A very long time ago, a group of people were pulled out of bondage, taught to be free, taught to care for each other and to walk close to God. But not everyone was doing that and we know, it is as true today as it has always been, that when all the people around you are doing something one way, and you are doing it another way, you start to wonder who is doing it right. Faith is easy to lose and a hard discipline to maintain.

So these people started to want a king. Everybody else had one, it was sort of the thing to do. God said to the people, ‘I don’t think this is a good idea, you have me, you don’t need a king.’ But the people said, ‘trust us, we really want a king, everybody else has a king, we are going to get teased at school if we don’t have one too.’ Okay maybe they didn’t say that last part exactly, but you get the idea. And they got a king. Some of the kings were okay, some were pretty bad, but they were all kings which meant that the people, not all the people just a lot of the people, forgot how to walk close to God and instead started to walk in the way of kings. The way of acquisition and control and power and fear.

If you are on the top of this equation you get to exert the power, tell people what to do and how to do it, if you are on the bottom of the equation you get the certainty of being told what to do and how to do it. At the top you fear losing your place, at the bottom you seek to climb or else live life stuck in whatever you are told you are, whatever you are told you can be. In the world today we don’t so much have kings the way we did, but we have people with a whole awful lot of money and I suspect they function with a mindset similar to the rulers of old. It’s a self-perpetuating system that asks you to mostly think about where you are on the continuum of acquisition, power, and control, not so much about being present, feeling filled, loving the people you find yourself near.

I’m on an extended trip right now; traveling through several parts of Great Britain and Europe and visiting a lot of places of worship along the way. Sitting in St. Paul’s cathedral, the cathedral at Canterbury, little churches here and there, I’m struck by the way we create space to be in awe of God, and then the way we make God so small by making God like us. I stepped into St. Michales church in the neighborhood where I was saying, a church that claims to be one of the oldest recorded Christian spaces of worship in Britain, and heard the preacher teaching on the lesson of the woman who anoints Jesus with costly perfume. He said something about knowing the difference between the cost and the value of something, which I thought about when I was next in an enormous cathedral that certainly cost a whole lot to build, maintain, keep.

What I realized sitting there was that it is valuable to create these enormous spaces that inspire wonder and awe because, in an ideal world, anyone can walk in, anyone can be lost in the beauty, for a moment in time, whatever the rest of your life looks like, you can belong to the magnificence of this space, it is yours, the way God is yours, the way you are God’s. And then I felt sad because the fact is we don’t allow these spaces to be that for most people. We have not allowed these spaces to be that for much of history. We dress up our images of God and Jesus, apostles and saints, to look just like the people who rule us in whatever time and place we find ourselves. And then we dress up the people who are ruling us to look like those images and use that to command and control.

I one little church I visited in London, int he middle of the glorious stained glass was Jesus, draped in royal red and ermine, golden crown and scepter, just like any king on earth. I can’t be sure, but I had the sense that the costume was not exactly his vibe. I sat and wondered what would happen if we put Jesus on a donkey, tattered clothes, looking like most of the people sitting in the pews looking up at that image. What would it be like if the person we, as Christians, say is our king, looked not like the person living in the palace, but more like our neighbor sharing the extra bread he just baked?

I have quite a few more churches and cathedrals to visit in the next few weeks and I am grateful for these places and spaces that inspire, challenge, welcome, comfort, and guide me. And I am walking carefully in each space, trying to wonder at the best of what we are capable of, and to question the ways in which we continue to do the worst.

Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.