A sermon preached by Dr. Ralph Blair at City Church, New York on December 1, 2002

On this first Sunday in Advent, the Time of the Coming, we proclaim: "Jesus is Lord!" That’s the earliest of Christian creeds. But to proclaim that joyous confession these days – even in a land of religious freedom – is to risk indignant rebuke or at least a ho-hum "So what." The rebuke took the form of violent retribution, even execution, in those early days. It still does in many parts of the world. The "so what" is the rather newer response of the superficially tolerant. But whether we’re dismissed by hot-under-the-collar indignation and hatred or by cool indifference and the contemporary cold-shoulder, we’re nonetheless dismissed – along with the Lord.

It was in his correspondence with Christians at Philippi, the Macedonian city named for the father of Alexander the Great, that the Apostle Paul expounds on this earliest Christian creed: "Jesus is Lord!" That was around AD 60. At that time, the creed was already a well-worn rhythmic witness of reverence among Christians. They’d adopted this statement of faith at some time just after the crucifixion and resurrection.

These first Christians were surrounded with a world every bit as multicultural and pluralist as our own. It was a world of many languages and dialects, many gods and goddesses, many customs and conventions. Latin and Greek were read and spoken by the educated throughout the Empire – and some elementary Greek-of-the-streets was known for managing in the marketplace. But if you got much beyond the boundaries of your own home district, it would be difficult to converse with the natives and you’d run into the ethnocentrism of tribal traditions that could seem quite strange and even scary. Yet what they all had in common under the Pax Romana – the Peace of Rome – was the recognition that, no matter how many lords were allowed, Caesar was Lord. Among the Christians, though, it wasn’t Caesar who was sovereign. No. Among the Christians, it was the Lord Jesus Christ who was sovereign. And they were willing to suffer and die rather than save their skin by substituting Caesar for Christ.

If it remains true today, as Christians happily proclaim, that "Jesus Christ is Lord" – and not merely Lord of Christians, but Lord of all – then there’s no more foolish non sequitur than our sermon title: "Jesus is Lord! So what." Still, among so many "Christians" today, there’s no more frequent folly. Of course, among non-Christians, it’s no non sequitur at all. For as Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians of his day, "No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ [and really mean it] unless he or she is under the influence of God’s Holy Spirit." (I Cor 12:3)

Now, of course, Christians don’t actually say: "Jesus is Lord! So what." They don’t say it in so many words. But instead of following through on the historic confession of Christ’s Lordship – there’s a flaking out in the fantasies of our own lord- and ladyships. For all practical purposes, for superficial Christians, it’s not: "Whatever – Jesus is Lord!" It’s: "Jesus is Lord? Whatever."

So many among even regular churchgoers are complacent, apathetic, indifferent, negligent, biblically illiterate and theologically ignorant when it comes to basic Christian thought and discipline. "People call themselves believers, yet biblical and theological illiteracy is rampant." (John P. Burgess) George Gallup find’s "not only a lack of knowledge of other religions but an ignorance of one’s own faith" among so many Americans. No wonder they buy Jerry Falwell on both Islam and Christianity!

But it’s worse than that. Gallup observes, even with all the popular profession of faith here in this country, "survey evidence suggests that it does not change people’s lives to the degree one would expect from the professed level of belief." Says philosopher Dallas Willard of the University of Southern California: "The most telling thing about the contemporary Christian is that he or she has no compelling sense that understanding of and conformity with the clear teaching of Christ is of any vital importance to his or her life." Don’t we need to acknowledge that this is too true of ourselves?

After 9/11, Oprah Winfrey’s advice was this: "Whatever it is you believe most deeply, … embrace it." As the hijackers did? Comic guru Al Franken advises: "Pick a Religion, Any Religion! … I don’t care what kind of nonsense you believe." He adds: "The core tenet of my religion [is] Keep going. Keep going. Keep going." But, we might ask, Where? and Why? and How?

Alice asks the Cheshire-Cat which way she should go. She’s told: "That depends on where you want to go." She replies: "I don’t really care." To that, the Cat says: "Well it doesn’t matter then, does it." But sensing something’s amiss, Alice quickly adds: "As long as I get somewhere." But is "somewhere" really good enough? Isn’t "somewhere" just anywhere? And anywhere can be nowhere! And nowhere can be despair.

