A Fourth Church Sermon by John W. Vest

November 26, 2006 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Mind Your Metaphors

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 47
1 Samuel 8:1–22
John 18:33–37

“Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world.’”

John 18:36 (NRSV)

Within the theological system there are several places where semantic questions
must be asked and answered. Man’s rational structure cannot be understood
without the word in which he grasps the rational structure of reality.
Revelation cannot be understood without the word as a medium of revelation.
The knowledge of God cannot be described except through semantic analysis
of the symbolic word.

Paul Tillich
The Living God:
Systematic Theology, Volume One

The year was 1000 BC, an election year. Yahweh(1) and his opponent Baal(2) were in a close race for Supreme Being. The most recent polls gave Yahweh a slight lead in the red tribes of Judah and Benjamin, but the blue tribes of the north were still on the fence. The negative ads were getting brutal: “Yahweh is always sleeping on the job!” “Baal eats children!” By all accounts, it was still anybody’s race.

It was a trying election for Yahweh, coming on the heels of a difficult term. After prematurely declaring “mission accomplished” in the war against the Canaanite and Philistine axis of evil, it became clear to voters that the insurgency of displaced peoples was not going away any time soon. As a result, the midterm elections saw the balance of power in the Divine Assembly(3) shift to the gods of the Canaanites, and Yahweh found it difficult to push through many miracles or divine interventions. Even within his own party, Yahweh encountered opposition between those who would proclaim him the only true god and those who favored a more democratic ideal of multiple deities.(4) His policies of increased sacrifices proved disastrous to his public approval rating, which bottomed out at its lowest point when the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant. And, of course, there was the messy scandal involving his alleged consort Asherah and the massive cover-up that followed.(5)

In all respects, it was shaping up to be the election of the millennium for Yahweh, a referendum on his performance as Master of the Universe and the God of Israel. With his political future hanging in the balance, Yahweh did what no one expected . . .

OK, I should probably quit before I really get myself into trouble. No, this is not the text of a newly discovered Hebrew manuscript or an exercise in creative blasphemy. It is merely the product of a preacher’s overactive imagination, still trying to recover from yet another tumultuous election cycle.

Yet, and please pardon the pun, my imaginary scenario of divine election, offered in jest, does suggest an interesting question for us this morning: what if the Bible’s story of God and Israel was told in today’s language instead of that of ancient Israel? What images and metaphors would we use to describe God’s nature and God’s relationship to humanity?

Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year, the last Sunday before we celebrate the season of Advent. It is an opportunity for the church to reflect on what it means to proclaim Jesus Christ the King of kings. This idea of Christ’s kingship, of Christ sitting on a heavenly throne alongside God, is derived from several New Testament theologies, which are themselves based on the pervasive image in the Old Testament of God as king. These thoroughly biblical concepts of God as king and Christ as king infuse our many traditions and ways of talking about divinity, from music to art to theology and preaching.

But what does it mean for twenty-first-century Americans to speak of God or Christ as king? On the one hand, “king” doesn’t convey the same depth of meaning for citizens of our American democracy as it does for others. I think it is fair to say that we operate with an impoverished sense of royalty. A far cry from any real notion of monarchy, we more frequently speak of kings and queens of pop culture. Back in the ’30s and ’40s, Clark Gable was routinely considered the King of Hollywood. Elvis Presley is, of course, still the King of Rock and Roll. Michael Jackson once reigned as the King of Pop, more recently usurped, some would argue, by Justin Timberlake. Madonna is usually considered the Queen of Pop, and we mustn’t forget the multitalented Queen Latifah. Most of our young people are much more concerned with their homecoming queen and king than with actual monarchs that still govern in our world. And don’t forget the triple Whopper you can pick up at your local Burger King. Do any of these provide helpful ways of thinking about God or Christ as king?

