Give More

Our scripture readings for last Sunday and today are obviously linked. Last week, the angel Gabriel announced the birth of John to his father, Zechariah, and Zechariah responded with the praise song we call Benedictus. Today, Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus to his mother, Mary, and Mary responds with the praise song we call Magnificat.

Luke, our gospel writer, structures their stories to make the parallels obvious. John, who will prepare the way for Jesus, is born six months before Jesus. John’s mother, Elizabeth, is long past the normal age of child-bearing. Jesus’ mother is young and still a virgin. Both births count as miraculous, though in different ways.

Mary humbly accepts the role she will play in God’s plan to save the world. But she has few illusions about how easy it will be. Gabriel brings good news to her and to the faithful of Israel, but it’s bad news for just about everybody else.

There’s an old song that prattles on about “gentle Mary, meek and mild.” This is a young woman with grit and spunk. (She might be a role model for Greta Thunberg, among others.) She knows that God will use her boy to turn the world upside-down, and she celebrates the turnover.

After all, this is the God who scatters the proud, knocks the powerful off their thrones, elevates the lowly, fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty. Bring it on, she says!

Jesus has, indeed, turned the world upside-down. But we’re still waiting for that other part. In today’s world, the proud and powerful rule, the rich are filled with good things, and poor and the desperate are sent away hungry.

The descendants of Abraham are still waiting for fulfilment of that ancient promise of justice and righteousness and peace. When will that happen, O Lord? If you’re waiting for us to make it a reality, you may wait another 2,000 years. Isn’t this something only you can do? Isn’t this the real promise of Advent and Christmas?

* * * *

Last Sunday I asked, “What was the worst Christmas present you’ve ever got?” This Sunday, I’ll ask, “What was the best Christmas present you’ve ever got?” No fair answering, “Jesus.”

Jesus is God’s special gift. But to understand why Jesus is such a special gift, it helps if we understand what makes any gift special. So, think for a moment about the best Christmas gift you ever got from another human being.

What makes it best? Is it the size of the gift? The appropriateness of the gift? The uniqueness of the gift? Or perhaps a combination of all these things?

I said something last Sunday that you may think a little odd. I said that a gift is not about the giver but about the person who receives the gift. At least, that’s the way it ought to be.

Good gifts delight the person who receives them – and not just because of the thing they receive. The greatest delight comes in knowing that someone cares enough about you to know that this is something that would delight you.

That’s why some of your favorite gifts probably were the least expected. Because you didn’t even know that you wanted or needed the gift until someone who knows you even better than you know yourself decided that this was something that would delight you.

Once you saw it, you recognized how perfectly fitting it was. Until that moment, the thing may never have been on your mind. You might have walked right by it in a store a hundred times and never given it a thought. But someone who knows you better than you know yourself concluded that this would be the perfect gift for you.

It’s perfect not because it suits the giver, but because it suits you. What makes the gift perfect is not only that it suits you but also that someone knew that it would suit you because that person knows you so well and cares so much about you.

Yes, it really is the thought that counts.

I suspect that the gifts you find most delightful are delightful because they celebrate a relationship. The best gifts are about the recipient, not the giver. But they celebrate the relationship of the recipient and the giver.

If you’re married, look at your wedding ring. Whether it cost $400 or $4,000 matters less to you than what it stands for. It stands for your relationship with your spouse. It was given to you as a sign of that relationship. It celebrates that relationship.

The best gifts are relational gifts. They are the gift of yourself to another. The wedding ring that Linda placed on my finger was a gift to me signifying the gift of herself to me, just as the ring that I placed on her finger was a gift to her signifying the gift of myself to her.

I gave myself with that ring, but the gift wasn’t about me. It was about her and for her. And her gift to me wasn’t about her; it was about me.

The best gifts are relational gifts. They may, in fact, be quite common things such as socks and sweaters, because it really is the thought that counts.

I have a collection of Father’s Day, birthday and “no special occasion” cards that were made for me by my daughters when they were children – and some similar cards made by my young grandson.

Sorry, Hallmark, I treasure these cards far more than anything you could ever produce. “World’s best Dad” written in crayon on construction paper cannot be surpassed by anything machine made.

