Creekside Church Sermon of November 23, 1997 "Jesus Rules" John 18:33-37	Rev. David Bibbee
Send this sermon to a friend

I was driving west on the by-pass two weeks ago on one of those glorious autumn afternoons. It was the complete package-crisp, cold breezes, the bright sun illuminating the already brilliant golds and reds of the maples with such intensity it seemed they were about to burst into flame. It was one of those "the heavens are declaring the glory of God" days...a blessed by what I saw day, a good to be alive day. As a result, I was driving just a little slower than usual so as to drink as much splendor as possible.

Then an eighteen wheeler passed me, and something on the back of the truck caught my attention. It wasn't the company logo. It wasn't the, "Caution! This vehicle makes wide turns" signs, nor a missing child sign, or even the " How's my driving? Dial 1-800 something" or other message. It was a message someone had written on the dirty door. It was just three words long. And no, it wasn't "Please wash me!" It said, "Jesus is Lord." Here was the oldest Christian confession enroute to who knows where. I wondered if the driver knew what his truck was saying. I wondered if he had done it, or whether someone else had made him an unwitting evangelist.

I also began to wonder how many drivers would read the message before it was washed off and what their reactions would be. Jesus is Lord. How many would nod and say, "Yes, if I believe anything at all, I believe this is so. Jesus is what it's all about." I wondered how many wouldn't know what it meant and wouldn't catch the difference if it had said Mohammed or Michael Jordon is Lord. I wondered how many saw it as no different than the spray graffiti on bridges and railroad cars.

Today is the last Sunday of the year...the church year, that is. It's called Christ the King Sunday, a time to focus on the claim that no power is greater than that revealed in Jesus Christ. It says that at the end of the year, at the end of nations and empires, at the end of the last sentence, at the end of time, still will Jesus be Lord. Christians have been making this claim now for two thousand years, but the claim that Jesus rules has always been contested, and even for those who want deeply to believe it, there are times when they wonder.

As an ex-architecture student, I can tell you that the tallest, most elaborate structures people build are monuments to what they believe most deeply and what is the source of their trust and security. There was a time when churches were the tallest structures. They were built to draw the gaze upward to the heavens from whence our help comes. Then the steeples and spires were eclipsed by capitol buildings which said that government ruled, and security is in the state. Then came skyscrapers. The Sears Tower. The World Trade Center. The corporation and commerce are king. And what is housed in some of the biggest, most elaborate buildings being constructed today? Hospitals and medical centers-monuments to our ability through medical science to fix ourselves by ourselves.

There is the little old church, sitting in the shadow of big government and commerce and science saying, "Jesus Rules." We want to believe it is so. In our better moments we know that security isn't in Stealth fighters and hope doesn't rise and fall with the stock market, and being alive isn't measured by lab reports and C.A.T. scans. But crawling into bed after watching the late news, don't you sometimes get the feeling that we're losing ground? Do you ever feel there is an attempt to render the church unnecessary and the faith irrelevant? Have we become so uncertain and our witness so anemic that Jesus has to resort to having messages about himself scrawled on the tail end of Mack trucks?

Or maybe we need to remember something about the sort of power Jesus possessed, and how it is that his reign stands above every earthly power that would claim to rule the day. If you want a glimpse into how this can be, look again at what happened when Jesus was put on trial. Jesus was dragged before Pilate, the man in charge of the Roman occupation of Palestine. An intelligent person would know that Jesus didn't stand a chance. Pilate had Imperial Rome behind him...Caesar, the Roman Senate, vast armies, chariots, the war machine.

And there stands Jesus-a penniless, powerless preacher with a little band of disciples who, when Jesus was arrested, ran every which way like roaches from the light. Jesus is supposed to be shaking in his shoes. He is supposed to fold the way the weak usually do before the powerful. "Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate asked. Jesus should have thrown in the towel right there. Pilate was mocking him. How could an occupied people have a king? "It all depends," Jesus answered. "Did you come to this conclusion on your own or did someone tell you about me?"

I hear Pilate saying, "Whose on trial here, you or me?" It was a good question, because Jesus had just put Pilate on the witness stand and Jesus became the chief prosecutor. "What have you heard about me?" Jesus said. "I'll ask you what I ask my disciples. Who do you say I am?" "Do I look like a Jew to you?" Pilate retorted. Now look who is on the defensive. "My kingship is not of this world," Jesus said. "If it was, my servants would fight. But my kingdom is not at all like yours." "So you are a king?" "You say that I am."

