Christ the King

Don’t freak out…you are not seeing things.  SLIC is back for 2010! (hear that in the monster truck/wrestlemania voice of your own choosing)  My apologies that a month long break turned into a four month hiatus.  What can I say?  Mea Culpa.  I hope that you will forgive and pickup where we left off.

I was asking myself the following question the other day; why did the Romans kill Jesus?  It had little to do with religion.  The Romans were actually quite tolerant of other religions.  Consider the Jewish religion, even with it’s overtly nationalistic tones, the Romans allowed them to continue to worship and gather.  The charge laid against him, and later nailed above his head on the cross was, ‘King of the Jews’.   They charged him with claiming authority.  You could argue that Pilate neither believed nor cared that Jesus wanted to be a king; that he was just doing this to pacify the Jewish leaders.  Fair enough.  So why did the leaders of the Jews want him crucified?  bc he sat on a mountaintop in Judea and said, ‘Love everybody and be nice.’?  I don’t think so.

They were as frightened of him as I often am today!  Jesus was killed, in the body 2000 years ago, and in our hearts quite often, because he represents an entirely different way of doing things.  That ‘way’ threatened the foundations of power in Palestine so many years ago, and it threatens the foundations of my life today.

He didn’t come with a moral code.  He didn’t come with clever insights or handy proverbs.  He didn’t come to be another in a long line of  power hungry rulers.

He did come with love, but a love so different, we shoulda made up a new word for it.  He came with paradoxes and parables to show people that an entirely different of living and seeing was possible.  Most people didn’t/don’t get it.  Of those that do, very few of them like it. Some want to kill him for it.

We finished the last post….so many months ago, by asking how we are going to accomplish our task as image bearers.  The task that Christ perfectly fulfilled.  The task with which he charged his disciples, including us.

It has to begin and end with Christ the King.  Six months ago, when I began this little series, I lamented that I proclaim Jesus ‘King of Sunday’, and I run to Caesar for the rest of my time.  It’s been a winding road from there, but now we have come back to it.  After the Cross, what was there?  Not a dead revolutionary. Not just another wannabe Messiah.  There was a King.  There was a King who would never die.

Why was he made King?  What is so special about him?  I guess that’s where we are headed next.

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