Once upon a time, all Christmas gifts were handmade because they had to be. Then came the machine age. In the late 1800s it became unfashionable to give handmade gifts. Handmade gifts were considered tacky, unless done by children, and then only up to a certain age. Everybody knew that the best gifts were store bought.

It’s interesting how things have turned again. These days, we consider handmade gifts superior to the store bought. Why? Because they involve a greater personal investment by the giver.

It’s really not about presents. It’s all about presence. That is, it’s really not about presents with a “ts” at the end, meaning material gifts. It’s really all about presence with a “ce” at the end, meaning personal involvement.

The creators of the Advent Conspiracy think we should give fewer gifts that come in a box and more gifts that come from, in and through our very selves. Presents with a “ts” are tokens of our love. Presence with a “ce” show our love most directly.

Why give a token when you can give the real thing? Why give a token of your love when you can show your love in person? Your presence with a “ce” – your time, your attention, your energy, your creativity, your personal investment – mean so much more to those who receive such a gift.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the times that my family can get together. Even if we don’t actually do much of anything when we are together, just being together is the greatest gift I could receive from them.

There are perhaps only two occasions when presents with a “ts” are preferable to presence with a “ce”. One is when you are separated by geography or circumstance – when you live too far away to get back to grandma’s house, or when you are in the military or some other service occupation far away. Then you must send a gift in a box because you can’t give yourself in person.

The other occasion is when the other person’s needs are so great and so urgent that you best show that you care by providing material things such as food, clothing or shelter. Then you give money or you give the present in a box because by itself your presence with a “ce” cannot fill the need. By itself, your presence is not enough.

Remember that when Jesus encountered someone in physical distress, he always healed the person right away. He relieved their immediate physical distress before he attempted to address their other needs. He showed his presence in action, in ways we cannot.

The creators of the Advent Conspiracy suggest that you give one less gift to a loved one so you can give something to someone in need. Chances are, your loved one will never miss that gift. But the person in need may treasure such a gift because it arrives at just the right time and tells that person that she, too, is loved; that he, too, is valued – even if even by someone they’ll never meet.

It’s possible that receiving that gift could even change a life. Have you ever given someone a gift that changes that person’s life? Have you ever received such a gift?

In Jesus, God gives us God’s presence, God’s very self. Some days, even that doesn’t seem enough, when we realize how far the world is from God’s dream for it. Then we remember that Jesus is called Emmanuel, meaning “God with us.”

And having God with us, feeling God’s presence, helps make the long wait more bearable. It’s a cliché, but what we all want for Christmas is peace on earth and goodwill to all.

That’s the promise of Christmas. Let us continue to cherish that promise, even as we await its fulfillment.

Amen.

“Give more” is a message that the Rev. James Hopwood intended to preach Dec. 15, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas. He was unable to reach the church because of a snowstorm. However, 28 people carried on quite well without him. The scripture readings for the day were Luke 1:26-33 and 46-55.

Spend Less

In our worship time together, we are going to be dancing lightly through the stories of Jesus’ advent. We set the scene last Sunday with an ancient prophecy of God’s hope for a peaceful world.

Today we look at how God starts to bring it about, beginning with the story of Jesus’ cousin John – or, rather, the story of John’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth.

Zach and Liz are good, faithful people who have tried to honor God with their lives – and they have in all ways but one. They have no children – a major failing in their culture. Elizabeth bears the brunt of the shame, because it’s always assumed that it’s the woman’s fault she can’t get pregnant, as if fault has any part in it.

Zach is a priest, but he’s what you might call bivocational. Priesthood is an inherited occupation, and there are so many priests that few of them can serve in the temple full-time. Most serve a two-week term once a year.

It’s during one of these stints that Zach is chosen to light incense in one of the most secluded and quiet and holy and – let’s face it, scary – inner rooms of the sanctuary. And it’s there that he encounters an angel. He’s scared out of his wits. The angel announces that the old couple’s prayers have been answered. They’ll soon have a son who will be great in the Lord’s eyes.

Zach scoffs. He and Liz are too old for that kind of thing. The angel angrily says, “You talk too much of things you know nothing about. You can just spend the next nine months unable to talk at all.”

