Centered on Jesus V: If Christ is King . . .

This Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King. Pope Pius XI instituted the feast in 1925 in response to the

rise of secularization, atheism, and communism. The Soviet Union had been founded recently in 1917. It

Window above the High Altar
of St. Paul Cathedral,
Fond du Lac, WI

is significant that 1925 was also the year that Benito Mussolini established a Fascist dictatorship in Italy. Both Communism and Fascism expected people to give their highest allegiance to their nation and its government. Pope Pius rightly recognized this as antithetical to Christianity. For Christians, citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). Jesus Christ is the only king or ruler to whom allegiance is owed. Anglicans and others adopted the feast as a regular reminder of that allegiance.

Jesus told Pilate that his kingdom "was not of this world" (John 18:36). By that he did not mean that his kingdom was simply 'otherworldly' having no earthly or political implications. He meant it was 'other than the way of this world' and its kingdoms and nations which rule through coercion and violence with the threat of pain and death. Otherwise, his followers would have fought to keep him from being handed over. But, Pilate recognized Jesus as a threat to the political system and had him executed as one claiming to be "King of the Jews" (Mark 15:26, Matthew 27:37, Luke 23:38, John 19:19).

The earliest Christian affirmation was, "Jesus is Lord" (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:3, Romans 10:9-13, Philippians 2:11). It was a politically charged assertion. Jesus was Lord/King. The Emperor, who also claimed that title, was not. Neither was Rome nor the idea of Rome. And neither was any other god or gods. Jesus alone was Lord/King. The refusal by early Christians to pledge allegiance to the Emperor got them into trouble.

Claiming that Jesus Christ is Lord or King remains a radical claim. And it continues to raise questions about where our true loyalties lie. While Communist and Fascist regimes overtly demanded that their citizens give their highest allegiance to the nation, all nations in the modern era (since about 1650) have more or less encouraged, cultivated, and trained their citizens to adopt such allegiance as primary. Other allegiances – like allegiance to Jesus Christ and the Church – have been minimized, side-lined, subjected, or co-opted. And many Christians have a difficult time distinguishing one allegiance from the other. This is true in the United States of America as much as anywhere else.

I once saw a woman wearing a disturbing t-shirt that illustrated the confusion many Christians seem to have concerning their loyalty and emotional attachment to their nation and their loyalty and emotional attachment to Jesus Christ. It was a white t-shirt that had JESUSAVES written across the front. I believe he does. But that was not the only message on the shirt. All the letters were blue except for those in the middle – USA – which were red. So, it looked like this: JESUSAVES. It was a telling icon of the confused syncretism of many Christians in America. Who saves? Jesus? The USA? Or, are the two so emotionally entwined in our imaginations that we can't tell the difference? It is an illustration of Stanley Hauerwas' assertion that for many Americans, the nation is their true church. For many Americans, America is the social body to which their ultimate allegiance is pledged regardless of what religious affiliation they formally claim (see The End of American Protestantism). This confusion of loyalties is not just an American thing. It is a danger in most, if not all, nations. Christians would do well to disentangle this confusion in their hearts and guard against it.

Patriotism is not necessarily idolatrous. A distinction must be made, however, between holding dear and celebrating the particular culture and history of a place/people on the one hand and the sort of nationalistic exceptionalism on the other hand. 'Christian nationalist' is an oxymoron. Christians should be wary of appeals to patriotism and suspicious of those who use its appeal to shepherd them in one direction or another that compromises their first loyalty to the way of Jesus. If Jesus Christ is the King, our citizenship and loyalty is elsewhere (Philippians 3:20). We are always and everywhere strangers and foreigners on the earth seeking a homeland, the City God has prepared for us (Hebrews 11:13-16). Though we live under the temporal authority of governments of earthy nations, our allegiance is to that City and the coming kingdom of God. We seek to not be conformed to this world (see Do Not Conform Any Longer to the Pattern of This World), but rather to live according the the shape of that kingdom. We live, now, in anticipation of God's will being done on earth as in heaven (Matthew 6:9-13). We get some indication of Jesus' kingdom priorities in in the Sermon on the Mount and in the Gospel Lesson appointed for the Feast of Christ the King (Matthew 25:31-46). 

Christians need to beware of the temptation to confuse loyalty to King Jesus with loyalty to other entities – including Uncle Sam – who would claim the kind of emotional attachment that belongs to Christ alone. Our allegiance is to Christ the King. We pledge allegiance to that king every time we recite the Nicene or Apostles' Creed. All other allegiances are secondary and should be held lightly. Jesus alone is our hope and security. 

The Feast of Christ the King is a helpful reminder to Christians that their allegiances lie not with any government, nation, party, ideology, leader, or flag. Rather, it lies with Jesus Christ and his Church. It also reminds us that no area of human life, private or political, lies outside the concerns of the King and the responsibility of his followers.

Here's a bit from Pope Pius XI:

If to Christ our Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth; if all men, purchased by his precious blood, are by a new right subjected to his dominion; if this power embraces all men, it must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire. He must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone.
(Quas Primas, 33)

Collect for the Feast of Christ the King

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

See also:

St. Ambrose and the Emperor

Centered on Jesus IV: The Story and Other Stories

Centered on Jesus III: Jerome the Ciceronian

Centered on Jesus II. What it is Not, Part 2: Not a Mid-point on a Spectrum

Centered on Jesus I: Introduction. Not Moderate

How Big is Your Church?

A sermon preached on All Saints Sunday

Revelation7:9-17, Psalm 34:1-10, 22, 1 John 3:1-3, Matthew 5:1-12

Has anyone ever asked you, “How big is your church?” When I was rector of a church, I would get asked that question a lot. I never got asked questions like 

How faithful is your church?

How generous is your church?

