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.

Somebody's Singing Your Song

Perkins School of Theology Course of Study School

En una novela gráfica escrita para jóvenes adultos, el autor Gene Luen Yang cuenta las historias entretejidas de un joven chino-americano adolescente que luchan con su identidad y la historia del Rey Mono. La historia del Rey Mono ilumina la historia de la identidad.

En la leyenda de un rey mono, él va a una fiesta celestial y se le niega la entrada porque es un mono. Vuelve y comienza a usar zapatos y aprende todos los secretos de las artes de Kung Fu. Eventualmente, se convierte en un maestro de artes marciales y crece a un enorme tamaño. Él insiste en que se llama el Dios de la igualdad de tiempos y hasta quienes no están de acuerdo.

Por último, se enfrenta a su creador, el Dios del Universo. Este Dios le cita el Salmo 139 al Rey Mono: "Me formó parte de su perfeccionamiento. He creado en el vientre de tu madre."[“I have created in your mother’s womb”; do you have access to Spanish Bible or online Spanish?] Dios explica que el mono debe ser lo que Dios le ha hecho ser - un mono. El Rey Mono se niega a reconocer este hecho y está enterrado bajo un montón de rocas.

Es sólo después de 500 años que un monje que pasa por ahí lo encuentra y lo llama a seguirlo como un discípulo. El Rey Mono sigue siendo insultado debido a que el monje le llama un mono. Pero el monje revela que él ha tenido siempre el poder de ser liberado de la roca si acepta que es mono. Por último, el Rey Mono descarga todo su orgullo y se convierte en un mono de nuevo. Entonces él es libre de seguir al monje como discípulo. Él toma sus zapatos y se va.

I think I first heard God singing my song when I was 11 years old at a church camp. There, with a group of pastors who had come together to design the week, I fell in love with God. I also fell in love with Faith Gheen, but that’s a whole other story. That relationship with Faith Gheen didn’t last very long and that early love affair I had with God started to waver, too, when I got older.

At 11 I was ready to be a pastor in a church. But eventually I grew up and I forgot that I was going to be a pastor. I started to believe that I was going to be a country music songwriter.

This is a little known fact, but I tried to make it in the country music business. I was getting near the end of college but I really had already left college in my mind. I had a part-time job as a disc jockey on WPED radio in Crozet, “The Best Country – spanning the nation with three powerful watts. I was filling in during the late evening slots when we would sometimes run a live satellite feed of the Charlie Douglas Show from WSM in Nashville. When I wasn’t working I was writing some of the best country music the world had never heard. Classics like, “My Love Stalled Out at the Stop Sign of Her Heart,” and “Summer is Over and I’m Headed for a Fall.”

I even made my roommates take a road trip with me to Nashville one time to check out the scene. We sat in on the Charlie Douglas Show. Went to Music Row. Met Tom T. Hall.

My songs never went anywhere, though. I took a bunch of them to a music publisher several months after the Nashville trip. He gave them a good listen and then…I’ll never forget what he said…he said, “Son, these are really bad.”

It was only after I stopped listening to the crazy voice in my head that told me I was supposed to be a country singer and started to listening to God again that I realized that, even though I thought I had left God behind, God had never left me behind. The love affair that had started when I was eleven years old was still there for me.

He estado describiendo en inglés mi experiencia de tratar de convertirme en un compositor de música country. Yo era un terrible fracaso. Las canciones de Nashville no eran mi verdadera vocación. Y mientras perseguía la vocación no podía escuchar algo muy importante - la voz de Dios cantando mi canción.

El Salmo 8 dice que, “Cuando veo tus cielos, obra de tus dedos, la luna y las estrellas que tú formaste, digo: "¿Qué es el hombre para que tengas de él memoria, y el hijo del hombre para que lo visites?" El autor se siente muy pequeño en medio de todo lo que Dios ha hecho, pero él (o ella) es capaz de reconocer que Dios nos ama. Dios nos ama. Sin razón. Antes de todo. Dios nos ama.