So Liz gets pregnant and Zach can’t speak until John is born. Then Zach bursts forth in speech. We know it today as the Canticle of Zechariah, or Benedictus, Latin for the first word, “Blessed,” as in “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for God has looked favorably upon us.”

Their son, John the Baptizer, will indeed prepare a way for the Lord. He’ll live out those ancient prophecies about building a highway for God’s arrival – as Isaiah said, raising the low places and lowering the high places to make a straight and level roadway. (Isaiah 40.3-4)

During Advent, we also try to make a highway for God – a highway in our hearts. So on this second Sunday of the season, we light a candle of peace and we ponder some of the ways we celebrate the coming of Jesus. Today, we ponder the custom of Christmas gift giving.

* * * *

Think for a moment about the worst Christmas present you ever got. You remember it, I’m sure. You opened the package with the usual expectation and hope, and then you got this sudden, empty feeling in your stomach and you thought, “Whatever in the world am I going to do with that?”

Now try to consider the gift from the point of view of the person who gave it to you. Whatever in the world was she thinking? Was she even thinking? Or was this one of those “white elephant” gifts that she got at work, and now she’s “re-gifting” it to you? She’s passing it on to you, knowing that you’ll probably pass it on to somebody else – unless you have the gumption to pitch it in the trash, hoping that it gets buried so deep in the landfill that it never again sees the light of day.

Oh the games we play at Christmas! The last thing Uncle Robert probably needs is another sweater, but you get him one anyway because you can’t think of anything else he might need, and you haven’t seen him for long enough in long enough to have the vaguest idea what he might prefer.

Of course, you don’t know what size he wears, either, so you settle on Large. Maybe he likes it loose – or tight, as the case may be. If it doesn’t fit, or he doesn’t like the color or the pattern, he can always take it back and exchange it for something he really wants. That’s what gift receipts are for, right?

Meanwhile, the number of service providers who have their hand out to you is almost staggering: the person who does your hair or your nails, your chiropractor or therapist, child care provider, newspaper carrier, dog walker, housekeeper, lawn mower, snow shoveler…

You wonder how our celebration of the birth of Jesus turned into such a display of greed, paranoia and despair. This is Jesus, after all – the one who said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35) Why do we celebrate his birthday by giving mounds of stuff to people we hardly know and expecting some of them to give us stuff in return?

Mark Twain once said, “Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” It’s true of Christmas as well. Everybody complains about how impersonal and commercial Christmas has gotten, but hardly anybody does anything about it.

Here’s a quote to ponder. “There are worlds of money wasted at this time of year, in getting things that nobody wants and nobody cares for after they are got.”

That quote comes from novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe. She’s the one who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and she said that in 1850. That’s 169 years ago. A lot of things have changed in 169 years. Christmas has changed, too, but maybe not as much as you might think. It was a mess then, too.

Another novelist of Stowe’s day supplied us with a one-word reply that shuts down any criticism of Christmas excess. Charles Dickens is the novelist, A Christmas Carol is the novel, and, of course, the powerful word is “Scrooge.” All you have to do is hint that someone may be Scroogelike, and you’ve won your case. No one wants to be known as a Scrooge. So hardly anyone dares to criticize the excesses of our cultural Christmas.

Economist Joel Waldfogel is among those who dares. Ten years ago he wrote a book titled Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays.

Waldfogel is actually not against giving gifts at Christmas. He just thinks they ought to be good gifts. He thinks most of the billions of dollars that we Americans spend on gifts each year is wasted and benefits nobody because it buys junk that nobody wants or needs. If you want to give him a gift, he says, “Why don’t you do something good for someone else and say it’s in my name, and everyone’s happy.”

That is the essence of the Advent Conspiracy. It’s about worshipping Christ better by spending less on some gifts, investing ourselves more deeply in our relationships, and loving all by doing good in Christ’s name for those Christ calls the least of our brothers and sisters.

The Advent Conspiracy is not a campaign against Christmas. It is not even a campaign against gift giving. It is a campaign against mindless adherence to cultural norms, and wasting valuable resources on meaningless junk.

