II Samuel 23:1-7; Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Psalm 93; Revelation 1:4-8; John 18:33-37
In a few days, we will celebrate that most Christian of all holidays as we gather together with friends and family and talk about all that we have to be thankful for around some turkey and dressing and gravy and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. The devil is only invited to this holiday in the form of eggs – Even now, people are shopping for ingredients for our favorite dishes and, you know, I really think that perhaps a few less stores are open this Thanksgiving than last year.
I sometimes hear a person declare themselves to not believe in God. But then, this person celebrates Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a holiday where we give thanks - but Who do we give thanks to if not God? A wise young child said, "they give thanks to themselves!" when I asked this question. Who will you give thanks to?
On Wednesday, we will hear the kitchen timer go off and that is the signal, for it means that the first pies and cookies are coming out of the oven ready for Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. Even my son in China is planning to eat turkey with friends at his girlfriend’s apartment. Of course, having turkey, the King of Birds, in China is trickier than in America since almost no apartments are equipped with ovens – a deluxe cooking stove in China is one with two burners. And so my son and his girlfriend are paying $150 for a service to roast and deliver the turkey to her apartment and they hope to recover some of the money from their friends…Turkey is such an American thing.
Microwaves have their place, but there is something about the oven on Thanksgiving morning that is special. Perhaps that’s why every year our family has a tradition, a tradition developed over the years out of necessity, a tradition to avoid a late discovery when the dishes are being washed up, a tradition of just before grace is said, someone says, “Mother, what did you forget in the microwave?” For there is always a bowl of buttered cauliflower, or something forgotten in the microwave or the refrigerator because the oven and the King of Birds is what is important on Thanksgiving Day.
And here we are, sitting here on Sunday morning as ever, awaiting God. Here we are, listening to God’s Holy Word, spoken by people of various abilities, but all of whom love the Lord. Here we are, sitting among friends, singing hymns, in light that is dim, awaiting Him.
And a voice says to me…will this be the Day? Will this be the Day that He returns. Will this be the Day when the sky is rolled up like a scroll, the Day when the trumpet sounds, the day when Jesus Christ arrives in clouds with the glory and majesty of God?
King David was beloved by God. And God spoke to David and told David that his descendents would rule a kingdom without end. A son of David would always be the rightful, true and proper ruler of the world. And when a member of David’s house”...rules over people in righteousness,
when he rules in the fear of God,
4 he is like the light of morning at sunrise
on a cloudless morning,
like the brightness after rain
that brings grass from the earth.’
Have you seen that brightness after the rain? The rain falls and then the cloud moves on, and the tender grass sparkles in the bright sunshine from the rain that fell as new lift moves into the grass and the grass gives life to the animals that dine on it and through those animals – deer, sheep, cattle – we have new life and the world is at peace and we are filled and everything is good.
But men of evil, David said, are different:
6 But evil men are all to be cast aside like thorns,
which are not gathered with the hand.
7 Whoever touches thorns
uses a tool of iron or the shaft of a spear;
they are burned up where they lie.”
The evil men are to be dealt with as you would a thornbush. An iron brush hook, a spear shaft, a sickle, a scythe, an instrument of iron is used to keep the evil at a distance and let it burn up in the hot sun, away from the life of the rain, the living water that gives all life.
Life or death? That is the choice. To love righteousness or to love evil. One gives life. One gives death. That is the choice. Follow a life-giving son of David, or be dealt with as a thornbush is dealt with - struck with iron or a spear, and left to burn. Life or death.
Many years after David, the prophet Daniel had a vision. He had a vision of four beasts, four great kingdoms that grew and died. And when the final one was growing, the leader spoke against God and the Holy People of God, and then Daniel saw God in God’s throne room:
“As I looked,
thrones were set in place,
and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
His clothing was as white as snow;
the hair of his head was white like wool.
His throne was flaming with fire,
and its wheels were all ablaze.
10 A river of fire was flowing,
coming out from before him.
Thousands upon thousands attended him;
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.
The court was seated,
and the books were opened."
The Celestial Court is now in session. God pronounced judgment, and the leader was destroyed and the kingdom is given over to God’s Holy People:
13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
And so the people of God for centuries wondered: Who is this king of glory? Who is this man who is like a son of man? Who is this man who will be given authority, glory and sovereign power? Who will have this everlasting kingdom?
David had been promised an everlasting kingdom. The one who rules must be a son of David, a descendent of David, a man who can trace His ancestry to David, the righteous king of Israel.
But who would that be?
And so, the morning he was crucified, we have recorded a dialogue between Jesus of Nazareth and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Jerusalem and Judea.
33 Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
34 “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”
35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
When Jesus says, “You say that I am a king”, he uses the Greek word “legeis”, which is a variation of “lego”. Lego means to lay it on the table, to slap down the final card, to make a final strong statement. Jesus is saying: "Pilate, you have made the final statement in the argument. You have spoken the truth, you have cut to the chase, you have completely finished the discussion, for you have declared me to be a king and this is why I was born and came into the world. To be a king and to be the witness to the truth."
Jesus’ mission was now complete. Not only was Pilate about to pronounce the execution of a completely innocent man, who was not guilty of any crime, but Pilate was now about to kill a king, a foreign king, a king who was entitled to diplomatic treatment and not death, for even the Romans believed in the proper treatment of foreign kings. (Of course, they reserved the right to manipulate and mess with kings of lands they had conquered.) Jesus had just answered Pilate’s question, told him that he was the king of this world – (Kosmos), Pilate had stated in agreement that Jesus was a king, and in a few minutes Pilate would wash his hands and have Jesus the king executed for the crime of claiming to be God.
