Christ the Lord

 

[Note: This post is a revision of the one originally posted on 24 December 2012.]

Govert Flinck, Angels Announcing the Birth of Christ to the Shepherds, 1639
(Musée du Louvre, Paris)

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord (Luke 2:8-11, NRSV).

These are familiar words indeed to all, like I was, who were raised in Christian households where the narratives of Jesus' birth played a prominent role in family and corporate worship each December. But, as so often, it is their very familiarity that all too often renders us insensitive to the profoundly shocking theological implications of this angelic announcement. Indeed, this is the only text in the New Testament in which Jesus is called Savior, Messiah (“Christ”), and Lord in conjunction with one another.*

Particularly important is Luke's identification of Jesus as “Messiah, Lord.” As is universally known, Jews of many stripes in the first century were eagerly anticipating—and some, in various ways, were vigorously trying to hasten—the coming of a promised Messiah from the line of David,** who by definition would be the “Messiah of the Lord” (Greek christos kyriou) (cf. Luke 2:26!). But here Luke designates Jesus as christos kyrios, a difference of only one letter from the standard Jewish expectation (he uses the nominative rather than genitive case). This may appear at first glance to be only a minute, insignificant difference, but one would be mistaken to view it as such. Indeed, this grammatical difference demonstrates how the New Testament's portrait of Jesus subtly breaks the bounds of Jewish messianic expectation.

Luke's double designation, "Messiah, Lord," is found also in only two extant texts in Jewish Second Temple literature, both in the Psalms of Solomon (ca. 60 BCE): Psalms of Solomon 17.32 and 18.7. In each of these there is no suggestion that the Messiah is being identified in any ontological sense, let alone fused or confused with the one God of Jewish confession. In other words, "Lord"/kyrios is less a divine than a royal/political title or honorific. That is, the anointed king would be "Lord" in that he was to rule over Israel on God's behalf.*** There are compelling reasons to believe more is intended by Luke, however. This is argued most compellingly by C. Kavin Rowe, who traces Luke's unfolding of Jesus' identity via narrative, demonstrating convincingly that the Evangelist at times (such as in his citation of Isaiah 40 as the blueprint for John the Baptist's ministry in Luke 3) utilizes deliberate ambiguity so as to produce an "overlap" or "shared identity" between Jesus and God.****

Luke, of course, regularly uses the term "Lord" with reference to the God of Israel, YHWH. For instance, four times in Luke 1 the title  is used of this God with reference to his sovereign deity (Luke 1:16, 46, 68, 76) in the context of his faithful sending of Jesus to fulfill the Davidic/Messianic promises found in Israel's Scriptures. Yet at least 15 times Luke refers to Jesus as the "Lord" (cf., inter alia, 1:43; 2:11; 7:13, 18-19; 10:39; 22:61).***** Luke later includes in his narrative the bedrock Markan tradition of Jesus' own quotation of Psalm 110:1 (“The LORD said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand ...”) in which he interprets the text as a reference to the Messiah's enthronement alongside YHWH himself, thereby demonstrating that the title “David's son” (i.e., “Messiah”) is ultimately inadequate in and of itself to describe who Jesus was (Luke 20:42-43).

The full theological import of this move only becomes transparent in Luke's sequel to his Gospel, the Book of Acts. There Jesus, the risen Messiah, is proclaimed to be worthy of the title “Lord” by virtue of his exercise of exclusively divine prerogatives. Forgiveness is received through repentance and baptism in his name (Acts 2:28). Healing and the power of salvation reside in his name (3:6, 16; 4:12; 10:43). The risen Jesus indeed is “Lord of all” and “judge of the living and the dead” (10:36, 42).******

The significance of the angel's reported message that long ago night ca. 5 BCE is captured by the great Charles Wesley in his immortal Christmas hymn, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” (utilizing motifs from Matthew and John as well as Luke, not to mention reflecting the orthodox, conciliar theology ultimately developed from these texts):

Christ by highest heav'n adored 

Christ the everlasting Lord! 

Late in time behold Him come 

Offspring of the Virgin's womb 

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see 

Hail the incarnate Deity 

Pleased as man with man to dwell 

Jesus, our Emmanuel 

Hark! The herald angels sing 

"Glory to the newborn King!" 

Messiah Jesus—the Lord!—was willing to condescend to become a human being, in the words of the Nicene Creed, “for us and for our salvation.” The baby Jesus we celebrate each December was the baby who, according to the divine plan, would ultimately, about 37 years later, die an ignominious death on a Roman cross to save his people from their sins—born, as Wesley said, that “man no more may die.”

