2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132:1-12; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37

Good morning Stawell. It is good to be back with you, I have not stood here on a Sunday since 13^th October, and in that time I have been overseas and interstate, we have all elected new Shire councillors, and the USA has a new President-Elect. With that as our recent history, and with the church decorated in gold and white, we have arrived today at The Festival of Christ the King.

Today’s festival, which is only about one hundred years old in Christian tradition, is one of my favourite preaching events of the year. It’s not that the readings are particularly extraordinary, or that we have a festival in the more general sense of special candles or special clothes: there are no presents or chocolate or even streamers from the ceiling for today’s celebration. But I like the idea that on this final day of the lectionary calendar when, just before we begin Advent next week and bring out special candles, we consider who Christ is in terms of his kingship.

When I’ve preached on this day in years past I have made the point that to call Jesus “king”, or even to call him “lord” is a statement of loyalty to him and to his leadership above all other governments. This does not mean that we act as anarchists in our shire, state, or nation; but that our first allegiance is to Jesus, and all other forms of obedience come under that. In shorter terms, if Jesus is King then no-one else is; not anyone in London, Canberra, Melbourne, or even in the UC Assembly office in Sydney. If you render unto The LORD that which is The LORD’s and unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, in theory there’s not much left for Caesar (except what The LORD has generously bestowed upon him to equip him for the work of governance). That is a comforting message even if sometimes it isn’t a comfortable message. Recently returned as I am from China, a nation with a government system very different to Australia’s, I have had cause to reflect upon the life of Christians in other nations who have to make a stark choice between God and Government, often to the extent of losing life, liberty, or prestige. We do not have to make that choice so starkly in Australia, and China does sees less oppressive than it may have been in the Maoist years between the late Nineteen Forties and the late Nineteen Eighties. Privately as Australians in the Twenty Twenties we might consider just how godly our leadership is, and how far a conscience aligned to Jesus might allow us to go along quietly with certain legislated ideas.

It is a good message, and we are right to be atheists toward the secularising mindsets, (I don’t make a god out of myself, or some humanitarian ethic), just as much as the first Christians were considered atheists in their day (I don’t believe in the Roman or Greek or Egyptian gods); but I think there’s more to recognising Christ as Lord and Jesus as King than simply deciding where to place the first and deepest loyalty.

As our Stawell congregation in particular continues to discuss the place of Elders in our governance and leadership places in this local church, I wonder whether Australians and Victorians are becoming demoralised in the absence of credible leadership. I suggest that credible leaders are defined as those who heed God’s voice, who seek God in visions (whether mystical experiences or simply “seeing the big picture”) and who teach the scriptures with consistency. Some of these tasks are not within the job description of Premier, Prime Minister, or Mayor, but we would hope that there are advisors to our heads of government who are listening to God and to scripture for wisdom and direction. I make this point not at one party or another in the Australian landscape, it’s definitely a question of both/and rather than either/or for who needs to listen more closely to the King of Kings. We do not have credible leadership, we do not place our trust securely and with peace of heart in our governments, of any colour or either end or centre of the Right-Left adjectives, because no one (it seems) is listening to God.

We must always pray for our government, and our parliamentarians; I see that as a Christian duty and I am prepared to use these old-fashioned words too. When did it cease to be our responsibility to hold our leaders up in prayer before our God? It might not be “woke,” it certainly isn’t popular to say it aloud, but why wouldn’t we pray that our elected women and men have access to the wisdom and grace of the King of Kings? We should pray for our leaders, but I will say that we must never pray against them. Pray that Albo has a change of heart, absolutely! Pray that Albo has a heart-attack, don’t you dare!

My prayer is always that the women and men inside our governments and councils would personally meet with Jesus, never that they would personally meet with disaster. I don’t even pray that one or another would meet with electoral defeat or victory, only that God’s appointed would be elected. And yes, sometimes God does get it wrong; (okay so maybe sometimes electors at the ballot box get it wrong), but that’s no cause for calling down punishing fire from Heaven upon our capital cities. Pentecost fire, yes; a ten-times hotter furnace of divine wrath, no.

The sentence He who rules men, just, who rules in the fear of God (2 Samuel 23:3b in Robert Alter’s translation of The Hebrew Bible) is amongst the last words of King David. It’s an odd sentence in this translation, in The New Revised Standard Version it reads as One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning going into 2 Samuel 23:4a with a comma rather than a full stop. It’s a good point though, and a great image for our times: a just leader is like the sunrise after a stormy night, the light and calm returning after the destructive chaos visited upon us in the dark. Perhaps we might think of a sea captain who has brought us safely through a cyclonic night and how we want to thank him and recognise him for his skill and bravery, for his leadership and wisdom. Imagine if the story if RMS Titanic has turned earlier, or travelled more slowly, or stopped while it was dark, therefore missing the iceberg. We don’t expect perfection from our governments, but we would like to see justice, wisdom, and a bit less pridefulness. King David knew that; but do any of our leaders strike you as the sunlight after the storm? Jesus is that sort of leader for me, not just because “the answer is always Jesus” but because in the actual and metaphorical storms of my life he has been the one who brought me through and met me in the dawn as well. I cannot imagine ever thinking of a head of government like that, but that is why I trust in Jesus as Lord, and that is why, for me, a Caesar can never be.