Never was there such a mistake made by a man. There has never been such a dangerous diplomatic blunder made in all of history. No ambassador has ever made such a terrible mistake as was made that day by a man who should have know better, as when Pilate chose to execute the king from outside the kosmos, the Son of God, for the crime of claiming to be God.
For you see, men may die and men may be executed. But despite what some philosophers claim, God does not die, and God has the power to set the cosmos right. And so it has happened, it is happening, and it will happen.
We know from eyewitnesses that that afternoon, Friday afternoon, Jesus was executed by crucifixion. We know from eyewitnesses that His bleeding, speared body was taken down and placed in a rock tomb by a wealthy member of the Jerusalem religious council, that a huge rock was placed in front of the tomb in a trench, and that Pilate’s seal was placed on the tomb with a 16 man guard to protect the tomb from tampering.
And we know from eyewitnesses that beginning early Sunday morning, some women, then some men, then two different men on the road, then a large group of disciples in a sealed, locked room, another group of fishermen, and then over five hundred people saw Jesus alive again, eating and teaching and walking with them. It is a difficult thing to permanently kill the Son of God!
And then, about 35 years later, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. And about 20 years after that, John sat down and wrote once more. John wrote of a vision of Jesus that had been sent to him, and John wrote of a message that he had been given by Jesus, the son of man, the Son of God, to the seven large churches in western Turkey, and through them, John wrote to us…
“Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the sevenfold spirit before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”
The message comes from the “ruler of the kings of the earth”, Jesus Christ. And what is the message that John is delivering to us?
7 “Look, he is coming with the clouds,”
and “every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him”;
and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.”
So shall it be! Amen.
8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
It is a vision of the end of time. It is God and Christ returned to take possession of the world that rejected the son of man. The Son of God has returned with the power of His true kingdom to rule this world that preferred Rome. He has come to demand obedience where before He simply asked for followers. He has come in wrath where before He came in love. He has come to bring an end to all things where before He came to bring life to all. He has come to put an end to everything. “And all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.” So shall it be. Amen.”
From David to Daniel was 400 years. From Daniel to Jesus was 600 years. From Jesus to John’s Revelation was 60 years. And from John’s Revelation til today was 1900 years. Over nearly 3000 years, men and women have been predicting the arrival of God’s Kingdom in full glory and majesty. For nearly 3000 years, an increasing number of people have come to realize that the kings of the world need a wise ruler over them. And for almost 2000 of those years, one name has been proposed: Jesus the Christ, the son of man, and the Son of God.
Our world is once more falling into ruin. It has fallen before and it will fall again. After David’s son Solomon ruled, the great kingdom that David ruled fell apart, split, and began a slow death spiral, ending in the conquest that took Daniel as a young man to Babylon. After Daniel, Ezra, Nehimiah, and then the Mccabee family resurrected the Jewish kingdom once more. Herod the Great rebuilt the Temple of Solomon. And then the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, and then the Romans were destroyed by the Huns and the surviving Eastern empire was eventually destroyed by the French. The great civilization of the French was destroyed by the Germans, the Germans by the British and the Americans, and now we wait, and wonder, and while our country stands on top today, we wonder – will Moslem civilization destroy the great British-American civilization, or will something else happen?
Each of those civilizations flourished as they stayed focused upon God. Each of them died as they mostly forgot God. And so we stand at the threshold – will America and Britain rediscover God or will we gradually forget God over the next two generations?
Perhaps we have time to turn things around. Perhaps we don’t. Paris has forgotten God and Christ and we have seen the effects as the hatred between different groups of people split mainly by heritage, color, language, and even religion has become stronger than the love of Christ for all men and women. I fear that France is about to descend into civil war, a war of hatred as Frenchmen, fearful of Moslems persecute Moslems, and Moslems, full of anger toward Frenchmen kill Frenchmen. And without Christ, the cycle of violence will grow and grow until a full-scale civil war breaks out. Will we be the next ones to become trapped in the cycle?
Or will we teach our friends, our neighbors, and our family what it means to love Christ by our examples? Will we welcome the family of another religion – or no religion - to our table and attempt to win them to Christ, not through coercion or guilt or declaration of their sins, but through love and joy and sweetness and the careful telling of the stories of those times that God made God’s presence known to us and saved us from disaster? Will we be able to inoculate this town against violence because all people, Christian, Moslem, Hindu, and atheist understand that the Christian people of our churches love all people and welcome all people, and want to share the love of their God with everyone because we truly care for their souls?
Of course, we may begin to do this and not have time.
It is easy to become so focused upon ISIS as the potential agent who destroys our world of peace that we forget that there is another who is far, far, far more powerful than ISIS.
For the King is coming. He is coming in power – and in wrath. This Thanksgiving dinner may be our last before Jesus returns. Will this be the Day when the trumpet call over powers the ring of the kitchen timer?
When you sit down to eat, consider before you pray reading one of today’s readings. Look around you at the table. Are all the people ready for the King’s arrival? Or do you have friends or love ones who may be forgotten, like a bowl of buttered cauliflower that is still waiting in the microwave, left behind and forgotten because the main event has arrived, the King has returned. If you’ve left people in the spiritual microwave, take some time during or after dinner to speak with them of the King who has made you thankful, the King who rules your life with joy, the King who will return to conquer through force those who did not choose to follow him.
If Jesus does not return, we’ll be here next Sunday to begin the Advent season, that time of joyful preparation for the arrival of the King at Christmas time. Our upcoming sermon series will be focused on helping you explain our Christian faith, upon finding God, understanding how God can help us find what is right and wrong, how God can lift us up and yet keep our arrogance in check, and on why God is important in everyone’s life. And then finally, on Christmas eve, we will tell the story of Jesus Christ once again. This is a great time of the year to invite people to church, especially with the revival of the spirit that hit us last weekend. They will get answers to their questions. Do not leave your friends in the spiritual microwave.
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