I have been accused of being too political in my preaching
at times and it has been said to me that preaching has no place engaging with politics.
Yet that accusation in itself is a political statement and on
this day which is traditionally known as Christ the King our readings make it
very clear that our faith has a political edge.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians Paul makes the grand
claim that in Christ “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through
him God was pleased to reconcile all things to himself, whether on earth or in
heaven, making peace through the blood of the cross.”
This claim of God over all things is one that is hard to
wrap our heads around but I have little doubt for the ancient community who
were under the rule of the Roman Empire they heard this statement as one of
hope.
The Emperor and his claims to divinity, and the power and
might of his Empire, were trumped by the maker and sustainer of all things who
walked among us in Jesus. God was bigger
than the ruling power of Rome.
In these words, which add a cosmic dimension to Jesus’
presence in the world, we hear a clear echo of John 1: “In the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in beginning with God, all things have
come into being through him and without him not one thing has come into
being. What has come into being in him
was light. And that light was the light
of the world.”
This cosmic claim concerning Jesus Christ had clear political
implications. The citizenship and the
first loyalty of the early Christian community was determined by their baptism
not by the Emperor.
Paul says to the Colossians that, God “has rescued us from
the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
To be transferred into another kingdom, a coming kingdom, a
rule and reign of God, not determined by place and time but by allegiance to
God set the early Christian community over against the Roman Empire.
God is the God of all things and in Christ God was reconciling
all things to himself. There is no place
in this universe, there is no time in history, there is no political system
that does not sit under Christ’s reign.
This is clearly a political claim as much as it is a claim over our
human existence.
Just as this set early Christians up to be in conflict with
the Empire, and subsequently led to the persecution of Christians because they
would not acknowledge the Emperor as a God, so too it sets up a conflict for
each one of us with the society in which we live.
Where does our citizenship lie? This is a politically charged question and to
say otherwise is naïve and more than that it is to deny the sovereign rule of
God over our lives. God has transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
I have spoken before to you of my personal sense of homelessness
as an Australian. Through my study of
history and the transient nature of my upbringing I came to have a deep sense
of unease. This unease was grounded in the
reality that as an Anglo-Australian I belonged to a history of a people who had
disregard for the sovereignty of the first peoples of this land, and mind you
of many other lands as well.
Yet this homelessness was not restricted to my Australian heritage
but to that Anglo heritage that stretches back through the centuries of conflict
between the Scots and the English, and between the Saxons and the Normans, and between
the Normans and Celts, and so on and so forth.
With so much talk of nationalism in recent years and what it means to be
Australian I am continually driven to find my identity, and my political
identity in Christ.
Being Australian is a mixed blessing – we live in one of the
best places and times amongst some of the most prosperous people ever, but we
should never ignore that others have paid a deep and terrible price for our
prosperity even if we are not personally aware of this.
Being transferred by baptism into the kingdom of the beloved
Son sets a new political context for my life which must and can only transcend the
relatively recent historical concept of the nation state. It must and can only transcend our party
political system – beyond Labor or Liberal or Green or Family First or One
Nation. None of these is truly reflective
of the kingdom of the beloved Son.
Despite the fact we may wish it were so and that we might even identify
glimpses of that kingdom in some of their policies. The reality is that all governments fall
short and we are citizens, as Jesus says, of a kingdom that is not of this
world.
Our citizenship in this kingdom is shaped by the life of Christ
and the Spirit of God at work within us.
It is a citizenship that connects us to the work of God in
Christ which is to reconcile all things to himself. All things on heaven and on earth.
The values of this kingdom are exemplified first and
foremost in Jesus’ words from the cross, “Forgive them Father, for they do not
know what they are doing.” Forgiveness
and mercy and love and grace. The preacher
and scholar Scott Hoezee says of this kingdom, “forgiveness is the coin of this
realm.”
To be a citizen of the kingdom of the beloved Son is to know
that God forgives, that you are forgiven, and that I am forgiven, and that God’s
deepest desire is to share this forgiveness in order that all things might be
reconciled to God in Christ.
This is a hard teaching to accept and it is even harder to
live. When we see those gathered around
the cross the executioners, the onlookers, the dicers, the scoffers, the mourners,
the thief who scoffed and the thief who appealed for mercy, and the Centurion
who declared Jesus’ divinity we are left wondering what does Jesus prayer
mean. Who does not know what they are
doing? Who is forgiven?
Apart from the one thief no future of reconciliation is made
known – but for that one we know and share his hope: “today you will be with me
in paradise.”
The judgement of this world and the political power that
takes away life, cannot triumph in Jesus’ kingdom for he is Lord of both the living
and the dead.
It is this hope that fills us baptised people, as people transferred
into the kingdom of the beloved Son and causes us to rethink how we live and to
whom our loyalties lie.
God has made a sovereign claim over our lives and because of
this all of the segregation and separation of nation from nation, tribe from
tribe, language from language are dissipated as on the day of Pentecost. This is the politics of God and we are called
to be citizens first and foremost of that coming kingdom which is shaped by
Jesus Christ, who is our Saviour, our Lord and our King!
15He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation;
16for in him all things in heaven
and on earth were created,
things visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—
all things have been created through him and for him.
17He himself is before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
18He is the head of the body, the church;
he is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that he might come to have first place in everything.
19For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
20and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself
all things,
whether on earth or in heaven,
by making peace through the blood of his cross.
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