A Different Kind of King…

Reflections on
2 Sam 23:1-7, Rev.1:4b-8,John 18:33-37
Holy Trinity/La Santisima Trinidad
11/22/2009

For almost a thousand years before the birth of Christ, a messiah was predicted in the Hebrew scriptures- a great warrior King to reign in the style of King David. This warrior king would restore the sovereignty of Israel, and conquer the various crushing forces that plagued Israel through the centuries, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, leading up to the occupying force of the Roman army in Jesus’ time. There was good reason for the yearning for a savior king. Josephus writes of 500 Jews a day being crucified by the Romans after the rebellion of 66 AD, and six thousand were crucified after the rebellion of Spartacus. So the desire for a savior king was at a fever pitch in Jesus’ time. Several of these messianic predictions, sometimes very beautiful ones are often read in Advent: This passage in Isaiah is one:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse (King David’s father)
And a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him
The spirit of wisdom and understanding
The spirit of council and might
The spirit of Knowledge and fear of the Lord.

And a portion of a reading from Numbers is also often read..

I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob (another anxestor of Jesus’); a scepter will rise out of Israel.

(The rest of the passage is usually omitted:)
He will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of all the sons of Sheth.

It was indeed a war-like messiah that was longed for.

And the David whose voice we hear in today’s Old Testament reading is surely a war-like king. Shortly before our passage of today, David, in his fervent praise of the Lord says,

He trains my hands for war, so that my arm can bend a bow of bronze… I pursued my enemies and destroyed them… I beat them fine like the dust of the earth…

Nowhere do we see a reflection of the gentle Jesus, who directed us not just to avoid crushing our enemies to dust, but actually to love them.

The word Messiah is derived from Machiach, the Hebrew word for “The Anointed One.” The Greek word for the same thing was Khristos, Anglicanized, of course as Christ. This longed-for redeeming king, was anointed by another king, or by a judge, or a person of great importance. But, as the Advent Godly Play lesson for children points out, “The people were waiting for a king. But the kind of king who came was not the kind of king they expected.

We as Christians, are named after the anointed one whose anointing goes to the very heart of what he was about, and what we are about as Christians. Jesus was anointed, not by a person of power, but by a woman that most of us would probably hesitate to invite to dinner. A “woman of the city” who poured an incredibly precious treasure of perfume on Jesus’ head to anoint him for his work on earth. Jesus’ life and teachings reflect that kind of radical giving.

So what kind of king do we have here? What, if not war-like glory, did he teach us? Jesus’ great subject was certainly not war, nor was it the hording of wealth as a king might do. His great subject was giving, even sacrifice, in all its forms. But radical giving is, to most people, a frightening thought. A more comfortable thought is to aspire to the kingly, to aspire to power.

I spoke last week of the disciples, gawking at the gleaming stone and gold-edged temple, and how we still fall prey to that tendency to worship power, even war-like power, and the real estate it yields. Our faith may be the only thing in our lives that helps us to spring ourselves from the awful reality of this culture of ours that makes a King of status and image.

In our Gospel of today, Pilot tries to get Jesus to admit that he is King of the Jews. Jesus points out that if he were a worldly king, his followers would form an army and rescue him. But Jesus tries to tell him that he is not of this world- this violent culture. He is here to bring the truth. Pilate, way out of his depth here, asks one of the most contemporary and existential questions in the whole of the bible, “What is truth?” he asks Jesus. Jesus does not answer, as he knows his answer would fall on deaf ears.

The irony of accepting Jesus as Lord, as king, is that Jesus was profoundly anti-hierarchical. He didn’t even want anyone to be called “father,” except our father in Heaven. After I was first ordained, the altar guild was showing me what I didn’t have to do anymore- “You don’t have to do that now- you’re Father Este,” they said. It never sat well with me. And yet a word we hear over and over again in the old testament prophesies and in the New is King, lord of all. We are to bow down to our King, every knee shall bow, in spite of the fact that Jesus himself knelt down to wash the feet of the disciples, to give them an example of the true work of a master.

I believe that if we follow the example of our messiah, of our Christ, we can evolve from people whose priorities are those of James and John, who desire kingly power into people who are moving toward understanding the lesson of the kneeling Jesus, the lesson of the anointing woman. This is a miracle we can effect in our own lives. Slowly shifting our priorities away from pre-occupation with kingly and queenly power and over to the humble and daily bringing of the Kingdom of God. Amen.