Last Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King: "Unpacking" God Language

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Psalm 46

Colossians 1:11-20

Luke 23:33-43

Christianity and our parent faith, Judaism, developed in times when monarchy was the dominant political model.  Kings and emperors held vast amounts of power and – depending on the size of their domains – their decisions, and even whims, would affect hundreds of thousands, of people, a vast number in a pre-industrial world.  So, in trying to make sense of the ineffable nature of God and of God’s power, it is hardly surprising that the language and images of kingship were associated with the divine.  Christianity’s growth alongside the principalities and kingdoms of the Middle Ages only served to cement the image of king with respect to God.  This is how God-language works, it work by analogy and metaphor.  Understanding God as all-powerful – the sort of power expressed in the psalm appointed for today – our ancestors in faith associated God with human examples of power, like kings.  But God-language always requires some un-packing, because it not so much what we say about God, but rather what we mean with what we say about God.  When we talk about God as king, we certainly do not mean a tyrant; we might qualify that title with “good”, we mean a “good” king.  When we talk about God as father or mother, we do not mean any kind of father or mother, but certainly one who cares for their children with tenderness and genuine parental love.  When we image Jesus as a shepherd, we do not do so as the shepherds described by the prophet Isaiah who “destroy and scatter the sheep”, but as a “good” shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep and even lays down his life for his flock. 

Yes, religious language always needs unpacking, and in every generation, people of faith must struggle

with un-packing religious language if it is to continue having any kind of resonance.  Religious language that is not resonant is useless, even dangerous.  Unpacked and un-nuanced religious language very quickly becomes sappy at best, and idolatrous at worst.  Good religious language, on the other hand, always packs a punch, pulls out the rug from beneath us and forces us to understand something new and surprising about the nature of God.  Take for example the image of God as shepherd.  To those who heard it for the first time it would have been shocking.  Shepherds were pretty low down on the social ladder, and the work was menial and tough – long, cold nights spent out in the open; and the life-style was itinerant, as they continually moved the flock in search of food and water.  The responsibility the shepherds bore for their woolly charges was immense, and the requirements of the job could entail a considerable degree of danger.  All of this would have certainly crossed the minds of those who first heard God referred to as a shepherd.  Yet, for us western, modern Christians the term shepherd has none of those resonances, and so our image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, is usually a saccharine, Victorian, stained glass image which make us feel warm and cuddly, but does not disturb or shock.  To get the full force of the image perhaps we could think of Jesus as rescue-worker in a war-torn region whose job it to get civilians safe from one town to another.  He is marginalised, dirty and alone, with any number of people depending on his courage and knowledge, depending on his sacrifice to see them into a place of safety.  When we really un-pack religious language then we catch a glimpse of what our tradition is trying to tell us about who God is, who Jesus is.

Equally, with the language of king.  Our images of kings come either from contemporary foreign monarchs, or more usually from fairy tales.  And so, Christians often glibly speak of Jesus as “the King” or “my Lord”, and in their minds is an image not learned from the inherited tradition, but from films and cartoons, or just plain sentimentality.  Without unpacking the God-language surrounding the images of king and kingship, we may overlook the extent to which Christianity seeks to subvert their conventional and popular representations.  While the Hebrew scriptures certainly use king imagery to convey God’s power, there is also the representation of a king as one who cares intimately for his people and is utterly faithful to God’s will.  In the gospels, Jesus expands on this understanding when he says to his disciples: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.  For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves?  Is it not the one at the table?  But I am among you as one who serves.”  (Luke 22:25-27)  What the Judaeo-Christian scriptures are hoping to reveal is a new resonance surrounding the image of king, particularly when applied to God.  Perhaps, nothing makes the point more clearly than the depictions in the Gospels of Jesus’ crucifixion.  Here we see the conventional idea of the powerful king utterly undermined by a king who lays down his life for his people.  How ironically crafted is Luke’s narrative in which Jesus suffers and dies under a sign declaring him “King of the Jews”, while the bystanders, having no other context for kingship than that of power and show, mock him with that same title.  How marvellously crafted is the narrative in which the real meaning of Jesus’ kingship is grasped by one who is a thief and an outcast: “Jesus, remember me we when you come into your kingdom”.  There on Mt Calvary any conventional understanding of kingship as applied to God is shattered, and as we unpack the words and images of the tradition we discover the uncomfortable and perhaps somewhat unsatisfying truth that our king reigns from a cross   

Religious language always needs unpacking, and when we live outside the social and historical context in which it was originally created, we need to be particularly careful how we adopt and continue to use it.  All religious language is analogical and metaphorical, and to a large extent we human beings are its creators, but if all we do is use to it in order to feel safe and comfortable then we can be pretty sure we’ve missed something.  Religious language should disturb, it should challenge, it should work to open our hearts and minds to possibilites about God and God’s nature we would not readily contemplate: that God is a shepherd – yes – but really a shepherd, one who makes himself dis-enfranchised and homeless for love and care of his sheep; that God who is a king – yes – but whose kingship is revealed in service – even humiliation – in suffering and death.  Living in the United States in the 21^st century we may not be able to relate to shepherds and kings of the ancient world, but by seriously doing the work of the unpacking those images used as religious imagery, we can discern what they might mean for us today, we may discover resonance with our own lives, namely the importance and value of sacrifice and service, as well as graphic and surprsing depictions of God’s love and care for us.