November 24th, 2024 - "Christ the King Invites You!" - Rev. Dr. T. Ray Wheeler

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today, or just want to

find out more about the ministries at First United Methodist Church, please

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Rev. Dr. T. Ray Wheeler: We're so grateful that you're sharing

worship with us this morning.

I have a couple of lessons that are fairly long.

These are actually our liturgical lessons for today.

So I invite you to hear the word of God this morning.

The first lesson is from the Old Testament, 1 Samuel 8, 4 through 20.

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah.

They said to him, You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways.

Now appoint a king to lead us.

But when they said, give us a king to lead us this displeased Samuel, so he prayed

to the Lord and the Lord told him, listen to all the people are saying to you.

It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king as

they have done since the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day

forsaking me and serving other gods.

So they are doing to you.

Now listen to them, but warn them solemnly and let them know that

What a king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.

Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king.

He said, this is what a king who will reign over, you will claim as his rights.

He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses and they will

run in front of his chariots and some will be assigned to be commanders of thousands

and commanders of fifties and others.

to plow his ground and reap his harvest and still others to make weapons of

war and equipment for his chariots.

He will take your daughters to be performers and cooks and bakers.

He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves

and give them to his attendants.

He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials

in attendance, your male and female servants, and the best of your cattle

and donkeys he will take for his own use.

He will take a tenth of your flocks and you will become his slaves.

When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but

the Lord will not answer you in that day.

But the people refused to listen to Samuel.

No, they said, we want a king over us.

Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to

go out before us and fight our battles.

And from the Gospels, John chapter 18, verse 33 through 37.

John 18:33–37

Pilate went back into the palace.

He summoned Jesus and asked, Are you the king of the Jews?

And Jesus answered, Do you say this on your own?

Or have others spoken to you about me?

And Pilate responded, I'm not a Jew, am I?

Your nation and its chief priests handed you over to me.

What have you done?

And Jesus replied, My kingdom doesn't originate from this world.

If it did, my guards would fight so that I wouldn't have been

arrested by the Jewish leaders.

My kingdom isn't from here.

So you are a king?

Pilate asked.

And Jesus answered, You say that I'm a king.

I was born and came into the world for this reason, to testify to the truth.

Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice.

This is the word of God for us, the people of God.

I invite you to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths and center our hearts on

the Holy Spirit that's present right now.

Holy God, open our hearts and minds to receive the message you

would have us receive this morning.

In the name of Jesus Christ, our strength and our Redeemer, Amen.

This is Christ the King Sunday, and it's also the last Sunday of the

year, of the church year that is.

We end the church year by celebrating the kingship of Christ, and next

Sunday we'll start over with Advent.

and will begin to look for the baby Jesus to be born.

I admit that I love following the liturgical year.

Many of you know, I grew up in a Pentecostal church, and I

didn't know about the liturgical year until my early 20s.

You know, preachers in my church, and I thank God for that upbringing.

They loved me, and they taught me.

But when they were preaching, they just preached whatever was on their

heart, and then it was Christmas.

Boom!

There was no advent, there was no preparation, uh, for Christmas

Day, and then we'd rock along for a while, and then it was Easter!

Boom!

And when I first started working in music for a church in the

mainline tradition, I was so amazed.

There's a plan for the whole year!

I think I love it because, well, I'm a nerd.

That's the first thing.

But I also love it because it tells us a great story.

In a real formalized way.

The church relives the life of Christ through the entire year.

And Christ the King, of course, is the culmination of the

life of Christ on this Sunday.

When I was in high school choir, we sang a Christmas concert at a

Catholic cathedral in Oklahoma City, and it was called Christ the King.

And I have this vivid picture of this huge crucifix that was behind the altar.

And Christ is on the cross, but this image of Christ is powerful.

This is not the suffering Jesus, but the triumphant Christ.

And this is part of our faith story as well.

Christ is triumphant.

And because Christ is triumphant, we are too.

Our scripture reading this morning illuminates two images of kingship.

