"We Two Kings..." (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday November 24, 2024 – Reign of Christ Sunday
Scripture:  John 18:33-37


I want to invite you to imagine that you are sitting in church… well, I guess that part doesn’t take too much imagination!... but I want to invite you to imagine that the church you are sitting in is located in Germany, and it is November 1933.  Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January of this year, and one of his projects was aligning the German church with the values of the Nazi party, including anti-semitism, racism, and placing the word and authority of the Fürher – ie Hitler – above all other authorities.

 

In the months since January, the leadership in the Protestant churches – whether they be presbyteries or bishops – has been replaced by people in line with the values of the Nazi party.  Any clergy who had Jewish ancestry have been defrocked, as have any clergy married to someone with non-Aryan roots.  There are calls to remove any Jewish elements in the bible, including, from some quarters, removing the entire Old Testament.

 

What do we do as a church?  In the 15 years since the last war ended (which our country lost), there has been a groundswell of German nationalism.  We are always being told that Germany is the best country, that Germans are the best people, that God loves us most of all, and that German Christians are the best kind of Christians.  And because of this, doesn’t it make sense that the Christian German Chancellor should be the supreme authority of the church, maybe not just in Germany but elsewhere too?  Who doesn’t want to hear that we are winning, both as a people and as a church?

 

What do we do?  The easiest thing is to go along with it.  Not only does our government promote this way of thinking, but all of our new church leaders are in agreement with it, and are enforcing it through the hierarchical structures of the church.  And since the world outside of the church is rallying around chants of “Make Germany great again!” and “A German Church for the German People!” this is the only way that we will survive in a world of turmoil.

 

But there were some German pastors who didn’t agree with going along.  They didn’t agree with the nationalistic fervor that was invading the church.  They had a different understanding of what the church was, and what the church was supposed to be.  And so between May 29 and May 31, 1934, 139 delegates from different Protestant churches, a mixture of ministers and lay church members and university professors, gathered in the town of Barmen and worked around the clock to draft a theological statement to stand against the German churches’ acquiescence to and acceptance of National Socialism or Nazism.

 

At the end of the third day, they had written and signed a document that begins:  “Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death”; and went on to include politically radical statements like:  “We reject the false doctrine that there could be areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ but to other lords,” and “We reject the false doctrine that the Church could, and could have permission to, give itself or allow itself to be given special leaders [cough… Hitler] vested with ruling authority.”

 

This radical statement, that proclaimed that since Jesus Christ was the one true head of the church, therefore no human being could ever fill that role, came to be known as the Barmen Declaration.  It was inflammatory in the political state of Germany in the 1930s.  It led to the formation of a new denomination, known as the Confessing Church – ie the church that confessed the ultimate authority of God in Jesus Christ, rather than the ultimate authority of the Chancellor.  But many of the people who signed the Barmen Declaration ended up imprisoned for their opposition to the Nazi government, and some of them were executed for it.  And though a new denomination formed as a result, this declaration didn’t sway the opinion of the majority of churches in Germany, or the majority of Christians.  The majority of churches accepted the authority of Hitler over the church and over their lives.  Maybe this was the easier road.  Maybe this was the safer road.  Maybe they believed in the message of German superiority.

 

But in the almost-century since, we have come to recognize which churches made the right choice.  At least, I hope that we have come to recognize this.

 

Which brings us to our bible story today.  We’ve jumped to the very end of Jesus’s life – we’re in the middle of the Good Friday story here, and Jesus is on trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor.  We are in Pilate’s palace in Jerusalem, surrounded by the opulence of the Roman Empire.

 

As we observe this scene, we are presented with two options, two paths that we can follow.  We can put our trust in the power of Rome, the power of Empire, as represented by Pilate.  This would be the way of worldly power, of comfort and luxury, of security (as long as you’re willing to tow the party line).

 

The other path that is presented to us is the path of Jesus.  Now this is a radically different path than the one that Pilate offers us.  Jesus has been saying some pretty challenging things on the way into Jerusalem – things like “the greatest commandment is to love God, to love others, and to love ourselves.”  Things like, “To be greatest, you must be the servant to all.”  Things like, “Let the most vulnerable come to me, for it is to ones like them that belongs the kingdom of God.”  Things like, “The first are last, and the last are first.”  Things like, “I’m going to walk this valley of suffering before you have to.”  And the way of Jesus eventually ends up on the cross.

 

And so in this scene that the Gospel of John paints for us, we are in Pilate’s palace, looking at two kings, and being asked to choose which king we are going to put our trust in.  Are we going to trust in the king of worldly power, the king of Empire?  Or are we going to trust in the king of the cross?

 

Before ending off, I want to paint one more scene to add to Barmen 1934 and Pilate’s palace circa AD 33.  And that third scene is the church in Canada in 2024.  Because I think that the foundational question we have to ask ourselves today is the same question as it is in those previous scenes.  Which king are we going to choose to put our trust in?

 

I don’t know if the urgency is as close to the surface today as it is in the two previous scenes, but I do think that it is something that we have to consider.  What are the things in our world today that might lure us away from the way of Jesus, from the way of the cross?  Because I think that there are things that would lure us away.  The way of Jesus isn’t an easy way. It is the way of service to others even if, especially if we don’t think that they “deserve it.”  It is the way of extending forgiveness to people who have wronged and hurt us.  It is the way of giving up control over our own lives and destiny.  Certainly there are far easier paths that we could choose to travel.

 

And when the rubber hits the road, where are we going to ultimately put our trust?  Do we trust in the king of Empire, or do we trust in the king of the Cross?