The campaign also has a positive side. It is for the joyous celebration of our Savior’s birth. It is for giving thoughtful, meaningful gifts to those who are close to you, whose needs and wants you know. And it is for giving generously to others who have so very little.

Let’s talk money. Last year, retail sales during the holiday season set a record of $707.5 billion. Let’s put figure that in perspective. This year, Americans were expected to spend $490 million on Halloween costumes for their pets.

Do these numbers tell you that something is seriously wrong with our society? The creators of the Advent Conspiracy talk about consumer religion, the religion of the marketplace, the religion of the shopping mall, the religion of people who thoughtlessly enslave themselves to destructive cultural idols.

Some years ago social scientists coined a new term for this sickness. The term is affluenza. It’s a mental and physical illness caused by the constant pursuit of more stuff. Remember the last time you had the flu, and you couldn’t stop throwing up? When you have affluenza, you can’t stop shopping. You feel healthy only when you are spending and acquiring.

You can get the 24-hour flu, but there is no 24-hour version of affluenza. Once you’ve got it, you’ve got it permanently. You’ll fight this disease the rest of your life.

A century ago, people suffered from a disease that caused their bodies to waste away. Today we know that disease as tuberculosis. Back then it was called consumption. Friends, we are dying of consumption. It is causing us to waste away in body and mind and spirit. It is killing us. And unless we take the cure, it will destroy our society.

Affluenza-style consumer religion says that love is measured by the size of the gifts you buy for people. If that’s the case, you had better spend a lot, or people will begin to think you’re not a loving person, you’re a Scrooge. The unwritten rule is that love has a dollar sign on it, and the bigger the dollar sign, the more you love the person you’ve giving it to.

Big gift, big love. Little gift, little love. No gift, no love. It’s so very simple.

A modest Christmas for a typical family can cost $600 or $700 for gifts alone. Call it a $1,000 Christmas, altogether.

Bill McKibben raised a stir a few years ago when he began advocating what he called the Hundred Dollar Holiday. McKibben is a social activist, so he’s used to taking a lot of heat. But he got scorched for suggesting that people cut their holiday spending by 90 percent.

We are so self-centered. We think the gift is about the giver. It’s not about the giver. It’s about the one who receives the gift.

That’s what makes good gifts good. Good gifts delight the person who receives them. And the delight isn’t just in the thing itself. The delight is in knowing that someone knows you well enough to be sure that this is what would delight you and cares enough to track it down and give it to you.

That’s one of the reasons it’s more blessed to give than to receive. Because giving moves the spotlight off of you and onto the other person. We self-centeredly want to make it about us, about the giver. But gifts are not about the giver. Gifts are about the one who receives them.

That’s why thoughtful gift shopping is so difficult. You’ll know it when you see it, but you may do a lot of looking before you find it. Once you’ve found it, you delight in knowing how much delight it will give to the person who receives it. Both of you delight in the gift – but only because you know the gift is about the recipient, not the giver.

* * *

If what I have just said is true, then God’s good giving to us is not about God but about us. Actually, it is very much about God, but God makes it about us, by loving us and by giving good gifts to us. And the greatest gift of all is the gift of God’s presence, supremely revealed to us in Jesus.

Next Sunday we’ll talk less about the giving of presents with a “ts” on the end, meaning material gifts, and more about the giving of presence with a “ce” on the end, meaning the giving of your very self.

Because that’s what God gives us at Christmas – God’s presence, God’s very self.

“Spend less” is a message preached Dec. 8, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood. The scripture reading for the day is Luke 1.5-151, 68-79

Advent Conspiracy 1: Worship Fully

Let’s walk by the Lord’s light, Isaiah says.

Most of us want to do that, to be best of our understanding and the best of our capability.

We want to do what’s right. We want to walk in paths that are well-lighted by God’s instruction for right living. There are widely divergent ideas about what right living amounts to, but whatever we perceive it to be, we want to do it. We want to live in ways that are attuned to God’s heartstrings.

What that means is, what we really want to do is worship God fully.

Some people have the idea that worship is what you do in church on Sunday morning. Some people have even more truncated notions than that. Some think worship means singing, and everything else you do on Sunday morning is just an annoyance you put up with between songs. Even worse, some think that the sermon is the main event, and everything revolves around it.