Dios no nos olvida, pero nosotros tenemos una gran capacidad para olvidar a Dios. La Biblia tiene un gran tema mayor y es que Dios nos ama, nosotros olvidamos a Dios y Dios continúa con nosotros hasta que no puede ser más claro que Dios nos ama.

Es la historia hasta en el Jardín de Edén. Cuando Adán y Eva comen del árbol y ellos olvidan quienes fueron creados para ser, Dios no los abandona, sino que sigue tratando de llamar de nuevo. A lo largo de toda la historia del pueblo de Israel, Dios seduce a la gente con la canción de su creación. Y finalmente, Dios viene en Jesús. Dios – tan grande que su gloria llena el universo – viene a vivir como una sola persona humana. ¡Qué doloroso! Es como en la película Aladino cuando el genio habla sobre la vida en la lámpara. ¿Lo recuerdan? “¡Fenomenales poderes cósmicos! Chiquitito espacio vital.” Pero Dios viene en esta manera porque Dios nos ama y Jesús nos muestra cómo nuestras vidas y el mundo podrían ser transformados por este amor. Esta relación con Dios que puede transformarnos a nosotros y todo el mundo es el corazón del amor que justifica. En este amor, oímos nuestros nombres verdaderos.

Psalm 8 gives us a vision of a God who really loves the world and really loves us. The writer of the psalm looks out at the night sky and says, “When I look at the moon and the stars and all the things that your hands made, God, I wonder why on earth you care for human beings?” The writer feels small in comparison with all that God has made but is still able to recognize that God does love us.

Of course, even though God doesn’t forget us, we are pretty good at forgetting about God. The Bible has one major theme and it is this – God loves us, we forget God, and then God keeps pursuing us until it can’t be any clearer that God loves us. From the Garden of Eden the story is there. Adam and Eve eat from the tree and forget who they were made to be. Happens over and over. These beautiful creatures that God has made forget that God has great intentions for them. They fall into sin. And God keeps seducing them back with the song of their creation.

Finally God takes a dramatic step. God comes down to earth in Jesus. God – who is so grand that God’s glory fills the universe – comes to live as a single human person. That must have been…painful! It’s like the scene in the Disney movie, Alladin, when the genie talks about the pain of living in the lamp. “PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS! Ittybitty living space."

God does this because of this outreaching love and Jesus shows us how our lives and the world can be transformed by that love. This relationship with God that can transform us and the world is the heart of justifying love. Accepting that love and moving into relationship with God is a reclaiming of the promise that has always been there in us and in the world – though it has been marred by sin. We don’t realign the universe when we accept that love. God has already done that in Jesus. But we do realign our lives to take the form that God has intended us to have.

Hay una vieja leyenda, compartida por Rowan Williams, acerca de un rabino de Praga - el rabino Yehuda Loew ben Bezalel. Fue el más famoso rabino de su época. La gente lo conocía porque él había creado el Golem, la forma de un hombre hecha de arcilla que le dio la vida por poner el nombre de Dios en un pedazo de papel debajo de la lengua.

Una noche, el rabino Yehuda tuvo un sueño. Soñó que había muerto y que fue llevado ante el trono. Un ángel salió y dijo: "¿Quién es usted?"

Por lo tanto, dijo, "Yo soy el rabino Yehuda, el creador del Golem", porque imaginaba que seguramente lo conocía por eso. Así es como todo el mundo lo conocía.

Pero el ángel dijo: "Espere aquí. Voy a leer los nombres de todos los que han muerto el día de hoy, cuyos nombres están en el libro." El ángel abrió el libro y comenzó a leer. Y mientras el ángel leía los nombres, los espíritus comenzaban a responder volando por encima de la gloria en el trono.

El rabino Yehuda esperó y esperó, pero cuando terminó de leer el ángel, estaba todavía sentado allí. Comenzó a llorar y gritar al ángel. El ángel le miró y dijo, "He llamado tu nombre."

"Bueno, yo no lo escuché!"