Does it attend to the real problems in the surrounding community?

Does it love and support its children? It’s elderly?

Are strangers welcome?

Does your church care about the poor?

Are the people there merely nice or do they love with costly, genuine love?

How prayerful is your church?

Are the members of your church gentle with one another?

Are the members of your church free to be honest? Genuine?

Is forgiveness and reconciliation practiced at your church?

Is your church the kind of place that encourages you to believe in God?

It seems to me such questions are at least as important

as how many people are counted as members

or how big the budget is.

Today, we are celebrating the Feast of All Saints. In the collect we just prayed we acknowledged that God has knit us together with the saints in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of Christ our Lord. If that is the case, one answer to the question about the size of your church is that it is as big as the multitude of the saints, that great cloud of witnesses that surround us. And that is true no matter how many people show up on a given Sunday. Take comfort in that.

But, don’t become complacent. Those same saints, that great cloud of witnesses, urge and encourage us to run with endurance the race that is set before us and follow them in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that God have prepared for those who truly love him. “Ineffable joy” – joy beyond our imagining, more joy than can bear unless we are made able to bear it, more joy than we can express. As we hear in the passage from 1 John, “What we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him. We will be like Jesus in his resurrection joy.

What might that look like? In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus offers the Beatitudes, which might point us in the direction of entering into some of the joy and tasting and seeing the Lord is good as we just hear in the Psalm. The beatitudes might also offer a way of measuring the church differently from adding up numbers.

There is a new translation of the New Testament by theologian, David Bentley Hart. Hart has made an interesting choice in translating the Beatitudes. Instead of the familiar “Blessed” he has “Blissful.” I’m going to use that this morning because it points to those ineffable joys that are promised to those who live in the way of Jesus. It reminds us that this is the way of the saints who have run before us in pursuit of the blissful life.

“Blissful are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Is this a church that is poor in spirit?

Are we encouraged to let go of the illusion of self-sufficiency

and to recognize their own neediness?

Most especially our need of God,

but also our need of one another?

And are we committed to assisting those who are poor in the usual sense?

“Blissful are those who mourn,

for they will be comforted.”

Is this a place where mourning happens?

Traditionally this has been understood to mean mourning

for our own failure and sin,

our own inability and unwillingness to love as Jesus loves.

Is this church a place where we are encouraged

to mourn our sin individually and corporately?

Is repentance practiced?

But also, is this a place where people are permitted

to mourn the hurt, heartache, hardness of life?

Or do we try to slap a smiley face on everything?

Is this a place that mourns with those who mourn?

Is this a place that mourns the very real suffering in the world around it?

Does its mourning provoke action to address that suffering?

“Blissful are the meek,

for they will inherit the earth.”

Is this a church where meekness is encouraged? Gentleness?

Is humility, modeled on the self-emptying love of Jesus Christ, typical here?

Are members willing to set their agendas and preferences aside

for the sake of others?

And are we committed to engaging those who are inherently meek
due to their weakness

“Blissful are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they will be filled.”

Is this a congregation of people who hunger and thirst for righteousness?

Is holiness encouraged and pursued?

Is righteousness understood to be about right relationship with God

and right relationship with others?

Is this a community that hungers for and seeks to live

in anticipation of the kingdom of God

in which there will be perfect harmony?

Is this a community that knows what the LORD requires:

to do justice,

and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?

“Blissful are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”

Is this a church where mercy is practiced and received?

Are we patient with one another?

Do we bear one another’s burden?

Do we bear the burden of one another?

Do we practice the art of forgiveness?

Do we seek to understand one another?

"Blissful are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

Does this church encourage and cultivate such single-hearted devotion to Jesus Christ

that our hearts are aligned with his

and that every decision is made with the intention

of being drawn deeper into his heart?

Are members encouraged to purify themselves

from all that keeps them from following Jesus

in his way of pure mercy and peace

in obedience to his Father?

“Blissful are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God.”

Is this a church that knows and lives the art of reconciliation?

Do its members seek peace?

Do we resist the society's indulgence in anger, resentment, and vengeance?

Its fascination with violence?

Do we know ourselves to be agents

of God’s ministry of reconciliation in the world?

“Blissful are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Though we live in a time and place

where real persecution for righteousness' sake is unlikely,

are people formed in this church

such that they at least seem odd or peculiar to their neighbors

because of the way they act, talk, and live?

Are members encouraged to go against the flow?

To question the status quo?

To recognize that what passes for wisdom in this world

is often foolishness in the light of God's wisdom?

And is this a church that is engaged with members of the body of Christ

in parts of the world where believers are truly persecuted on Jesus’ account?

Does it pray for, support and encourage those sister and brothers?

There are lots of ways to assess the health of a church.

Most of them have little to do directly

with the kinds of things that can be counted, weighed, or measured

in the usual sense.

Still, a church that is growing in the ways that matter

is likely also to grow in the more conventionally measurable ways.

Increasing attendance can be nothing more than ecclesial obesity

or it can be a sign that the Holy Spirit

is moving among the members of a church,

birthing new life and drawing new people

who desire to be a part of such a community

and the resulting love, truth, and joy.

A bigger budget doesn’t necessarily indicate spiritual health,

but a growing budget can be a reflection

of a spirit of generosity, commitment, and thanksgiving.

Let me be clear that, as your bishop,

I hope and pray for growth

and want to see our numbers increase.

Any church worth its salt of the earth and light of the world

ought to be growing in tangible ways

precisely because it is growing in the ways that really matter.

Let us recommit ourselves to becoming more and more

the kind of people and kind of church

that can answer "yes" to the above questions.

That is the way of Jesus.

            It is the way of the saints.

                        May it be our way.

How big is your church?

How blissful is your church?

How blissful are you?