Are You a King?

Scripture Lessons: Revelation 1: 4-8 and John 18: 33-38a Sermon Title: Are You a King? Preached on November 25, 2018 Sara and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary last week and were able to get away for a couple days to North Georgia, up near Helen. Helen is a funny place. But the names of roads up there will make you laugh too – we passed by Scorpion Hollow and Booger Hollow. I wonder if the people who live there are ever self-conscious about reporting their address at the DMV. I knew a lady back in Tennessee who lived on a road called Sheep’s Neck, and when she told someone her address, she answered two questions before they even had a chance to ask: 1. Yes, I am serious. 2. And yes, that is out in the country. The best street name we passed up in North Georgia last week was Nonchalant Lane. Now that was a place that I’d like to live. I can just imagine what life is like up there. I bet on Nonchalant Lane on Thanksgiving, everyone shows up to dinner wearing pants with an elastic waist band and no one feels self-conscious about falling asleep on the couch watching football after dinner, and anyone, who would dare interrupt Thanksgiving by trying to force their family into matching outfits for a Christmas Card Photo gets exiled over to Cares Too Much What Other People think Avenue. That might be where my grandmother would have lived. It’s hard to go through life worried all the time about what other people think, but some people are proud. Conscious of appearances. We all are, but some are more than others. Maybe I’ve told you about my grandmother before. She was a proud woman. Wore hose with her bathing suit kind of proud. And one of the stories that got told about her childhood, was that she’d get off the school bus home from elementary school two stops early, so people would think that she lived in the nicer part of town. She’d get off with all those middle-class kids and would walk the rest of the way, just because she didn’t want anyone to know that she lived on the poor side of town. That her brother stayed on the bus and rode the whole way blowing her cover notwithstanding. Now, my grandmother had some very Christ like attributes, but this was not one of them. Christ was more secure in his identity than most of us would dare be. More willing to take stands than most of us are. From the Scripture Lessons we’ve just read it’s easy to gain a sense that our Lord was so secure in his identity, that he would not deny who he was or back away from what he came to do, even when his life hung in the balance. Reading from the Gospel of John, we remembered when Pilate asked him: “Are you the king of the Jews?” You can tell from this interchange that Pilate didn’t really want to trap Jesus. He wasn’t cross examining him or trying to trick him into incriminating himself. In fact, it’s as though Pilate was trying to do everything he could to set Jesus free. All Pilate needed Jesus to do was get off the bus a couple blocks early – just deny who he was a tiny little bit. Jesus wouldn’t do it, though. He was determined not to hide or deny. That’s a superhuman quality then, for if there’s anything we humans are good at its hiding who we really are. Whether it’s getting off the school bus a few stops early or pretending to be the perfect family for the Christmas card, putting on a toupee or too much makeup, telling white lies or keeping our real opinions to ourselves, for mere mortals it takes a profound level of trust before most of us are willing to just come right out and be who we really are – warts and all, because none of us really live on Nonchalant Lane when you get right down to it. There’s a wonderful story I once heard about a wise old Rabbi giving a sermon based on the story of Adam and Eve. Genesis chapter 3 tells of the first sin and its punishment, the story of the serpent who tempted the man and the woman to eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After they ate this forbidden fruit their eyes were opened, but soon after their eyes were opened “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” “Where are you?” the Lord asked, which is a funny question for the Lord to ask the old Rabbi noted, considering how God already knows everything. “But you see,” the Rabbi said, “the Lord God knew. He always knew where Adam was. But did Adam know? Adam was not lost to the Lord, but in hiding, was Adam lost to himself?” In what is considered by some to be one of the most important philosophical works of the last quarter of a century, The Sources of the Self it’s called, Dr. Charles Taylor claims that we are always in search of ourselves, always wrestling with the question of identity. “Who am I?” we ask, “but this can’t necessarily be answered by giving name and genealogy. What does answer this question for us,” according to Dr. Taylor, “is an understanding of what is of crucial importance to us.” What was of crucial importance to Adam and Eve – well, the story of Genesis tells us that this shifted under the shade of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – for while in the beginning all that mattered to the first man and the first woman was enjoying God’s creation within the limits God ordained, when tempted by the serpent something shifted, then as the Lord God walked through the garden calling out to the man, “Where are you?” that same shift happened again, for while once they had the kind of relationship where Adam and Eve walked through the garden together with God, in that moment of falling from grace, Adam and Eve thought it more important to hide. That’s human enough, but there’s something in Christ that wouldn’t let him. In his refusal never to deny his true identity we see not only his integrity, but what is of crucial importance to him – namely, to be who God created him to be, and to do what God created him to do. We mere humans on the other hand, are always tempted to hide. When at the DMV, if we live on Booger Hollow there’s a temptation to hide. When riding home on the school bus, if our home is on the poor side of town, we’re tempted to get off the bus early. When sending out Christmas Cards we want to project a certain image of functionality, as though we always dressed in color coordinated outfits, and our lives were but one long family vacation to Europe. When going on a first date there’s the temptation, not to be who we are, but who we think our love interest wants us to be, but I know a guy who always drives a dirty old pick up truck when he takes a girl on a date. “If she’ll take me like this,” he says. When Pilate summoned Jesus he asked him: “Are you the King of the Jews?” We know how Jesus answered, but what you me? What about you? Who am I? That’s no easy question to answer. It’s not set in stone or fixed in history. Identity is more like a ship pushed by the wind of peer pressure and circumstance – and to maintain a sense of who we are we must stand firm, holding close the commitments that matter most. For some people this is easier than others I’m sure. The country music legend Johnny Cash sings a song about a boy named Sue who had to fight every day of his life for his identity “Some gal would giggle and I’d get red And some guy’d laugh and I’d bust his head, I tell ya, life ain’t easy for a boy named Sue.” The same must have been true for a woman remembered by the 1880 census of Maury County, Tennessee. The county historian there once called me over to show me that among all the citizens of that great county, was a 35-year-old widow woman – last name Mcville, first name – Parrollee. Now a boy named Sue and a girl named Parrollee learn the same lesson – you want people to really know who you are, you have to learn to stand up for yourself, for the world asks us day and night, “Who are you?” and we answer through our commitments, our promises, the stands we are willing to take. Not just what we are willing to say – but the character we are willing to embody. Not just the words printed on the wall, but the words that guide our decisions. Not just the sermons we listen to or preach, but the sermons that we live. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” These are the words engraved on our Statue of Liberty, stating one of the ideals that we hold close – but are these ideals that we are willing to stand for? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” For all the years since these words were first written our nation has been working to embody them. Then there’s the greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” That one’s easy to say but it’s hard to do so remember it’s not what we say that matters, it’s the stands we are willing to take, and unfortunately, when it comes to embodying the ideals of our nation or the ideals of our Christian faith, too many of us get off the bus two stops too early. Our Lord is different isn’t he. He stood trial before Pilate, the governor – the man who held our Lord’s fate in his hands. In our Second Scripture Lesson – an event that ironically occurs just after Peter denied Jesus three times – as our Lord stood trial he refused to deny the truth of his identity. The Lord embodied the truth in his every breath. He lived it in his every action. For he is Jesus Christ, the one that Revelation calls “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” And it is by his love for us and his determination not to deny us but to face death on the cross, that we are freed from our sins and made us citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s the Good News – that while Peter denied him three times, and while we are guiltily of the same, the Lord refused to deny us. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” And while we sometimes hide in the woods, relying on the most convenient truths rather than the real truth, rejoice in this: Christ won’t hide from us nor will he deny us, and we don’t need to hide from him when he comes again. Amen.