Any decent bookstore is chock full of great detectives. There, lingering on the shelves, you will find Miss Marple, Precious Ramotswe, Kurt Wallander, countless others, each the invention of a gifted writer, and many appearing on our television screens. One of those fictional detectives, the mostly forgotten Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, has found a unique niche in university history departments, of all places, where I first encountered him several decades ago. He appears in six novels by the late Josephine Tey, but it is only one of these, “The Daughter of Time,†that has consistently appeared near the top of lists of the greatest mystery novels of all time, placed as high as number one during the 1990’s.
In the novel, Grant, rehabilitating from an injury, uses his time to investigate a centuries old mystery, the fate of the Princes in the Tower, England’s King Edward V and his brother, Richard of Shrewsbury. The book asks a fundamental question: who gets to write history? It is a question we still ask, or at least should still ask, both of near history, of far history, even of scripture.
The two boys disappeared during the reign of their uncle, Richard III, around the turn of the 16th century, and people have speculated ever since. Shakespeare, whose patrons were the Tudor usurpers, would portray Richard as a hunchbacked monster. His bones have been found under a carpark in Leicester and his reputation somewhat rehabilitated by historians, but the remains supposed to be those of the two boys, interred in Westminster Abbey, have never been tested, so their identity remains unproven. We do not know who may or may not have murdered them, nor even know with certainty that they were actually murdered. Tey, through her character Grant, argues that it was the Tudor, Henry VII, not Richard, who had reason to commit the crime and eliminate rivals with better claims to the throne.
You might say that this is ancient history, but lost royalty and not-so-lost royalty have been the subject of more energy than seems quite fitting for a country that worked so hard to throw off a monarchy. Hucksters traveled America in the 19th century pretending to be displaced royalty or selling people, at high price, the lie that they themselves were displaced royalty. Much ink and airtime went to the question of Anastasia during the 20th century, the supposedly escaped daughter of the last Russian tsar, and it might still be the subject of debate had not the bodies of she and her brother Alexie been found.
We follow as if they were our own the news of the British royal family, tabloid rags screaming the latest in bold type as we go through the supermarket checkout, and now that an American is the Duchess of Sussex, we are right to feel as if they are our own, yet tomorrow we will celebrate Patriot’s Day, and pay our taxation with representation, and celebrate our independence now and again in July. Confused much?
Royals are an issue in the Bible too, of course. The Twelve Tribes had never had a king, but they became fearful of their neighbors and demanded one, for fear sometimes makes people do dumb things. Samuel, the great prophet and priest, consulted God, who responded, in John Goldingay’s new translation, “it’s not you they’ve rejected, because it’s me they’ve rejected from being king over them. […] they’ve abandoned me and served other gods […] So now listen to their voice. Only testify against them solemnly and tell them about the authority of the king who will reign over them.â€
And so, the Hebrew people got a king, at first the warlord Saul, then David and his son Solomon, and then two separate royal houses in divided kingdoms, some terrible kings like Ahab, some faithful kings like Josiah.
The last of the Davidic kings, Zedekiah, would rebel against his Babylonian overlord, and in 587 BCE, Nebuchanezzar and his forces would destroy Jerusalem. There would not be a king again for centuries, until about 160 years before Jesus, when a family of country priests rebelled against foreign rulers. Later a member of that house would declare himself king. That line failed too, and the Romans had installed a puppet, an Idumaean Jew named Herod the Great, by the time Jesus was born. By the time Jesus began his active ministry, Herod the Great was dead too, and the Romans had abolished even that sham throne. So as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, as Pontius Pilate questioned him, there was no King of the Jews. Their longing for a king of their own, a kingdom of their own, would be mocked by that cruel Roman governor in the sign they placed over Jesus’ head as he hung dying on a cross.
The Hebrews in Palestine were notoriously difficult subjects, willing to die rather than to compromise their faith. Passover, the most important celebration in their calendar, was a celebration of rebellion, a celebration of liberation. Jerusalem was always packed and on edge. The Romans knew a thing or two about leaders entering the city to the cheers of great crowds. They called it a “triumph,†and it was always the sign of someone who either had power already or would soon get it. This entry into Jerusalem looked like the start of something bigger.
It is no wonder that the Romans chose to make a public example out of him when he was handed over by his own people. A mob cheered him into the city. A mob cried out for his execution.
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!†Lord, a title we think of first as religious but that they understood always and only as political, a title of power.
This is the new king? An un-credentialed cult leader from the sticks?
He would die with a crown of thorns on his head, but by the Middle Ages, Christians had replaced this with a crown of gold and jewels, taking up that title Christ the King. What sort of king is this? What sort of kingdom? He declared that the kingdom of God was at hand, was breaking into the world even as he wandered, healed, scolded.
What type of holy imagination did it take to see the could-be of divine creativity and mysterious love, to see and believe that the world was more than it seemed and people were better than they knew, even in that time when people were divided, angry, hurting?
The innovative Christian leader Brian McLaren points out that what we have here are counter-kingdoms, that the in-breaking kingdom is subversive, that it comes in not with power and might, as do all finite earthly kingdoms, but that it comes in weakness and vulnerability. It cannot be brought low by the forces of aimlessness and sin, for it has gone as low as possible. It has been to the grave.
It was a kingdom where believing is seeing. Let those who have eyes to see see, Let those who have ears to hear listen.
