KING OF KINGS
First Congregational Church of Evanston
November 26, 2006, Christ the King Sunday
Psalm 93; John 18: 33-38
Rev. Dr. James E. Roghair, Interim Pastor
Psalm 93
1 The Lord is king, he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed,
he is girded with strength. He has established the world; it shall never
be moved;
2 your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting.
3 The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring.
4 More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters, more majestic than the
waves of the sea, majestic on high is the Lord!
5 Your decrees are very sure; holiness befits your house, O Lord, forevermore.
John 18:33-38a
33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned
Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
34 Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell
you about me?”
35 Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the
chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?”
36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom
were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being
handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
37 Pilate asked him, “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.”
38 Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”
Pastors in Germany
It was the year was 1934. Times were difficult around the world, especially in the repressed economic and political climate of post-World War I Germany. But recovery was in sight. A group of theologians who met in Wurtemburg, Germany saw a rising star of hope and wrote a declaration of faith that would be signed by 600 pastors of churches and fourteen theology professors at seminaries.
Their statement included these words: "We are full of thanks to God that he, as Lord of history, has given us Adolf Hitler, our leader and savior from our difficult lot. We acknowledge that we, with body and soul, are bound and dedicated to the German state and to its Fuhrer."
What were they thinking? How could they have done it?
That same year, 1934, Hitler summoned another group of church leaders to his office. Martin Niemoeller was among them. Niemoeller had been a great hero in the German Navy during World War I, commanding a submarine that caused great destruction to the Allied fleet. Now he was a pastor, much loved in his new vocation.
Although the meeting with Hitler began cordially enough. One of Hitler's people burst into the room with a charge of treason against Niemoeller. Hitler raged in an angry tirade. Finally, he regained his composure and told Niemoeller, "You confine yourself to the church. I'll take care of the German people!"
But Niemoeller kept his composure and quietly replied, "Herr Reichskanzler, you said just now: 'I will take care of the German people.' But we, too, as Christians and churchmen, have a responsibility toward the German people. That responsibility was entrusted to us by God, and neither you nor anyone in this world has the power to take it from us."
Hitler saw the showdown. Niemoeller went to trial, and was convicted of misusing his pulpit for political purposes. Hitler refused to pardon him, declaring, "It is Niemoeller or I." (This section relies heavily on material found in www.sermonsuite.com Emphasis)
Much of the German church had lost track of its relationship to God and had sided with the political power of the State. For them the Kingdom of God and the political star of the state were one and the same thing.
Jesus before Pilate
Political confrontations are not always that dramatic. And yet, if we look at the story of Jesus before Pilate, we see another example Pilate had surely heard that some of Jesus' followers were calling him the King of the Jews. And Pilate asked Jesus specifically if that is what he was. Jesus refused to answer - passed it off - said that the Kingdom he had was not of this world. But Pilate wouldn't let it go. As we see if we read a little further in the gospel that Pilate actually puts up the charge when Jesus is executed: “The King of the Jews.”
It is always a bit of a shock to come up against this reading at the end of the church year, just as we are ready to enter into Advent. Because the story is a part of the Passion narrative. But what this story does here is remind us of the kind of political and social milieu in which any assertion of divine authority takes its place.
Pilate seemed to be amused by the possibility of making it seem that Jesus was the King of the Jews. He would make it a quarrel between the Jerusalem religious authorities and the power of Rome instead of a quarrel between those authorities and Jesus. And so it is that Pilate's political posturing gets us to what I consider one of the most heretical things recorded in Scripture. The religious authorities saying to Pilate, no, no, “We have no king but Caesar.” I call that heresy not because of its politics, but because of its theology.
Over the years, Hebrew people had always declared that God is their King - the real King. For generations they had no king but YHWH. During that time Judges rose up to lead the people. We read about them in the biblical book of Judges. It is for me the words of one of these Judges, Gideon, that encapsulate the theology. After his very clever and successful military maneuvers in which the enemies were overcome, the people come to make Gideon their King. But Gideon proclaims “You have no King but YHWH.”
It was many years later when Samuel the prophet was told by God to anoint first Saul and later David as the Kings. But the theological understanding - the statement of faith - continued to be that God is the real king and these human kings are only kings under God's real rule.
Was it not, then, blasphemy and a denial of their theological heritage for the religious leaders of Jerusalem to say to Pilate, 'We have no King but Caesar'? They were responsible to God and to the people to remind everyone that God is their real king.
Psalm 93 as an Enthronement Psalm
In order to remind themselves ritually of their loyalties, the ancient Hebrew people had celebrated a day of the enthronement of Yahweh. If we were there, we would see the Ark of the Covenant being taken out and brought back into the temple. Of course they had the ark of the covenant even before they had a temple. It dates back to the days the Children of Israel were vagabonds in the wilderness.