New York Times social critic Michiko Kakutani perceives our Culture of Whatever to be a byproduct of years of radical relativism, multiculturalism, deconstruction, identity politics and other aspects of the very worst of postmodernist propaganda. She says it’s "a mindset reinforced by television shows like ‘Oprah’ that preach self-esteem and the accommodation of others [but instead lead to] niche cultures" where, for example, argument over superior and inferior ideas is taken to be personal attack and evidence of oppression – elitism, sexism, racism. A Johns Hopkins professor has written a book with the title, The Way we Argue Now. She grants that "appeals to relativism today [are] coming out of genuinely pluralistic orientation and a desire to get along. [But this, she says] makes argument and rigorous analysis very difficult, because people will stop and say, ‘I guess I just disagree.’" (Amanda Anderson) Worse yet, they’ll say: "That’s just not the way I feel about it" – as though how one feels settles matters of truth and falsehood.

Among the cultural elite, where there can be so much hostility to anything seriously Christian, even hostility devolves into indifference and moves on. Except, of course, for selected stories of scandals in church circles. Then the hostility remains hostility.

But nobody – Christian or non-Christian – can be confronted with the historic claim that "Jesus Christ is Lord!" and then go on as though nothing’s been said. That all-encompassing affirmation sits there like a most inconvenient elephant in our midst and cannot be ignored. By definition, it demands a decision – from everyone.

It’s not that spirituality has gone missing – though many are missing the point. Barbara Walters’ interview with Monica Lewinsky was one of the most-watched programs in the history of television. On the Oval Office adultery, Walters asked her if she’d sinned. Lewinsky hesitated and then replied: "I’m not very religious. I’m more spiritual." Whatever did she think she meant? Even supposedly personal and private "spirituality" is borrowed belief and derived dogma and every bit as organized (or disorganized) as so-called "organized religion." Saying you’re not into organized religion but you’re spiritual makes as much sense as saying you’re not into organized sports but you’re sporty!

Spirituality pervades us. We’re all created by and for the Spirit of God so we cannot escape the spiritual – whether aimed in a true or a counterfeit direction.

According to the premiere historian of religions: "What goes by the name of ‘religion’ in the modern world is to a great extent unbridled human self-assertion in religious disguise." [Henrik Kraemer] Of course, that’s always been the case – though it’s not always been pulled off with such candor. So it’s no wonder that the Lordship of Jesus Christ is not a high priority among many churchgoers today.

In order to meet what’s called their "felt needs," people shop around for their so-called "religious preference." And they wind up where they began – in their "Church of Me, Myself and I" – a tightly-knit little trinitarianism. But this "peculiarly American phrase ‘religious preference,’" as sociologist Peter Berger notes, "contains within itself the whole crisis into which pluralism has plunged religion."

In the elite strata of Western society today, we’re witnessing what’s being described as "a shift from a theology of transcendence to a theology of immanence." [James R. Edwards] It’s all about me or my group. It’s a do-it-yourself religion.

As Neil read Paul’s letter to the Philippian Christians [1:27-2:16], we were taken back among the very earliest Christians. We hear them pronounce this foundational confession with the clear conviction of eye-witnesses and those who were close to these eye-witnesses.

A Bible scholar says: "The confession Jesus Christ is Lord stands as the climax of the drama of salvation. [Jesus Christ] receives the new name which is none other than God’s own name [and the hymn’s climax is] the sign of a new aeon already begun in the Church and the world." [Ralph P. Martin] He points out that "now in Christ, pre-existing, incarnate and humiliated, and exalted, God and the world are united and a new segment of humanity, a microcosm of God’s new order for this universe (Eph 1:10) is born."

When Paul, "Hebrew of Hebrews" as he called himself, says that "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father," he’s echoing the prophet Isaiah. [Isaiah 45] Amazingly, the specific text is "one of the OT passages that most strongly emphasizes the sole authority of God." [Martin] Isaiah’s words are these: "I am the Lord [Adonai], and there is none else. … there is no other God besides Me, a righteous God and a Savior; There is none except Me. Turn to Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other. I have sworn by Myself, … that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance." You’ll still hear this read in the Friday night services at synagogues. And here, in the earliest Christian creed, Rabbi Paul is applying this text to Jesus Messiah, Jesus the Christ.

Biblical scholars marvel at the "stunning implications" of this. They point out that the point is this: "Jesus Christ [Yeshua Hamashia – as the Hebrew-speaking Paul would have put it to his fellow Jews] the righteous Savior bears the name [the very authority] of the one Lord, Yahweh, ‘to the glory of God the Father.’" [Moises Silva] Tom Wright of Westminster Abbey recognizes that "When Paul said ‘Jesus is Lord,’ it is clear that he meant that Caesar was not. This is Jewish-style no-king-but-God theology with Jesus in the middle of it."

