Who needs a King?
Part 1
They come for him in the dead of night, a rabble of men led by one of his closest companions; betrayed for money. A short scuffle and he is taken away for questioning, the result will be a foregone conclusion, he knows what awaits him. The priests want him dead and what they want they will get, there’s no point in offering a defence. When that is done, first thing in the morning, he is transferred to the governor’s palace where, with barely a qualm, the sentence is confirmed. It’s the political thing to do. First a flogging, tied to a pole in the barrack’s courtyard as the cords rip in to his bare skin, before a march to the hill of execution with the bloodied strips of flesh hanging from his back and his bones showing through. Nailed to the cross bar and hoisted upright, the man hangs for a few hours but it is all over before nightfall. The thrust of the spear into his heart, an unnecessary coup de mort from a soldier who knew all too well what a corpse looked like. Hastily taken down, the body is wrapped in linen and placed in a tomb before the sun sets, the priests’ law dictates it. A stone is rolled over the entrance to seal it and guards placed to keep his supporters away. A night passes, then a day and another night. In the earliest light of the third day two women seek out the tomb. They come prepared with spices to anoint his body as custom requires – but it is too late, the guards have left, the stone has been rolled away and the body is gone. The rest, as they say, is history.
In a handful of years it will be two full millennia since Jesus of Nazareth hung upon his cross, died and rose again to launch his revolutionary movement that has, for better and worse, changed the face of the world. The course of history pivots around that moment in time. With new sets of values being loudly proclaimed and enforced and church attendance collapsing across Europe and America, has western Christianity finally run out of steam? Will the new churches of the South and East triumph over communism, Islam, secularism and the host of challenges they face or is the world entering a post-christian future? Are we pivoting again like a sudden switch of magnetic poles?
What’s it all about?
Many might think that ‘Church’ was the focus of Christ’s life and purpose, that creating a new community and vehicle for the worship of God was the aim of his mission, or bringing souls to salvation and heaven after death. Few things could be further from reality. In all his recorded sayings ‘church’ (ekklesia in Greek, meaning ‘assembly’) is only mentioned twice, both times in the gospel of Matthew. In contrast the number of times in the New Testament the term Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven is used is 162. It is clear where the focus of Christ’s mission lay, the bringing of the Kingdom of God / Heaven to earth. It is the first petition within the prayer that he taught his disciples:
‘Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven…’
Even where church is mentioned, the first time it is to declare ‘I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it’ (Matt. 16:18). The church is described as a militant force, breaking open the prison stronghold of the powers of darkness, liberating those held there. The church of Christ depicted here is that of a conquering army.
How can we begin to understand and feel what was in Christ’s mind as he planned to fulfil the task that he was convinced was his divine calling, the establishment of the Kingdom of God? Two thousand years of history have flowed under the bridge, not just rivers but whole Amazons and Niles of time and change separate us from his days. The past is a foreign country, it is said, and we are strangers to it. Fortunately for us though there is a way to peer through the fogs of time and to re-think the thoughts of Christ. Where one mind has trod others can surely follow, especially where the path is clearly marked out in books. The Hebrew scripture, what is commonly called the Old Testament in Christian circles, is a common constant between then and now; faithfully copied and re-copied in the centuries before the printing press, not one jot or tittle of them has changed. We are able to read the same words as Christ did, to meditate on them as he did and reach the same conclusions. Further than that, within the New Testament writings we have the observations, recollections and understanding of what Jesus did, said and expected through the eyes of his immediate disciples and earliest followers. Jesus of Nazareth undoubtedly had a fine mind, like every Jewish boy he would have learnt the Torah (the Law of Moses) by heart from an early age and knew the histories, prophets and wisdom intimately. We learn from the gospel of Luke (Luke 2: 41ff) that by the age of twelve he was able to debate with the leading scholars and Rabbis of Jerusalem as an equal, astonishing them with his insight. To the Law and the Prophets then, to allow the words that illumined the mind of Christ illumine ours also.