The Ark was very special in Hebrew tradition and worship, and its symbolism is powerful. Physically the Ark was very small. Perhaps we've heard of the Ark of the Covenant or seen it in Hollywood movies, and so we imagine something enormous. But according to the description in the scriptures it's only 2½ cubits long -- that's about 4½ feet and only 1½ cubits wide -- that's about 2 feet. And it only stands 1½ cubits high - that's 2 feet! Smaller than that communion table up there that we sometimes call the altar. It's not very big to be the most sacred expression of Israel's faith!
But it isn't really the size that most draws my eye to the Ark of the Covenant. Its top, called the “Mercy Seat” was made of gold. On either end of this small gold top is a half-human/half-lion figure with wings, called a Cherub. (Now, it's not the “cherub you know as a round-faced baby with wings that came into European painting.) This is an ancient thing much like the Sphinx in Egypt - they are figures who are supposed to protect the sacred space.
But in the middle - between the cherubim - is nothing - a blank - a zero! That small blank space is the sacred space. That is where God is supposed to sit -- at least symbolically.
These ancient Hebrews were primitive peoples. Their faith would have to grow hundreds of years before it produced prophets like Isaiah or Jesus. But they had it all figured out - they were way ahead of their contemporaries. The God who created the earth and the heavens - the God who owns them all because he created them - is not visible to human eye. No human expression, no matter how artistic, can even attempt to depict this God.
Rather YHWH God, the creator of the vastness of the universe and the oceans, is honored with the top of a little wooden box -- the Mercy Seat on the Ark of the Covenant. That's as far as the human being can go.
Enthronement
Perhaps this Psalm 93 was a part of the enthronement liturgy. We can imagine the Temple Choir singing in Hebrew: “The Lord is king, he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed, he is girded with strength. He has established the world; it shall never be moved...”
Christ the King Sunday in the Church calendar may have a little of the same meaning as the ancient Hebrew enthronement ceremony. Usually Christ the King gets lost in the Thanksgiving holiday and the beginning of the Advent Season. We are fortunate this year.
Now some of the strong Christian enthronement imagery has come out of the book of Revelation. As I have mentioned here before, Revelations was written to encourage the fledgling and endangered Christian church to believe that Jesus was indeed stronger than Caesar. It is one of the Christian books which I believe has done much to equate Old Testament understandings about God with the new Christian ideas of Jesus as the Son of God and indeed a part of God's self.
Relevance?
So what does the enthronement of YHWH or the Kingship of Christ have to do with us? Some of our contemporaries reject all King and Kingdom imagery because it is all male. And I do understand. I have sympathy with that. But it is hard for me to catch the real imagery in words like Sovereign and Reign. How can we best portray the supreme authority of God?
Ancient Jews were told we have no King but YHWH, but the leaders of Jesus' day found it convenient to say we have no king but Caesar. Martin Niemoeller's clergy contemporaries stated that Adolf Hitler was their economic savior. And those who stood against Hitler were accused of treason. And some were actually killed for their theological and political opposition.
Declaration of Barmen
The Theological Declaration of Barmen adopted in Germany in 1934 by the group Niemoeller sympathized with was called the Confessing Synod. They were Lutheran, Reformed and United Churches leaders who held up Jesus Christ as the way the truth and the light, and they “reject[ed] as false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths as God's revelation.” They were talking about Hitler and his party! I am proud that my own denomination in the year 1967 took this historic document into its Book of Confessions as the statement of our brothers and sisters more than thirty years earlier when they were in deep peril. It reminds us who we are and whose we are.
What is our story?
What about us? Is it conceivable that there ever be any challenge to the authority of the church to stand and proclaim Jesus Christ as King in the United States? Maybe not. We may be more likely to fail from weak faith more than from political pressure.
But I am afraid that many people in the run up to the Iraq war and in the conduct of the so-called war on terror have been fearful. It seems that an extremely narrow interpretation of theology and of appropriate citizenship has been promoted in the last few years. The tax laws may have been used to try to get churches and pastors who have not agreed with the present administration to toe the line. We need to be vigilant.
Of course, now, there has now been a citizen backlash. The war has lost its popular support, and the party of the president is no longer the dominant power. And people who have been threatened are breathing easier.
But when I hear of people breathing too easily, I always remind my friends, that we have to start watching the other party now. It is the responsibility of Christians to always be the loyal opposition. We have a loyalty that is above the loyalty to our party or to our nation. We are to proclaim Jesus as King - to be reminded as the ancient Hebrews were that there is really no King but YHWH.
It is easier for us to be partisans than for us to be theologically faithful Christians. And people who know the truth have to be ready and eager to speak up. When the Democrats in Congress continue to pass the laws that build up the military of the United States with the armaments that cost more than the expenditure for armaments of all the rest of the world, we have to speak to them about peace.
When the children of the poor haven't enough to eat and can't learn what they need to in schools, we have to speak to both parties about our priorities, because we are followers of Christ the King.
Christ the King Sunday is a day for remembering that no one else - not anyone - deserves the place of power of God. And to remember that we know that God in Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Last Updated: Wednesday, February 6, 2008