Nearly every morning since we moved into our new house last July, I have arisen a great while before day so that I could finish prayers in time to see the sun rise. I walk up our street, turn the corner, and enter a bike path that goes due east over a highway and into the fields beyond. On the very clearest mornings I see something I first experienced at sunrise on Lake Michigan: the horizon where the sun will first appear gets intensely clear. In Chicago I could see individual waves miles from shore; in Iowa each distant tassel of corn becomes clear and sharp. Then suddenly there is a sharp flash of light, and a new day has begun.
Some of the clearest mornings come after a storm has passed through, when the clouds have been swept away and all that is left is the wet land. The sun is more welcome on such days, brighter, more intense. Those are the days I think of when I read in the First Book of Samuel, “One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on a grassy land.” A just ruler brings brightness and clarity to the people, the brightness of God.
Few, if any, rulers fulfill that promise. Those in whom we may put our faith at one time (such as Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan), we later come to doubt. Many of our Presidents have undoubtedly ruled in the fear of God, but even those who say that they are led by God find that what they have done creates more murkiness than clarity. It just isn’t that easy. The “last words of David” found in Samuel’s book are more hope than reality.
That is why we put our hope in Jesus Christ. Only in Jesus do we find that sharply revealing light, the sword that divides soul from spirit, joint from marrow (to mix metaphors). That is why the writers of the New Testament saw Jesus as the ideal and final king, and why many Christian churches celebrate Christ the King Sunday on the last Sunday of the Pentecost season.
It some circles it is no longer fashionable to speak of Christ the King; it is too imperialist, or undemocratic, or whatever. These same circles choose not to interpret the Hebrew Bible in the same way that the first Christians did, seeing glimmers and foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus. I do have some sympathy with that; Jews have been interpreting their Scriptures longer than Christians have, and we need to honor that. But what Christian hears in Psalm 132 “A son, the fruit of your body will I set upon your throne” and does not quickly move past Solomon to think of a messianic king, he whose appearance is foretold in those same Hebrew Scriptures? Who does not think of the Messiah revealed to us as Jesus Christ?
Only Jesus can rule as God would rule, with the utter clarity of the sun rising on a cloudless morning. Only Jesus can illuminate the smallest movements within our souls, bringing them to light. Only Jesus can testify to the truth that comes from God. “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
Last Pentecost: 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
We are singing Randall Thompson's anthem "The Last Words of David" this Sunday, with the KJV version of the text. I remarked to the choir at rehearsal as to how fortunate we are to have Iowa sunrises. We have nothing like this back in West Virginia. I never tire of them.
I agree with your comments about "Christ the King" Sunday, and Christological interpretation of the O.T., and that no one except Jesus Christ will ever completely rule with righteousness, as the light of the morning, "even a morning without clouds."
As with other modes of life, the saints show us the way. Among them have been some rulers who have come close to this model: Alfred the Great and (on a smaller scale) Hilda of Whitby, to name two. I suppose some of the most sensible and competent Bishops of Rome, such as Gregory the Great and Leo the Great, should be named as well. And William Wilberforce as an example of a "politician."
It must be very hard to do, because it is so rarely done in this manner.
Post a Comment