Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first born of the dead, and the ruler of the Kings of the earth.
This week I was watching the BBC world news and they featured the Queen, Elizabeth the 2nd opening parliament. She arrived in his splendid carriage that glitters with gilded paint and she wore her crown, the crown that normally sets encased in bulletproof glass in the Tower of London. She looked every inch the Monarch that she is and addressed the assembled parliament on the grave issues that confronts the Kingdom of England. She was impressive.
In our lesson from Revelation, we see a similar scene. This opening chapter St. John’s Revelation is set in the throneroom of heaven. God is surrounded by the seven spirits who many have suggested represent angelic rulers – perhaps incarnations of the principalities, powers and authorities that St. Paul talks about in his letters. Most of the introduction is devoted to Christ and extolling Christ for what he has done by “freeing” us from our sins by his blood. What remains, of the lesson is an announcement about Jesus’ eminent return. Today we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, and while we do not have monarchs anymore, most among us are still moved and affected by the pomp and circumstance that surrounds ruler.
When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, President Jimmy Carter stopped in Liberia for a state visit. His mother had been one of the original Peace Corps volunteers in India, so he had a special heart for our institution. Several of us were selected to meet him, attend a reception in his honor and shake his hand. I thought that I wasn’t a person to be impressed easily, but it was an impressive event and one of the most memorable of my life. He was the most powerful man in the world. I felt small, insignificant and inconsequential in comparison.
In Revelation all honor, glory, power and dominion goes to Christ. Notice how he is described.
He is a - the faithful witness.
In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the world witness is martyr. We think of a martyr as someone who gives everything, even gives up her or his life to a greater truth and a greater purpose. Jesus is the ultimate faithful witness who gives up his life for ours by taking our sins into his own body on the tree of death to bring in the new age of eternal life. He exchanges his life for our death.
He is b - the firstborn of the dead.
As a human being, Jesus who is God and Human Being, is the first person to enter into the resurrected eternal life which God had planned for us from the beginning of time. Jesus looks back at death not ahead to it. He is eternal. He will never die again. He is also God’s first-born eternal human. Preeminent in all things, He is evidence of the future God has for us all.
He is c – the ruler of the Kings of the Earth
This title of Jesus is hard to understand and harder still to see. Dictators, tyrants, autocrats and despotic theocrats rule in vast parts of the earth and they suppress dissent and put jackboots on the necks of all those who speak for the truth. How can Jesus be the ruler of the Kings of the earth?
The answer resides in Jesus’ role as he who is the embodiment of truth. Slavery existed at the time of Jesus and from long before. In Jesus’ day about 1/3 of all people were held as slaves against their will. Yet, Jesus’ words about love and justice, kindness and compassion served as a critique of the ideologies of despots whose rule was based on raw power.
Over time, the words of Jesus gnawed away at the logic of privilege based on wealth, power, race or ethnicity. Gradually, philosophers influenced by Jesus’ principles of radical equality and the radical, universal love of God for all people, led to new political philosophies and political systems. Democracy, many historians claim, is the direct by product of Luther’s understanding of Christian freedom and the Christians right to interpret scripture on its basis and merit alone.
In Jesus’ time, 95% of the people lived in grinding poverty, while a mere handful, a ruling class lived in luxury. Today, thanks to the ideas that are derived from the TRUTH Jesus taught, only a third of the earth’s people live in poverty.
In Jesus’ time, gladiators, who were enslaved captured soldiers, fought each other to the death for the amusement of the powerful. After World War II, the UN adapted a set of statements called the Universal Right of Humankind. Those rights are derived from the essential truth that Jesus taught that we are all God’s children. Jesus taught that each living person has the same right to life, liberty and freedom from desperate want. Now, Michael Vick spent time in prison for violating laws that ensure that even animals cannot be treated cruelly for the amusement of spectators. Things have really changed in the last 2000 years because of the truth Jesus brought and taught.
Today’s lesson from Revelation also talks about us. We belong to Christ, We are a part of his Kingdom. He reigns. He rules. Moreover, it is a Holy Kingdom and St. John says something interesting, even puzzling in verse 6 “we are priests serving his God and Father”. What does that mean?
A priest speaks for God. A priest speaks to God for others. We Lutherans would probably be more comfortable with the word Pastor. What does it mean for us to Pastor the world in the 21st century?
One of the rolls of a Christian Pastor is to lead by example. God calls us to Pastor the environment we all share. We are to Pastor the ecosystem. This is also called stewardship – taking care of what really belongs to God and we only hold in trust. We are to care for the environment, the earth, our home and hand it over to the next generation in better shape then we found it.
Maybe one way we can Pastor the earth is by installing solar panels on our roof or a windmill in our back yard. Social change takes place over time when a few courageous trendsetters “put their money where their month is”. It took about 10 years for people to accept both television in the early 1950’s and the Internet in the 1990 and early part of this century. Now they are also universally present in everyone’s home. Perhaps we should put solar panels on our church roof here at HCLC. Being a martyr as Jesus was described always involves taking risks – there is always a personal cost.
How do we Pastor for Christ in our neighborhood? I pass by the church sign at St. Michael’s in Perry Hall frequently and they recently had a message on the signboard. It said, “Maybe you are the only sermon they will ever hear”. It was catchy and a bit puzzling at first glance, but as I thought about it, I though “How true!”. People get to know Christ by getting to know us. If we are loving, patient, kind, giving, we reflect the light of Christ that is in us. We are called to be servant people. The world will recognize us in our Servant pose and posture and be attracted to Christ because of us. The old children’s song goes “And they will know we are Christian by love, by our love. Yes, they will know we are Christians by our love”.
Today is Christ the King Sunday. How much do you let King Jesus rule in your heart and life?
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
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