Wright notes that Paul "takes the [Shema, the] Jewish formula which is the most basic expression of Jewish monotheism, and places Jesus at the heart of it." Paul’s Christology is based in the central Jewish prayer ("Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God.") [Deut 6:4; I Cor 8:4] This is especially striking when Paul’s Greek is compared to the Greek Old Testament text of this prayer. Paul glosses the term "God" with "the Father" and "Lord" with "Jesus Messiah." As Wright explains: "There can be no mistake: Paul has placed Jesus within an explicit statement drawn from the Old Testament’s best known monotheistic text, of the doctrine that Israel’s God is the one and only God, the creator of the world. … Paul has redefined [the Shema, the daily Jewish prayer] Christologically, producing what we can only call a sort of Christological monotheism." As Paul put it in his letter to Colossian Christians: "In Christ, all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form." [Col 2:9] How much clearer could he be?

We see this same high and early Christology in the testimonies of other New Testament writers as well. For example, in the very first sentence of Second Peter, "God and Savior Jesus Christ" are linked by a single Greek article. The Old Testament name for Yahweh is applied to Jesus.

Well is the creed credible today? Is it true? If true, true for whom? Following the resurrection, Paul and the earliest Christians believed it to be true – period. And Stanley Hauerwas of Duke, "America’s Best Theologian" according to Time magazine, continues to insist, most recently in his prestigious Gifford lectures, that this is not only Christians’ "truth, [and] the truth for everyone," but it’s the absolute truth about "the way things are … the way the world is."

It follows that if this is true, nothing is truer. If indeed, Jesus Christ is Lord in the sense that the Jews meant "Lord," then nothing is untouched by His Lordship. If Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not, every Caesar-substitute is dethroned. It’s the most profound statement that can be said about anyone. And it’s a statement, then, about everything. No one and nothing can be a realistic rival.

So no wonder Paul describes angels, people and demons as finally coming together for worship. [cf. I Cor 4:9] All people, principalities and powers will one day bow before the Lord Jesus. [cf. Col 1:16, 20; 2:15; Eph 1:10; 3:10] This first confession of faith "makes clear what lay behind God's action to exalt Christ and to share with him his own name, ‘Lord’ (kurios, YHWH). It was in order that every created being in heaven, on earth and under the earth might ultimately be reconciled to himself by voluntarily and joyfully pledging allegiance to the one who chose the lowly path of self-effacement and of humble service to others (cf. Eph 1:10)." [Gerald Hawthorne]

Physicists speak of a "theory of everything." Have you heard anyone call this arrogant? And one physicist (Stephen Wolfram) now claims he’s found the simple rules behind everything. Have you heard anyone calling this arrogant? Focusing on the central event of the cross of Christ, Richard John Neuhaus asserts: "If what Christians say about Good Friday is true, then it is, quite simply, the truth about everything." Now that’s what’s called arrogant these days. Says novelist Eugenia Price: "Jesus is God’s explanation for everything." Could you get away with saying this in your circles?

Neuhaus and Price sound arrogant to people pre-programmed to postmodernist propaganda. They protest: How dare you say that Jesus Christ is the truth about everything! How intolerant! How culturally oppressive! How anti-pluralist! But how beside-the-point can they be? If it is true that Jesus Christ is Lord, then that fact of reality – by definition – tolerates no competitive claim. And if it is not true, the fault is not intolerance but falsehood. But they’re blind to their own intolerance as well as to their own illogical argumentation. They’re every bit as dogmatic as the Christians they’d fault. They’re claiming: Jesus Christ is NOT the Lord! Period. But on what basis do they say that? By what authority do they make their pronouncement? What evidence do they have to support their disdaining dogma? That’s the way they feel!

And it makes no sense for them to allow that Jesus Christ may be Lord for Christians but not for them. The terms of the historic creed do not allow for such a fashionable favor. That creed with which Christians went to their tortured deaths rather than deny Christ’s Lordship does not mean to say "Jesus Christ is a mini-lord," a petty political hack with no jurisdiction over in the next county. The cosmic meaning of the creed won’t allow for such true-for-you-but-not-true-for-me exclusion. The creed is inclusivity itself.

"Jesus Christ is Lord!" is a double-edged sword. Jesus promised that. He said he’d be the source of conflict and division, splitting up families, separating one person from another, severing assemblies – even slicing into the bone and marrow of all the conveniently contrived inconsistencies inside one’s self. While granting practicality to some tolerance, the greatest theologian of the 20th century, Karl Barth, nonetheless noted in his reforming commentary on Romans that "The One in whom we are veritably united is himself the great intolerance. … He is who disturbs every family gathering, every scheme for the reunion of Christendom, every human cooperation." And then Barth points out that this is due to the fact of Christ’s authority over all: "He disturbs, because he is the Peace that is above every estrangement and cleavage and faction."

