One of the great gifts that Christian creeds and confessions offer is their simplicity. Time and again, as we walk through changing contexts and circumstances, we are invited both toward improvisational contextualization of the faith, yet at the same time, to return to that which is most central and succinct. For the earliest Christian, “Jesus is Lord” was one such stabilizing and regularly reorienting confession amid the rapidly changing contexts of their life together. Amid the rise and fall of empires and kings, this creed inherently de-ultimatized every earthly ruler; as Stanley Hauerwas says, “if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not.”
Appealing to the reign of Jesus – amid the rise and fall of earthly rulers and kingdoms – has been a regular source of peace, joy, faith, hope, and love for believers across time and space. It’s enabled followers of Jesus to not “lose the plot” of the story they have been baptized into. So, it’s not surprising to see appeals to Jesus’ Lordship in the wake of elections in our own time. However, it’s easy for a regularly used phrase to become an empty trope. But a confession like this was never intended to be an abstract pious platitude.
The Jesus who is Lord is not an abstract divine figure who never made contact with the messiness of this world. He walked this earth, trafficked in markets, worked a trade, navigated borders, experienced the pain of compromised religious leaders, and endured violence at the hands of corrupt government. He was and is a middle eastern, Jewish, Aramaic-speaking, refugee, suffering-servant King. The particularities of his humanity make him an interesting figure to look to for hope and stability wherever one is a citizen. Even more, he “reigns from the tree” – as Lesslie Newbigin put it – even as he prayed for the forgiveness of the very people murdering him in the moment. To serve this King is to vulnerably offer one’s self to him toward the end of sharing in his kind of justice-seeking, righteousness-bearing, peacemaking, enemy-loving reign; all the while mysteriously learning the ease and lightness of his yoke and burden. It is to steadily discover a grounding set of loyalties and commitments that become a permanent and chastening filter for all of the other loyalties and commitments one bears. It is to shape the way one sees, speaks to and about, and treats fellow human beings and the whole of creation. His reign invites a curious, humble working out – in one’s particular context – of the personal, public, and political implications and actions of that loyalty to Him. To be a citizen of his kingdom is to become an increasingly complicated, though uniquely invested, citizen of any earthly kingdom.
Furthermore, this Jesus who is Lord also identifies with the poor, the persecuted, and the oppressed. In his own words, he came, “to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free.” It is this cast of characters to whom the reign of Jesus first comes and is good news. His is a kingdom that breaks in “from below.” And if there is one guarantee of his reign, it’s that it always casts down the proud and raises up the lowly. Again, an interesting and perhaps sobering figure to point to for hope and stability wherever one is a citizen.
Confessing that “Jesus is Lord” does, of course, bear witness to a deeper order at the heart of things. It does anchor one to a King who is incapable of becoming anxious at the tumult of our world, not because he does not care, but because he has endured and overcome the very worst and has joined himself to us in such a way as to ensure that the very worst cannot have the final word. As Winn Collier put it, “If our hope is that the God of all creation has forever joined himself in the body of Jesus to me, to my children, to my neighbors, to my enemies, to those who are starving, to those who are being bombed, to those whose health is failing. That is a different kind of hope – that does not promise no hardship but promises ultimate rescue and renewal.”
The promise of his reign does not mean that all “is” well in the world. It is a promise that all “shall be” well. And part of the work “in between” is truth-telling, repentance, forgiveness, lament, repair, surrender, faith, hope, love and more. To participate – within the givens of one’s life and the spheres of one’s agency, no matter how great or small – in the in-breaking of his kingdom. A kingdom that makes possible and worthwhile the mending of broken things and the healing of gaping wounds because that is where the story is going.
And so, in the aftermath of another election and the complicated terrain of our social life in the U.S., it is right and good to profess the reign of Jesus. But be warned: his kingdom is perpetually indicting and inviting all who profess it to align the whole of their lives with it. To speak it is to open oneself up to the claims that it – more specifically, the Jesus who is Lord – makes on you. And he often leads one where one never expected to go. It is to declare a desire and commitment to carry and perform the story truthfully. And more often than not, to be led on a journey from the clear, abstract, and ideal to the messy, proximate, and local. Discipleship’s sharpest edges are in the realm of our agency. But be encouraged, all who seek his kingdom are gifted his Spirit, who sets us free to not grow weary in doing good, all the while living – in the very finite, fragile contingencies of our lives – toward a way of wholeness, integrity, and peace.
Let this early creed be what it truly is. Not an empty trope but a revolutionary word that shatters and remakes the world. A call not to escapist passivity but to embodied participation in the messy and mundane realities of our lives. This kingdom has come near. For, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).
Robert Cunningham, Rector, Church of the Good Shepherd, Charlottesville, VA
No Comments