King Jesus' Land of the Free and Home of the Brave

In a few weeks Mayor Peterson’s anti-violence task force will issue its report. At the three community meetings I’ve been part of, the emphasis has been on identifying concrete strategies, proven to reduce or to prevent violence.

Faith community’s face at least two challenges to join this focus. First, most of our programs don’t stress either crime prevention, or criminal justice activities. When we offer VBS, weekly bible study, Jabari Malevi, or think about launching 4-H, neither our vision - Sharin’ Plenty Good News - nor our core values - inviting, welcoming, discipling, nurturing, healing and rejoicing – keys in on reducing crime, or punishing and rehabilitating wrongdoers. Second, the outcomes we do aim for are, for the most part, either not measured easily, or identify effectiveness differently than those measuring reductions in crime.

Here’s an example. Let’s say one of our Jabari Malevi girls becomes a model school bus rider. She stops arguing with seatmates, chooses to ignore name-calling, and never again joins in fist-fights. Let’s also say that her change has come through contact with us. Trusting her identity as a child or God, she feels differently about herself and her future. She also recognizes her sister-hood with other girls, even those not yet on the same page as she is. In this new awareness, she is able to ignore other riders’ petty, disruptive behavior.

Three questions: (a) would we ever know she made that change, (b) if we did know, could we claim credit for her new behavior, and, (c) what world would we be living in such that we’d see that as a crime prevention outcome? As people of faith aren’t we more likely claim her new way of thinking and behaving as a sign of God’s life-changing presence?

Now I’ve been in this debate before. You’re aware of it too. At one level, it’s the old argument between so-called hard and soft sciences. It goes like this. Question: what’s the best way to cure alcoholism? Answer: (a) give the addict a different drug, Anabuse, which makes the body react violently to alcohol; or, (b) encourage participation in AA.

If we give the drug, we measure, biologically and objectively, its effects on the disease. If we push AA, the measures are subjective, what the addict tells us. Want to really cloud the bases for judgment? Substitute, or add into the mix, religious practices like anointing and laying on hands. What accounts for the change?

Most faith-filled folks take with a grain of salt research into the value of prayer as a treatment for illness. We look suspiciously at surveys claiming regular church-goers live longer than those who spend Sunday mornings at Starbucks, or at home.

We’re also wary of government and religion becoming too closely linked. That’s especially true in our country, where separation between church and state is both a core cultural value and a legal obligation.

I think it’s helpful, every Sunday, to have ideas like that play in our minds and tugging for the loyalty claims of our hearts. What we’re about here, in this assembly and in this larger community, as disciples of this Jesus, is to bring life and faith together. Part of the way we do that is to gather together to offer worship and praise to the God Jesus came to reveal to us. We give God thanks for all that’s happened to each of us, alone and together, in the week past. We also give God thanks - in advance - for all that will happen in the week ahead.

It’s especially helpful, I think, to have these conflicting thoughts and confounding feelings swirling in and around us as we celebrate the Kingship of Jesus. What on earth does that mean? I mean that, literally. What on earth does that mean?

Before we get there, here are a few other contradictory thoughts and confusing feelings. We’re Christians, citizens of a country governed by a constitutional democracy. This particular duly elected government, which campaigned against so-called nation-building, is committed to spreading democracy in other countries, steeped in very different cultures. Our president, also a Christian, is doing that by means of a war that’s never been declared formally by those representatives we elected to preserve, protect and defend that constitution.

This is the world in which we’re trying to bring life and faith together, celebrating the Kingship of Jesus. What on earth does that mean?

Part of what I hope you’ll see and hear here, as well as wrestle with for a while, is that while we may value and desire a constitutional separation between church and state, for disciples of Jesus, there can be no separation between life and faith!

Looking only at this one scene in John’s rather long drama of Jesus’ passion and death (John 18:33-37), we can learn some profound realities about both God and ourselves.