But there is much more than these trivialities at stake in our use of king as a metaphor for God or Christ. You see, the metaphors we use to talk about God say much about our own conceptions of power and leadership and vice versa. In a time when the advent of an American theocracy is being debated in the media(6) and the realities of America’s imperial ambitions are being felt throughout the world,(7) we must stop and ask ourselves if it is in fact responsible theology to continue to use king as a metaphor for God. The kingship of God—and by extension the kingship of Christ—is a widely used biblical image. But has this metaphor run its course?

I should perhaps first note that I use the concept of metaphor quite consciously to describe what is going on here. The ancient Israelites, Jews, and Christians who employed the metaphor of God as king did so because this was the primary model of power and control with which they were familiar. I don’t think that the image of God as king necessarily reflects things as they really are—what philosophers and theologians would call an ontological reality. If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that the nature of God is ultimately shrouded in mystery. When we talk about God, we use imperfect human terms to describe a transcendent reality beyond our full comprehension. The language we use is conditioned by the cultures and contexts in which we live. But when particular language gets concretized and fixed, we must be careful about its use when the context changes. We can’t afford to be sloppy with the language we use to talk about God.(8)

When it comes to the political metaphor of king, our citizenship in a representative democracy and our commitment to Presbyterian ideals of church polity should incline us toward a natural suspicion of centralized power. There is a reason that our church doesn’t have a pope or even bishops. There is a reason that leadership in our government is shared by various institutions and is protected by a system of checks and balances. Monarchy in the truest sense, the rule of one, whether in autocratic or totalitarian forms, is considered by most modern Westerners to be dangerous and susceptible to corruption.

As we can gather from the passage we heard earlier from 1 Samuel 8, there were certain voices in ancient Israel that were as suspicious and cynical about centralized power—or perhaps any human power—as we are today. To the list of warnings Samuel provides about the exercise and abuse of power in the hands of kings, we could easily add our own list of grievances about those who wield political, military, and economic power. Lord Acton’s famous dictum has proven itself true time and time again: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

But more fundamental to the argument of 1 Samuel 8 is the theological problem of the sovereignty of God. In response to Samuel’s resistance to the institution of a human kingship, God suggests that that in their desire for a king the people are essentially rejecting God. “They have not rejected you,” God says to Samuel, “but they have rejected me from being king over them.” According to this theology, God is Israel’s true king.

Yet the negative characterization of human kings both in the Bible and in our contemporary political sensibilities begs the question of whether or not it is still appropriate to talk about God as king. We even have legitimate grounds to question the exercise of God’s kingship in certain parts of the biblical canon. I doubt that the Canaanites were very impressed with God’s royal decrees of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing.

But going about the business of changing our language about God presents at least two problems. First, it is exceedingly difficult to alter traditional religious language. Presbyterians were reminded of this most recently by the backlash against the Trinity paper recommended by the General Assembly this past summer.(9) And we are always struggling to incorporate truly inclusive language about God into our theology and worship. Beyond this difficulty, however, is a second. If we challenge the use of king as a metaphor for God, what alternatives will we propose? As the satire of my opening reflection suggests, democracy may not present itself as a viable alternative. Where, then, do we go?

Fortunately for us, Jesus has already done a lot of the work for us. Our gospel reading this morning comes from one of the most climactic scenes of Jesus’ story, his trial before Pontius Pilate. Though it also involves complex issues of messianic expectations and realities, Pilate’s question to Jesus is richly evocative with regard to our reflection on the metaphor of God as king: “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Pilate’s inquiry, coming from the official representative of the Roman Empire, raises a pointed political question: does Jesus consider himself a challenger to the autocracy of Caesar? Held in tension with the pervasive traditions of God as Israel’s king and the developing understanding of Jesus as divine himself, the question takes on a theological dimension as well: is Jesus the king of Israel in the same way that Yahweh is depicted as king in the Hebrew scriptures?

To this loaded theopolitical question, Jesus provides a remarkable response: “My kingdom is not of this world.” At once affirming his role as king and refuting it at the same time, Jesus provides a way out of the metaphorical quagmire of kingship, a completely new definition of kingship that is as compelling today as it was 2,000 years ago.

