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Sermon, by Pastor Joel
Reign of Christ
November 24, 2024
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Psalm 93
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37
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100% written by a human
Erin told me a story recently, about a conversation she had at a work assignment in Florida, covering young women who were going door-to- door, campaigning for a constitutional amendment that would restore their right to abortion under Roe V Wade. At one door, she met a middle-aged contractor who told the canvasser that he didn’t agree with abortion, but he was willing to listen and take her flyer. On one point, he was firm: he was, he said, Trump all the way – the former president would be better for the economy, though how exactly, he didn’t say. “I know he’s not a good person,” he said, “but who cares?”
Is this where we are today? Where we no longer care about the integrity and values of our leaders so long as we feel individually advantaged by them? How afraid that should make us! A leader’s values are the very qualities that guide their decisions, decide whether they will cheat, or bully, or lie. They matter far more than any campaign policy that may or may not get passed in the end. Indeed, when it comes to the leaders we elect, or the celebrities we follow, or the people we admire, their values should be the first consideration, not the last thing we care about -- if for no other reason than this: leadership is full of unexpected trials and difficult decisions you cannot prepare for. In those bleak and tense moments, it will be a person’s values and beliefs that guide them.
Who, after all, would Jesus have been without his values? Yes, they were shaped by his parents, by his early teachings, even by the disciples, his friends walking with them, and by his encounters on the road. But he chose to hold them to himself along the way – to listen and learn, to be kind and trustworthy. Each time those values guided him, they became stronger within him, and spread to those around him, until those values defined the faith, the gospel we follow today.
This is the Sunday that the church sets aside to consider the leadership of Christ, who is at the core of what we believe and guides the good we want to accomplish. More than the God who watches over us, and the Holy Spirit who inspires through us, Jesus is the one who walks among us, the one we can best imagine meeting on the bus someday, and who is the most firm and visible model of our faith. Jesus is not ethereal for us – he was a person who walked the earth as we do, and whose values are trumpeted across the major religions – among Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Baha’i and Christians. We may differ on what ties us to Jesus – and his connection to God – but we do not differ on who he was, and what he did. He was a leader -- in almost every way the ideal of what we want out of a leader. Which is why he remains such a key figure in religion and history for so many people.
Now, a lot of what Jesus did and accomplished often gets muddied up by people of different faiths, and by believers and non-believers alike. Was he the son of God? Not to a Rabbi or an Imam. Did he perform miracles? An atheist would say no. But let’s set all that aside. As Christians, we believe that Jesus was the son of God, that he did bring about miracles. For us, the Reign of Christ is more than an earthly title. But Jesus is not a leader for mice, or blind believers. The confidence we place in Christ does not have to be so locked into our faith, that when faith falters, so does our confidence in Jesus. As history has recorded, across writings, the things he did, the lessons he taught, are as true and important to be learned no matter where we stand on our journey of faith. He was a leader, as we wish our leaders today might be.
What makes Jesus a sovereign worthy of these modern times? “For this,” he says, “I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” Those are nice words, clever rhetoric, and we all know people who would argue about their authenticity after being written down so many years after his death. But we don’t need to distill Jesus down to one quote, when we have the events and actions of his life to develop our view of him.
For me, there are three important moments that define Jesus as the one who reigns in my life – they are not times when he was making blind people see or sick people well, or even when he calmed the sea for the disciples. No, it was the moment he was tempted, the moment when he judged wrongly, and the moment when he doubted.
The first time happens in the desert, with the devil. We can interpret this passage literally, but it is really about Jesus confronting his pride and his own power. He was a person, by then, that people followed, at whose feet strangers fell, and in whom men and women were desperate to believe. He was in charge. He was the CEO faced with the choice to skim a little off the top, or the politicians who could take a brown envelope or two without anyone knowing. Who could blame him for wanting to show how cool and powerful he was? But he didn’t – he did what he knew was right, and did not fall to temptation.
The second moment happens when a Canaanite woman grabs his cloak, begging for him to heal her daughter. The disciples are ready to cast her away, and in that moment, Jesus is ready to do the same. But the woman appeals to him again: “Aren’t the dogs fit to eat at the master’s table?” And Jesus changes his mind and cures her daughter.
A lot has been made of this passage in the gospel – to say nothing of some awkwardness around the analogy – but what is significant to me is that Jesus allowed himself to be corrected by another person, to hear their point of view, to see in a new way. His ministry became known for its openness, for his welcoming even those whom society deemed unworthy. That is a leader – someone who listens, who learns.
And the third moment happens on the cross. Theologians debate the meaning of those words repeated in Matthew and Mark—Eli, Eli, lama sabbachthani—when Jesus is said to have wondered out loud if God had forsaken him. Some people are troubled by the thought that Jesus could also have stumbled in his faith. But for me, that makes the experience of the cross all the more honest. What is important is not that Jesus’s trust may have wavered, but that he found the faith to go on with grace and hope. Leaders face these moments of doubt every day – those paralyzing “I-can’t-do-it” thoughts – but they do not get stuck in them. They act - they stand in front of the guns, or face down the wall, or leap, or run. They do whatever is needed in the moment.
These are the qualities, the values, that make Jesus a ruler worthy of our times, and especially in these times. In a time of temptation, he resists. In a moment of hubris, he listens. In the midst of fear and doubt, he finds courage and faith.
In Jesus’s moments of fallibility – when he is less the Son of Heaven and more a Man of the Earth – he demonstrates the values of true leadership possible in all of humanity. Possible in each one of us, despite all our blundering. This is the Jesus who stirs our hearts today. Not the angelic figure, glowing, and at peace. But the Jesus in his dusty robes in the desert - the Jesus, weary from a long day of bringing people together. The Jesus who was humble enough to hear the voices of others, and who carried on in the dark moments. That is a man worth honouring. A teacher worth learning from. A leader worth following. Amen.
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