Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Word Become Flesh: Dominion or Love?”
Rev. Rod Debs
December 19, 2004

Story for All Ages: “The Story of Jesus” Roman soldiers had taken over Jesus’ country and were doing anything they wanted to the poor people: making them carry loads for the soldiers, taking their food and animals, beating and killing them, destroying their homes and taking their land.

What is the best way to get rid of enemies?

Kill them? Some Israelites did try to kill the Roman soldiers, but it made the Romans madder. They sent larger armies and burned Israelite towns and cities! Romans killed troublemakers by hanging them on crosses and even cut off the head of John the Baptist whom Jesus followed!

Kiss up? (grovel-grovel) Some Jewish leaders did try to please the Romans by helping them do whatever bad things the Romans wanted to do. With cooperation from Jewish leaders, Roman armies oppressed the people even more. It was awful!

Jesus practiced kindness and generosity to everyone. At the same time Jesus refused both to fight against the Roman soldiers, and he refused to cooperate with the Roman soldiers in doing anything harmful. He was treated like all the other trouble-makers. The Romans killed Jesus.

But the story wasn’t over. The kindness and generosity of Jesus’ followers eventually spread all over. So many people followed Jesus’ kindness and generosity that Roman Emperor Constantine eventually declared Christianity the official religion of Rome!

So who won? Those who fought? Those who joined in doing bad things? Or those who were kind and generous no matter how people treated them?

Many of us celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus, and we call him the Prince of Peace.

Message: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14, RSV). Christmas celebrates the divine logos become flesh, the incarnation. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is God’s Word, the logos or order, “the way it really is meant to be” become flesh. Early Christians became known as followers of “The Way,” the orderly, peaceful way of living incarnated in the flesh of Jesus.

I grew up going to Sunday School, and I remember how common and lowly Jesus was in the Bible stories. He was so contrary to all expectations. Jews longed for a warrior King like King David, a great military conqueror who would defeat the Roman armies and liberate the Jewish people. The Messiah would be a conquering King like David. Jesus, the peasant martyr who taught the way of loving-kindness, refusing to fight even when facing death, didn’t cut it.

Consider the story of Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. One of the disciples drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Jesus said to put away his sword; then he touched the ear and healed it. “All those who take the sword will perish by the sword,” Jesus said (Matthew 26:52). Jesus was no fighter.

In the story of Jesus’ interrogation by the Roman governor, Pilate asked Jesus: “`Are you the King of the Jews?’ And (Jesus) answered him, `You have said so’” (Identical accounts in all three Gospels: Mark 15:2). Jesus himself didn’t say he was King of the Jews. Those who wanted a Messiah liberator and those who wanted to kill him called Jesus the King. Though he was so unkinglike, because he preached The Kingdom of God, Jesus was crucified with the inscription, “King of the Jews.”

Two thousand years later, worshiping Jesus as King, coming again in dominion and glory is most of what we hear of him, even at Christmas:
“Joy to the world the lord is come, let earth receive her king…”
“Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, born is the king of Israel.”
“This, this is Christ the King whom shepherds guard and angels sing,
This, this is Christ the King, the babe, the son of Mary.”
“O come, all ye faithful… come and behold him born the king of angels…”
“…Come and worship, worship Christ the newborn King.”
“And he shall reign for ever and ever, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Halelujah!”
“If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing, a star in the sky or a bird on the wing,
Or all of God’s angels in heaven for to sing, he surely could have it, for He was the King!”

What is all this about Jesus being a King? The roots of Jewish Messianism are to be found is early Hebrew history. It’s a fascinating story.

In the fourteenth century (BCE), during the reign of Amenophis IV (Akhenaten), Egypt’s power and influence over neighboring Canaan was beginning to wane. The Apiru or Habiru, local Canaanite tribes of wandering herders whom Egyptians had sometimes forced to slave labor or conscripted to military service, were gaining power. At the same time the Canaanite city-states under weakening Egyptian domination lost the power to oppress the wandering tribes.

During the period of Hebrew judges (1200-1050 BCE), wise leaders, often military heroes as well, arose among the tribes as warrior judges. Later Priestly writings from the era of Babylonian Exile described tribal era of judges between slavery under Egyptian Kings and dominion of Hebrew Kings, as a time of just self-governance. The story (Exodus 18) is about Moses’ father-in-law Jethro, visiting Moses. Jethro observes that Moses sits from morning to night judging the people and counsel’s otherwise. Here’s the text:

“On the morrow Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood about Moses from morning till evening. When Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people he said, `What is this that you are doing for the people? Why do you sit alone, and all the people stand about you from morning till evening?’ And Moses said to his father-in-law, `Because the people come to me to inquire of God; when they have a dispute, they come to me and I decide between a man and his neighbor, and I make them know the statutes of God and his decisions. Moses’ father-in-law said to him, `What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you; you are not able to perform it alone.

“Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel…. Choose able men from all the people, such as fear God, men who are trustworthy and who hate a bribe; and place such men over the people as rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. And let them judge the people at all times; … and they will bear the burden with you….” (Exodus 18:13-19, 21-22, RSV)

“Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; and he called it the “tent of meeting.” And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.” (Exodus 33:7)

The Hebrew tradition of the Tent of Meeting where representatives of the people sat in authority and judgment is to be contrasted with the rule by kings of all the nations around them, Egypt, the prime example. Rather than a priesthood who proclaimed their kings to be “the son of God” with absolute authority and unlimited power, early Hebrew tribes found that the “divine presence” would be with them as long as justice and righteous judgment were practiced in the Tent of Meeting by trusted representatives of the people.

However when the tribes united under the rule of a king in 1050 BCE, the practice of the limited authority of representatives governing in the Tent of Meeting was replaced by absolute monarchy. The account in the book of Samuel is interesting. The prophet Samuel is asked by the elders of Israel to anoint a king over Israel. Here’s the story:

“Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, `Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint for us a king to govern us like all the nations.’ But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, `Give us a king to govern us.’ And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, `Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them…. Now then, hearken to their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.’

“So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking a king from him. He said, `These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your menservants and maidservants, and the best of your cattle and your asses, and put them in his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’

“But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; and they said, `No! but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.’ … And the Lord said to Samuel, `Hearken to their voice, and make them a king.’” (I Samuel 8:4-7,9-20, 22, RSV)

After Saul the first Israelite King was anointed in 1050 BCE, King David united all the unrelated Habiru tribes under a single unnamable God. The Royal Davidic monarchy lasted until the fall of Israel to the Assyrians in 722 BCE, some 330 years of kings. King David, and Solomon after him, molded Israel to be “like all the nations” with centralized government overshadowing the local Tent of Meeting. David taxed the people to fund a standing army of mercenaries. David built a centralized Temple, and Solomon, a royal palace fit for a king, the son of God. Then when Solomon instituted missim, the Egyptian practice of conscripted labor, one month out of twelve, and funded his military and palace building projects in the south through taxes on the northern tribes, Israel’s tribal unity began to crumble irrevocably. Samuel had been right in his warning against kings.

Royal Davidic kings gave birth to Messianic nostalgia. From exile and oppression, Jews longed for birth of a conqueror king of the royal lineage of David who would rule the world. Only the later prophets remembered the days of self-rule in the Tent of Meeting when the Israelites enjoyed the promise of divine presence as long as they practiced justice with one another. Even though the prophets called for justice and compassion, and thus, God’s protective presence, the people longed for a conquering king, a Messiah.

The question before us in the world today, as Christianity reaches out to all nations, is: What is the character of your God? Who is this Jesus? Is the saving power in the universe the power of justice? Will right relation, kindness and generosity bring peace? Do you really think so?! Or is the saving power in the universe to be found in a conquering king? Will forced-submission and obedience create peace in the world?

Imagine this: What if there were a passage in the Bible which gives a criteria, not only for how humanity is to be judged, but a criteria for how God wants to be judged by us?! Now imagine the Hebrew God taking his place in the council of Gods. Imagine that all the other Gods are dethroned, not because they are less powerful, not because they are not the Hebrew God himself. Imagine a Biblical passage that declares all those Gods “dethroned for injustice, for divine malpractice, for transcendental malfeasance in office. (Imagine) they are rejected because they do not demand and effect justice among the people of the earth. And justice is spelled out as protecting the poor from the rich, protecting the systemically weak from the systemically powerful. Such injustice creates darkness over the earth and shakes the very foundations of the world.” (John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, Epilogue, 1998)

Well, you don’t have to imagine such a passage. Here it is, “the single most important text in the entire Christian Bible,” the text that gives us the criteria for judging a false God, Psalm 82:

“God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: `How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.’ They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk around in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.”

Based on such criteria for God, how shall we understand Jesus? As a Royal Davidic King, as conquering in power and glory? Or shall we understand Jesus as the standard of justice, kindness and generosity? What is the job description for being God incarnate, for Jesus? John Dominic Crossan asks, is it “transcendental justice” or “transcendental testosterone?”

Let me conclude with these words. Crossan writes: “Yahweh is a God not of revenge but of (compassionate) justice…. If, confronted (by) God, all convert freely… to justice and righteousness, then all is well in our religious imagination. But if we await a divine slaughter of those who are not (acceptable)…, then we are the killer children of a Killer God.”

A good question to ask of our own and of others’ God-become-flesh: Is the Word we incarnate “dominion” or “love?”