Sermon for November 22nd

Can I let you in on a little bit of irony? Today is Christ the king Sunday and yet most of us have no idea what a king really is. We don’t know what a king does? We don’t know what makes a king a king! And yet we say that Christ is our king even though we don’t have the foggiest concept about what having a king means for us or what being a king meant for Jesus.

Here are some things a king is not. A king is not a president for he is not democratically elected. You don’t get to choose a king. A king is chosen for you from the moment you and he are born. If you don’t like your king, tough luck, you can’t recall him, you don’t get a vote, because a king is a king for as long as he lives.

God chose the Israelites first king, Saul, not because God thought it was a great idea, but because the Israelites demanded that they have a king. Like any good father, sometimes giving your children exactly what they want is the best form of punishment. Up to that time, the Israelites were unique because they had no King. God was their King. And even though God explained that a king would reign over them, put their children in the army, demand shares of their best crops as a tax and take away their slaves, the Israelites still wanted a king. God even explained that when they became unhappy with their king, He wouldn’t do anything about it. But still, the Israelites wanted a king, so that’s what they got.

There were a couple of kings in Jewish history, like David and Solomon, who, despite their many sins were, for the most part, able to follow in the footsteps of God. They were good kings. But most of the Israelite kings were really, really, really bad. You see, being a King doesn’t mean you are a good person, or that you are the smartest, or that you are the strongest or that you are the most faithful to God. Being a king was either something you were born into or a position that was chosen for you by God. What does it mean, to call Jesus your King? That’s what I hope that you find out this morning.

Jesus was descended from king David as the gospel of Matthew points out, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” But while having royal blood was important for Jesus, it was his second qualification that made him the greatest king of all. The gospel of Mark points this out, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Remember that before God chose Saul as the Israelite’s first King, God was their only king. Now, in Jesus Christ, Israel once again had God as their king as well as a king from the royal line of David. Jesus was the perfect king.

But what does it mean for us to have a king? This is so difficult for us to understand since we have all grown up in a Democracy. It’s hard to imagine. But let me try to give you a taste of what having a king would be like. When a king made his decision there was no further debate. You didn’t get a vote. When a king determined a course of action, it was done. The policies of a king affect the entire kingdom: no if’s, and’s or but’s. If you disagreed with a king, you either kept quiet or you risked the king’s wrath. And the king could do anything he’d like to do to you, whether it was justly deserved or not, and his decision could not be appealed. The king received the best of the best: the best food, the best land, and the best living conditions of anyone in the kingdom. And the king didn’t work for any of it, he just deserved it.

That meant that if you had a king you were at the king’s beck and call. You did what the king told you to do. You gave the king the best of your children to fight in the army or to work in the castle and you gave the king the fruits of your labors, whatever they might be. If the king was benevolent, merciful and gracious, you might be happy. If the king was evil and malevolent, you might be sad, but whatever the case, the king was the king and you were not. That was your lot in life. There was no loyal opposition party. There were no anti-war demonstrations. There didn’t need to be any “transparency” in this type of government, it could be corrupt or not because it was none of your business if you were not the king. You did not simply respect the king: you worshipped your king.

Today is Christ the king Sunday. What does it mean to call Jesus your king? It means that you are loyal to no one else but to Jesus. It means that you worship only Jesus. To call Jesus your king means that you are at his beck and call. To call Jesus your king means that when he gives you a command, you are expected to follow it. To call Jesus your king means that he deserves your best and that the fruits of your labors belong to Him. To call Jesus your king is to admit what Jesus puts so plainly in the gospel of John, “You did not choose me, I chose you.” To call Jesus your king is something that is true for as long as you live and as long as He lives.

If any of us really knew what calling Christ our king meant, for our lives, we would have probably all run the other way as fast as we could. We are progressive people! We live in a democracy for goodness sake! It’s the 21st century! We want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the decision is not yours to make: God, your creator has made Jesus your king. I’m just letting you know what that means for you.

In the book of Revelation, we read that Jesus is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. He is truly the king of kings and lord of lords. But a few chapters later, we see this king of kings for what he truly is, “Then I saw . . . a lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.” King Jesus’ is not known by His glory, but by His suffering. He is called the Lion of Judah, a name reflecting power and majesty, but he comes as the weakest of animals, a lamb, but not only that, a lamb who looks as if it had been slaughtered. Jesus shows his glory in a much different way than a normal king would; not through power, but through suffering.

Your king is weak. Your king is foolish. Your king suffers. Your king died on a cross. Paul explains why in his first letter to the Corinthians, “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” God undermines the greatest, the wisest and the strongest by dying a weak, suffering fool on a cross and then doing what the greatest, the wisest and the strongest king could never do: be raised from the dead. Many Americans were upset recently when President Obama, on a trip to Asia, bowed respectfully to a foreign diplomat. Because the President of the United States shouldn’t bow! It’s a sign of submission! Now, imagine if your king—your king!—allowed himself to be beaten, spit upon and got crucified without defending himself or even fighting back. Would you have been inspired by Jesus Christ as your king?

Pilate asked Jesus, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Jesus was born a king, with all the special rights and authority that comes with that title, but he shows his power by simply speaking the truth. Jesus was killed for speaking the truth: that he had come to save the world from sin and that he had the authority to forgive sinners. He was killed NOT because people were threatened by his royal blood, but because he spoke the truth to their faces and then offered them forgiveness. The lion of Judah might have been accepted, but the Lamb of God was slain. What does it mean to call Jesus your king? What does it mean to live under him in his kingdom? It means to listen to the truth.

Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” It is the very same question we are asking ourselves still today, isn’t it? “What is truth?” And the question doesn’t simply pertain to the few hot topics that have caused the church so much grief lately, it is a question that has stretched across cultures, times, continents and generations. “What is truth?” Is there only one truth or can each person make it up as they go along? Do you want to know what the truth is? Listen to the words of Jesus Christ, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” If you are looking for truth, look for Jesus who is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow. There will always be new controversies. That is why, throughout them all, as Christians we are called to trust in God’s Word to lead us into the truth.

What does it mean to call Jesus your king? To follow his voice. To be loyal to His words. To trust in a king whose truth will NEVER be up for a vote. You did not choose him, he chose you. Jesus is your king. He is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth, the Lamb who was slain to forgive your sins. No, you didn’t get a vote in all this, but would you really want one? Jesus has chosen you to live in his kingdom and that, my friends, is the truth. You may trust in God. You may trust in HIS truth. Amen.

Sermon for April 1st

“Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” Jesus asks his disciples, Should I say, “Father, save me from this hour?” No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out!” Jesus is about to perform an exorcism of immense proportions and it will happen on the cross. Death will swallow up God’s Son Jesus one time on the cross, and then God will swallow up death forever by resurrecting Jesus from the dead. In the last petition of the Lord’s prayer, we pray that we will remember that the cross has the final say in our lives despite all the hours when we are tempted to believe the opposite.

Let me read for you from Martin Luther’s Small Catechism concerning the Lord’s Prayer, “Save us from the time of trial.” What does this mean? “God tempts no one to sin, but we ask that God would watch over us and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful self may not deceive us and draw us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins. And we pray that even though we are so tempted we may still win the final victory.”

The gospel of John explains that the devil is a liar and the father of lies and that when he lies he acts according to his nature. We live in a world of darkness that is full of flashing neon lights, 60 inch Plasma TV screens and advertisements saying that the future is bright. But it is still a world of darkness. We live in a world of sin where all the news stories, psychologists and experts tell us that we are just getting better and better, more informed, more tolerant and more civilized. But it is still a world of sin. How appropriate that today is April fools day, because our lives as Christians is full of trying to decipher what is real and what is not, what is darkness and what is light, what is true and what is a lie.

Jesus was criticized again and again for what others saw as inconsistencies between who he said he was and what was happening to him. Between what Jesus said he was doing and what people saw that he did. For instance, he was called the “King of the Jews”, but his own people shouted “Crucify him!” People shouted, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross! Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” The Messiah was supposed to be strong enough to defeat his enemies, not be crucified by them. How could Jesus save others when he was about to die.

The Devil, the world and even our sinful selves would have us also believe this lie. Despite God’s promises, we wonder how God could really be in charge when our best friends, spouses and heroes die of cancer. We wonder how God could really be listening when sometimes things happen to us that go directly against what we have prayed for. We wonder how Jesus could possibly mean that no one comes to the Father except through him, when there are so many different religions, so many other faiths and so many people who don’t believe anything at all.

In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray for God to be holy for us. We pray for faith. We pray for things. We pray for forgiveness. And now, we pray for salvation. In his Heidelberg Disputation, Martin Luther wrote this, “A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.” We pray in the Lord’s Prayer that God would give us eyes to see the truth, ears to hear it and a heart to believe it.

What is a temptation, truly? It is a lie that we are encouraged to believe. At eleven o’clock at night, we begin to believe that ice cream will make us feel better after a hard day at the office when, in fact, it will probably only make us feel worse the next day that we step on the scale. When your marriage is in trouble, you begin to believe that the woman sitting next to you at the office cares more about your life than your wife sitting at home. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, they believed that they would be better creators than God who had created them. We pray that God would help us to call a spade a spade. To realize when the truth is set before us and when a lie is simply dressed in sheep’s clothing.

Finally, we pray that God saves us from believing the biggest lie of all, that death will have the last word. You see, when Jesus cast the Devil, the ruler of this world, out of the world, and promised you eternal life, the final word was spoken to you. “You will live with me forever,” Jesus said. But, throughout your life, everything except for Jesus, will tell you differently. The books you read will try to fool you into believing that all there is to this life is the pursuit of fame, honor or happiness. The movies you watch will try to make you believe that any idea of the afterlife is simply fantasy. When you watch a loved one die, you will find it almost impossible to believe that you haven’t lost them forever.

The Lord’s prayer is finally a prayer for trust. To trust that God will be God for us, that he will give us faith to trust him, that he will give us everything we need for this life, that he will not let our sins get in the way of his mercy and that he will be faithful to everything he has promised. For he has not only commanded us to pray in this way, but he has promised to hear us and THAT is a pretty special gift from the creator of heaven and earth.

So, we pray, that God keeps his promises. That God would save us, both our bodies and our souls, from death. We pray that despite all the lies we live with and believe in every day, that God might always remind us of the truth and that he would help us live in the light of that truth. Every day is April fools day for the devil who tries to tempt you to believe that he is still in charge of this world and what goes on within it. But more than two-thousand years ago Jesus died on the cross and in that moment, at that very hour, the Devil was driven out and you were brought into the love and grace of God forever. Amen.