One of the glories of the Christian message is that God himself has done for us what we could not and cannot do for ourselves. Let those of us who bear the name of Christ reflect gratefully on this as we celebrate his birth on Sunday. If any who read this have not done so, please consider the claims made by and about the baby of Bethlehem and, like the shepherds of old, bow down before him in faith as the crucified and resurrected Lord.

I leave you with a video of "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" from St. Paul's Cathedral, London. The majesty of the setting and spine-tingling performance of David Willcock's famous treble descant by the Cathedral choir perfectly complement the incomparably profound words the choir and congregation sing. Merry Christmas!

Martin Luther King's Final Speech, 3 April 1968: "I've Been to the Mountaintop"

 

[For the full text of his speech, see here; for the video of the entire speech, see here.]

"Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord." With this citation of the lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. turned, physically and emotionally drained, and walked away from the podium at the Mason Temple in Memphis on the evening of the 3rd of April, 1968. He would be dead less than 24 hours later, assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel by a sniper's bullet.

I have often written about Dr. King over the years―his "I Have a Dream" speech (here), his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (here), his powerful, prophetic calls for justice and against war (here), his 1960 Christian Century article, "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence" (here)―perhaps as a reflex to my evangelical background's at best marginalization of him, and at worst disparagement or disowning of him as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yes, he was no evangelical (the fundamentalist preacher and future Left Behind author Tim LaHaye, in a letter to Wheaton president Carl Armerding protesting the school's holding a memorial to the slain civil rights leader after his assassination, referred to him as "an outright theological liberal heretic"). Yes, he had documented academic and moral failures. But, as one who lived through the time period and knows the people who most disparaged him, I greatly suspect the real reason lies elsewhere. After all, significant moral failings have not diminished their assessments of such other monumental historical figures as Martin Luther, Thomas Jefferson, and Winston Churchill.

What still strikes me, as it has struck nearly everyone over the years, is that King, in alluding to the experience of Moses on Mt. Nebo (Deuteronomy 34), appears to have foreseen his approaching martyrdom for the cause of civil rights. What showed his true greatness was his courageous refusal to shrink from what he saw to be the mission he had been given to do ("I just want to do God's will") in the teeth of implacable opposition. As I have often reflected, King saw himself, first and foremost, as a minister of the gospel. And, for those of my evangelical friends who might demur, let me remind you that the genuine, "biblical" gospel is the gospel of 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, yes, but it is also the gospel of Mary's Magnificat; it is also the gospel of Jesus' Nazareth Manifesto in Luke 4. In other words, the New Testament gospel is not the pinched, desiccated, dualistic, "soterian" "life-after-death"-exclusive gospel of much popular evangelicalism. As I argued, ten years ago now, in a 9-part series on this blog, the New Testament gospel is the announcement of the inbreaking, through the events of Jesus' death and resurrection, of the long-awaited kingdom of God/new creation promised in the Hebrew scriptures. It may include such elements as substitutionary atonement and justification by faith, but it cannot be limited to such things, divorced from ultimate social, and societal, ramifications. As Dr. King proclaimed, prophetically as it were, "Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord."

One more thing strikes me. It has been close to 54 years since Dr. King spoke these words. He claimed to have "seen the promised land." There are some, indeed, who, seeing laws passed in the wake of the civil rights struggles of the '60's, believe the promised land to have been reached. This, of course, was the rationale of Chief Justice John Roberts and the four other conservatives of the Supreme Court, who gutted the Civil Rights Act of 1965 by striking down its Section 4(b) in their Shelby County v. Holder ruling in 2014, believing it no longer to be necessary. The results could have been predicted: many southern states have once again acted to purge registration rolls, enact voter ID rules, end or restrict early voting and same-day registration, shuttering polling locations in minority districts, etc., in efforts to hold the vote down. The manufactured crisis over "critical race theory" in schools, or even the more general issue of "systemic racism," is yet another issue. Many people―I won't mention their race to protect the guilty; hint: it's the same as mine―continue to insist, in what must be a vain attempt to salve guilty consciences, that the problem is only a matter of the individual prejudice of a few bad actors. What a load of rubbish. And nothing will change until a large enough number of the majority community in this country comes to grips with the problem and acknowledges it. But there's the rub: such would involve the actual teaching of history, something many in this country are not really in the mood for these days. 

