Jesus Buddy or Saviour?

(Uriel Presbyterian Churches )

Sermon

“Jesus-buddy? Saviour?” 

Christ the King/Reign of Christ

November 21, 2010

Thumbs-Up Jesus or Saviour of the Angry Eye?

Hebrew Text: Jeremiah 23:1-6 

NRSV1 Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD. 2 Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the LORD. 3 Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. 4 I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the LORD. 5 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 6 In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: "The LORD is our righteousness."

Gospel Text  Luke 1:68-79 

68 "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. 69 He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, 70 as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, 71 that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. 72 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, 73 the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us 74 that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. 78 By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

We all have our own ideas of what royalty is; some think of medieval Tyrants, other people think of glamor personified in diamonds and cloth of silver, still others see, a Complete waste of money and still other’s wish they had such unlimited power and resources. 

I’ve got two personal understandings of Royalty. The first happened when I was about eight and the queen visited the town in the south of England where I lived--she even passed right past our backyard. Thousands of people packed into the parking lot to watch her open our new American elementary school and children sang and presented her with flowers, bowing politely instead of curtseying because we were Americans.  But even though we were American,  I came away with a certain connection and regard for Queen Elizabeth that I have never forgotten. There was something personal about her to me, she was THE queen; a special, perfect person who liked children, and I saw her shining face every day on all the coins in my pocket and in the blue, green, red or orange stamps on every letter that came into our house. If I say "king" to an American and ask for a definition, most folks reply, "male ruler," whereas a British person nearly always answers, "monarch." The difference lies in experience—for Britons, they have a particular 2000 year experience of being ruled by a single person set over them by God. 

“[s]he has looked favorably on [the] people and redeemed them.” “[s]he has shown  mercy... and has remembered [the] holy covenant”

“By the tender mercy of our God... to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow[s]; to guide our feet into the ways of peace."”

On the other hand, I have an opposite personal understanding of Royalty. A few years ago on a cold snowy Sunday in Moscow, I trudged under the blood red brick arch of the Saviour’s Gate into the very heart of the Russian Kremlin. Many people don’t realize it, but the Kremlin is filled with churches, at least 13 churches and tiny cathedrals lie within the walls of this small fortress, even during the communist era. That Sunday morning , I had no way to find an English speaking church, so I decided to go pray in the oldest of the Kremlin churches, the squat, square building called the Cathedral of the Dormition. I opened the massive door of the church and found that though the enormous chandeliers were lit, no one was there in that empty space. But in one sense I was not in the least alone. the walls and massive columns were all covered from floor to ceiling; painted with row upon row of life-sized biblical figures and saints jostling each other for space. It was very confusing, The only furniture in the whole church was this enormous wooden box whose pillars supported  a carved roof like a pyramid. It was the throne of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and had been used by every Tsar since 1551 when attending worship in this place. But something struck me as odd. Instead of being placed directly in the middle of the church facing the center of the altar doors, it had been placed way off to the right, strangely close to the front wall, with a pillar blocking the view of the main part of the church. 

I stood there in front of this throne with my little English-Russian prayerbook in hand and tried to imagine what it would be like to be the Tsar of all the Russias, snug and warm in mink fur crown seated under that wooden canopy praying to God, surrounded by the clouds of incense and the choir chanting and moving behind the screen. 

Then I looked up from my book and saw him. 

He was directly in front of me and there was no escape. He was unmistakably a Tsar, solemn and inflexible; powerful, condemning, and furious, and his eyes fixed mine under terrifyingly deep hooded lids. This look he gave me saw right through my pretensions and silliness. And though this man had no crown upon his head, not a single fur to keep his painted body warm, he was alive with a blazing light that emanated from the very core of his being, pouring out from his very skin, so that the shadows were only deeper pools of stern glory.  