But worship is far more than singing, and far more than preaching, and far more than plunking your bottom in a pew or chair for an hour or more on Sunday morning. Worship is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week, 52-weeks-a-year endeavor. Worship is not a part of living; it is living. Worship is not something you do part-time; it’s your full-time occupation.

It’s a lot like breathing. If you stop breathing, you die. If you stop worshiping, you may still be breathing, but you’re not fully alive anymore.

That’s why “worship fully” is the first of the four key principles of the Advent Conspiracy.

Rest assured, the Advent Conspiracy is not like those other conspiracies you hear so much about these days. You know, those wacko theories about how sinister forces are out to undermine our sacred values and destroy our way of life.

No, the Advent Conspiracy is nothing like that at all. It’s a very public and very loose union of churches and individuals with one goal in mind – and that is, bring some sanity to our celebration of Christmas. We want to actually celebrate the birth of Jesus rather than drive ourselves crazy observing traditions that have little meaning for us and drive ourselves to bankruptcy buying tacky gifts for people who already have everything they need.

The movement was started more than a dozen years ago by three young pastors. They range from fundamentalist to progressive in theology but they all lead non-traditional churches and they all passionately love Jesus. They are Rick McKinley of Imago Dei Community in Portland; Chris Seay of Ecclesia community in Houston; and Greg Holder of The Crossing in St. Louis.

I’ve been promoting the Advent Conspiracy since about its second or third year. It fits nicely into the themes of Keeping Christmas, my new book. Like many books, it has been in the works a long time. It started as a guide about how to prepare for Christmas without being distracted by all the hustle and bustle and tinsel and politics that typically clutter the holiday season.

Along the way, I got interested in the history of Christmas and discovered that the standard story of how Christians stole the date from the pagans is simply a lie. Christmas is not a pagan holiday, though some of the crazy ways we celebrate Jesus’ birth do have pagan roots.

One of the important things we always need to keep in mind is a concept from United Methodist pastor Mike Slaughter. He’s written a book with the totally obvious but still mind-blowing title, Christmas Is Not Your Birthday.

Actually, a certain number of people probably do celebrate their birthday on December 25. But the Christmas celebration is not about their birthday. It’s about the birthday of Jesus. The point is simple: It’s not your birthday, so why are you getting presents? Even when you help a friend celebrate a birthday, the most you get is some fun and some cake and ice cream and maybe a party favor. You give presents. You don’t receive them.

Remember the Magi who traveled so far to honor the newborn king? We’ll talk more about them at Epiphany in early January. Theologian Miroslav Volf notes that the Magi give baby Jesus gifts that are fit for a king – gold and frankincense and myrrh. One thing they do not do, he says. “They do not huddle together around a warm fire and give gifts to each other…” But isn’t that exactly what we do every year at Christmas?

Nobody is saying we shouldn’t give any gifts to one another. We are saying that we ought to be more careful about what we do give and to whom. As much as I love my grandson Theo, I know there’s a limit to the number of toys he should get at Christmas. Maybe if Linda and I gave him one less toy, we could give a toy to a child who might not get anything otherwise.

That’s the essence of the Advent Conspiracy. It’s a conspiracy of love. It’s based on four powerful and countercultural concepts:

1. Worship fully, because Christmas begins and ends with Jesus. Keep your focus on Jesus, despite the many distractions of the season.

2. Spend less, to free your resources for things that truly matter. Give one less material gift to those in your inner circle whom you especially love.

3. Give more of your presence, your time, your heart, your self, to those people closest to you.

4. Love all – the poor, the forgotten, the marginalized. Love them in ways that make a difference in their lives. Take the money that you would have spent on that material gift for someone close to you and give it away so that the lives of others will be brightened.

That’s the conspiracy. That’s all there is to it. Soon, I’ll introduce you to a special way of living out the Advent Conspiracy. I call it the Advent Challenge.

First, though, let’s return to that pivotal Advent Conspiracy theme, worship fully. It is especially appropriate for this first Sunday in Advent, when our overall theme is hope. The birth of Jesus fulfills the hope of generations of the people of Israel.