The image of the demands of a human king, and the Christ as king in

perhaps Christ's weakest moment.

In our Old Testament lesson, Samuel gives the people a warning.

Samuel has been a prophet and a traveling judge, serving the people of God.

And Samuel has been the authoritative voice of God for 20 years.

But he's growing old, and there's a concern that there'll be a

power vacuum if he should die.

Now, it was customary for a prophet's sons to follow.

So, like, enter the family business and be a judge or a prophet.

And Samuel appointed two of his sons to be judges in the town of Beersheba.

However, the book of Samuel reports that his sons walked not in his

ways, but turned aside after money.

This was the impetus of the people to say to Samuel, we need a king.

And Samuel's very disturbed by the request.

But the Lord tells Samuel, listen to the people, but also remind the people

what it means to have a human king.

So Samuel warns the people about the ways of a king.

Recall Samuel's warning when he tells the people, This is what a king who will

reign over you will claim as his rights.

He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses.

He will make them be the charge of soldiers.

He will take your vineyards.

He will take, plow your ground.

He will take your daughters.

He will tax you.

Believe it or not, Samuel is likely to have been thinking about the kingdom

of Solomon, Solomon's kingly reign.

So Solomon was a wise king, but he was a human king.

And he took their daughters.

He conscripted their daughters and sons to work in his kingdom.

He taxed them.

He took some of their best things in their vineyards and their wine.

In other words, he's a human king.

And we know that Samuel's prediction was right on the money with King Saul.

And while King David followed Saul and was a just king, in many

ways, he was also a human king.

And we know very well his human failings.

We can contrast this with the exchange of Christ and Pilate in our gospel lesson.

Recall the answer Jesus gives to Pilate's question, Are you a king?

And Jesus answers, My kingdom didn't originate from this world.

If it did, My guards would fight so that I wouldn't have been

arrested by the Jewish leaders.

My kingdom isn't from here.

And Pilate says, so you are a king.

The answer Christ gives is confusing.

It's not clear to Pilate.

Pilate knows how to recognize an earthly king, how a human king behaves and looks,

and he understands the power of a human king, and he can't connect that idea

With this Jewish peasant in his custody.

We can't really blame Pilate for this.

The followers of Jesus didn't understand the kingship of Christ either.

They were looking for Christ to be a type of earthly king to drive

the Roman oppressors out in a blaze of kingly glory, and they were

arguing over who's gonna be king?

Jesus's right hand man.

But that wasn't Christ the King's mission.

Jesus tells Pilate and all of us what the mission is when he says, I

was born and came into the world for this reason, to testify to the truth.

Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice.

King Jesus came to witness the truth.

To a higher truth, Christ, the King's message is that the kingdom

of God is here now and is summed up in the great commandment.

Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your being and with

all your mind and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

The great message of the kingdom of heaven is love.

It's grace.

It's forgiveness.

These truths can also be hard to accept.

Sometimes.

We don't have the experience with an earthly king here, but

I think sometimes we may have a hard time seeing Christ as king.

We may struggle to understand that Christ's kingdom is not of this world.

We can be like the Israelites in Samuel's time.

We want someone to tell us the rules.

Even if they're difficult, we'll follow them.

Just make the rules clear.

And in some of my conversations with us, I find that a lot of us

are carrying some guilt and shame.

We just want to know the rules.

We are willing to do hard things if someone will just give us those rules.

We can lay down this shame and the guilt.

When we were traveling in Rome, I read about some special stairs at the Vatican

where people ascend on their knees.

It's difficult.

And when my wife and I were in Malaysia, I saw people carrying heavy

loads up the side of a mountain.

There were 272 steps that led to a temple, and they were carrying heavy

loads up to this ancient temple.

These hard things are not bad in and of themselves, but I suspect we

tend to do these type of things to assuage feelings of guilt or shame.

We will do hard things for this feeling of forgiveness.

And let's just be honest, between you and me, there are some religious traditions

that are built on giving their members the rules and making them follow them.