Five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy - are attributed to the hand of the Prophet Moses, the greatest of the prophets of Israel and the man who, under God, was responsible for the creation of the ancient Israelite nation. The book of Genesis, the book of beginnings, starts with the Creation of the world, passes swiftly through the earliest times and settles on the calling of Abraham by God to be the founding father of a people in special relationship with Himself. Genesis finishes two generation later with the small clan of the descendants of Abraham headed by Jacob – also known as Israel - taking refuge in Egypt from a devastating famine that was sweeping the middle east. The second book, Exodus, resumes the story some 400 years later when the Israelites have vastly multiplied in number and are perceived as a threat by the ruling classes of Egypt. Fearing for his power the ruler Pharoah sought to exert control over this nation within a nation by the infliction of heavy labour and the genocidal murder of infant males. Enter Moses, a baby abandoned to fate upon the waters of the Nile and miraculously preserved, who by the end of his life some 120 years later, had led his people out of slavery, through the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula, to the verge of conquering a new land for their own. This story, of Moses, God and a stubborn Israelite people is the story told from Exodus to the end of Deuteronomy. These five books of Moses are the foundation of Israelite (Jewish) thinking and understanding; everything subsequent is interpretation, application, commentary and consequence.
Three key events in the formation of the nation of Israel, which are recorded in the later four books (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), are mirrored in Christ’s making of the new Christian community. Christ would have been aware of all the details of these stories, recorded as they were in the scriptures and celebrated annually in the rhythm of festivals that marked the Jewish calendar. The story of Israel’s deliverance from Israel was, and still is, taught and remembered as the outstanding event of Jewish history; at the synagogue, at the family dinner table and, in Christ’s time, at the Temple in Jerusalem too. To see them re-enacted, developed, re-purposed in the creation of the Christ’s new spiritual community is to begin to understand the nature of that community as he intended it to be. It is the beginning of understanding how Christ himself thought in his years of preparation and ministry. In centuries past these three events would have been well known to the inhabitants of the predominantly Christian nations of Europe and North America but no longer; decades of decline, antagonism to Christianity and mass immigration from non-Christian countries mean that today that widespread knowledge cannot be assumed, so it is worth recounting it here.
A New Deliverer
The story of the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt is a highly dramatic one, well-suited to Hollywood blockbuster treatment, whether it be Charlton Heston playing Moses in Cecil B DeMille’s 1956 film ‘The Ten Commandments’ or the 1998 animation ‘Prince of Egypt.’ It is the first of the three key events which shape the future of Israel. Commissioned by God as His prophet to free the Israelites, Moses confronts Pharoah, who is reluctant to let his slaves go. To force Pharoah’s hand God sends nine plagues of increasing severity upon Egypt, culminating in a deep darkness over the land that lasts three whole days. These plagues correspond to the areas of supposed influence of major figures in the Egyptian pantheon of gods. The ninth plague, that of darkness, strikes directly at the position of the Pharoah, the supposed son of the Sun God Ra. Denying the light of day to the Egyptians, while it continues to shine upon the Israelites, very directly displays the superiority of the God of Israel over even the mightiest of Egypt’s gods. Even this though did not break Pharoah’s will, he continues in his hardness of heart and refuses to let the Israelites go; God has no option but to unleash judgement upon Egypt, a tenth catastrophe, the death of the first born of man and beast. Here, in order to protect the people of Israel from the impending judgement, God commands that every household of the Israelites should sacrifice a male lamb, smear its blood on the doorframe of the house and eat its meat. Where the Angel of Death sees the blood on the lintels of the door, he would pass over that house, where there was no blood, the firstborn would die. In one act God brings judgement on Egypt and its oppressive, absolutist religio-political system and deliverance for Israel. Sure enough, in the middle of the night the disaster strikes and the firstborn of Egypt die; Pharoah and all the Egyptians tell the Israelites to leave, fearing complete annihilation if they continue to hold the Israelites back. Here in this climactic act we see the first and greatest of the events that Christ was to re-constitute in his own life for his own new people. In Christ’s own death on the Cross he was to become the lamb sacrificed for the deliverance of his people from the judgement of God and by his resurrection he would show his victory over death – the ultimate power of darkness and evil. Judgement and deliverance in one act. Not only were Christ’s people to be free from oppressive worldly power systems and spiritual forces of darkness that lie behind them but also from the inner bondages and moral guilt of wrong-thinking, wrong-speaking and wrong-doing collectively known as ‘sin.’ Outer freedom of society was to be matched with inner freedom of the heart. As the Apostle Paul was later to write to the assemblies in Galatia, ‘it is for freedom Christ has set us free’ (Gal. 5:1a). The nation of Christ is to be a free people.