Our reading from Isaiah this morning announces God’s future reign over all the earth. Reigning on earth as in heaven has been one of God’s goals from the first days of creation. In Jesus, that goal comes closer to becoming a reality. But this event was eagerly anticipated for hundreds of years beforehand.

Shockingly enough, not one but two prophets claim the words of the prophecy that we read earlier. Both Isaiah and Micah proclaim the same future reality, using the same words.

They both lived about the same time, 800 years before the birth of Jesus. It’s possible that one borrowed from the other. But it’s more likely that both borrowed from an earlier source. It’s more likely that they are both citing an ancient dream that has already been put into powerful words. God put this idea in the minds of Israel’s sages a long time ago, and both Isaiah and Micah repeat it to keep the idea alive.

One day, the prophets say, the peoples of the world will stream to Jerusalem to hear God’s teaching. Instruction will pour out from Mount Zion. The word of the Lord will be heard from Jerusalem. All the nations will learn to walk in God’s pathways.

God will judge between the nations and settle their disputes. Then the nations will beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning tools. Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation. They will no longer learn how to make war.

O Lord, the prophets say, make it so!

Preparing for this message last week, I came across a striking comment on this passage. The author said that it’s really not hard to make swords and spears into plows and pruning tools. Any blacksmith could do it.

Think about that. Any blacksmith could do it. But would any blacksmith do it? Who will join God’s conspiracy to overthrow the evil lords of this world and reign on earth as powerfully as God already reigns in heaven? Who will do this by destroying implements of hate and making implements of peace?

I want to give you an opportunity to do your part in this conspiracy of love. You can be one of the blacksmiths who contribute to world peace, one sword and one spear at a time.

I call it this Advent Challenge. It’s a simple thing with three parts.

1. Do something to brighten someone’s day.

2. Leave a card that tells why you did it.

3. Do it again.

As you receive Holy Communion this morning, you’ll have an opportunity to take as many cards as you think you might need for use in Advent and in the Christmas season beyond.

Last week, you may recall, I said that receiving communion is one of the ways you can declare allegiance to King Jesus. In a moment I’ll invite you forward to do just that, and to receive Advent Challenge cards that you can use to spread the love of God and the hope of Jesus to others in this season that leads us toward Christmas.

A baby King is coming into the world to set things right. The forces of evil are gathering to stop him. Won’t you join a conspiracy of love to bring the baby to his rightful throne?

“Worship fully” is a message preached Dec. 1, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood.

Hail to the King

Two thousand years ago, throughout the Roman Empire, it is traditional to stage a big parade to celebrate the arrival of the emperor or one of his puppet kings. In Greek, the occasion is called “Parousia.” In Latin, it’s called “adventus.”

People line the parade route hours in advance, hoping that they’ll get a good look at the king and his entourage. Who knows? If fortune is with you, perhaps some prize will be tossed your way – not candy, as is often thrown at parades today, but something more substantial and more valuable.

Eventually, the first heralds appear. These are the advance men. They shout: “Prepare the way! The king is coming!”

After them, nothing for awhile. Then you hear drums in the distance, and the sound of horse’s hooves and soldiers’ boots on the stone pavement. Another herald announces, “The king is coming!”

Now comes the imperial guard, splendidly attired and marching in perfect formation. Behind them, riding in a chariot drawn by four magnificent horses, is the man himself, and one last herald proclaiming, “Hail to the king!”

That is what the Advent season is all about. King Jesus is coming!

The entire Christian year is built around this promise, and all the year’s seasons as well. During Advent, we prepare for his arrival. At Christmas, we celebrate his birth. During Epiphany, we ponder the implications of God putting on human flesh. Then, during the Lent and Easter seasons, we learn what it really means for Jesus to be king. For the rest of the year, we eagerly anticipate his Second Coming, when he’ll bring heaven right down to earth.

How easily we call Jesus our King, and yet how shallowly we understand his kingship!

We often call him “Jesus Christ,” as if Jesus were his first name and Christ his last name. But in his letters to young churches, the Apostle Paul is just as likely to call him “Christ Jesus,” because Christ is not a name at all. It’s a title.

