claim him as the lord of my needs while ignoring the needs of the refugee, the slave, the hungry, and the homeless. 

If Christ is our king, we will stand with those whom he stands beside, however much the powers of this world despise them.  We will stand with whom he stands with, however different they might seem from us.  We are being called to do this even now.

There has been a new level of hate unleashed in our land.  We are seeing this hate expressed against those who live on the margins of our society – immigrants, or those who simply look like immigrants; racial and ethnic and religious minorities. We must resist this, if we believe in the kingship of Jesus.  We must work for justice if we are citizens of the kingdom of Jesus.

Jesus rules in this world wherever there are people who choose his reign over the reign of might makes right.  Jesus rules in this world wherever there are people who choose to stand where he stands – with the outcasts of this world, the least, the last, and the lost.

Whenever someone stands with the person who is being taunted or bullied.  Whenever someone gives up a privilege so that another might have their basic human dignity.  Whenever someone calls out the authorities who are neglecting their responsibility as the shepherd to all the sheep. 

Jesus rules in this world when he rules in our hearts.  And when he rules in our hearts, the world will know it, my friends.  The world will know it.