You see, already by the time of Jesus, the context of the metaphor of God as king had changed significantly. The tensions that existed between God as king and the human king of Israel were mediated throughout ancient Israel’s history by the developing understanding of the covenantal relationship between God and the house of David. The Davidic king was understood as God’s chosen leader, and the subordinate place of Israel’s king was always clear. But things changed in the sixth century before Christ. Israel finally lost its fragile independence to the expansion of the Babylonian Empire, and from that point on, with the exception of a relatively brief period of autonomy, the Jewish people were perpetually vassals of a succession of empires and kingdoms. During Jesus’ lifetime, it was, of course, the Roman Empire that controlled the destiny of the Jews and the Roman emperor who provided the model of absolute power. It was in the face of this imperial model that Jesus proclaimed, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

Biblical scholars such as Richard Horsley have convincingly argued that Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom of God, perhaps the central element of his teaching, was a protest against the Roman Empire, an alternative vision of what it means to live together in covenant community with God’s many children (Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder, 2003). Instead of power and dominance—the defining characteristics of the Roman Empire and of all empires—the kingdom of God is shaped by service and sacrifice, elevating the common good over selfish desires.

When Jesus taught about the kingdom of God and when he finally accepted the mantle of kingship himself, he did so in such a way as to completely redefine the terms. We read in the Gospels that when Jesus is proclaimed king, his crown is made of thorns and his throne is a cross. The sign that is placed at the top of this instrument of death leaves no room for doubt: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” It is through this ultimate act of self-sacrifice that Jesus redefines what it means to be king in a new kind of kingdom. It’s a far cry from the domination of the Roman Empire, a far cry from the Old Testament image of God as king, and perhaps a far cry as well from how we live our lives today, both as individuals and collectively.

The philosopher and theologian Alfred North Whitehead has suggested that when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, the metaphor of God as king took on the attributes of Caesar.(10) The Christian faith itself became a tool of empire, a means of control and domination. The gospel was co-opted by the very imperial and monarchic tendencies it aimed to reject and replace. And whether we like to admit it or not, today our church and our nation are still deeply implicated in the ways of empire, what Walter Brueggemann calls the “royal consciousness” (The Prophetic Imagination, 2001). Friends, we need to reclaim that vision of Jesus, boldly proclaimed in the face of certain death: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Our kingdom is not of this world.

While I think that this gospel vision of the kingdom of God has great significance and potential for change on a global scale, this morning is not the time to explore that. Instead, I want to leave us with a challenge that is more manageable: how do we live out our lives as citizens of the kingdom of God? When we say that Christ is king, do we envision Caesar or the servant?

Our metaphors matter because they translate into real life. Perhaps we all aspire to be king or queen of our own domain. After all, “It’s good to be king,” as the saying goes. When it comes our turn to answer, what metaphor will we choose?

Amen.

Notes
1. Yahweh is the personal name of Israel’s God in the Hebrew Bible.
2. Baal was one of the chief deities of the Canaanite peoples.
3. For examples of God in a divine assembly or heavenly council, see Psalm 29:1, 82:1, and 89:5–7.
4. See Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
5. See William C. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005).
6. See Ross Douthat, “Theocracy, Theocracy, Theocracy” in First Things 165 (2006) for a review of recent books on the subject.
7. See David Ray Griffin, John B. Cobb Jr., Richard A. Falk, and Catherine Keller, The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God: A Political, Economic, Religious Statement (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2006).
8. For a thorough study of the metaphor of God as king in the Hebrew Bible as well as methodological considerations about the category of metaphor, see Marc Zvi Brettler, God Is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989).
9. For more on the Trinity paper, see www.pcusa.org/ga217/newsandphotos/ga06086.htm.
10. Griffin, Cobb, Falk, and Keller have all been influenced by Whitehead and cite this particular argument on p. vi of The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God. See also Keller’s chapter, “Omnipotence and Preemption”, in this volume.