And yet, when Paul and other New Testament Christians began to declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, how did they picture him? In John’s vision of the Lord in the Throne Room of Heaven, what was it that John saw? It was a scene no one would have painted on his own. Only the revelation of the risen Christ himself, as John testifies he received, could come up with such a disturbing disclosure.

When the powers of this world want to strut their stuff they picture themselves as ferocious beasts. The U.K. is the lion rampant and roaring. Russia is the mauling bear. France is the terrifying tiger. The U.S. is the eagle, an angry vulture of prey. What were your school mascots? There are the Yale bulldogs and the Princeton tigers. They’re not the Yale poodles and the Princeton pussycats!

But when Scripture presents the Lord of lords, what is the animal that represents him? John turned toward the Throne in order to see the Lion of the tribe of Judah. But he saw no lion. Instead there stood "a little lamb" – the Greek word is the diminutive. And that little lamb was seen as having been slain, though now standing in the seven-fold fullness of the Spirit of God. [cf. Revelation 5] Who would ever have thought that the Lord of lords, the Lord of all, would be depicted as a little lamb that was slain? Where’s the power in that? The greatest power of all is in that. The power of self-sacrificing love is in that.

Jesus Christ is declared to be the Lord because Jesus Christ is the Lamb that was slain.

We’ve just passed the sesquicentennial of Matthew Bridges’ hymn poem, "Crown Him with Many Crowns, the Lamb upon His Throne." Who is it who is crowned with many crowns? The Lamb. The One on the Throne is the Lamb that was slain – slain at Calvary, yes, but slain from before the foundation of the world, as Scripture says. And so Bridges puts into poetry what, in Scripture is the song of every living creature and all the dead: "Hark! How [this] heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own. Awake, my soul, and sing of Him who died for thee, and hail Him as thy matchless King through all eternity. … Crown Him the Lord of life, who triumphed o’er the grave. … Crown Him the Lord of peace, whose power a scepter sways. … Crown Him the Lord of love, behold His hands and side, Those wounds, yet visible above, in beauty glorified. … Crown Him the Lord of years, the Potentate of time, Creator of the rolling spheres, ineffably sublime. All hail, Redeemer, hail! For Thou has died for me; Thy praise and glory shall not fail throughout eternity."

But remember: His first crown was a crown of thorns! From thorns to the Throne.

If we have even a hint of what it means to affirm that Jesus Christ is the sovereign Lord because Jesus Christ is the sacrificial Lamb who laid down his life for our life, perhaps we can begin to grasp something of what Christian lifestyle may mean.

This morning’s Gospel Lesson helps us here. After Jesus had called his disciples to live his lifestyle of self-sacrificing love, he warned them of false teachers, wolves masquerading as sheep. Speaking of Judgment Day, he said: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven.’" He says it matters not one bit how good anything or anyone looks, it matters not one bit how great the appearance may be, it matters not one bit even how much is done – even "in the Lord’s name," as they incessantly say. Is what is done, the will of my Father?

Impressive miracles, exorcisms and prophecies "in the Lord’s name" may have nothing to do with the Lord. There’s a superficially spectacular spirituality that’s nothing but sham. Paul knew he’d gain nothing at all by speaking with eloquence, knowing everything, moving mountains by faith, and even giving up all – if he had no love. [I Cor 13]

But the Golden Rule, "now means far more than calculating one’s self-interest, because [Jesus illustrates its meaning] by love of enemies and nonretaliation (Luke 6:3) … The ultimate clue for interpreting and applying the Golden Rule is [this, as Jesus said]: ‘Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:36)." [Douglas R. A. Hare]

Jesus is looking for real fellowship in real followers. Fakers have no fellowship with him. Whether fakers on the Right, claiming they’re "faithful to the fundamentals of the faith" or fakers on the Left, claiming they’re "faithful to their fixing and finessing of the faith" – fakers reject the Father’s will "to do what is merciful." And since deceivers deceive themselves as well, Jesus will have to note for them: "I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!" [Matt 7:15-23]

Now notice: these the Lord calls "evildoers" are nominal Christians! They’re not pagans. They’re not Hindus or Muslims or agnostics or atheists! They call themselves Christians – and they’re leaders! This is serious business.

"Jesus Christ is Lord!" So whatever you do, says Paul, be sure to do it heartily, as unto the Lord who says: To whomsoever – do as you would be done by. For this is the will of the Father in heaven: That we love one another as Christ, the Lord loves us and gave himself up for us. We can love like that only in Christ’s love!

"Jesus Christ – the Lamb – is Lord." True Christians have believed that truth for 2,000 years. Do you believe that truth? "Jesus Christ – the Lamb – is Lord!" True Christians have done that truth for 2,000 years. Do you do that truth?

Jesus is Lord! So – what is that to you?