Today, in the wake of Donald Trump's refusal to acknowledge his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, multiple "red" states have passed laws both restricting the vote and placing the elections in charge of partisan Republican legislatures in transparent efforts to game the system for future potential steals. In each case, the target of their vote suppression are the very demographic King fought, and ultimately died, for. Biden and the Democrats in Congress, of course, have a voting rights bill ready to counteract these measures, but thus far it remains stalled. The problem? Of course, the anti-democratic Senate, split 50/50 along partisan lines, even though the 50 Democrats represent 40 million more people than the 50 Republicans. The fly in the ointment, however, remains the two recalcitrant "moderate" Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who, though they say they believe in voting rights, pledge ultimate fealty to the traditional, though not constitutional, institution of the filibuster. Hence, since they can't get ten (!) Republicans to vote for the bill, they won't either. Better, I guess, incipient authoritarianism than unilaterally-sanctioned democracy? I won't pretend to guess as to the motivation for Sinema's and Manchin's bull-headedness on this matter. Certainly they can't be as naïve as they appear. But my only question is this: if 51 votes is OK to pass Trump's tax cuts for the rich and confirm Supreme Court justices, why not voting rights to secure democratic outcomes to our elections? 

Such seems like a no-brainer to me. And it would be the most fitting tribute to the memory of Dr. King. Don't honor his memory unless you mean it.

T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" (1927): A Brief Reflection for Epiphany

Today (Jan 6) marks the Christian Feast of the Epiphany, which in the Western Church celebrates the visit of the gift-bearing Magi to Bethlehem narrated in Matthew chapter 2. In Matthew's narrative, the Magi, who "prostrate themselves" before the one "born King of the Jews," represent, as the late New Testament scholar Raymond Brown argued,* the firstfruits of the eschatological pilgrimage of the nations and their submission to the true God. This richly evocative story called forth this wonderful poem by Christian convert T. S. Eliot in 1927:

 

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times when we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wineskins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

 

Three elements of this poem stand out for me. The first is the reference to the "three trees on the low sky." This, transparently, is an allusion to the three crosses on Golgotha 36 years (on the assumption of a 33 CE date for the crucifixion) after their visit. The second is the line, "Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver," likewise alluding to the soldiers' dicing for Jesus's garments (Mark 15:24 et par.) and Judas's betrayal of his Lord for 30 pieces of silver (Matt 26:15). Elliot's point in these two allusions is manifest: Jesus's death is already foreshadowed at his birth. And by doing this Eliot is, I believe, faithful to the theological intent of Matthew's narrative, in which "all Jerusalem" is "terrified" of the news of the birth of the King (Matt 2:3) and the "chief priests and scribes" "of the people" "assemble" in response, in deliberate foreshadowing of the "high priests and elders of the people's" decision to put Jesus to death at the climax of the story (Matt 27:1; cf. v. 25). Even in Matthew's story, in other words, the shadow of the cross hangs over Jesus's life from the beginning. For in truth Jesus was a baby born to die for all, Jew and Gentile alike, who submit to him as did the Magi of old.

The third element I would like to highlight comes at the end: "We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods." This highlights the all-important New Testament theological emphasis on inaugurated eschatology. The birth of Jesus―indeed, his birth, ministry, death, and resurrection viewed as a whole, the entire complex conveniently referred to as the "Christ-event"―changed things, indeed changed things fundamentally and eschatologically, inaugurating the promised kingdom and fulfilling, in an initial sense, the Abrahamic, Davidic, and New Covenants of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Second Exodus, the New Creation―these have arrived, but not completely, not as they will be at the consummation. The new age co-exists in "eschatological" tension with the old, a fact which gives the apostle Paul's theology its particular dynamic and dynamism. What matters is what today's followers of Jesus do with this eschatological tension. As Eliot, through the words of the Magi, suggests (rightly), the Christian, as a citizen of the kingdom of God, should never be totally at ease "here, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods." As an American, it may be uncomfortable to have to say this, but America, like Britain, like Canada, may be a fine country to live in, but it is a human country, and that means it is a fallen country. It is not an outpost of the kingdom of God. And it has its own idols, chief among them being, as I heard Ron Sider say a number of years ago in a fine commencement address at Messiah College, an "idolatrous nationalism" that runs rampant in evangelical circles in today's America. As Christians, our job is to work for the kingdom of God, for that is where our true citizenship resides.

Soli Deo Gloria!