Jeremiah 23:1-6 “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and
scatter the sheep of my pasture! 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. Then I 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. 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. The
days are surely coming, 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. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live
in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “God is our
righteousness.”
Luke 1: 68-79
Wonderful is the Holy One of Israel,
who has visited and set the people free, and has sounded the trumpet of new life for the descendants of David. As the prophets preached long
ago, that we should be saved from those who would harm, and from the hands of those who hate us, to live by the love
promised to our forebears. To remembering the holy covenant, made with
Abraham; that being free from the
grasp of enemies, we might serve God without being afraid and do good
things in God’s presence throughout every day that we live. And you,
little child, will be named the prophet of the Most High. For you will go on ahead, to prepare a new
way, so that people will know true freedom as all their errors are forgiven. This will be the outcome of
God’s yearning love, when the new dawn shall shine on the heights, to shed light on those who cower in
darkness and in the deep shadows of death, to guide our feet into the way
of peace.
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Today is generally known in the
Christian year as “Christ the King” or “Reign of Christ” Sunday. It’s the last
Sunday of the current liturgical year, before we begin a new year with the
first Sunday of Advent, next week.
I confess I don’t really like this
Sunday. It’s not a part of the Reform tradition at all, since it really came
into being only in 1925 by a decree from Rome, and we adopted it along the way.
For me it embodies so much of the language in our Christian history which became
the language of empire – conquering, oppression, power, authority. – we do still
use words like “King, Lord, throne, kingdom, conqueror”, and despite how we
bend ourselves into pretzels explaining that we don’t really mean those words
exactly that way, language is critical to how we see ourselves, and how we see and
relate to others.
Here’s an example of how words shape
thinking. The word ‘tolerance’. Its root is in ‘tolerate’, and it actually means
‘to put up with’ or ‘to allow to continue’. When we talk about ‘religious
tolerance’ or ‘racial tolerance’, we’re still using a word which implies that we
who are being ‘tolerant’ hold power to change that. Instead, what about the word
‘respect’? What would happen if we use the words ‘religious respect’, or
‘racial respect’? There is a difference – one is a power word, the other is a
relationship word. Language does matter.
There’s a group of people emerging within
the church who are identifying themselves not so much as “Christian” as ‘People
of the Way’ , which is how the original followers of Jesus referred to themselves.
Who was Jesus of Nazareth? What were the core values and the grounding in which
his following developed? When did a first-century peasant known as Yeshua
become known as “Christ”. What do we know? He lived and died. He was a Jew, born in Galilee. Most of the
people he knew - colleagues, disciples,
friends - were Jews. He went to services in synagogues, preached from Jewish
text; celebrated Jewish festivals; went on pilgrimage to the Temple in
Jerusalem. The gospels offer no sense that he came to found a new religion, nor
that he was an educated rabbi. He was called ‘rabbi’ which means teacher, but
that isn’t quite the same as being one.
The challenge, according to Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan, always “asks about the relationship between any and every historically reconstructed Jesus and any and every theologically accepted Christ.” The late Marcus Borg identifies Jesus as a spirit person, a teacher of wisdom, a social prophet, and almost by accident – founder of a movement. He's completely embedded in the Judaism of his time. He's not a Sadducee, nor a Pharisee, nor an Essene, nor an insurrectionist. He does argue with members of these other groups because that's what the Jews all did - argue with each other all the time...and because he has a particular view of an increasingly doctrinal faith which is rigid in human-devised law which excludes; and the loss of compassion and openness, and inclusion, which *is* actually the law of God.
He talks about God’s realm using the language of empire – since his listeners are well associated with that – but turns that upside down by describing an empire of equality. After the death of John the Baptiser, he began to preach the realm of God as a healing in the present – a non-violent resistance to empire based in Love. God was described as Love.
There was an expectation following Jesus’ death that the
Realm of God would arrive immediately. Nothing happened, and the followers simply
went home not sure what to do. As time
passed, they started looking into their own scriptures to find something which
might give the experience meaning – and found among others, the passage from
Jeremiah describing the shepherd who would rise from the line of David. Note
that both shepherd and king are mentioned. Now, Jeremiah was a prophet, but
prophets didn’t predict the future – they spoke directly to the people of the
time. So while Jeremiah’s text didn’t predict the coming of Jesus, it gave the
early followers a frame for explaining the Jesus experience and its purpose.
Kings were not so much crowned, but anointed to be shepherds of the people. The
early followers were looking for some way to make sense out of Jesus’ death.
The resurrection narratives didn’t
come along until approximately 70 years after Jesus died. The followers still
continued to practice their faith – but identified themselves as one of many
small sects within Judaism. The ‘People of the Way’ simply went on doing what
Jesus had taught them. In the book “How Jesus Became Christian”, author Barrie Wilson notes what he terms the
“Conventional Model of Christian origins” - a straightforward chronological
line from Jesus to church to Paul to wild success. This impression stems from
the Book of Acts, written in the late first or early second century. Yet it
seems, according to Barrie Wilson, that the original Jesus movement continued –
at least until the year 62 CE and the death of Jesus’ brother James – within
Roman-occupied Israel.