It was subversive and threatening, certainly to the political system, this declaration that God was God and Caesar wasn’t, that final authority and ultimate power did not rest with a pervert at his resort on Capri but rested with the Creator of Heaven and Earth, who they experienced as Yahweh, a liberator, a power for justice and love. It was as subversive and threatening to other Jewish movements of the time as it was to Rome. The Pharisees shared the belief in the resurrection of the dead, but they could not control this Jesus, this Galilean, and he called them out as showy and self-righteous, called them out for a religion that was rich in rules and lacking in love. The Sadducees were the elite, the wealthy, the old families, still angry about those upstart country priests who had rebelled and placed themselves on the throne, and they were willing to do anything to keep what little power they had left.
This man on a donkey, this crowd, was subversive and threatening to the economic system, for though the Law and the prophets spoke about things like justice and radical hospitality, in the end, they still believed that those who were rich deserved to be rich and those who were poor had probably done something to deserve it, and Jesus dared to say that was wrong.
That crowd chanting, waving palms, throwing their cloaks on the ground before him, they were mostly the folks who needed to believe that there was a better world, a better kingdom, to dream that it might be true. But there were folks with privilege too, like Nicodemus and Joseph who would bury him, folks who believed in a better world even when they themselves were doing okay, for they could look around and see despair.
I am so deeply embedded in today’s massively complex systems myself, have a fair amount of privilege. I get the desire to put your head in the sand, or to pretend that somehow what si going on out there doesn’t matter. My retirement fund is doing great these days, so as the song says, “Don’t worry. Be happy.â€
I mean, if we try to disconnect from everything that is tainted, we’d end up naked in the woods, for humans are humans, the makers of earthly kingdoms. Almost two thousand years after he rode into Jerusalem, and the kingdoms of self, of power, of greed and hate, seem to be doing just fine, so maybe we’re better off just joining them. Maybe, just this one day, I can go home and watch a bunch of gas-guzzling cars covered in corporate logos drive in circles, watch people skate around whacking a puck with sticks, swinging for the fences.
I am sometimes a little tired of the debate over whether cultural and educational institutions can take tainted money, whether they need to turn away donations by the Sackler family, increasingly implicated in the opioid epidemic, but I also totally get why people are upset, why folks who have lost loved ones to addiction are mad, why they don’t think you should be able to use ill-gotten wealth to white-wash your name. What time does that ballgame start?
Yale theologian Kathryn Tanner has a new book out called “Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism†where she addresses a particular and pernicious trend in our economy, one you have heard me address from this pulpit, for while capitalism has traditionally been driven by talent, hard work, and courage, today it is fueled by schemes and manipulation in what Tanner refers to as “finance capitalism.â€
Paul, that great translator who turned a Jewish reform movement into a spiritual path that transcended race and culture and context, was an advocate for hard work. Even the massive corporations that dominate the economy, companies like Apple and Amazon, at least delivered actual goods and services, continue to innovate.
Jesus did a lot of hands-on direct ministry to the people who were right in front of him, people who were hungry, people who were sick, and that is a part of what we are called to do, direct mission. But he spent just as much time addressing the kingdoms of sin, announcing that there was another way of experiencing God, of being in this world, of living together. That part is a bit harder.
Before you despair and we put our heads in the ground, before we blow off this king riding into Jerusalem, before we turn our eyes from this unsightly display, I want to tell you a story.
Several years ago, people were walking into pastor’s and rabbi’s and imam’s studies throughout the Greater Boston area. They couldn’t afford the healthcare they needed, couldn’t afford or were deemed ineligible for insurance. They were looking for help, someone to listen, someone to speak for them. They told stories of premature deaths and bankruptcies, of lives diminished and lost.
And those women and men of God came together and they shared those stories. Then they became convicted that there had to be a better way. They imagined a better kingdom. So they found some other smart people, and they learned how to organize and how to lobby. They lived as if things could get better. And the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization drove what became known as RomneyCare which became known as ObamaCare but is really the Affordable Care Act, and millions who did not have healthcare, folks with pre-existing conditions, families with disabled children, now do, all because real people just like you and me had holy imagination, saw the possibility of a counterkingdom.
Not that their plan was perfect, especially by the time politicians and corporate lobbyists got through with it, but it was better than what we had for most people, and especially for the poor, the powerless, the sick.
They changed things through the power of holy imagination and human relationships and calling out the best in one another and making use of the gifts they had, for we each have gifts.
I can watch a ballgame today, because we all need some rest sometime, some break from this polarized angry and hyper-critical age where you can’t even go to most restaurants without politics on some screen. But tomorrow, after I get a break and a little rest, I might need to do some work with other faithful Christians on BDS, the boycott, divest and sanction movement targeting the genocide in Palestine, because there will be innocent people suffering tomorrow.
Divestment helped end the brutal and sinful Apartheid regime in South Africa, but as faithful Jews, Muslims, and Christians use that same tactic to try to seek justice for Palestinians, they are called antisemites and worse. State and federal laws are being passed to strip citizens of their right to free expression and the free exercise of their faith, to criminalize and outlaw this powerful and effective witness. We all know that one vote can make a difference, one act of courage, one dream of a another kingdom, one person willing to say “no, this isn’t okay,†especially in a small state like this.
In a little over two weeks I’ll be at Disney World where you will no longer find plastic straws. That didn’t happen because Bob Iger woke up one day and changed corporate practice on a whim. It changed because of grassroots activism. It changed because the crowds that wave palms also wave signs on the bridge and show up at town meetings in Blue Hill, because care for this amazing planet is on our lips and in our hearts. Because people in this town made the world a slightly better place. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly. Terrifying to those with power, for scripture tells you that you have power. You always have.
The religious and civil authorities were alarmed at this crowd that dared to dream of a better world. What does that man know? He’s from away. This isn’t the way we do things around here.
They thought they had crushed him.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.