No Accidental Monarch

There’s a lot we don’t know about the visitors from the East who came to see the baby Jesus. We call them kings, but they weren’t. Matthew is the only one of the gospels that tells us about them and he says they were magi – ancient astrologers who studied the skies. But we still sing “We Three Kings.”

We say that there were three of them, but we don’t know how many there were. We assume three because they brought three gifts and it would be rather awkward if some came with gifts and some without. We don’t know what faith they held but they weren’t Jewish. We don’t even know if they were men, and the fact they stopped to ask directions on the way to see Jesus makes me suspect even that. Men have trouble doing that. But they were wise, so maybe they were men.

At any rate this is the Sunday when we remember these Multiple Wise People who come from afar to bring their strange gifts as they worship a newborn child they call king. Traditionally January 6 is Epiphany on the Christian calendar and that is the day Christians in many parts of the world celebrate as Three Kings Day. I think this must be a little mystifying to people who did not grow up in strong Christian households. I ran across a blog post this week in which someone wrote that they had been told that the reason Christians give gifts at Christmas was not because of Santa Claus but because of the wise men who brought gifts to Jesus. But the writer couldn’t understand why they would have brought gold, myrrh and Frankenstein!

Christmas is meant to mess with our heads, though. It’s supposed to turn our ideas of how the world works upside-down. For a world that thinks God doesn’t care – God says, “This is how much I love you.” For a world that thinks God has abandoned the world – God says, “Here I am.” For those who think they know where to find God and what it will look like when God comes into the world – God says, “I am coming to the place you don’t expect.” For those that think there is no mystery, no transcendence, no wonder, nothing miraculous left in this world – God comes with angels and visitors with frankincense to say, “Keep your eyes open and you will see heaven on earth.”

And for those who think they understand what a king is supposed to be like, God says, “Look again.”

So tell me what you think of when you think about kings? Maybe you think about crowns and palaces. Maybe you think about flowing robes and absolute power. Maybe you think of Mel Brooks, who gave us the phrase “It’s good to be the king,” when he was playing King Louis XVI as a guy who could do anything he wanted just because he was the king.

That’s how we think of kings but it hasn’t always been this way. In fact, kings were supposed to be very different. In the Disciple Bible Study we have been moving through the Old Testament and one of the big storylines in that section of the Bible is how God’s people came to have a king and what a mixed blessing that was.

Early on the prophet Samuel warned the people that it was not going to be pretty. “A king,” Samuel says, “will take your sons and send them off to war and do his work. A king will take your daughters to work in the palace. A king will take your fields and your vineyards and your olive orchards. He will take your servants and your cattle. He will take your flocks and make you into slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves” [1 Samuel 8:11-18]. But the people insisted that they needed a king so that they could be like the nations around them.

The problem was that Israel was not supposed to be like the other nations. Israel was supposed to be different. God was supposed to be the ruler of Israel.

So the king would have to have a special role. Our psalm for the day, Psalm 72, tells us what Israel’s king was supposed to do. He was not on the throne for his own power or his own self-aggrandizement. He was there to “defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.” The king was supposed to “deliver the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper.” Other nations would come to bow down before the king but not because he was great in his own right. They would bow down because this ruler was acting in this world as God would – looking out for those who had no defender and bringing down those who would take advantage of the weak.

That’s just how Mary saw what God was doing in sending her a son. When she sang the song that came down to us as the Magnificat she used exactly these images. Do you remember what she sang? “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” [Luke 1:52-53].

But Israel’s kings seldom lived up to this ideal. In the end Samuel’s warnings were right. The kings did take advantage of the people they were supposed to serve. They did take the children of the people and use them for their own ends. They did get intoxicated with their own power and wealth. Even the greatest of the kings, David, had episodes of massive failure.

Do you remember the movie The Lion King? There is a moment when Nala, a young lioness, discovers Simba, the lion who is meant to be the king of the pride. Simba has gone off to live with a meerkat and a warthog after the death of his father because he feels like he was responsible for the death, even though his evil uncle Scar had orchestrated the whole murder.

Simba has grown to like this new life, though. Do you remember the song they sang while they were together? Hakuna Matata – no worries. That’s what Simba wanted – a life with no worries.

Nala tries to convince him to come home. “You have a responsibility,” she says. “You’re our only hope.” Being king means giving yourself on behalf of the people. Eventually Simba accepts that on his own and goes back to become the king he was supposed to be.

Martin Luther, the great leader in the Protestant Reformation, wrote a very famous treatise once called “The Freedom of a Christian.” In it he said that every Christian was a king, “the most free lord of all, subject to none.” By that he meant that Jesus opened the door for every one of us to have access to life and liberty. “One thing, and one alone, is necessary for life, justification, and Christian liberty; and that is the most holy word of God, the Gospel of Christ.”[i]

So here is the twist of the day in all this talk of kings. The wise men may not be kings. We may not think of ourselves as kings. But because of that baby in the manger who really was a king – we also can be kings! We can be kings. I may live in a shack on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, but in Jesus Christ, I am a king. I may be working for the worst boss in the world, but in Jesus Christ, I am a king. I may be from the wrong family, the wrong side of the tracks, with the wrong haircut and with the wrong teeth, but in Jesus Christ…I am a king.

It is good to be the king. It’s what Jesus wants for all of us. But Luther goes on to say that while all Christians are kings, lord of all and servant to none, they are also servants of all and subject to everyone. What does this mean? While our freedom is in the spiritual realm, our work in this world is in the role of servants. We need to train our bodies and our minds to become servants of the Word and we need to learn to love our neighbors by serving them. This is the model Jesus shows us in his life of service on behalf of others.

I have met a few of these servant kings over the years – people who understand that with all the freedom and possibility they have, there is no greater choice to be made than to place that freedom in service to God and God’s people. I think of the people who have given so much to this community through their charitable giving and the ways their gifts are being used to improve our hospital, our community college, our social ministries, our land. I think of the people who stopped by the Salvation Army kettle when we were ringing the bells on Christmas Eve and who gave so generously even if they didn’t have much to give.

I think of Margarita – the woman in charge of an orphanage in the south of Mexico that I met on a mission trip. She and her two teenage children were responsible for 40 children. Some weeks she didn’t have enough money to get them milk so she would water down what she had to make it through the week. Sometimes there were only beans and tortillas. But there was always love. Margarita had a ton of love to give. And Margarita was a king. Maybe a queen. It’s good to be the king.

It was no accident that Jesus came in the way that he did. He came to be a king and to be a different kind of king. He came so that you and I could be kings and queens as well. And if we use our freedom and power the way that Jesus did, the world cannot help but be changed. Because Jesus is changing the world. And like those Multiple Wise Persons, the world will come to see a light in the stable at Bethlehem.

Thanks be to God.

Psalm 72:1-14 (NRSV)

Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor. May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations. May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth. In his days may righteousness flourish and peace abound, until the moon is no more. May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. May his foes bow down before him, and his enemies lick the dust. May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts. May all kings fall down before him, all nations give him service. For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.

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[i] Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” http://www.wsu.edu:8001/~dee/REFORM/FREEDOM.HTM.