Tuesday, June 26, 2018

I Want My Kingdom, And I Want It Now! (6)


If you've been following along, you are probably seeing that Jesus, this great spiritual teacher, is a little different than what you expected.  He was not just the "meek and mild" doe-eyed Jesus of the movies.  He had a huge heart for weary, discouraged, and broken people, but very little tolerance for religious people.  Despite his obvious love for the hurting and the poor and "sinners," it is amazing how the "mob mentality" can sweep people up and encourage them to do things they otherwise would not do.  In our last post, we saw how the people of Jesus’ day responded when Jesus didn’t organize an army, didn’t lead a political coup, and didn’t set up an earthly kingdom.  They were furious!  “How dare he!?  Who does he think he is?”  And there is the big question.  Who exactly was Jesus?  Either he has some special right to tell us that our kingdoms are failing and his is the only one that really matters, or he is just another religious do-gooder we can either listen to or ignore, but either way, we get to pick and choose what part of his teaching we like and which parts we don’t.  You may have noticed that Jesus is often referred to as “Jesus Christ.”  Is that his last name, “Christ?”  No.  It’s a title.  In that way I might be referred to as “Dave Pastor.”  “Pastor” is what I do and, in some sense, who I am. The word “Christ” is used in that way, and in the language of Jesus’ day, it was the same word as “Messiah (Just as, for example, "bien" in Spanish means "good" in English.  They mean exactly the same thing).  Jesus didn’t claim to be just any messiah/christ, but The Messiah, the long-awaited messenger from God who had come to set his people free and to set all of mankind free.  But there was a twist.  Not only did Jesus claim to be The Messiah, he also claimed to be God, in the flesh.[1]  That, coupled with his unpopular view of the Kingdom, was simply more than the people of his day could take.  He was unwilling to lead an armed rebellion, and now he was claiming to be God Himself.  Would it surprise you to know that the people of Jesus day responded to him exactly like people today, “spiritual but not religious” people? The audacity of his claims and the disappointment surrounding his idea of the kingdom were simply more than they/we can bear.  So how do you respond to someone like that, someone who acts like they call the shots, someone that demands something of us that we may or may not want to do?  We kill him.  And we move on to build our own kingdoms our way, using some of the nice things Jesus taught when we need them, but all this talk of repentance and kingdoms and deity are just too much.  You may be thinking, “I would never kill someone I disagreed with!”  Perhaps not.  But we all reach a point where we tire of hearing someone demand something of us that we are unwilling to do.  Eventually, the actual claims of Jesus are like nails on a chalkboard.  “Stop!”  Are we really that different from the people of Jesus’ day who raised their fists in the air and demanded, “Crucify him?!”[2] 


[1] Jesus repeatedly claimed to be God!  This absolutely infuriated the religious professionals of His day.  They fully acknowledged that He possessed incredible authority, the power to perform miracles, and that He lived an exemplary life.  It was precisely because He CHALLENGED AND CRITICIZED PHONY RELIGION that they simply could not stomach His claims.
[2] Mark 15:6-15