Reflection for 25 Nov 2012

Year B Proper 29 - Reign of Christ 25 November 2012
2 Samuel 23:1-7 Psalm 132: 1-12, (13-18) Revelation 1:4b-8 John 18:33-37

Tonight was the night! Brittany has been counting down the hours for the last couple of days..... It was the return of the television series Once Upon A Time. The last series finished with the curse being broken. With the curse broken, the characters remembered who they are and the heroine, Emma, who was sent into the real world as a baby, seemingly abandoned by her parents, realized that she was actually a princess. While everyone else rejoiced, Emma was the only one who seemed like she’d lost something. The others had all found their true identity, but for Emma to embrace her true identity meant letting go of all she’d ever known.

I think that many of us also have an identity crisis. We don’t realize who we really are.
Revelation 1:5b-6a “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.”

We belong to a kingdom and we are priests – all of us- to serve God. Most of us would acknowledge that this is right but most of us are more comfortable with the God who serves us and we like to say, “Thank-you God for salvation” and for the good stuff, and perhaps chat with him every now and then, but we certainly don’t think of ourselves as priests in a kingdom that serves God.

But there is more to our identity than this, because through our union with Christ we are heirs of this kingdom.

Jesus had a sign nailed to the cross above him which read, “King of the Jews”. The Jews objected to this but Pilate may have known something, because he insisted that this be the wording. In actual fact what Pilate ordered be written was prophetically accurate.

2 Samuel 23:2-4 ““The Spirit of the LORD spoke through me; his word was on my tongue. The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: ‘When one rules over people in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning,”

I have always wondered about that old argument about keeping church and state separate. I have no answer, as it is complicated, but certainly we know that when one rules over people in the fear of God it is a great thing. Many times in the history of the Israelite nation they were taken captive by foreign kings, and many of these were actually good men who came to serve (in some manner) God as revealed through and often because of the King’s interactions with the Israelite nation.

Recently I did some research and found out some interesting things about Jesus and about the role of the messiah. It is well known among the Jewish people that the messiah is to be of the house of David, but did you know that to be able to claim to be the messiah, he must be able to prove his kingly line? And did you know that since the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, records were destroyed, implying that the messiah had to have been born before then?

In two of the Gospels we have the record of the genealogy of Jesus. Common understanding is that one of the records is of Mary’s genealogy and the other is of Joseph’s. Both are of the line of David, but one is directly the kingly line. So it would seem that even in a very earthly and physical way, Jesus was the king of the Jews. I found lots of great stuff.... but I’ll leave that for another time...

Psalm 132:2-5 “He swore an oath to the LORD, he made a vow to the Mighty One of Jacob: “I will not enter my house or go to my bed, I will allow no sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, till I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob.”

King David spoke these words. His first priority was to God. This was a king who understood that he himself was part of a kingdom, and that he and his kingdom were there to serve God. It may have been easier for David to grasp the concept because he was a king, but he wasn’t born a king and even as the youngest, smallest and least significant of his family, he seemed to grasp that he was of God’s royal line.

John 18:36- 37 “Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.””

Jesus knew who he was. He didn’t need to prove it because the evidence spoke for itself, but he also declared that his kingdom was from another place. In the words of Jesus we find no doubts and maybes. He knows who he is and he always did. We recall the time he was in the temple at the age of 12 and telling his parents that he would be about his father’s business, meaning that God was his father. Jesus did not deny the fatherhood he had in Joseph, but the deeper reality was that God is his father.

We are the opposite of Jesus. We live lives that are grounded in the here and now and although we profess to have faith in God our lives bare testament to our doubts. How is it possible that Jesus could live without doubt, and so sure of his identity?

Sometimes it is easiest to find the answer by looking at fairytales like Once Upon A Time. Jesus, like a few of the characters, had grown up always knowing who he was. Some of the fairytale characters forgot who they were, but once the curse was lifted they remembered and fell easily back into their own identity, but Emma is a lot more like the majority who struggle with their true identity. She had lived all her life in a world apart from her birth place..... and that world denied the existence of her birth place.

We live in a world that denies our true identity.... a world that denies God exists. It is hard to remember who we really are while we surround ourselves with this world of denial and doubt. This is one very good reason for being in community with other Christians. When we go to church or meet with other Christians we are reminding ourselves where our true home is and who we really are.

Revelations 1:7-8 ““Look, he is coming with the clouds,” and “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him”; and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.” So shall it be! Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.””

Why will the people of the earth mourn because of the return of Jesus? It won’t just be those who physically pierced him who will mourn, but ALL peoples on the earth. I can only guess, but I would be mourning if I had forgotten my place in the kingdom of God. If I was found to be living as if removed from the reality of God, and then God interrupted my life, I would be disappointed in myself.

It’s time now to rethink our lives. In what ways are we living as children of the King, and how should we be living if we are living in the reality that we are children of the king?