“How to Rule the World”                                                                             Vance L. Toivonen

READING         Matthew 17:1-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!" When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid." And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, "Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."

READING Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary.

People who encountered Jesus sometimes experienced a spiritual presence in him. Rudolph Otto speaks of a numinous presence that is frequently reported in or around those who have decisive experiences of the sacred. There is a sense of "otherness" in them that evokes awe, amazement, or astonishment. There may be something authoritative about the way they speak, penetrating about the way they see, or powerful about their presence. The Buddhist tradition speaks of a "Buddha field," a "zone of liberation," around the Buddha and subsequent Buddhist "saints," or bodhisattvas; to be in their presence was to experience something extraordinary. In the Christian tradition, followers of St. Francis in the thirteenth century spoke of a similar presence in him. In the Jewish Bible, perhaps Moses’ glowing face when he came down from the sacred mountain belongs in the same category; the Torah’s characterization of him suggests that there was something "other," a numinous presence, about him. Narrative descriptions of Jesus in the gospels suggest that Jesus had this kind of presence.

SERMON

I had that song ringing in my ears when I read the Psalm that we used to begin our service today, the 2^nd Psalm. It’s a song from the 80s by the band Tears for Fears. Do you know it? Everybody Wants to Rule the World. History is scattered with the bones of one failed dictator after another, one failed attempt at world domination after another. The Romans couldn’t pull it off, and Hitler failed, and now, well, hmmm, I wonder who has been making the effort lately? I’ll leave that to all of you to speculate about.

The peace of Rome was peace through victory. It was military might that secured the peace, and every advancement in society was born of their military dominance. The strong leader echoed in that Psalm, we are told, is the agent of almighty God. He, and it is a he, will break the leadership of other nations with an iron rod, and dash them into pieces. This is a vision of leadership via domination. This is about power. This is about fear. This is about crushing the enemy and establishing a pre-eminent kingdom on earth. And this is how one nation after another has attempted to rule the world for millennia.

The messianic expectations of ancient Israel had grown to require that when the son of God, the anointed one mentioned in Psalm 2, and in other pockets of the Old Testament, came into power, it would be an earthly kingdom marked by such dominance that only God could be behind it. This would be an unsurpassed and eternal kingdom, never again to be taken over by the other kingdoms of the earth. So when the followers of Jesus began to associate Jesus with these messianic expectations, there was a grave disappointment brewing. We all know that Jesus of Nazareth never sat on a throne, never engaged in military activity, never manipulated political systems to his advantage, and never had anyone put to death. Jesus was not fear-based. He was the polar opposite of fear-based.

So if one is not to use fear, oppression, and military dominance to rule the world, then how are we supposed to run this place we call planet earth? Jesus spoke often about the kingdom of God. In the fourth chapter of Mark’s gospel Jesus is quoted as having taught,

Now, if I were to say this to you today, and then sit down without any further exposition, what might you conclude about the difference between God’s kingdom in the teachings of Jesus, and the historic kingdoms of men? And again, yes, I do mean men. Another time Jesus compared the kingdom of God to "yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened." (Luke 31:21). So ruling the world in Jesus’ mind is like planting mustard seeds and leavening flour. What should we make of this?

Before Jesus was born, around 600 B.C.E., there was in the land of what is now China a group of teachings that came to be collected in what is now call the Tao Te Ching. These teachings are attributed to Lao Tzu, which simply means Old Master. It is not certain whether Lao Tzu was an actual person, or a mythological figure, but the wisdom was there nonetheless. At any rate, these teachings predate Jesus. There is a piece on leadership that comes from these writings, and that hangs on my wall as a reminder to me of how to lead. Unfortunately, I do not always retain consciousness of it. Here it is:

I see great similarities here between this ancient Asian wisdom, and the wisdom set forth by Jesus. We plant seeds, and we leaven life with the best of our humanity, and the world will grow and blossom forth into a place we all would like to live. We allow that numinous presence to shine forth in our lives, and the world will be full of light and hope and peace. Mind you, I am not always so good at this myself. My numinous presence is sort of like a light socket with a short in it. It flickers. But I am not merely putting up with this defect in connectivity. I am working to make that light stay on more than it flickers off. This is what we sometimes refer to as spirituality, fostering the light within us rather than the darkness. The book reading on complaining going on right now is about that.

The other night at choir my light flickered. As soon as choir ended I sought forgiveness, and graciously received it. That’s one way to keep our light lit, to seek forgiveness. We won’t always receive it on this human plain, but there is light in the seeking itself.

When I approach the politics that swirl around us in this election year, I long to apply these teachings and principles to the leaders who will lead our country. These are my core values. I long for these principles to be valued within my own life, within our life together here, and within our country. I wonder what America would be like, and how we might provide leadership in the world, if we adopted these core values reflected in the Tao Te Ching, or in the teachings of Jesus? I would encourage us to add that discussion to our already on-going political discussions.

The kingdom of God that Jesus taught about is something we pray for every week in that standard prayer attributed to the Lord Jesus. Borg says of the kingdom of God,

Every week we are praying here for this alternate reality in contrast to the reality we live in every day. This is how we rule the world, by clueing ourselves into the wisdom that flows from that universal source we call God, and by re-orienting ourselves toward that wisdom, no matter what the pundits say, no matter what the Fed determines is best, no matter what the State Department and the Pentagon dictate. This wisdom of Jesus, the Tao Te Ching, and other historic sources known to have tapped deeply into God’s loving, hopeful, and peaceful energy, are the only sources we need to consult when we are pondering how to rule the world; our world. After all, it’s the only one we’ve got.