See all this shuttling back and forth Pilate does between the law-abiding Jewish leaders and the accused Jesus? That shows a piece of an unholy alliance between religion and government. The religious leaders are trying to get the government to execute someone whose “crime” violates a biblical, not a civil, law. The official religious charge is blasphemy (19:7).

To reach their goal, these religious leaders declare their civic allegiance to Pilate’s Roman Caesar. They then charge that his failure to see Jesus’ claim to be ushering in God’s new rule as treason against Caesar, makes Pilate a traitor.

The real verdict here is that whenever power is used to get something over on someone, power deals death. Pilate murdered his principles of Roman justice and fairness. The religious leaders slaughtered their claims to biblical integrity. Jesus was executed.

Listening closely to Pilate’s interrogation and Jesus’ answers, we learn something deeper. In reply to Pilate’s asking what Jesus has done to earn the chief priests’ disfavor, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

Understanding, or misunderstanding, Jesus’ meaning has a huge impact on how we Christians bring life and faith together. Misunderstanding Jesus is the reason so many Christians live as the “frozen chosen.” It’s why so many of us are so heavenly minded we do no earthly good.

Way too many Christians imagine that Jesus means his kingdom is up in some far off heaven. It’s as though we imagine some angelic general holding back battalions of angels ready, willing and able to descend from the sky to smite those bad acting Romans, and to slay those bad believing Jews. Hooey!

Jesus isn’t some first century realtor shrieking, “Location; location; location!” He’s not talking about place; he’s talking about orientation, point of reference, direction, and course. My vision, the vision of the Father in whose:
- name I have come to speak
- rule I have come to bring in
- way I have come to reveal to you
- word I have come to make known for you
- truth I testify as witness for you
- life I have come to offer you,
is “otherwise” to your selfish claims and your death-dealing clamor. He says, everyone who brings life and faith together in this God’s vision for life and world keeps on listening to my voice.

Whose vision moves us to bring life and faith together? If it’s Jesus’ vision for world in which we live and move and have our being, if it’s Jesus’ truth about life that gives shape and meaning to who we are, if it’s Jesus voice to whom we keep listening; that’s got to mean something here and now, before it can possibly mean anything in any other there and then!

Jesus went to his death trusting that vision - not jumping on a heavenly hand-grenade so we’d escape God’s fury. He went to the cross to free us for a new way of seeing, hearing and relishing in what God’s desire for all God’s people has been all along. John told us as much in the prologue of his Gospel.

9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God (John 1:9-13).

It’s a tall order: to identify concrete, proven strategies to reduce violence, then marshal the power over others to get the job done. The Caesars’ Pax Romana couldn’t do it. Herod was unable to pull it off. Pilate failed and the chief priests were unsuccessful. George Bush hasn’t fared much better and, like as not, Mayor Peterson and his task force will fall short, as well. See, it’s not the Christian thing to do.

The Christian thing to do, in a here and now world where life and faith come together, is to exercise our real power as children of God.

We keep gathering in Jesus’ name, openly and inclusively, in defiance of those who set race, gender, status, age and income standards for belonging.

We put all our trust in his good promises, avoiding fear, guilt and shame as means to speak to or hear from God.

We listen to his voice, to be certain our claims neither ambush the weak nor assault the suffering, because of unholy alliances we’re tempted to make.

We share his good news, comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comfortable, in ways that focus our anger on negative results not responsible people.

We keep pouring water in here, so people are free enough to “walk wet” out there.

We keep welcoming sinners, outcasts and misfits to this table so each of us who fits those categories is brave enough to break ourselves open and to pour ourselves out, in the way Jesus went to the cross, knowing the grace that’s ours is costly.

You probably won’t see anything like this on the pages of The Indianapolis Star when the task force releases its report. But these are the concrete, proven strategies that bring about the godly neighborliness that reduces violence, because they make new world, where Jesus is Lord, and our loyalty to God’s vision for beloved community, as well as our high regard for all its holy citizens and its gracious King, speaks from and walks in that truth.