“Christ” comes from the Greek “Christos,” which means Messiah. Messiah in Hebrew means “God’s Anointed One,” one who is specially chosen by God and anointed for a specific service. In the Hebrew Bible, kings and priests are both anointed for service, but only kings are called “God’s Anointed One,” or Messiah.

So whenever you encounter the word “Christ” or “Messiah” in your Bible, you should read it as “King,” because that‘s what it means. That’s one reason that when people call him Messiah, Jesus generally tells them to hush up about it – because it’s a title with political implications. In a world ruled by Caesar and lesser kings, a title like that can get you killed.

The New Testament also calls Jesus “Son of God.” In the Hebrew Scriptures, that title is reserved for the king of Israel. In the New Testament, it’s also used, once, to refer to Adam. In Jesus, God gives the title new dimensions of meaning. But its earliest and simplest meaning is as the one who serves on earth as God’s Chosen One – first Adam, then David and the other kings of Israel and, finally, and most splendidly, and in a way that surpasses all the others, King Jesus.

The kingship of Jesus is one of those Advent themes that is hidden in plain sight. It’s so obvious that we just can’t see it. When we finally do see it, we realize that it’s everywhere.

One example: just listen to the music.

Next Sunday we’ll open our hymnals to page 196 and sing, “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.” Why is his coming so eagerly anticipated? Because he’s the one who is “born a child and yet a King.”

Turning to page 213, we’ll sing “Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates.” Why should the gates open? Because “the King of glory waits.”

Page 219, “What Child Is This?” “This, this is Christ the King.”

220, “Angels from Realms of Glory” – tell us to “come and worship Christ the newborn King.”

234, “O Come All Ye Faithful” – “come and behold him born the King of angels.”

237, “Sing We now of Christmas” – “the King is born, Noel.”

238, “Angels We Have Heard on High.” They sing of “Christ the Lord, the newborn King.”

240, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” – “glory to the newborn King.”

245, “The First Noel,” “Born is the King of Israel.”

246, “Joy to the World,” “let earth receive her King.”

249, “There’s a Song in the Air,” because “the manger of Bethlehem cradles a King.”

Whew! Talk of King Jesus is everywhere!

Wait, what kind of king needs a diaper? A baby king, of course. A baby king who will save the world once he’s grown – but first has to grow up.

He has a lot of learning to do – learning to walk, learning to talk, learning to feed himself, learning to reason and to read, learning a trade to support himself, learning how to get along with other people who may or may not want to get along with him, experiencing the soaring joys and piercing disappointments of loving others, experiencing first-hand all that it means to be fully human.

So scripture tells us he matures “in wisdom and years, and in favor with God and with people.” (Luke 2.52)

And when he is, finally, all grown up, we’ll have to kill him because he is not the king we want. He’s not the warrior we want to overthrow our oppressive rulers. And yet our rulers recognize him as a threat to everything they stand for, and anxiously do away with him.

What kind of king dies for his people, and even for those who are not his people? King Jesus, that’s who.

He is God’s perfect model of what a king should be. He’s not our model, not the human model. We think of kings as strong and ruthless. They get things done. They slay their enemies and share the booty with their friends. Best of all, they’re on our side. Who cares about any collateral damage to others along the way? Who cares about the cost, as long as we get what we want?

God’s model starts in the Garden of Eden, when God gives the first humans a mission to serve and protect, to be shepherds and stewards of God’s good creation, acting on God’s behalf, ruling as God would rule if God were there in person.

Israel, God’s test model for the world, isn’t even supposed to have a king. God is supposed to be Israel’s king. But the people clamor for a human king, like all the nations around them. The prophet Samuel warns them it’s a terrible idea. A king will make your sons serve in his army in endless wars, and he’ll make your daughters serve in his palace. He’ll tax you to death and take your land and make you his slaves.

But Israel wants a human king, so God tells Samuel to anoint one. It’s not your leadership they’re rejecting, God says. It’s mine. (1 Samuel 8.4-22)

Centuries later, when Jeremiah is prophet, the Lord thunders: “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” (Jeremiah 23.1)

God tells Jeremiah, “The days are surely coming when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” (Jeremiah 23.5)

That righteous king is Jesus. As his apostles, we are sent out by him to change the world. We are the ones who execute his will. We are his mighty arm of justice and righteousness.

