Christ is King
Have you ever met Christ the King? Many of you have met Jesus our friend and/or Jesus as God above everything, but have you met and known Jesus as King and Lord?
We walk around our daily lives as little islands unto ourselves. At least half isolated from the people around us. We have institutions that rule over our lives, our work, pension, traffic laws, night and day, governments and more. We walk around often isolated and yet we can’t help but be affected by the people around us. How someone acts, their mood, their face, their conversation, how they drive, or respond to us, even a stranger effects us, while we don’t share in the joys of a meaningful relationship. We move about our days doing what is right in our own eyes and so people move further and further apart. As the book of judges reminds us, conflict and isolation increases everyday because everyone does what is right in their own eyes because we do not yet have a king.
People are scared to have a king. Most people are scared to have parents that they have to honour, or a spouse that they have to share their decision making with, or children that will for many years decide huge aspects of their lives. Yet, none of these are equivalent to the duty and honour that a king would deserve. Most people I know are scared of losing their physical or mental capacity and most that have dislike it, because we don’t know how to have someone else make decisions for us or how to truly depend on another, yet this is what it means to have Jesus as king. We are to give our wills over to him. To have him guide our every moment and shape the way we live and interact with the world. To have him as our king means that he has the veto and the final say in what we think, speak or do.
But what if he asks for something I don’t like, agree with or understand? This will happen and does, probably daily. These are moments of trial that we talked about last week, yet we must decide in every one of those moments who we follow and if we are making Jesus our king, or if we would rather be king, or would we rather make the world our king.
Thanks be to God that he is a king of both justice and mercy though. Our creeds are an amazing statement about the kind of King we have. Look at the Kingship of Christ at creation. As God spoke, our King Jesus, created and ordered the cosmos and world to create a peace, stability and law that then would be the foundations for his bountiful kingdom, which he then invited us into to join in this work of fruitful creation and order. Look at our King Jesus as calls Abraham out of his world and family to establish a new and better Kingdom and family or as he called Moses to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt into a new law and order and into a promised land. Our King Jesus keeps inviting us into a new world and kingdom that he is creating and ordering. Right now King Jesus is inviting you.
The first king to really establish the Kingdom of Israel was King David. We’ll be talking about him in the coming weeks as his life and kingship points us imperfectly towards the perfect kingship of Christ. What was King David before he became king? He was the youngest shepherd, someone that was willing to be humbled to serve his family and his flock. This is our King Jesus. He humbles himself, he lays his life down for the flock. He walks beside us leading us to better pastures, pulling us out of the jaws of lions, he lets us graze, but always calls us back to his safety and peace. This is a foundational idea in how we look at our King Jesus. He is the King of glory, law and order and yet he is the merciful and humble shepherd that does everything to care for us.
What I hope you are seeing is that Jesus is the kind of king we can trust with our freedom, with our dreams, with our every decision. He is the shepherd that does everything to care for his sheep. He is the shepherd that knows better and knows what is better than his sheep. He is the King that is ordering everything to lead to justice and peace. He is the King that is creating and Kingdom of bounty and fruitfulness. Don’t we want this for everyone of our decisions, for every step we take? Don’t we want to take the best job and work in the best way that leads to peace and fruitfulness? Don’t we want to build our relationships in the same way? We do, and yet we too often think we know better and do what is right in our eyes, instead of what is truly right and good - ordered by our King and creator.
We all know that this is not always easy. Scripture itself is full of things that we struggle with, that we may not agree with. Now imagine how much more we will struggle with God’s words when it enters into every moment and decision challenging our desires, our biases, what we want for our lives and world. I don’t pretend to do this perfectly, but I can tell you that God challenges my thinking, words and actions almost daily. I can also tell you that even though I struggle at times and even struggle with others over this, I have seen greater bounty and life in it, then when I follow my own way.
An amazing thing happens when we recognize Jesus as King and follow him at every moment, we begin to experience and see God’s Kingdom in our midst. And in this we can experience everything that is the perfect reality of God’s Kingdom - a peace that surpasses understanding - a fruitfulness and fulfillment that actually has an effect on a broken world - a bounty, richness, and glory that fills us with thankfulness and joy never depending on the economy or the broken realities that surround us. We live in this richness and we take it with us when we make Jesus our King in everything. Imagine it like the only shelter in the midst of a storm, or having a lantern in pitch black darkness, or a hug while arguing rages around you.
A natural consequence of following and obeying our King Jesus and taking this Kingdom with us is that we invite others into his Kingdom. The Kingdom of God acts like an antidote, or a positive infection as it touches others. Have you ever met someone whose joy is contagious, or whose faith is inspirational, or who makes you feel at peace, or who is so genuine and true that you want to be that present. That is what living in God’s Kingdom does. Just our being present can have an effect on people, but then our words and actions extend God’s Kingdom purposefully into people’s lives.
As those that have met and known Jesus we have a duty of love to do this. We have been called out of just being sheep that follow to be shepherds that speak and act to gather Jesus’ flock at his feet. We have been given a divine purpose that changes the world one person at a time as God’s Kingdom grows and we see heaven on earth.
We already saw the negative side of following our own wills and God warns us of this in Jeremiah as he talks to the shepherds of Israel. When we follow our own will, when we do what is right in our own eyes, we destroy, separate and scatter. This is what we see in our world. Of course we are meant to keep governments and institutions accountable, but this is primarily a message to the people of God. We need to be the good shepherds that gather people and live our lives expressing the Kingdom of God. Yet, we don’t do this alone. Our heavenly king Jesus, comes down, walks with us and empowers us to do it in ways that we can’t on our own.
As we close our service today we go out with God’s blessing, his peace promising to love and serve the Lord. This is our blessing and our dismissal. Every Sunday and hopefully more, we gather together to experience the Kingdom of God in a bigger way that extends beyond our little pocket Kingdoms, we see God’s Kingdom fill this space and these relationships. This then feeds us to see how this singular relationship with God as King can build whole new relationships and a whole new world. We take God’s peaceful Kingdom with us, we love and serve the Lord in such a way that others see something different and are thus invited into something that surpasses anything they see in this world.
Today, I invite you to make Jesus your King, wrestle with him and follow him in such a way that his will is what determines your every day, your every moment. In this we will see his Kingdom Come. AMEN
