Jesus is the Risen Lord! Many scholars believe that this explosive statement was the earliest Christian creed. Peter preached at Pentecost that through the resurrection God the Father made the risen Jesus the king of the whole world:
God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear . . . Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:33, 36)
The Israelites between the Exodus and Saul seem to have believed that Yahweh Himself was their king (1 Sam 12:12), but they demanded for an earthly king and were given, with the exception of David and the few who followed in his footsteps, a long line of idolatrous, unjust, and downright foolish kings. And eventually exile was the result. Humanity as represented in Adam had been chosen by God at creation to be His agents in the world; humanity rejected this call, so God called for Himself a people who would be His representatives in the world. But they too rejected their call, and so just as Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, the Israelites were kicked out of the Promised Land (and even when they returned to it, it was almost always as slaves, colonies, second class citizens in a long line of pagan empires).
But the prophets promised that God would finally send a king who would put all things to right, not just for Israel but for the whole world. "Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See your king comes to you,” And who is this king? How shall we know him? He comes “righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey (Zephaniah 9).” And so Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, the anointed by the Spirit of the Lord to fulfill the promises of God (Luke 4), Israel and the world’s rightful king.
But if on Palm Sunday King Jesus came to the capital of his kingdom, it was on Easter Sunday that the Risen Christ was crowned king of a new creation kingdom that He himself inaugurated through His death and resurrection. And it is this same risen Lord, given a new creation body by the Holy Spirit that nevertheless still bears the scars of his suffering, that John saw returning at the end of all things with KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS written in blood red across His thigh and on His robe, with the new heavens and the new earth coming out of heaven like a jewel behind him (Revelation 19-21). Hallelujah for our Lord God Almighty reigns!
Jesus is the Risen Lord and King, we cry with the church across the ages. But for those of us whose ancestors haven’t lived under a monarchy for several centuries, for those of us like myself whose cultural, historical, social, and even philosophical story shares few obvious roots with the story of God’s people in the Old Testament, I think it’s easy for us to cry “Christ is King” with our lips . . . and deny it with our lives.
You see the early Christians knew full well that to declare “Christ is King” was to shout “And Cesar Isn’t.” They knew it, and they died for it. And everyone in the Roman Empire knew it. When the jealous Jews of Acts 17 really wanted to get Paul in trouble, they just dragged him to the officials and declared a half-truth: “[Paul is] defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” And while we have no evidence that the first half of this claim was true, the entire New Testament testifies that the church lived and died proclaiming the second half.
Many have asked why the persecution of Christians under Rome was so severe when the official Roman policy was to tolerate religions of all kinds, especially since, unlike the Jews, the Christians led no armed revolts. But the answer is clear: Rome tolerated all sorts of religious beliefs, just so long as it was Roman citizenship that came first. You could worship whoever you wanted, so long as you worshipped the Caesar as well. And this was exactly the thing that Paul and the early church refused to do: they refused to let Jesus be a religious leader. They insisted on crying out to Him as a King.
Because of our distance from monarchs of any kind and particularly of that kind who declared themselves to actually be gods, it is difficult to recognize the extent of all this. So to help us out, author and activist Shane Claiborne quotes extensively from a Roman letter about the Caesar:
The most divine Caesar . . . we should consider equal to the Beginning of all things . . . for when everything was falling (into disorder) and tending toward dissolution, he restored it once more and gave the whole world a new aura; Caesar . . . the common good Fortune of all . . . the beginning of life and vitality . . .whereas the Providence which has regulated our whole existence . . . has brought our life to the climax of perfection in giving to us the (emperor) Augustus . . . who being sent to us and our descendents as Savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in order; and (whereas,) having become (god) manifest, Caesar has fulfilled all the hopes of earlier times . . . the birthday of god (Augustus) has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel concerning him (Jesus for President, p. 70).
Replace Caesar’s name with Christ’s and most of this could be Biblical. The early Christians weren’t doing a write-in for a new candidate for the king in the upcoming election. They were declaring that above and over and against the claims of kingship and deity for the Caesar, in total opposition to the demand for ultimate authority and allegiance to Rome and its ruler, stood the Risen Christ, King of the World and the Coming Kingdom.
The Christians died with Jesus is the Risen King on their lips. They suffered abuse at every side because they refused to let any claim of culture, ethnicity, state religion, or political power trump their allegiance to the Christ who had become for them all in all. Given the hubris of the Roman empire cult, Christ’s resurrection crown was one of the most subversive and controversial claims going. Lucky for us we don’t live in an age like that!
Or do we? Isn’t it true that our culture and our nation constantly seek to demand our total allegiance? Do not the household gods of comfort, financial security, and affluence claim our allegiances in the economic sphere? Are we not constantly if subtly told that ‘yes, it’s all well and good to follow Christ, but it really just won’t do when it comes to national security, or family loyalty, or economic practice’? Here’s a test: when was the last time we thought about the Christians in the countries we’re currently at war with (or those in nations that our self-serving economic policy might be decimating). Because according to the Bible, we share a greater allegiance with them than we do with our nation. How about another one: when was the last time that the Sermon on the Mount was the driving force behind your financial decisions? When was the last time that we were part of a church budget discussion that made “blessed are the poor” the first question for every line item? I can’t avoid asking one more: how do you talk about brothers and sisters in Christ who happen to be communists? Or Socialists? Or Democrats (or Republicans)? Which came first in that last discussion? The person’s secondary political identity? Or their membership in the true and lasting kingdom with the Risen Christ as its King?
All of us everywhere have in subtle and sinister ways become traitors to our King. We have given our allegiance to the temporary powers of the world, whom Christ made a spectacle of at the cross (Colossians 1). Looking at those litmus tests, I find that my allegiance to the world is acid as anyone I know. I worship Jesus as King every Sunday, but as I’ve been thinking about this blog post I’ve realized just how often the worship that goes on Monday through Saturday is at the altar of the household gods of economic security, political theory, personal achievement, and maybe worst of all, of general respectability and acceptance in my own community of friends and family.
The resurrection shatters the kingdoms of the world, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. The resurrection reminds all world orders, be they nations, philosophies, or religions, that their days are numbered, that their power is limited, that they must kneel to the Christ or perish. If we look at the way the early church read the Old Testament, the way they treated their Jewish or Greek heritage, the way they interacted and engaged with their nation and the larger world, we see at every turn that they recognized Christ as King of the cosmos, and therefore gave their allegiance to Him as such. This Easter week, let’s pray that the Spirit would open our eyes to the ways we’ve traded Christ as King for the much more visible, much more expedient, but nevertheless deadly kings of our culture, nation, and community. Let’s fall on our knees again as subjects of the king who, like Aslan in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, is “on the move,” coming to Narnia, gunning for the White Witch, and bringing the eternal summer kingdom that drives out the tyrant’s long winter.
Peace,
Michael
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