As king, Jesus doesn't settle for less

This is post #2 following the Palm Sunday post.

Jesus is king. That much is true according to the New Testament gospel stories. 

This much is also true: people in these stories, including his own followers, misunderstood what that meant.

On Palm Sunday, we remember that Jesus entered into Jerusalem, the big city. People all around him were waving palm branches and setting palm branches and coats on the ground before him. They were giving him the royal hero treatment. 

This royal entry into Jerusalem is the beginning of a mini-story that leads to his death on the cross, and to the resurrection. But you can’t just jump over everything to the end. That’s not how the story works. To rightly understand what it means for Jesus to be the hero king, who like other kings is the law of the land, you must follow the story.

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As king, Jesus doesn’t settle. The first things he does after going into Jerusalem are acts of judgment, according to Matthew 21-23. And these are acts of judgment against the religious establishment. This is important. 

Jesus doesn’t come cruising in to condemn the “sinful” people. The story of the gospels already makes it clear that he rather likes hanging out with them. But make no mistake, Jesus is angry. 

He’s angry because he expects something and He calls out the failure in responsibility and “productivity” (“bearing fruit” is the language he uses). He doesn’t settle for less than what is expected. But this doesn’t mean what we often might think. Read on. 

The first thing Jesus does in Matthew 21:12-17 is go into the temple and chase out all of the people making a profit off of God, marketing God and religion to the masses. When they were all cleared out of the way, the people everyone had not noticed because they weren’t “acceptable” found their way to him. 

Then he sees a fig tree with no fruit. He condemned the tree and it withered up. It’s symbolic. The good stuff that is expected isn’t there (Matthew 21:18-22). 

Then he tells a story about a farmer with two sons. One son did not do the job his dad asked him to do; the other did. And then another story about workers who lose their inheritance because they didn’t “produce the fruit” expected of them (Matthew 21:28-46). 

Then Jesus calls out the religious leaders in Matthew 23 for several things: they make faith a burden, they love people to notice them and their “religiousness”; they shut out people they don’t think are “worthy”; they make a big show to get people to convert to God; they overlook the needs of people in an effort to follow strict rules; they make everything look good on the outside, but with false motives. 

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Jesus expects differently. He expects there to be more evidence of God’s juicy goodness in the world. And the judgment is on the shoulders of the religious folks -- the “pastors” and other leaders of the religious institution of the time. It’s not that the everyday people are completely off the hook. But it’s the job of the leaders to equip, encourage, and point people to God and otherwise “coach” people in their everyday lives to be signs of God’s goodness. And this they were failing to do. It’s not that God didn’t matter. They were not effective or productive in the right ways, which for Jesus made the product as good as nothing. The means is just as important as the end.

The result, the “fruit,” was that the everyday people had an impoverished understanding of God; a misguided approach that left their lives mostly in the fog, unsure of how God is active and present in their lives; people feeling more like “sinners” than like people who are made in God’s image, part of God’s family, recipients of God’s goodness. Things might have looked good from the outward view, from the standpoint of religious "success." But that's not how Jesus measures "fruitfulness."

Jesus particularly seems to not be a fan of the ones who make a big show of their faith. He’s not a fan of the Pharisees, not just because they are “legalists,” but because they like to be seen a little too much. They want people to see how special they are, how “pastoral” they are. They want to be noticed for their religious stuff done in the name of God. They think it’s a big deal to make connections with the “important” people as if this is the way to spread the message of God more effectively. 

Such is the mentality of striving for religious “success.” I’m sure the temple was a busy place, full of activity and people. Looked pretty successful for what they were doing. But it was the wrong kind of busy-ness, the wrong people, the wrong reasons. Jesus cleared it all out and replaced it with people who were seen as less effective, less than evidence of “success.” This is what mattered.

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All of this, Jesus says, is not what it seems. It looks like “success” or fruitfulness, but really it’s not producing any fruit at all. Jesus expects differently. Hence the symbolism of the fruitless, withered fig tree. Hence Jesus’ anger in the temple. Hence the reasons to NOT be like the religious Pharisees. 

This is where Jesus the king “doesn’t fit” when people imagined a king or leader at the time. Doesn’t fit many of our ideas of “leader” or “hero” today. He doesn’t fit our attempts at “religion.” He sets a new law. 

For Jesus the king, being “fruitful” and effective as the church is less a matter of getting noticed, having it polished and perfect, or making sure you catch the attention of the “right” people. God doesn’t need our efforts to make the gospel more attractive. Bearing fruit and being effective is more a matter of doing things “in secret” as Jesus says in Matthew 6 and being concerned with the lives of those pushed out and left out than shining your light brighter for all to see. Jesus says, “Let your light shine…” but says right after that to do it without people noticing. God’s light shines best when we’re not trying to make it brighter by our own productions. 

And it’s hard. I get it. Especially in our “get-noticed-on-social-media” culture. If it’s not posted on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or wherever...did it happen? Did it matter? I wonder if today Jesus might say to a church or church leader, “If you ARE posting about it to get noticed, God just lost interest.” This is hard to consider, because often our attempts are well-intentioned. But there’s usually another side. We end up trying harder and harder to be attractive and polished and have a more impressive voice or slogan or video to sell the gospel (or is it our church or ego?) to the world. Because we feel like we need to. And Jesus sees right through it. 

Jesus as king didn’t play that game. Instead of doing things on a big stage, publicly to get noticed (which would have been not a bad idea, since he was “God with us”), Jesus didn’t even raise his voice to be heard on the street corner, according to Matthew 12:18-21. And often he told people to be quiet when he’d heal someone. He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. He told Peter not to fight. He let the Romans spit on his face. This, according to Jesus the king, is the way of effective ministry of the gospel. 

And for Jesus as king, his way of life is not one of demanding that people get their lives together to be accepted by God. Or that you have to mimic the always demanding, self-image driven expectations of the world. It’s about welcoming people into God’s family as they are. He got friendly, moved into the neighborhood and went to the local gatherings. He wasn’t interested in watching with a judgmental eye to mark off all the “bad” things people were doing. And he didn’t demand that they present a “likeable” image. 

But he brought a different joy to the party. He taught so that the people he was around understood God’s welcome of them, and even to see their lives as part of the evidence of God’s mercy in the world. Yes, rather than far from God, they were potential ways that God might be known and experienced in the world. Welcome to the family. Here’s how we do it here.

The point is this: Jesus the king lives to mend the brokenness in our world -- brokenness between people and between people and their God. How this is done effectively is not through making a big show of faith, or striving to get noticed. And Jesus wasn’t going around demanding more religion. His way as king is a way of embracing our lowliness, forgiving with abandon, setting egos aside and making room for God to quietly show up, often in spite of our best efforts to make God more interesting or our attempts that make us feel good about how much we're doing.

Jesus as king won’t settle for anything less.