Isidore: November 25, 2018

A challenging sermon on Christ the King in an age of Caesars…

While life in the United States is still far from normal, whatever normal is, there was a bit less buzz this year about tense stares and heated arguments over plates of turkey and stuffing. I don’t know if that is because people have learned what subjects to avoid, if hearts have really been changed, or if people simply are not sitting down in the same configurations they did two years ago when we felt so very divisible, if folks have actually been disinvited. It is probably a little bit of all of the above. Even this year though, there were surely more than a few who would have preferred to be anywhere except where they were on Thursday. For some, it was wanting to be somewhere specific, the “your family or my family” that is always a part of holiday negotiations. Others simply wanted to be in two places at once, not because they wanted to be under a different roof, but because they could not be in the kitchen and watching the parade at the same time, could not be at the dinner table and watching the big game.

If only we had the gift of Isidore. A Spaniard who lived into the 12th century, he is referred to as a “labrador,” which can be confusing in translation, for it does not mean laborer as we might guess. That word would better be translated “obrero” or “trabajador.” “Labrador” meant specifically a farm worker, and not the landowner, but the hired hands. Isidore was the sort of person Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers would represent centuries later, often poor and exploited. Nonetheless, he is the patron saint of both farmers of all kinds, and of Madrid, the gleaming Spanish capital filled with wealth he could have never imagined. Two US cities are named San Ysidro after him. He was renowned for his piety, something that got him in trouble with his fellow “labradors,” who accused him of missing work to attend mass.

One version of the medieval myth has angels plowing in Isidore’s place while he worshipped, another has a pair of angels plowing on each side of him, allowing him to complete his tasks in a third of the time. But I prefer the one that claims for the saint the miracle of bilocation, the ability to be in two places at the same time, out in the field and also in worship. The gift of bilocation is also claimed for other saints in the Roman Catholic tradition, including Anthony of Padua, an early and important Franciscan, and Padre Pio, a Capuchin Franciscan from the 20th century.

Great on the saints for being in two places at once, but it doesn’t work that way for the rest of us, and even if it did, I suspect we’d immediately find ourselves needing to be in three places at once, because whatever it is that we have, it is rarely good enough.

Yet, being in two places at once, and specifically in two worlds at once, is at the heart of the gospel message. Jesus announces that the kingdom of God is at hand, that the kingdom of God is co-existent with our reality. Further, he is crucified under a sign that says “King of the Jews.”

The ancients had venerated kings as gods, and the Hebrews would claim Yahweh as their ultimate king, so it is not surprising that the title “king” would be assigned to Jesus in his role as Christ as well. After all, Christ means anointed, which is what you did to kings and future kings like the shepherd boy David.

The ancient Hebrews expected the messiah to be the monarch of the new/re-created Hebrew people, a new Davidic kingdom, and even though Jesus redefined the term, adding aspects of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, Daniel’s Son of Man, and his own claim of divine presence to that definition of messiah, the role as king was still there, so much so that the authors of the gospel wrote it into their version of events that took place in the hours before his crucifixion.

The Feast of Christ the King is celebrated on the last Sunday before Advent, and even influences the readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, the schedule of readings shared by many Mainline Protestant denominations and churches, giving us today’s text, which feels so out of season, that trial before Pontius Pilate we are used to hearing during Holy Week.

It is surprising that Mainline Protestants and the Revised Common Lectionary celebrate Christ the King, for while the idea of Christ as king dates back at least as far as Cyril of Alexandria in the 5th century, the feast itself was not promulgated until the early 20th century, four hundred years after we had split from our sisters and brothers in the Roman church. This was an innovation from Rome that was embraced and adopted by other Christians. The first half of the last century saw Christians focusing on what they shared rather than on how they differed in a wave of ecumenism that would lead to the formation of councils of churches and merged denominations like our own. New ideas were challenging the Enlightenment project, positivism and the idea of existence as a giant machine regulated by Newtonian mechanics. It was as extraordinary time in human consciousness, and a terrible time for humanity.

After the First World War, after the carnage and destruction wrought by the sin of nationalism, Pope Pius XI declared in the encyclical “Ubi arcano Dei consilio” that peace could only be found with Christ as king, as the “Prince of Peace.” Neither the ruler nor the nation could be the ultimate, the final answer. He would follow it three years later with “Quas primas,” for the pope still saw rampant and dangerous nationalism. This second encyclical formally established the feast for Catholics.

The rule of God is at the heart of the Hebrew tradition. The Sh’ma Yisrael of the Hebrew tradition and the Great Commandment of the Christian tradition could not be any clearer, making all the more bold the sins of those who ignore this core belief. God comes first, above all else. After God comes our neighbor, and Jesus is clear in the parable of the Good Samaritan that neighbor is not defined by race or nationality. Who is my neighbor? Everyone. Any creed that places nation or race first is sin.

Declaring that God was the only true king to the Hebrew people was an act of subversion, of treason when the nation had been conquered and foreign very human kings laid claim to supremacy. Refusing to worship those kings and their gods got people killed. Scripture captures tales of resistance, and miracles associated with that resistance, from the Exile in Babylon to the failed Seleucid attempt to Hellenize Jerusalem two centuries before Jesus.