Do you see the sublime irony here? Jesus, the one with supposedly no power, has Pilate begging and pleading for answers. In their second meeting, he tells a staggering, spat upon, beaten to a pulp, robed in kingly purple Jesus, "Don't you know I have the power to release you or crucify you?" "You have no power over me," Jesus said. "So you will kill me. Is that the worst you can do?" Jesus was Pilate's worst nightmare. There was no royal, regal, or legal method to deal with him.

To say Jesus rules is to say he has given us a kingdom that doesn't operate by the customary rules. Jesus' rule over the world has nothing to do with bigger battalions, majority rule, public opinion, or who holds the purse strings. Jesus' rule has to do with truth, righteousness, those with most sharing with those with least, it is about choosing love over hate and life over death. The sign of his rule is the resurrection which tells us at the end of another church year, at the end of our understandings, at the end of our resourcefulness, and at the end of our finite, human power, lies the beginning of his rule. How did Isaiah say it? "His authority shall grow continually. There shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time on and for ever more." (Isaiah 9:7)

I know it's a stretch sometimes to hold fast to power that doesn't seem very powerful. Compare to all the violence and bad news and the collective voice of all the powers which drown out the little voices of those who would live by Jesus' rule, it doesn't seem like we have much of a chance. We are like people who stop reading a book because it's too depressing. That's when you need to go to the end to see how it all works out. This is the message of Christ the King Sunday...that the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone...that what seemed weak and brought to a violent end, conquered the Roman Empire and every empire since.

It was the Sunday after Easter, 1945. In a German prison a group of political prisoners hold a worship service. They sense the end of their lives is near, yet their worship is permeated with a mood of hope and courage. They are led by the theologian Detriech Bonhoeffer who has been a constant source of strength to the others. He reads from I Peter 1:3..."Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." He offers a few words on the significance of this passage in light of their situation. Then he finishes with a prayer.

Just then the cell door was thrown open and Nazi guards in a chilling tone said, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, you will come with us." A momentary, knowing silence fell over the cell. They knew what it meant. But as Bonhoeffer left the cell he whispered to a fellow prisoner, "This is the end, for me the beginning of life."

Question: Who ruled? Bonhoeffer and many of his fellow prisoners were silenced at the end of a rope. But who ruled, really? It was a repeat scenario of Jesus and Pilate. Those with the power really had none at all. Jesus and all those whose faith was in him, died to live. Those who thought themselves so powerful, so in charge, were really the ones who were perishing. It has always been and will remain so till the end of the road. Our call is to cast our confidence upon him whose seeming powerlessness is the very power which calls the bluff of all that the world thinks is ultimate.

The message is so short you can put it on a little piece of paper or put in on the back of a truck if you want. To say it is no chore...barely a breath for two little words. Jesus Rules. The challenge is to live these words and trust them above all else when the world offers plausible and powerful reasons to trust something less.

As the truck drove out of my sight, the message it bore lingered. "Jesus is Lord." I had to ask myself, and will ask myself again and again, "Is he?" We must regularly ask ourselves, "Is it true? Does Jesus rule our lives, our loves, our families, our work, our church, our decisions?"

As we enter Advent, the time of watching and waiting, it is important to apply these candid thoughts which the Catholic priest Brennan Manning applied to himself:

"If Christ really ruled in me, my life would be very different. My self-esteem would cease to be based upon the worldly values of possessions, prestige, status, and privilege, and upon the group solidarities of family, race, class, religion, and nation. For to make these my supreme values is to have nothing in common with Jesus.

"With burning faith I would speak of Jesus not as some distant being but as a close friend with whom I have a personal relationship. The invisible world would become more real than the visible, the world of what I believe more real than the world of what I see. Christ more real than myself.

"Christmas would be more than a breathless finale to a frantic shopping season, more than sentimental music, tinsel on the tree, a liturgical pageant, and boozy good will toward the world.

"Yes, life would be radically different if Jesus Christ ruled me, if my faith had the force of passionate conviction."

All of the sermons that have appeared in text form on our Web Site since August 1996 are available here in the On-Line version. Use the search engine below to find the sermon you want. You may search by date, sermon title, or content. The sermons are full-text searchable.

Sermon Search:



Exact phrase    All words (AND)    Any word (OR)