I had come face to face with the 14th century  icon that the Russians call  “Spas qroe oko” (Spas  yaroë  oko), “The Saviour of the Angry Eye”.  I became aware of my own fallenness, of the sins I had committed, the people I had harmed, the promises I had betrayed. The eye glared at these iniquities with blazing hot judgment, so terrifying in its intensity as to make my knees buckle at the horror of my past.

At that point, I could no longer contain myself. I could no longer keep these transgressions hidden away in the pockets of my soul. I had to confess them to God in sorrow.

And so I did. 

Suddenly I understood why this throne was placed in this odd place. It was the one place in the entire world where the Tsar had to come face to face with the truth that no one dared tell him. That he was accountable. Ivan the Terrible needed to know what this Saviour could tell him; that no matter how many people he killed, no matter how much he turned Russia upside down. That God was not mocked, and that God was coming with justice to exact a price for sin.  The scoffer, Peter the Great,  Elizabeth, Catherine, Alexander and Nicholas, all of them were called to account in that place. Almost 500 years later, in the winter of 1941, when the enemy had already reached the threshold of Moscow, Joseph Stalin secretly ordered a service to be held in the Dormition Cathedral to pray for the country's salvation from the invading German Armies. Did he stand there in the place of the Tsars? Could he have had the same experience I had? To hear the Tsar of all the Universe say “It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings”,“I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing”

People are very comfortable with Queen Elizabeth. When she visited Washington our first lady even had  a tendency to put an arm around her as if she were her grandmother. We are not comfortable with the all powerful Tsar of all the Universe come in judgment. 

We also have our own ideas expectation about who Jesus is too. And we have this same, warm,  personal feeling about our Saviour. We are human, and being human we are by our very nature, idol makers. We have this deep urge to cast Jesus in our own image., sort of like a buddy Jesus who’s got our back no matter what. Buddy Jesus who likes the the same things we do and who will drop kick us through the goalposts of heaven when we die.

But then there are other, older views of Jesus too. There’ is this ‘Saviour of the Angry Eye Jesus  who gets merged with the old testament idea of Jehovah who is seen as a God of wrath and vengeance. The great and terrible day of the Lord is a fiery apocalyptic truth that is found not only in the book of Revelation, but also in all 4 of the gospels. 

In fact, none of our ideas reflect God’s concept of kingship (human or divine) completely. In today’s readings from the bible we have two very different views of who Jesus is. In Luke we heard Jesus’es kinsman, Zachariah talking about the wonderful things that Jesus was going to do, and how excited he was that his own son, John was going to  help. 

We are not alone in this. In Jeremiah’s time the people’s understanding of kingship was tainted by human kings who had led them to the point of imminent destruction and deportation. God spoke of the kings as shepherds who had failed to care for their people. Would a nation scattered and destroyed, left uncared for and afraid, even want God to raise up another shepherd or king for it? Could the people welcome a righteous king?

When we come to Christ the King Sunday, we have to acknowledge that we bring cultural baggage with us. But what happens if we lay our preconceptions to one side and let the readings tell us what a king is?

God’s promise to the people was a king who is righteous, deals wisely, executes justice and righteousness in the land, and enables the people to live securely. In Jesus, God has fulfilled that promise. Justice and righteousness, themes that will recur as we move next week into the contemplation of Christ’s indwelling incarnation in  Advent, are the hallmarks of God’s king. In the story of Jesus, kingship is recast. The miracle lies in the fact that God shares our potential hopelessness  that is part of the human situation, but he also does so as king, as the source of our hope and life. Jesus took his wounds to heaven, and there is a place in heaven for our wounds because our king bears his in glory.

Where ever we may be in our spiritual pilgrimage, where ever we may be with the struggles going on in our world, the Spirit of Christ stands before us, bidding us each to look him in the eyes, to see both his humanity as well as his majesty and divinity. Only in this way will our own discipleship deepen. Only in this way will we be able to take out any beams from our own eyes in order to see clearly enough to remove the speck from our neighbor’s. 

To the only God be that same power and glory, forever and ever. Amen