When we make him king of our lives, we sign on to a new way of life. As my spiritual mentor Bruce Larson used to say, when we decide to follow Jesus, we come under new management. We don’t run our lives any more, and nobody else does either. Only Jesus is our King. We follow no one but Jesus.

We don’t follow a program. We don’t follow an ideology. We don’t follow a philosophy.

We don’t follow a theology. We don’t follow a party line. We don’t follow a doctrine or a creed. We follow a person,a divine person. We follow Jesus Christ. We follow the King of the universe. And if we follow any one else or any thing else, we are lost.

There are those who suggest that on this Christ the King Sunday, it might be appropriate for us to say a pledge of allegiance to our King. It might be appropriate for us to make it known that we have no higher allegiance than to Jesus.

I have tried to find such a Pledge of Allegiance to Jesus, and I haven’t seen one yet that didn’t turn into a self-serving political manifesto. So I won’t ask you to recite any such pledge of allegiance today.

But I would ask you to live out your allegiance in your daily life.

Every time you say the Lord’s Prayer and ask for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, you pledge allegiance to our King.

Every time you receive the bread and the cup in remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice, you pledge allegiance to our King.

Every time you do what is right when everybody around you tells you to do what is wrong, you pledge allegiance to our King.

Every time you aid the poor and feed the hungry, you pledge allegiance to our King.

Every time you work for peace in a culture that cannot abide peace, you pledge allegiance to our King.

Every time you are reviled and slandered and attacked because you follow Jesus, you pledge allegiance to our King.

That’s how you show allegiance to King Jesus. You do it by living the way he taught us to live, by living in imitation of him, by loving God first and all others as deeply as you love yourself.

Remember that in the words of an ancient hymn, Christ did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.

Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord – our King – to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2.5-11)

I ask you now to confess that by joining me in the words of another ancient hymn preserved in the New Testament, the scripture we read earlier.

God the Father has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For in him all things in heaven and on earth were created – things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him.

He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

He is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:13-20)

That is the great truth we proclaim today, that no banner can ever fly higher than his, because Jesus is King of the universe and King of our lives, and so we say, “Our King is coming! King Jesus is near!”

Amen!

“Hail to our King” is a message preached Nov. 24, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood.

Radical Stuff

The United Methodist Church has finally caught up with the book of Genesis.

That’s how one member of my church described the news that the UM constitution has been amended to proclaim that “men and women are of equal value in the eyes of God.”

News of the amendment passing was announced recently after voting in annual conferences was completed earlier this year.

The measure got 92% of the vote. (You wonder about those 8%.)

Another version of the measure was approved last year, but it was ruled invalid because the ballot language accidentally included a paragraph that hadn’t been approved by General Conference

That’s the way the church works – methodically. Ploddingly.

Forever we in the churches are in the last car on the train of social action. Seems to me we ought to be in the engine that pulls the train. But no. “Traditionalists” always want to uphold the status quo, and the status quo is always stacked for the privileged few and against everybody else.

For the record, here’s the new language in the United Methodist Constitution:

“As the Holy Scripture reveals, both men and women are made in the image of God and, therefore, men and women are of equal value in the eyes of God.

The United Methodist Church acknowledges the long history of discrimination against women and girls.

The United Methodist Church shall confront and seek to eliminate discrimination against women and girls, whether in organizations or in individuals, in every facet of its life and in society at large.

The United Methodist Church shall work collaboratively with others to address concerns that threaten the cause of women’s and girl’s equality and well-being.”

You can see why such language might cause a flap, don’t you? It’s one thing to say that men and women are equal in the eyes of God. It’s another to say that they are equal in the eyes of the church. But saying that the church will work for change in society? Yikes!

Oh, the mention of Genesis. In my church, we’ve been reading the opening chapters of Genesis in worship over the last couple months. You may recall that Genesis says God created humans, male and female, in the image and likeness of God.

Kindly ignore the doodling of “complementarians,” who maintain that men rule and women drool. Genesis says we’re all made in God’s likeness, and we ought to be treated that way.

Radical stuff. No wonder it’s “controversial.” Don’t you wish God were driving the train?