Not of this world
John 18: 33-37
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
November 25, 2018 – Reign of Christ, Hippie Sunday
(Why Hippie Sunday? First, to honor the spirituality of some hippies in the congregation. That's the short answer. But also, because hippies, all of us, are explorers of the human experience. And in their exploration, the hippies of the 60's tried to find the edge of human experience where everyone lives in peace and harmony. We know what war is like, as well as oppression, prejudice, disconnection, dehumanization. But what about acceptance, belonging, wholeheartedness, authenticity? Doesn't that sound like the reign of Christ? Keep reading.)
It’s been 40 years since Jonestown happened; it’s been 40 years since more than 900 people followed Rev. Jim Jones in a mass suicide by drinking Flavor Aid poisoned with cyanide. It’s where we get the phrase “they drank the Kool Aid”, which means following someone blindly, falling hook, line, and sinker for the cult of personality, lacking critical thinking skills, not only believing but spreading propaganda, what has come to be called “fake news”.
A king can often be an oil-and-water mixture of a leader with the heart of his people, tradition, ego, power, and the cult of personality. After decades of slavery and wilderness living and worshiping out of a suitcase and tribal rivalry, Israel wanted to settle down and have a king to rule and to judge. God wanted to be sovereign in the hearts of the people and unify them, but the people craved worldly belonging—everyone else had a king, so why shouldn’t they?
Jesus’ disciples and followers saw him as a direct descendant of this desire but now as messiah too: a king who would overthrow the Roman Empire and save his people. Centuries later he would become the King of kings, the Lord of lords. And yet he was a rejected king, a failed king. In the next chapter of John, the crowds cry in their fear of power that they have no king but Caesar. Jesus is crucified with a placard over his head that mocks him as King of the Jews, executed as a criminal against the state.
Part of the revolution that initiated this nation is that we would have no king, no sovereign, no distant landlord, no one to tell us what we could or could not do with our land, our property. “Give me liberty or give me death!” “No taxation without representation!” “Don’t tread on me!”
Who or what is the authority in how we live now? Though it still plays a part, the Bible no longer takes precedence. Christendom, Christian empire, Christian supremacy, has been over for quite some time and thank goodness. But still we must ask ourselves, what is sovereign in our lives? Are there any ends we hold dear that would justify any means? What could command us to give our lives for the greater good? And who gets to decide what the greater good is? What difference does it make in our faith journey and in how we live our lives that Jesus was a servant and a slave and not an earthly ruler?
Franciscan friar Fr. Richard Rohr wrote, “When the Christian church became the established religion of the empire, it started reading the Gospel from the position of maintaining power and social order instead of experiencing the profound power of powerlessness that Jesus revealed.” He goes on to say that “Christianity is a lifestyle – a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established ‘religion’ (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s ‘personal Lord and Savior’”. As the church faces dwindling membership, resources, and relevance, as religion faces this, we are often more concerned with institutional survival than lifestyle change.
That lifestyle change is that we are in this world but not of this world. The lifestyle change is that the kingdom of God, the church is within us. And the needs of the world call the church within us out into the world. The Beloved Community begins within us. Solidarity, acceptance, believing that we’re enough begins within us. Wholeness, authenticity, belonging begins within us. Peace, justice, unconditional love begins within us. And yet it doesn’t have a chance if we’re the only ones in that Beloved Community. As humanity stands now, we need something, someone to remind us that God is God and we are not, that no one deserves grace but we all need it, that more often than not we are powerless to save. But it’s hard to surrender, to get to that place within us when our privilege gets in the way. It’s harder still when we don’t have what we need for living.
We’ve been at this point in history more times than we can count, at the precipice between what was and what will be, between a tenuous peace and the threat of all-out war, between the disguise of a sustainable civilization and utter collapse. At the height of the Vietnam War, during the energy crisis, John Lennon released his anthem “Imagine”—what has been called the antithesis of a call to arms. Sometimes we are so ready to fight, to call out the traitor and the bully, that we cannot hear the “profound power of powerlessness” to which Jesus calls us. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world but of a world yet to be born, yet to be inhabited. Like Jesus and many other spiritual teachers, John Lennon invites us to live in it now, to birth this new world through our lives, through our dreams. We “give peace a chance” when we are peace-filled, justice-minded. By how we choose to live our lives we can imagine a world yet to be born, a lifestyle change into servanthood, the profound power of powerlessness, and allow the peace of Christ to rule in our hearts.
