AN UNLIKELY KING

SCRIPTURE READING: John 18:33-38a

This Sunday is currently celebrated as the Reign of Christ Sunday. It formerly was known as Christ the King Sunday. This has been the case only since 1969. I don’t know what prompted the designation of this Sunday, but it is the last Sunday of the church year and does serve as a reminder of the Christ who rules our vision of the kind of world we want to live in. Jesus, however, is the model of an unusual kind of monarch. He is different from the monarchs who lord it over subjects and are constantly calling attention to themselves as wielders of power. It is human nature to want to count for something and to call attention to our efforts.

I’m further amazed at the ardor with which people pursue a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. I’m also astounded at the things they will do to get their name in print. Not long ago I ran into the Notebook section of Time Magazine where aspiring world record breakers participated in Guinness World Records Day, trying to break the deadline for the 2008 edition.

One of those was Jackie Bibby, a.k.a. “The Texas Snake Man.” He had four records, including sitting in a bathtub with 81 rattlesnakes and sharing a sleeping bag with 109. He earned a fifth holding ten 2 1/2 ft. Western diamondback rattlesnakes in his mouth for 12.5 seconds.

Maybe you would rather have participated in the record for the largest kissing group held in Paris. Only 1,188 people showed up for that. You would have expected Paris, a city known for romance, to have done better. The city that holds the record for group kissing is Budapest. Who would have thought? It still holds the record with 11,570.

These activities on the whole are pretty harmless except for the “Texas Snake Man.” The participants in such things do call attention to themselves, which I guess is the whole point of the exercise.

There are others who call attention to themselves as well with results not so satisfactory. Perhaps you have heard of the annual Darwin awards given posthumously to commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.

The 1995 award was given to James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Michigan. He was killed as he was trying to repair what police described as a “farm-type truck.” Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise. Burns’ clothes caught on something, however, and the other man found Burns “wrapped in the drive shaft.”

There is another one I would not recommend to any snowmobiler in Wisconsin. This occurred in Windsor, Ontario. Daniel Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles.

This bit of foolishness shows how far we will go in willfulness to assert ourselves to defy the common sense God gives us. Self-destructive behavior does no honor to God. Jesus is our model for service to the glory of God which calls attention to God and not to us.

This Sunday as I mentioned before is the Reign of Christ Sunday. It is the time given over to the celebration and honoring of Christ who rules supreme and does not call attention to himself. Jesus always calls attention to the one who sent him, the eternal God. His sovereignty over the world is not one that is easily understood nor acknowledged.

Monarchs typically act like Henry VIII. A few years ago Masterpiece Theater on PBS did a production on the life of Henry VIII. As I watched that production I was reminded of the way kings act. It brought to mind that the kings of England believed that the right to rule came directly to them from God. During the course of this two-part drama, Henry VIII said many times, “Because I am king.” This was said in reference to the questioning of one of his wives or one of his advisers. It also was made clear that God was in his right to be king. If you ever look at the crest of the English monarchy, your will see the words in French, “Mon dieu et Mon droit.” “My God and my right.”

We see Jesus the Christ as quite a different kind of monarch from the willful monarchs of human history. He rules over our hearts and minds in a quite different way than the arrogant way of rulers of the past and present.

When he stood before Pilate, the symbol of Roman might and power in Judea in which Jerusalem was located, he tried to communicate that his kingdom was no threat to Rome. In fact, he said that his kingdom, “is not of this world.” Pilate picked up on this and asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered him, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come in to the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

Philosophers today agree that there is no such thing as Universal Truth. Truth is relative. What is true for one person is not true for another. As a matter of fact, the reigning operative principle seems to be happy human inconsistency. It is like honoring right to life and the death penalty in the same breath.

The only truth we can honor is the truth that we respond to the love of God in Christ as ruler of our minds, hearts and strength. That response shapes the way we see the world and operate in it. In other words, we give that love flesh; we incarnate that just as God has incarnated the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Christ reigns here. He is our ruler in our service to others. He rules in us as we participate with our partners in ministry in Africa. We incarnate Christ’s love and reign in our hearts through our service there, but our partners in Kenya incarnate the hospitality of Jesus for others. In Christ there are no strangers, only fellow sojourners who are seeking to help establish Christ’s reign. Not only do we care from afar, but also we go to be with our brothers and sisters on site in their homeland, and occasionally we welcome Philemon and Kip into our presence and have the opportunity to extend the warmth of our hospitality to them. We share our techniques for creating a clean water supply in their place. The exchange of love between us builds up the body of Christ and testifies to his reign.

Christ reigns here. He is evident in the commitment of our church not to forget the victims of Hurricane Katrina through our ongoing support of Back Bay Mission. This past week I had a conversation with someone in Wisconsin Rapids about the depth of appreciation for what this congregation is doing to embody the love of Christ for that troubled region. The man I was speaking to knows of your efforts and spoke so warmly of what you are doing to help rebuild that troubled region. I know after speaking to those who have come back from the most recent mission trip to Mississippi that you found that to be a humbling and rewarding experience, even a life changing one. Christ reigns where we serve.

Christ reigns here. Christ reigns in the extraordinary leadership you have given our youth and in the extraordinary service in which our youth engage in the name of Christ. They struggle with what it means to be a faithful servant of Jesus within the realm of faith and politics. They participate in showing forth Christ’s love through gifts of apple pies to our older members. They serve meals in the Emergency Shelter for those in temporary housing. They, too, go on mission trips not only to learn but also to serve and bring the evidence of Christ’s reign to the attention of others.

Christ reigns here. He is seen in the showing forth of God’s extravagant welcome to all as you proclaim in Christ’s name that you are a place where all are welcome. That is extraordinary in a time when the world keeps getting divided into smaller and smaller groups of who is acceptable and who is not. Thank God there are places like this where Christ reigns over heart and minds and makes this a safe place for all people.

Jesus does not call attention to himself like those who would be listed in Guinness. We call the world’s attention to Christ through our efforts at spreading his love and reign in the corners of the world where we can be a presence in Jesus’ name.

Sermon preached by Reverend Jake Close at First Congregational U.C.C., Appleton, Wisconsin on November 26, 2006.