Some of you all are sitting here this morning because you're seeking a

different understanding, a different relationship with the divine presence.

Recently, I was contacted by a religious polling service, and they

asked me if I would participate in a poll of pastors in the U.

S., and I did some checking, and it appeared to be reputable, so I said,

sure, I'd be willing, and I got a call.

So, you know, there were the basic demographic questions.

But then when she got into the questions about our church, some of

them didn't quite fit us, you know.

But I answered them as best I could.

And then the polling person asked me this question.

In the past year, how often have you had to discipline your members?

And I said, what?

And she said, she repeated the question.

And I kind of had lost it at that point.

And I kind of shouted, we're United Methodists.

We don't discipline our members.

And there was a silence on the other end for a while, and she says, So, zero then?

I said, Yes, yes, put us down for a zero.

You know, you always think, I wish I would have been better on my feet and thought,

you know, to give a better answer.

And I wish I would have said, we don't discipline our members.

We love them and they love us and we stumble through this thing together.

That'd have been a better answer.

It probably still would have been zero, I guess, It would have been a better answer.

But loving is not always easy.

And what I hope you hear from this pulpit are spiritual concepts and ways

to walk with God and walk together and follow the Holy Spirit as God leads us.

In other words, how do we have a relationship with God and one another?

One of the ways we can do this is to really challenge ourselves to see people.

that we meet and that we come in contact with really see them offering a kind

word or asking people, How are you doing?

And then really caring about the answer.

I think of this is offering one another intentional kindness.

And I think intentional kindness may be what we all need more

than anything else right now.

But that's not easy.

It requires being vulnerable.

It requires opening ourselves up to rejection.

And that's not easy.

And maybe the hardest thing is trying to see everyone we encounter as a

complex and multifaceted person.

Seeing everyone, in other words, as a beloved child of God, even the people we

find annoying and grating on our nerves.

We don't know what those other people are going through, what

load they may be carrying.

This seems to be keeping with the edict of King Jesus from

our gospel lesson this morning.

Some years ago, I was working on a project in graduate school.

I ran across the work of a Danish philosopher named Knut Løgstrøm.

And Løgstrøm's main ethical concept is called the silent demand.

He wrote several books on this.

He said that when two people meet, there is a silent demand

created, a need created.

And our job as ethical humans is to find out what that need

is and try to meet that need.

It might just be a kind word or a smile, and it might be something much greater.

But that's our job.

His ideas are sometimes used in nursing education and in colleges of nursing.

You can kind of see why that would be important there.

Voigtstrap is difficult and he's confusing to read.

I thought I'm reading this guy in translation.

Maybe that's the problem.

And then I read some Danish writers that said, boy, he's so hard to read.

And the reason is, I decided, is because he doesn't want to give you the rules.

You must work to meet the needs for this person, but he won't tell you exactly

how to do it, because every time you meet a new person, there's a new need.

It's a new game.

He does give us one rule, which I think is really important.

He says, you must work to meet this other person's need without taking away this

other person's free will or personhood.

He does decline to mention what happens when it's a situation

where you're the person in need.

So I imagine he was thinking, well, we just always assume

that we're the ones in need.

Being the helping person, but I can remember times in my life when someone

reached out in kindness and met a need that I was really desperate to have met.

And I remember the joy and gratitude that brought to my life.

I imagine many of us can think of moments like that as well.

So maybe this might be a way to be a model for us to really see other people.

We can ask ourselves, What can I do to make this person's life better?

Just a little bit better today.

Thank you.

Honestly, that's way harder than following the rules, even hard rules.

On this Christ the King Sunday, let us remember that an earthly king conscripts.

But King Jesus invites.

Let's say yes to King Jesus' invitation every day in this new church year.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the sermon podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

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orientation, marital status, age, physical and mental ability, national origin,

economic station, and political ideology.

We come together in action and outreach, aspiring to follow Jesus' example of

radical hospitality, love, and grace as a transformative movement in our community.

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Grace and peace.