An Inverted King

Advent Blog; Day 6

The solution may just be in a completely unexpected place. I see a young Gandhi, in my minds eye, having a conversation with one of his followers. "Right Gandhi, let me just get this straight. I just stand there and let them hit me?" (Gandhi concedes that this is indeed the master plan) "Right, and when they finished hitting me, or when I regain consciousness, I go to the back of the line and cue up for some more?!" Sounds like foolishness, does it not?



Years ago my brother and I (well, truthfully, just my brother) used to be able to beat his little chess computer for the same reason Jesus beat Satan. They both did not understand sacrifice.

Sometimes a tactical withdrawal, though counter intuitive, can actually mean ultimate victory. If Hitler had not been so power hungry and had not taken on Russia immediately, the state of the world would possibly look very different today. True power does not lie only in asserting yourself at all costs.

So it comes as no surprise that this "Humble God", should not send in a warrior King to defeat the Roman invaders. Paul, and let us never forget that Paul was about as Jewish as you get, said the Greeks look for wisdom and the Jews look for miraculous signs. They wanted a powerful Messiah. That's why they got excited when Jesus started working miracles. Paul dismissed these saying "but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block for the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles."

Jesus came teaching things like "turn the other cheek" and "Love your enemy". He practised it too. He did not resist arrest, he did not argue or curse, even as they crucified him. He came to establish an entirely different kind of kingdom and he had his sights on toppling a power far greater than Rome, and Rome itself fell peacefully to his followers. Jesus came preaching an upside down kingdom where the greatest among his subjects was the least.

For centuries Christianity has been ridiculed for appealing to the poor and uneducated, (not so much in the last few hundred years in the west, I grant you). This is okay. There is no place for pride in this kingdom. Wisdom and knowledge mean nothing. Power and strength mean nothing. As Paul states,

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. ~ 1 Corinthians 1:27-29.
 

So it makes sense that this all powerful, humble God should send, as the king of his upside down kingdom, (where poor is rich and "foolishness" is wisdom) not a wealthy King born in a palace but a nobody-baby of questionable parentage in some tiny back-water of the empire, the son of a carpenter and a teenager, to turn the world upside down. Its no wonder he....

 made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

(Philippians 2:6-8)

 

 

it seemed to work out okay.  Gandhi himself was quoted to have said "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ!" I think we have to take that one, in all humility, on the chin and re-apply ourselves to the task of loving the least, turning the other cheek and offering hope, the hope that first entered our world, in a stable, 2000 yrs ago.