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
November 25, 2018 – Reign of Christ, Hippie Sunday
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| Jesus before Pilate |
(Why Hippie Sunday? First, to honor the spirituality of some hippies in the congregation. That's the short answer. But also, because hippies, all of us, are explorers of the human experience. And in their exploration, the hippies of the 60's tried to find the edge of human experience where everyone lives in peace and harmony. We know what war is like, as well as oppression, prejudice, disconnection, dehumanization. But what about acceptance, belonging, wholeheartedness, authenticity? Doesn't that sound like the reign of Christ? Keep reading.)
It’s been 40 years since Jonestown happened; it’s been 40 years since more than 900 people followed Rev. Jim Jones in a mass suicide by drinking Flavor Aid poisoned with cyanide. It’s where we get the phrase “they drank the Kool Aid”, which means following someone blindly, falling hook, line, and sinker for the cult of personality, lacking critical thinking skills, not only believing but spreading propaganda, what has come to be called “fake news”.
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| Peoples Temple, Redwood Valley, CA |
This wasn’t any nationalist, alt-right, ultra-conservative, or Christian fundamentalist fringe group. This is what had started as the Peoples Temple of Indianapolis, IN—a blend of Christianity, communism, and socialism—for its time one of the most racially and socially integrated churches in the Midwest. It had a progressive social justice mission: feed the hungry, shelter and clothe the needy, provide rental assistance and job placement services, to lift up those society had left behind. For a time Jones even served on the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission. He received a MLK Jr. Humanitarian award.
It’s important to remember this because it’s not just a certain kind of ideology or ignorance or lack of education that leads to a cult following. Many of Rev. Jones’ closest followers were intelligent, socially conscious, college-educated people who wanted to make the world a better place and they believed that Rev. Jones was the leader they needed to do that. Even though they knew that he tricked people into thinking he was pulling cancers out of people’s bodies by using rotten chicken parts, they convinced themselves that the ends—a world where race, money, gender didn’t divide people—that this justified the means.
So when Jesus says his kingdom is not of this world, he can sound like a cult leader ready to lead his disciples to the next plane of existence. Part of the Confirmation class curriculum at the church where I served in seminary focused on the difference between a cult and joining a church, to instill critical thinking skills, to show that there’s a difference between education and learning and indoctrination and behavior modification, between following Jesus and the cult of personality.
It’s important to remember this because it’s not just a certain kind of ideology or ignorance or lack of education that leads to a cult following. Many of Rev. Jones’ closest followers were intelligent, socially conscious, college-educated people who wanted to make the world a better place and they believed that Rev. Jones was the leader they needed to do that. Even though they knew that he tricked people into thinking he was pulling cancers out of people’s bodies by using rotten chicken parts, they convinced themselves that the ends—a world where race, money, gender didn’t divide people—that this justified the means.
So when Jesus says his kingdom is not of this world, he can sound like a cult leader ready to lead his disciples to the next plane of existence. Part of the Confirmation class curriculum at the church where I served in seminary focused on the difference between a cult and joining a church, to instill critical thinking skills, to show that there’s a difference between education and learning and indoctrination and behavior modification, between following Jesus and the cult of personality.
A king can often be an oil-and-water mixture of a leader with the heart of his people, tradition, ego, power, and the cult of personality. After decades of slavery and wilderness living and worshiping out of a suitcase and tribal rivalry, Israel wanted to settle down and have a king to rule and to judge. God wanted to be sovereign in the hearts of the people and unify them, but the people craved worldly belonging—everyone else had a king, so why shouldn’t they?
Jesus’ disciples and followers saw him as a direct descendant of this desire but now as messiah too: a king who would overthrow the Roman Empire and save his people. Centuries later he would become the King of kings, the Lord of lords. And yet he was a rejected king, a failed king. In the next chapter of John, the crowds cry in their fear of power that they have no king but Caesar. Jesus is crucified with a placard over his head that mocks him as King of the Jews, executed as a criminal against the state.
Part of the revolution that initiated this nation is that we would have no king, no sovereign, no distant landlord, no one to tell us what we could or could not do with our land, our property. “Give me liberty or give me death!” “No taxation without representation!” “Don’t tread on me!”
May it be so.
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