John in his letter to the seven churches calls Jesus the ruler of the kings of the earth; you can see that in Revelation 1:5. Revelation was likely written at a time when Christians were being murdered for their faith under the emperor Domitian; so for the writer to claim that Jesus is ruler of all the kings is a big and dangerous claim in a world with a Caesar. It’s a big and dangerous claim in a China with a Communist Party. It was a big and dangerous claim in the Soviet Union with Stalin, and in Germany with Hitler. It was and is, and always will be a threatening idea anywhere where there is a tyrannical president, a local drug boss, or a warlord. This is why it is good to remember that Revelation is a letter written to seven specific cities in the Roman province of Asia at the turn of the first century. It is a personal note of encouragement from a friend of Jesus to a group of specific, unique, neighbouring congregations. This is not purely doctrine; it is not just theory it is application and pastoral care; and the whole thing was to be read to each congregation in the place where it met. In other words the news that Jesus is the king of kings is not something to be filed away as a Christian belief; it is supposed to be an encouraging word in the moment.  In this verse, and the next one, Revelation 1:5-6, we see Jesus described as the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, him who loves us and frees us from our sins by his blood, him who made us to be a kingdom, him who made us to be priests serving his God and Father, the one to whom be glory and dominion forever and ever. Christians, do you remember him? Well he’s the him who is on our side: what were you saying about Caesar and/or the local procurator? This is not to say that persecution isn’t painful, or that martyrdom is pleasant, there is no sugar-coating of the world against us here; but John asks us to lift our eyes and remember the one to whom we belong, the one whom we serve.

In John 18:33-37 we read where Jesus is speaking to Pilate immediately before the crucifixion. Do you see in John 18:35 that Pilate asks Jesus what crimes he is guilty of, “what have you done?” Pilate asks because it seems that Jesus’ accusers cannot get even that straight. Within the confused accusations Jesus and Pilate speak about kingship, and Jesus says that his kingdom is not from this world but that if it were then his loyal armies would have prevented their king from being handed over to the Jews. Interesting that, so is the kingdom of Jesus is not a Jewish kingdom either? Is Jesus claiming that he is not King of The Jews, and that he is innocent of the accusation of promoting insurrection? Or was this story written by an anti-Semitic man who wanted to distance the Christian saviour from the rabid mob of circumcised blasphemers at Pilate’s door? Regardless, Jesus’ kingdom is not from here he says in John 18:36. Jesus’ power comes from God, not from conquering armies nor cabinet-room shuffles. Jesus’ kingship is theological, so his kingdom is too: Jesus’ authority is his power to speak and define truth.

So that’s how the Bible reads, but what do we think; what is “the Kingdom of God”? In our twenty-first century world where absolute monarchy is seen as a bad thing, and most developed nations are parliamentary democracies with elected heads of government and constitutional heads of state, it can be challenging to speak of a kingdom. Perhaps we’d prefer to use words like “realm” or “sovereignty”; maybe “zone of governance”, “area of authority” or even “arena of control”. God’s kingdom is not about there being a place with demarcated border walls to keep the foreigners out and the citizens in, so much as it is the experience of God’s control. When Pilate asked Jesus whether he was a king, Jesus’ responded yes and no; yes I have authority to reign, no my kingdom is not a place on earth and I don’t have an army. Jesus refutes the militaristic claim to be King of The Judean people. Jesus does not offer an earthly challenge to the Herod family or the Roman Empire occupying and colonising the land; nonetheless his cross is adorned with the famous “INRI” sign as an accusation, Jesus from Nazareth who is King of the Jews.

Like Pilate we must acknowledge who Jesus is when we speak of the Kingdom of God. We cannot speak of God’s influence without speaking about Jesus, there is no kingdom without a king and the king of God’s kingdom is Jesus. Our conversation is not about power for its own sake, but about the power of Jesus: the miracles of Jesus are the display of his power, pointing toward God’s expectation of what the Lifestyle of God-followers looks like. Where John the Baptiser proclaimed that the Kingdom was coming Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom had begun to arrive. And that tense is important, “begun to arrive” is what we see. The Kingdom is among us in present and future tense, the reign of God is underway but it is not yet complete for fulfilled. The power of God, the influence and equipping of the Holy Spirit upon the Church and each disciple was “inaugurated in the incarnation”, in other words it started when Jesus was born as a human child, but it continues through the Church as we get amongst the work of faithful ministry carrying the authority, the blessing, and the equipping of Emmanuel.

The question therefore is not what our ideas of monarchy and democracy are, but what we think God is like. When I asked the youth group at Kaniva six years ago what the world would be like if God was the boss they responded with words and ideas about God. “The world would be more kind,” was one response, presumably because the girl who said it thought that Jesus was kind. Her thinking was that with Jesus in charge kindness would become the way things are done. What do you think? What do you think the people of Stawell think?  If the world under God’s authority would be like God, then what if God is like a Pentecostal televangelist or a paedophile bishop? What if God is like some people’s Old Testament ideas of God? What if God is like some people’s New Testament ideas of God? I wonder whether when we talk about a Kingdom of God people think not so much about a world operating under the broadly beneficial ideas of The Sermon on The Mount, but a world of Trump’s Evangelical America, or the current shape of Israel, or something like Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or North Korea, but with the pope in charge. Is that what they think?

God said to David that the good king is like the dawn of daylight in a bright sky: is that how we see Jesus? Is that how our neighbours see Jesus? Is that how strangers to us living in the district see Jesus? Is Stawell as stoked at the idea of Jesus as the Ephesians and the Philadelphians were in Revelation 3? Would they be prepared to swap Albo for Jesus? Okay maybe Albo, but what about Obama?

The last Sunday before Advent is a good time to rethink our ideas of Jesus. In five weeks’ time we’ll be welcoming “Christ the newborn king”; so it’s good in time before we get tinsellated to ask what sort of king we think he is. Is a king who is like God in character and power truly welcome? First century Christians might have said that anyone is a better option than Domitian; we might think the same of Netanyahu, or Putin, or Kim. But if King Jesus is only the lesser of two evils, is Christmas really worth celebrating?

O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

Amen.