"En este libro están los nombres de cada hombre y cada mujer que haya vivido en la tierra, porque cada alma tiene una parte en el reino" dijo el ángel. "Pero muchas veces la gente viene que nunca han escuchado su nombre en los labios de los seres humanos o los ángeles. Creían que conocían sus nombres, pero no. Así pues, no reconocen sus verdaderos nombres cuando se les llama. Ellos no reconocen que las puertas del reino están abiertas para ellos. Así que tienen que esperar aquí hasta que escuchen su nombre y los conocemos.

"Quizás una sola vez en su vida, alguien le llamó por su nombre. Tienen que sentarse aquí hasta que puedan recordarlo. Tal vez nadie le haya llamado por su nombre. Aquí se quedan tranquilos hasta que estén lo suficientemente quietos para escuchar al Rey del Universo llamarlos."

Bueno, en esto el rabino Yehuda despertó de su sueño, con lágrimas en su rostro. Salió de la cama y cubrió su cabeza y se quedó postrado en el suelo y oraba, "¡Maestro del Universo! Concédeme una vez antes de que yo muera el escuchar mi verdadero nombre en los labios de mis hermanos o hermanas."

There is an old legend shared by Rowan Williams, about a rabbi in Prague – Rabbi Yehuda Loew ben Bezalel. He was the most famous rabbi of his day. People knew him because he had created the Golem, the form of a man made out of clay that he gave life to by putting the name of God on a slip of paper under its tongue. Or so the story goes.

One night Rabbi Yehuda had a dream. He dreamed that he had died and that he was brought before the throne. An angel came out and said, “Who are you?”

So he said, “I am Rabbi Yehuda, the creator of the Golem,” because he figured surely they would know him by that. That’s how everybody else knew him.

But the angel said, “Wait here. I’m going to read the names of everyone who has died this day whose names are in the book.” The angel opened the book and started to read. And as the angel read names, spirits started to respond and to fly into the glory above the throne.

Rabbi Yehuda waited and waited, but when the angel finished reading, he was still sitting there. He started to cry and yell at the angel. The angel looked at him and said, “I have called your name.”

“Well, I didn’t hear it!”

“In this book are the names of every man and woman who ever lived on earth, because every soul has a share in the kingdom” the angel said. “But, you know, many times people come who have never heard their true names on the lips of humans or angels. They thought they knew their names, but they didn’t. So they don’t recognize their true names when they are called. They don’t recognize that the gates of the kingdom are open for them. So they have to wait here until they hear their names and know them.

“Maybe once in their life one person once called them by their right name. They have to sit here until they can remember it. Maybe no one has ever called them by their right name. Here they stay until they are quiet enough to hear the King of the Universe calling them.”

Well, at this Rabbi Yehuda woke up from his dream with tears streaming down his face. He got out of bed and covered his head and lay prostrate on the ground and he prayed, “Master of the Universe! Grant me once before I die to hear my own true name on the lips of my brothers or sisters.”[i]

God has been singing the song of your creation since before your birth. That’s the love song of prevenient grace. God knows the failures and flaws that have disfigured you and the world. God knows who we are. And God loves us enough to invite us into relationship. When you hear your own true name – don’t neglect to respond. It is the justifying grace that opens the door to tomorrow. Thanks be to God.

Dios ha estado cantando la canción de tu creación desde antes de tu nacimiento. Esa es la canción de amor de gracia preveniente. Dios conoce los fracasos y defectos que te han desfigurado a ti y al mundo. Dios sabe lo que somos. Y Dios nos ama lo suficiente como para invitarnos a estar en relación. Cuando escuches tu verdadero nombre - no dejes de responder. Es la gracia que justifica que abre la puerta al mañana. Gracias a Dios.[ii]

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[i] Based on a retelling of the legend by Rowan Williams, A Ray of Darkness, [Boston: Cowley Publications, 1995], pp. 152-3.

[ii] Thanks to Cynthia Salinas-Dooley for her assistance in translation.