Jeremy L. Berg

My New Year’s Resolution: study, reflect, and exposit Scripture. A great place to start (and I invite you to join me) is a weekly reflection based on the Common Lectionary for the upcoming Sunday. The Lectionary provides four readings — from the Old Testament, Psalms, New Testament and Gospels — and follow the seasons of the Church Calendar.

This week we celebrate the Epiphany of Our Lord. Epiphany, (from Greek epiphaneia, “manifestation”), commemorates the manifestation of Jesus as Savior not just of the Jews but of the Gentiles, represented by the Magi who come from afar to offer their wealth and devotion to the Jewish Messiah.

In today’s text, the great prophet Isaiah describes the hoped for return of YHWH to his people and land as His “light” and “glory” suddenly appearing, chasing all darkness away at His arrival. When God finally acted decisively to usher in the dawn of the His Eternal Kingdom, throngs of faithful Jews would join with Gentile pilgrims in Jerusalem to welcome the world’s true Lord. Here’s the text:

Sadly, the Jewish Messianic hope was often contaminated by a nationalist fervor that had God’s people thinking the Messiah was coming to take the country back for God from the unbelieving Gentiles in power, and bring swift judgment on the less zealous and insufficiently patriotic religious compromisers — i.e., “tax collectors and sinners.”

Isaiah speaks of God’s “glory appearing over you” and invites us to all be on tip toe, to “lift up [our] eyes and look around.” He mentioned hearts “thrilling and rejoicing” and the “wealth of the nations” coming to Jerusalem to behold God’s long-awaited Messiah, with gold and frankincense among their treasures. Matthew will add a third, “myrrh,” which was a key ingredient in the mixture of spices used to prepare a body for burial anticipating the unexpected way the Messiah will save (e.g., John 19:39-40).

So far, so good. Can you see why this Scripture is read around the Advent of King Jesus’ birth? Is not the Christmas story filled with glory appearing to angels and shepherds, the hearts of young pregnant girls thrilling and rejoicing, and Magi from far off lands bringing their wealth to celebrate “the brightness of this new dawn”?

But here comes the twist in the tail. Here comes the politically subversive edge. Here comes King Jesus, fulfilling Old Testament hopes all the while turning expectations on their head. He may have flipped tables over once, but he spent his entire ministry flipping lids and turning over the misguided nationalistic hopes of the religious leaders of the day. If we want to draw the nations to the Light of the Messiah, we need to dispel the dark cloud of nationalistic snobbery hanging over our witness.

Many Christian leaders and worshippers in America today are making the same mistake and expecting Jesus to champion their misguided nationalistic religious agendas.

When God arrived in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and the glory of appeared in Jerusalem riding on a donkey, all eyes saw Jesus and waved palm branches to welcome him. But they would soon reject Him because he refused to get behind their political agenda. Their approach was dripping with political compromise, blinded by a “God-and-Country” nationalistic fervor, and a willingness to compromise godly character in order to get political “results.”

The moment along Jesus’ path into Jerusalem that has left a deep impression on me is when, in direct fulfillment of Isaiah’s words above, “his glory appeared over [the city]” on the Mount of Olives in Luke 19. Watch closely: instead of the Glory-in-Person shining and radiating divine power over the city, the incarnate Glory of God wept over a city bent on violence. Here’s the poignant scene:

⁴¹ As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it⁴² and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day the Way of peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. ⁴³ The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. ⁴⁴ They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:41-44).

Jesus came to fulfill the Abrahamic Covenant which was Israel’s God-given vocation to shine God’s glory into the Gentile world, and to be the means of bringing blessing to all the nations (see Gen. 12). The Big Story Jesus came to fulfill was the creation of a New Humanity, the dream of a unified human family made up and Jew and Gentile alike, all living together in peace while putting nationalistic agendas aside.

The New Testament text for this week has Paul emphasizing the shock of this moment in the Big Story when the Gentiles are suddenly brought into the blessings of the Covenant people. Paul writes:

“In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel... Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:5-8).

But it’s hard to bless and welcome the surrounding Gentile nations when you’re caught up in a violent story bent on excluding them and/or destroying them. It’s hard to be a light to the nations when you insist on consigning them to the darkness. Or, as Luke puts it, it’s hard to “recognize the time of God’s coming to you” as a non-violent, peace-making Messiah when you would prefer a Messiah who kicks butt and takes names in the political theater.

Listen: If we still do not know the Way of peace, then we still don’t know Jesus the Messiah.

If we’ve adopted a gun-toting, God-and-Country, “we need a bully who will fight for us” to win political victories kind of Christianity, we are again failing to “recognize God’s coming” to us daily in the person of Jesus. The Way of peace — that is, the Prince of Peace — is still hidden from our eyes. “Lift up your eyes and look around,” Isaiah cries out again today.

The New Year we just rang in happens to be an election year, and tragically a thick darkness of political idolatry covers the earth and hangs over the church in America. The Nations, and unbelievers everywhere, are less likely to “come to our light” these days. Why? Because many see darkness instead of the light of a new dawn. Because the good, true and beautiful Kingdom Jesus launched and called his Church to put on display is covered in the mud of political compromise, unholy allegiances, and ends-justify-the-means versions of Christianity that bear no resemblance to King Jesus.

If you think I’m reading this “choose your kind of king and kingdom” into the text, we need only look at the parable Jesus told immediately before riding into Jerusalem. In his parable of the Ten Minas, Jesus speaks self-referentially of “a man of noble birth” who goes to “a distant country to be made king.” The next line gives away the plot completely: “But the king’s citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him to say, “We don’t want this man to be our king” (Luke 19:14).

Let that line sink in: We don’t want this kind of a king.

This foreshadows Jesus’ own rejection by his people who prefer a king who looks more like the violent Jewish insurrectionist named Barabbas. What possible use do these God-and-Country, enemy-butt-kicking believers have for a non-violent, love-your-enemy kind of Messiah who refuses to take Israel back for God the old fashioned Maccabean way of the political “hammer”?

Many today still prefer God’s glory to appear among us draped in political power and waving a flag, rather than appearing in the form of a heart-broken Savior weeping over his misguided people still choosing a Barabbas-styled kingdom over a Jesus-styled Kingdom. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Luke 13:34).

Are we willing to be gathered under the administration of Christ’s peaceable Kingdom?

The teaching of Kingdom Harbor and MainStreet Covenant Church will have a special focus this year on helping Christians recognize and understand “the Way of peace” so that we welcome and don’t miss God’s coming to us everyday in the Prince of Peace, King Jesus. Isaiah says, “Arise, shine! For your light has come” (60:1), but John gives us the tragic reminder that while “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world…the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:9-11).

Do we recognize Him? Will he recognize His Body, the Church, at his Second Coming? Will we be a city on a hill shining Jesus-shaped virtues into the world? Or will we be more like a “den of robbers”, or political insurrectionists, reflecting the misguided faith of a Barabbas?

“Lift up your eyes and look around! …Then you shall see [King Jesus] and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice” in His upside down Kingdom!