The Official

Daniel 11:20

With all the happenings in Ukraine, the Middle East, between the Koreas, and in our own country’s machinations, it is fascinating to see how often an official becomes the spokesperson for an empire. As something unfolds, the president, the monarch, or the prime minister stay offstage while a representative conducts the negotiations, handles the diplomacy, and speaks for the powers that be. It is not that they become a power unto themselves—no, they follow a carefully crafted script of behaviors, entreaties, and interactions meant to bring the wishes of the real power to fruition. Success is determined by how well those objectives are brought into being. 

Why this brief political science analysis?  

Because Jesus is the official—the one foreseen by Daniel in an apocalyptic dream. He enters the scene sent by the interested power with a definite agenda and outcome in mind. Jesus does not act in and through his own mind—but he submits fully and completely to the will and work of God. It is that work that holds the only real priority. Jesus never loses sight that he is the implement of God. he never veers off track, but follows it steadfastly and surely to its eventual outcome.

Interestingly, very few of those nearest to him had any inkling as to what was really going on with Jesus. His disciples routinely missed the point, famously coming to a ridiculous head when James and John demand to put in the key positions of power in Jesus’ empire—the right and left hand seats—they have no grasp at all on who Jesus actually is and what his role is to be. Same for Peter—when Jesus flatly tells him what his job is—to give himself to the earthly powers and let them empty him of even life itself—Peter argues with him! And look at the whole Palm Sunday parade—everyone in the crowd is sure they know exactly what is happening and who Jesus will reveal himself to be—and yet all of them are deadly wrong. They completely confuse the official with the real power, even as the official reminds them continuously of what is real and actual. A clanging confrontation is bound to occur as reality meets expectation. 

So, for us, the first challenge is to take Jesus on Jesus’ own terms.

He is the official.

Jesus embodies the presence of God, the will of God for human existence, and the promise of God to see us through to the fulfillment of being the image of God. During his ministry, he makes it plain he is the servant of God. He is the one who has come in the name of the Lord. So what does he do? He teaches the way of love. Look at all of those parables—each is a different nuance of the self-emptying, other-centered love that is God. Look at the healings—here is the application of that love to the neediest of all. Look at his walk through the roads and streets of Palestine—here is the life lived by God’s love that welcomes whoever is there with the full acceptance of grace, mercy, and compassion, allowing those forms of love to work transformation in those met. 

Note what is absent in all of this work—no self-aggrandizement; no self-focus; and no thoughts of self-gratification or advancement. Jesus has work to do, so he does it, the end.

We have to take that as it is, refusing to manipulate this message into a gospel we want to hear—that God is on our side; that God is our sacrosanct ATM, doling out the goodies whenever we ask; that God is an extension of our wants and choices—no, we are to meet Jesus and find the Christ—the servant of God who can save us all from all that would break us in any way, shape, or form. 

If we were at that parade so long ago, the proper stance would be welcome Jesus into holiest of cities—Jerusalem—as God’s emissary, returning the full presence of God to the House of the Lord on God’s own terms, allowing God to shine through us, the place, and all else as a mighty beacon of hopeful redemption for all human beings so hungry for fullness, healing, and wholeness. 

But would we have been any better able to avoid the pitfalls and pratfalls that doomed the parade to its end on Friday coming? 

Before we leap to an answer—consider those first witnesses who were working with a whole lot less than we have to ensure our response.

The Temple people were good, but lost in their own practice. The priests, the Council, the prophets, scribes, and rabbis—they were devoted to God, but in their praxis of the Torah. Jesus did not look at all like what the praxis said was coming in its interpretation of God’s revelation. Their religion trumped faith. 

And ours?

The crowds were caught up in the buzz and exuberance of a rabbi who talked like them, looked like them, and who sided with them against the powers that were. They found a hero. They made him into whatever they needed their hero to be—a revolutionary, a reactionary, a healer for whom you needed no insurance; an advocate who stood in the face of those whose bigotry kept you down—all their own images. When Jesus stuck to God’s plan, they felt betrayed, denied, and abandoned—he acted for all, not just them.

And us?

The Romans had no idea what to do with Jesus. He was said to be a holy man, but he did not act like one, staying in the streets away from that Temple of theirs. He was to be a man of the people, so they put their guard up, listening for uprising in his words and deeds. Through it all, every response they formed was built on their own experience and outlook. Jesus was nothing.

Do we take a too material, literal view of Jesus and his power?

On this day, we need to examine all these aspects of our own response to Jesus. We need to clear our eyes, hearts, and minds to perceive with sharp clarity what Jesus is. 

He is the official. He is God’s man for all human beings. He is God’s servant, losing himself in God. He is the embodiment of God’s love.

He calls us to be what he is. 

He calls us to serve.