 

And yet the way of Jesus, the way of the Cross is also the way where we receive forgiveness just as we are called to extend forgiveness.  It is the way where we receive unconditional love, just as we are called to extend unconditional love.  It is the way where, even as we give up control, we are giving control over to the one whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.

 

Let me end with some words that I shared earlier this week – words that come from the now-inactive Facebook account, Occupy Advent.  They wrote:

If Jesus is Lord, then nothing else can be.

If Jesus is Lord, then violence and anger are not.

If Jesus is Lord, then the nation is not.

If Jesus is Lord, then my stuff is not.

If Jesus is Lord, then I certainly am not.

If Jesus is Lord, then ______ is not.

 

Which king are you going to choose?

 

 

Die Barmer Theologische Erklärung

The Barmen Theological Declaration

Photo Credit:  Shawn Harmon

"WTF Are We Supposed to Do?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday November 10 – Remembrance Sunday
Scripture:  Mark 12:38-44


I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling as though the world is spinning out of control these days.  I’m feeling like there are so many things to be worried about, that my brain can’t keep track of them all.  There was the heartbreaking election result in the US this week when it seemed as though misogyny and racism won, with all of the implications for people whose lives are going to be affected in very real ways.  There is climate change and all of the associated anxieties, with the threat of rising water levels and increased drought and fire risk, and our global food supply systems under threat.  There are wars being fought in every corner of the world with no end in sight.  There is increasing divisiveness in our politics, with an us-against-them attitude at every level.

 

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty powerless these days.  I’m feeling like I’m caught in systems that are so much bigger than one person, like anything I say or do won’t make a difference, like there are forces beyond one person or one community that are controlling and shaping how we live our lives.

 

I don’t know about you, but some days I really feel like I’m struggling with how to be in the world.

 

But when I step back and look at the bigger picture, I rather suspect that this has been the case through most of history.  This time of year, when we remember wars that have been fought, especially in the last century and this one, we think about soldiers who fought and died in wars that they didn’t start, who fought and died in wars that were controlled by people far away from the front lines.  Joe Blow or Jane Doe soldier follows orders and does what they have been trained to do, but ultimately they are trapped in a system of war that is decided not by them or by anyone they will ever meet.

 

We can go back even further to the time of Jesus, when the ordinary people living their lives had very little control over the forces that impacted how they lived their lives.  There were systems imposed on them by the religious structures of their time and place – rules about what you could and couldn’t do.  And then there were all of the laws and rules imposed on them by the Roman Empire… and don’t you dare put a toe out of line, or you might end up on a cross too as an example to others.

 

I’m sorry – I probably sound pretty gloomy this morning – but the world has been feeling like a heavy place these days.

 

The primary role of the preacher is to find some good news in the text, some good news in the stories of our faith, and make it somehow relevant to our everyday lives.  So if we look at the story that we heard today, is there any good news that we can find?

 

I need to apologize to our treasurer and Stewards – they would probably like it very much if I stood up here and said that we should all be like the widow in today’s story, and put all of our money, everything that we have to live on, in the offering plate on the way out of here.  But to me, this isn’t a faithful reading of this story.

 

Because did you notice that nowhere does Jesus praise the widow for her actions?  Nowhere does Jesus say to her, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  Nowhere does Jesus say to his followers, “Go and do likewise.”

 

In fact, if you look at the passage that came right before his encounter with the widow, Jesus is condemning the religious hypocrisy of his time and place.  Given his harsh words, it doesn’t really make sense for him to turn around and praise someone for giving more than she could afford to give in order to prop up these broken systems.

 

In fact, Jesus seems to be using the widow’s plight to emphasize the brokenness of these systems.  If every household was expected to contribute x number of Shekels to the temple treasury, that is unfair to someone who is already marginalized like the widow, as that required contribution takes up 100% of her disposable income, leaving her nothing to pay her rent, to buy food for her family, to clothe her children.  Jesus is pointing out that it is a flawed system.

 

Which leaves us with a text that doesn’t seem to have too much good news in it for us.

 

But I wonder if the good news might come from being like Jesus.  Jesus noticed the woman, and he noticed that she was trapped by forces and systems beyond her control.  He noticed her, and he named those systems, and in doing so, restored some of her humanity to her.  She was no longer struggling along, unnoticed and un-regarded by the world around her.  Jesus sees her, and she becomes someone important, at least in that moment.

 

We humans are imperfect in our human-ness, and unfortunately I think that any human system, whether political or economic or social, is going to be a flawed system because it is created by flawed people.  God is the only one who is able to create a perfect world, and we have to trust that this perfect world is going to become a reality some day, even if it takes longer than our lifetimes to get here.  God longs for the liberation of all people from these systems that entrap us, systems that I dare to name as sin – systems that exploit, systems that harm, systems that oppress – God longs for the liberation of all people and all of creation, and some day, God’s reality is going to be so much more real than what we currently see as reality.

 

But for now, as we are stuck struggling through our imperfect human systems, I think that there is value in being like Jesus, naming these systems and pointing out their imperfections and pointing out who is hurt the most by those systems – political, social, economic, environmental systems.  Because in doing so, we can restore the humanity of those who are being harmed.

 

I think that this is maybe at the heart of that old saying – we are in the world but not of the world.  We are in the world, navigating all of these imperfect and flawed systems; yet because we trust in God’s vision for the world, we trust that there is a good and perfect way of being that God will eventually unfold.  And maybe, just maybe, by noticing and pointing out the places where our world doesn’t match with God’s world, we can be part of the unfolding of that world, we can be participants in making God’s vision for the world a reality.

 

And may it be so.

 

And may it be so soon.

 

Amen.

 

 

“The Widow’s Mite” by JESUS MAFA

Used with Permission