A New Covenant
After Israel’s flight from Egypt and the passage of the Red Sea, comes the second key event, the giving of the Law and the making of the covenant between God and the Israelites at Mount Sinai. The covenant between God and Israel stands as a unique event in all history, never before or since has God made a covenant with a people group. At God’s instruction Moses gathers the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai and they freely agree to be ruled by God on the terms set out to them. Obey the laws of God and be blessed, deliberately and repeatedly disobey the law and reap the consequences of death and destruction that were also plainly laid out before them. These laws, summarised in the Ten Commandments (Exodus chapter 20) are expanded and applied in the later books of Moses. Together they form a comprehensive legal philosophy and code for the just ordering of a free society. God was teaching a people that He had liberated by His own strength how to live as a free, independent and responsible nation under his leadership and blessing. Having freed the people from slavery he was now teaching them and empowering them to live as a free people. The agreement of the people with God and with each other was not forced, no threat or cajolement was made to ensure acceptance. No offices or powers of state were put into place to ensure on-going compliance. God gave His word, the Israelites gave their word, and from now on God would rule over them, not as an arbitrary despotic all-powerful ruler, as the Pharoah of Egypt had been, but as a Judge rewarding obedience to the Law, ministering reconciliation and standing as its ultimate guarantor and enforcer. For 400 years following there were no kings in Israel, only judges and prophets raised up by God to resolve disputes and lead the people in times of crisis. Individuals were free and responsible, bound to God and to each other by the word they had given to keep the Law they had agreed. No master over them other than their conscientious observance of the Law they learnt as children. Three thousand five hundred years may have passed but no political constitution that combines the same level of personal freedom, social responsibility and equity of citizenship has ever been devised by human hand. That the system ultimately failed was due solely to the failing of the people to maintain it, a moral failing, a failure of heart, a failure of love. It was this failure of human nature that Christ sought to rectify.
Taking this ancient covenant of the Law and applying it to Christ and the re-birthing of Israel that he was initiating, we can see the second clear parallel in the way he set about constructing his new society, another pointer that he was intentionally following the same path while adding a new dynamic to it. Christ did not choose a great mountain covered with fire and smoke, as Exodus records Mount Sinai to have been, but a hill beside a lake from which to deliver his principles for right living, the Beatitudes, as recorded in Matthew 5: 2 – 13. For the twelve tribes of Israel present at Sinai, each the descendants of the twelve sons of the Patriarch Jacob / Israel, Christ chose 12 disciples as founding fathers of the new nation. He himself, having perfectly lived out the Law in the spirit of love, took the place of the Law of Moses as the Living Word (Torah) and the judge-reconciler of the new covenant people. As it had been for ancient Israel, no masters or lords, just personal responsibility to live righteously before God, so it would be for this new nation being called into existence. Christ himself and alone would be the ruler of his people. Again and again in his teaching and actions he emphasised that no one was to have mastery within his new society, the exercise of power was to be reserved to himself, who had proven that he was trustworthy and able to use it correctly. No man but the truly servant hearted, who had emptied himself and taken the lowest place, was worthy of the highest honour and to exercise power. The servant was to have the pre-eminent place, as the only one who could be trusted to use power properly – that is, for the benefit of others. ‘The first will be last,’ he declared, ‘and the last first.’ To be continued…
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