Jesus is Lord

Jesus is Lord (March 27, 2005)

“You know the message he sent to the people of Israel , preaching peace by Jesus Christ – he is Lord of all.” Acts 10:36

If there is any one part of Christianity that is more important than any other, it is the resurrection. Protestant Christianity has always emphasized the empty cross and I believe this is right. We must not in any way forget the atoning sacrificial death of Christ, and people who have kept Lent and attended Passion week services know that, but it is the empty cross which stands for the risen Christ that signals our hope and joy.

Jesus, of course, never separated the resurrection and the crucifixion. A week before his death he said the seed cannot bring new life without “dying” to itself. He would be put to death, he said, and be raised on the third day. Paul also spoke of the two together and sometimes even reversed the order for emphasis: “that I might know Him,” he said, “and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings.”

A little over a year ago a wonderful Presbyterian theologian named Shirley Guthrie died. Guthrie said that the empty cross is especially important because “the foundation and center of the Christian faith is not death but life, not a tragedy but victory beyond tragedy, not a gloomy world-denying fascination with a dead sacrifice, but a triumphant, world challenging faith in a living Lord, not a passive breast-beating moaning about how sinful the world is, but an active, joyful moving out of sinfulness to obedient fellowship with him. Jesus is risen! That is where Christian faith begins and it is the one event in history which gives meaning to all history, including our own.”

Sometimes I hear Christians say they don't believe in creeds. To which I say, politely, of course, hogwash. The earliest creed of the church was “Jesus is Lord” and it referred directly to the resurrection.

Three things we can say about Christ's Lordship are suggested by Peter's sermon in Acts: Christ is Lord for everyone, no matter what their race or background. Christ is Lord of all, including the nations. And Christ is Lord of death, as well as life.

I. Lord for Everyone

Peter's sermon follows his experience with Cornelius, the god-fearing Roman centurion who gave generously to those in need. This was a mind-blowing experience for Peter, and it could not have been easy for him to accept. His faith had been based on assumptions of partiality, and he and his people had suffered much because of those assumptions, but now he saw that Christ's Lordship challenged those assumptions to the core, even to including a representative of the ruling Romans.

Peter was brought face to face with this remarkable Roman soldier and he was forced to accept that Christ is Lord for him, too. He had to choose between his prejudices and his faith. The rest of the book of Acts shows that Peter wasn't always faithful to his new understanding, and he was openly challenged by St. Paul to stop treating Gentiles as inferior, but the basic conviction is there in that sermon. God shows no partiality.

For all of our talk about America being a “Christian” nation, this has not been an easy message to accept here. We have had our barriers, and though we have made much progress we still have our barriers. Martin Luther King said the eleventh hour on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America . This, unfortunately, still has truth in it. This summer the Presbyterian Church will have a conference here at Columbia University on multi-cultural congregations, and thanks to Dave Hab and our Session we have been asked to be a “presenter” congregation. We are still far more the exception than the rule.

Today there is an article in the Times magazine about one of those fast growing megachurches in the southwest. The article notes that when invitations were sent out to people to come none of the invitations happened to go to an area of town with Mexican migrant workers.

But Peter said, “I now perceive that God shows no partiality.” And it was the Lordship of Christ that brought that message to him.

II Lord of the “principalities and powers”

Jesus is also “Lord of all” principalities and powers. On the face of it, this was an absolutely ridiculous statement to make in the first century. Caesar, not a Palestinian preacher, was “lord of all”, as far as anyone could tell. But Peter boldly declared it anyway, and later in the book of Acts, by his daring, he showed that he truly believed it. “We must obey God rather than men,” he and John said. Now neither he nor Paul were radicals or anarchists, to be sure, and they did not go out of their way to confront Rome , but if challenged they knew that the priority lay with Christ. In the end Peter was crucified in Rome , and at his request upside down because he did not want to be compared to Christ.

That Jesus is “Lord of all” means that for Christians no earthly authority can ever be given ultimate allegiance. The idea of “my country right or wrong” cannot be squared with true Christian faith. Better: “My country, where it is right, uphold it, where it is wrong, correct it.” Blind, uncritical allegiance to any earthly power is a denial of Christ's Lordship. This was made clear in the Barmen declaration in 1934, one of our Church's confessions.

A Professor of Reformed Theology at a university in Germany who has been visiting the U.S. recently wrote a “letter to American churches”. He said he is impressed that our churches are more clearly oriented to service, that they cooperate in many things, and people in America really do support their churches and come to church with far greater regularity than in Germany . But he also noted that churches here are far too ready to give their blessing to violence and weapons, and even though officially churches are separated from the state, in many ways we seem “closer together”. “I got the impression,” he writes, “that what it means to be a child of God and to be an American has become confused.”

I think that is a very astute observation.

The Church, he said, must learn from Zwingli to be a sentinel, so that the “righteousness of a State” is to be measured not by its power but by the life of the weakest and most suppressed.

One of the really good religious books of last year was Credo , by William Sloane Coffin, the former minister at Riverside Church who has made a remarkable career of Peter-like boldness and as a campaigner for peace. “War,” he said, “is always a cause for remorse, never for exhilaration.”

Only Jesus is Lord of all.

III. Lord of Life and Death

Finally, the Risen Christ, who has conquered death, is Lord of life and death. Death has lost its sting, the grave has lost its victory. “The powers of death have done their worst, but Christ their legions hath dispersed, let songs of holy joy outburst, Alleluia.” Death and evil are still evident, but neither death nor evil have the last word. That belongs to Jesus, who is Lord of all.

The same Peter who preached openly that Jesus is Lord wrote that Christians are now characterized by “a living hope”. God, he said, has given us “a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.”

It is just six weeks ago that we lost Ralph Boone. The outpouring of love and support from this congregation, in prayers and cards, in going to the funeral home and the service, was a testament to him and also to his faith. Ralph was a firm believer in the Lord Jesus. He had fully received Jesus as his Lord and Savior, and he had no doubt whatsoever that Jesus was not only his Lord, not only the Lord for all people of every race and clime, and not only Lord of the nations, but also Lord of death, and that because of that what was happening to him was not the end.

When I gave the funeral message some thought it might have been hard to do because I had known him for ten years and worked daily with him. Not at all. It was the easiest message to write. In fact, it wrote itself. Ralph fully and without reservation entrusted himself to Christ, who is Lord of all. Because of Christ's resurrection, absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God.

“Love's redeeming work is done,

Fought the fight, the battle won,

Death in vain forbids Him rise

Christ has opened paradise.”

Jesus is Lord of all – for everyone. He is Lord of the principalities and powers. And He is Lord of life and death.

Alleluia!

Special acknowledgement to:

Shirley Guthrie, Christian Doctrine , (John Knox Press, 1968), p. 265-266

Eberhard Busch, Presbyterian Outlook , March 28, 2005 , p. 14

William H. Willimon, Acts , Interpretation series, (John Knox Press, 1988, p. 97