The resurrection stories were
written after Jesus’ death – Mark approximately 50 years after, Matthew and Luke
about 75 years after, and John 100 years after. The “Christ” Movement arose out
of Paul’s travels, and in fact the two were often at odds with each other. After the death of James, the original
movement gradually died off; and the leaders of both the Jesus movement and the
Christ movement never met each other.
Paul was in Damascus when he had his conversion experience –
and began reaching into the Gentile communities about five years after Jesus'
death. There were Greek-speaking communities in Greece, Macedonia, Turkey; and
within that time a church was also founded in Rome, but not by Paul.
And by then there were Christians saying that the Roman emperor,
and the state, were ordained by God. By the third century, Christians claimed
loyalty to the state, and by the fourth century and the Emperor Constantine,
Christianity became the mandated state religion with the now Greek word Christos,
the ‘anointed one’ but now set up as a King/Emperor. As the Roman empire
gradually declined, the church of Constantine became the empire. To me, all of
this would have been contrary to Jesus’ message.
In my mind, and a conclusion I’ve
drawn as I observe and research, is that just as Christ and Jesus gradually
converged in early Christianity, in modern-day practice Christ and Jesus are
diverging again, and are now two different persons.
In the church today, there appear to
be several phenomena:
- first, a trend among the more conservative,
fundamental and even reactionary practice of Christianity towards the Christ of
Empire, Christ the post-Easter Deity, the Lord and King who supports violence to
claim and maintain a way of life – those who brandish a Bible, a gun and a
flag, and claim Christ backs them up.
-second, a progressive Christianity
which still uses empire language, but says the words no longer hold those same
meanings – kings and lords, crowns and thrones of the empire which spread
around the world subjugating many different groups of people. This group is
working to retain the language, but reclaim its original meaning - ‘king’ and
‘lord’ as shepherd, someone who restores balance, who ‘makes things right” as
Jeremiah states in the scripture.
-third, a movement towards reclaiming
discipleship, following the teachings and way of Jesus, the pre-Easter human
person who preached Love. Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong, John Dominic Crossan,
writers about the church such as Diana Butler Bass and Barbara Brown Taylor. It’s a stepping back from, a stripping away
of, the traditional language and structures of the last 1800 years; an attempt to
go back to the beginning – the birth, life and teachings of Jesus, and those
who identified as ‘People of the Way’. It’s
a re-claiming of original principles, a re-framing in non-empire language, what
Jesus was teaching. It says we don’t have to cling to formulae or doctrines to
live the Way. To me it says striving to live in relationship to others,
with Love as the core motivator.
Simplistically, it’s a “what would Jesus do” theology.
Both the Jeremiah and the Luke
passage set up this difference: “Woe to the shepherds who destroy the flocks”,
says Jeremiah – and maybe we could read into that statement religious leaders
in power, in any time and place, those who subvert the Gospel for their own
need for power. They will be replaced, says Jeremiah, by shepherds who have the
good of all the flock at heart. The prophet Zechariah sings of the new ‘king’
who sets things right, who prepares a new way, who teaches an alternate way of
being that rejects violence and anger but is based in love. Jesus taught that
the Realm of God was right at hand, right around the corner - he taught a new and alternate way of being,
rejecting violence and anger – and that love was the key.
And so I use a different set of
words – rather than ‘Christ the King”,
or “Reign of Christ”, I use
“Realm of God” or “God of Love” - the
state of being to which Jesus constantly made reference – the realm at hand in
the here and now. To me it’s more
consistent with that presence in which we ‘live and move, and have our being”.
It removes all barriers, declares a way of Love as the key, and calls for the
Realm of God to come into being “speedily and at a near time”. May it be so.
This sermon is a condensation of an original
paper “From Christ to Jesus: Reclaiming the Way” – presented at the Power
Conference in Tampere, Finland in August 2016.
1. Borg, Marcus. “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time”.
HarperOne, 1994.
2. Crossan, John Dominic. “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography”.
HarperSanFrancisco, 1994.
3.
Curtis, Ken. Church History Timeline 301-600 CE.
http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/301-600/constantine-11629643.html
4.
Fredriksen, Paula. “From Jesus to
Christ”. Yale University Press, 1988.
5.
Meyers, Robin R. “Saving Jesus from
the Church: How to Stop Worshipping Christ and Start Following Jesus”. HarperOne,
2009.
6.
Spong, John Shelby. “This Hebrew
Lord”. HarperOne, 1993,
7.
Wilson, Barrie. “How Jesus Became
Christian”. Random House Canada, 2008.
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