Declaring that Jesus was the true king was an act of subversion, of treason, when the nation was under the thumb of the brutal Roman empire, and refusing to worship those caesars and their gods got people killed. Appropriating the titles used for Augustus, light from light, true god from true god, and assigning them to Jesus, was an act of defiance. The Christian message, of love, of good news for the rich and the poor, the Jew and the Gentile, the slave and the master, for women and for men, this was a revolution that challenged every structure of power and privilege, and it made those who had power and privilege very angry.

To claim that everyone was your neighbor was an act of rebellion in a world where Romans ruled, Roman citizenship made you a superior human with rights, a world of slaves and racism and broken bodies in the arena for the purpose of entertainment. This was a world where people watched violence for fun. It was a world where people watched death for fun, and so why not a few Christians. They were weird anyway, with their executed God.

The celebration of Christ the King, indeed honoring the commandments, is the exact opposite of nationalism. It should be no surprise that the same year Pius wrote of Christ the King, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” “Germany, Germany, over all,” was made the national anthem of that nation. Nor should it surprise you that today only the third verse of the original is used, and it does not place Germany above all else, but speaks of “unity and justice and freedom,” for Germany first fuled the fire of Nazism.

There is more still in this passage from the gospel attributed to John, for when Pilate pushes Jesus, he responds that he came into the world to testify to the truth. The response should be shocking were we not living in the same context, for immediately Pilate tries to relativize truth, to deny the importance of truth. “What is truth?” he asks, and walks away from the conversation.

It is in that same gospel that Jesus calls Satan the “father of lies,” the con artist who can leave us so confused that we are no longer sure what is true. This isn’t about the nuanced difference between fact and story. This is about old-fashioned, bald-faced lies. This is about what is false, about sin and evil. “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”

That is powerful. It is important. And we’d prefer to gloss over it, to turn it into metaphor, to soften the blow.

Because we lie. We lie to ourselves. We lie to others. And we live in a world of lies, all smoke and mirrors and emperor’s new clothes and nothing real behind it. We have become so accustomed to these lies, so defined by them, that when people challenge them, we become angry, we pick up stones. Speak truth, any truth, that makes people uncomfortable, that undermines the power of Caesar, and they will shout for Barabbas, will demand that you be crucified.

So many lies, lies like there is not enough for everyone, that more for me must mean less for you. Lies like race, the idea that somehow humans are worth more or less because of some infinitesimally small variation in the DNA that codes for darker skin or a narrow nose. The lie that healthcare can ever work as a free market commodity, as if one might say “gosh, that pharmaceutical is too expensive, so I’ll just die.” The lie that says you have to choose sides between law enforcement and the people of color who are gunned down by bad cops, as if dead cops or dead citizens are the only choice.

The Father of Lies is in for some serious competition if the selective literalists are right and the Second Coming will start with the trials and tribulations in John of Patmos’ feverish fantasy of the end, of the beast and the Whore of Babylon, and violence, famine, disease, though those selective literalists are in deep trouble themselves, for they have forgotten that God comes first, not nation, that neighbor is everyone, everyone, regardless of race or nationality.

We don’t need that vision of violence and famine and lies, one lie after another. We don’t need a feast to remind us what happens when we place nation above all else. We need only look at history and at the news.

As Americans, we struggle with this imagery, anti-authoritarian and committed to the rule of law and individuals rights except when we aren’t. We might have thrown off earthly kings, but honestly there is no other concept that quite captures the role of God in human terms. It is not nation, nation, over all, it is not nation first, it is God, God over all, God, God first, and then it is neighbor, neighbor…

And it is truth, and truth is hard and scary and dangerous because we cocoon ourselves in stories rather than deal with life.

We live in the world in which we live, but we are called to bi-locate, to live in the as-if where truth matters, God is in charge, and love reigns supreme, for God is love, not a voice crying in the wilderness but a voice speaking cosmos into being. It is not about lying to ourselves and pretending that everything is fine. Protestant Christian faith starts with a clear understanding of our deficits, but it also starts with a clear understanding of grace, of God’s love for us.

We are called like San Ysidro to worship even as we work, and to love, even when it takes work, to live as if every promise in scripture is true, that we are called and loved and capable of almost anything precisely because we are reflections of divine mystery, of holy creativity, to live as if we are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of the Maker, and we have a portion of that holy love and holy imagination inside of us and so does that guy that looks different, that prays differently.

We are called to resist the Father of Lies, to testify to the truth, for Christ is our alpha and our omega, our source and our destination, the one who loves us and frees us from our sins.

Though Protestants would join Catholics in declaring that only God was worthy of our worship, we didn’t really learn. Fourteen years after the feast was officially proclaimed, the world would once again be engulfed in the flames of war, flames fueled by lies, by nationalism, by racism, by hate.

Christ as King? Maybe. Maybe that doesn’t work for you. But what must work for you if you are to follow Jesus is truth, truths like the fact that nations come and go and so do their rulers, truths like God is God and God is good. The Father of Lies or the Prince of Peace… the choice is yours.

To paraphrase the words of Joshua from the ancient story: Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Amen.