Kingdom of the Lamb

Hello Friends,

In my scripture reading this morning, I was struck by these words of Jesus:

“I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows." (Luke 12:4–7)

At this time, Jesus' public profile is increasing rapidly. He has exchanged some harsh words with the religious leaders of the day, calling out their hypocrisy and underlying complicity with the politicians and powers whom they trusted in for the security of their status quo. We get a glimpse of the pressures assailing Jesus: Pharisees now actively and explicitly seeking to incriminate him, crowds pressing in around him, while he endeavors to shepherd and raise up his disciples in the midst of it all. Speaking to them, he warns against patterns of posturing, self-preservation and hypocrisy: everything will be revealed in the end, Jesus says. Ultimately, we will all be shown for what and who we truly are. There is no lasting benefit to be found in religious masks and political alliances. In the end, our motives, our character, and our true allegiances will be revealed to everyone.

And then, knowing the pressure his followers would face, he exhorts them, "Do not fear those who kill the body..."

And it struck me: this, the threat and power of dealing out death is what lies at the foundation of every earthly power, every empire. Watching the news cycle this week, I find myself wanting to weep at the futility of it all: assassinations, reprisals, threats and acts of war; saber-rattling nation states pursuing their ends and carving out their place in the world through shows of force and instruments of destruction. A bully bloodies the nose of the weak in order to increase his stature, trading in the currency of fear. The reach and influence of empires stands upon the meaningful threat and exercise of deadly force. We regularly pragmatize our participation in this economy of death (This is just the way the world IS, after all. Let's not be naive.), and yet as followers of Jesus we must confess; all of this is the enemy's game! It is the way of the world, as SIN has remade it, and Jesus declares that it has no future. When we uncritically accept the status quo of violence and death-dealing as a necessary and unavoidable reality - our way of life - we reveal the vacancy of our faith in the person, and promises of Christ: The Prince of Peace, the Lamb who was slain; the one who himself suffered death in order that he might disarm and overcome its power. The Messiah, who did not balk at calling his beloved disciples to FOLLOW him, knowing that nearly all would suffer in their own bodies to walk the same fearsome path he had, to the cross.

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy", Jesus says. "But I have come that they may have LIFE, and have it to the full." 

We must reckon with this: The Kingdom of Jesus, the Lamb, declares itself an entirely different economy and power than that established through sin and its consequences. The Gospel declares that Jesus is King, above and against every earthly power, every kingdom of death, every other authority bound by the Fall to play according to the rules the Enemy has established upon the Earth. THIS is the victory of Christ, and He invites us to LIVE as if we believe it true. Death and destruction is the Devil's game. In Christ, we need not fear it, and we need not play it.

I wonder: What would our lives look like if we, genuinely, did not fear death? What would a Kingdom look like, that divested itself of the currencies of violence and destruction, finding the root of its strength elsewhere? How might the Church - followers of Jesus - live and act and speak amidst the violence of the the Earth as a prophetic declaration of an entirely different world, joyfully and powerfully free from the oppression and fear and ultimacy of death itself? 

This is the Way of Jesus, and I long, today, that we - that I - might resolve to walk in it with ever-more-wholehearted faithfulness. That we do so is, in fact, a matter of life and death.