Actor Kevin Bacon had a conversation with his six-year-old son after the boy had seen the movie Footloose for the first time. Bacon's son said, "Dad, that was really cool how you jumped up on the roof and swung from the rafters. How did you do that?"
"Well, son," said Bacon, "I didn't actually do that part. A stunt man did."
"What's a stunt man?" asked his son.
"That's someone who dresses like me," said Bacon, "and does things I can't do. Things that are too dangerous."
"Oh, well, what about that part in the movie where you spin around on that gym bar and land on your feet," persisted the boy. "How did you do that?"
"Well, son," said Bacon, "that was the stunt man again, not me. He's really good at gymnastics."
"Oh," said his son. Then there was a long pause. "Dad," his son asked, "just what did you do in the movie?"
Bacon sheepishly replied, "I got all the glory." (1) Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Someone took his place, that he might receive the glory.
Two weeks ago we celebrated Easter in November. Now we are only a week from the beginning of Advent and yet the church lectionary takes us back to Good Friday. Jesus is hanging on the cross. On either side hangs a thief. Soldiers gamble for his clothing. They mock him, crying out, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" A sign is nailed above his head: "This is the King of the Jews." Even one of the thieves scoffs at Jesus: "So you're the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself--and us, too, while you're at it!" The other thief rebukes his colleague in crime and makes a request of Jesus: "Remember me when you come into your Kingdom." At least this one miscreant has been won over, and Jesus instantly rewards his plea of faith. Jesus replies, "Today you will be with me in Paradise."
Today is the celebration of Christ the King. Next week we will begin the cycle of the church year all over again. We will look forward to Christ's advent into the world. We will gaze into the face of the babe of Bethlehem. But today is the day we sum up what Christ means to humankind. And what he means to us is that someone has taken our place so that we can get the glory. What he means to us is what the thief upon the cross discovered Christ meant for him personally: salvation. Jesus Christ came into the world for one purpose: that the world might be saved.
Jesus didn't come into the world to found an institution, though we are grateful for this institution which we call the church. He didn't come to impose Western values on the rest of the world, though we have often been accused of that. Jesus came to save the world--with all the ramifications of what that word "œsave" means.
Are there children dying of AIDS in Africa? Jesus came to save them. Are there children dying of gunshot wounds in schools in America? Jesus came to save them. Are there people living in penthouses who have no purpose for life except to deaden their senses with drugs, alcohol and meaningless sex? Jesus came to save them. Are there people living under bridges with rags for a pillow? Jesus came to save them. Are there families torn with abuse and adultery? Jesus came to save them. Are there entire countries sinking under the weight of poverty and pollution? Jesus came to save them. When we crown Christ King, we do it not with a Cartier assortment of precious jewels. We do it with thorns pressed upon his brow and nails driven though his hands. He did not come to reign triumphant. He came to lay down his life as a ransom for our beleaguered souls. Why did Christ come into the world? One reason and one reason alone: he came to seek and to save that which was lost.
Jeffery Ginn and his family of Colonial Heights, VA served as missionaries to Cali, Colombia. One morning Jeffrey entered his office to find that a map of the world that he had taped to the wall had fallen during the night. A corner of the map had remained taped to the wall as the rest fell. Jeffrey took the torn piece from the wall and knelt to repair the map. At that moment his toddler daughter came in. She plopped on the floor and watched her father intently. Jeffrey's wife, noticing that their toddler had grown quiet, called, "Anna, what are you doing?" Their daughter replied, matter-of-factly, "We're fixin' the world, Mama!"
That's why Jesus came into the world. To fix it. Not to build a Christian empire. Not to make the world safe for capitalism. Jesus came to save that which was lost.
A few years ago, Pastor Erwin Lutzer and his daughters were visiting Washington, D.C. While there, they met a man who served on former President Bush's secret-service security team. The gentleman offered to give them a guided tour of the Oval Office. Pastor Lutzer and his daughters passed through many security checkpoints the next day on the way to the Oval Office. At each checkpoint, they expected to be searched and questioned. But instead, the guards took one glance at the secret-service man and announced, "You are with him, go on in."
Pastor Lutzer wrote that he expects our entrance into heaven will be like that. We will have no credentials of our own that could possibly get us in. But Jesus will be walking along beside us. And at each gate, the angels will take one look at Jesus and announce, "You're with Him, go on in." (2)
Evangelist Tony Campolo says that in his teenage years he was terrified by a visiting pastor's depiction of Judgement Day. This pastor claimed that one day God would show us a movie of every single sinful thought, word, or action we ever committed. And he ended his lurid description with the announcement, "And your mother will be there!"
But Tony claims that Judgement Day will more closely mirror what happened during the trials over the Watergate scandal. The prosecutor brought in a tape of a conversation between Nixon and his aides. Just at the most crucial part of the tape, the section that revealed their crimes, there was an eighteen minute gap of silence. Nixon's faithful secretary, Rosemary Wood, had erased the incriminating evidence! In the same way, Campolo says, Jesus will erase all the incriminating evidence against us. (3)
Jesus had one purpose in coming into our world: salvation. Salvation for you, salvation for me, salvation for every person ever born into this world. So, what does this say about our lives?
It means, first of all, that there is a lofty purpose for our existence.
An old folk legend has it that, scattered throughout the earth, there are twenty-eight people on whom the future of the world depends. These twenty-eight people do not know who they are--you could be one. But their actions determine whether the world will continue or not. (4)
Well, suppose the future of the world did depend on your actions. Would that fill you with hope or with dread? Suppose the future destiny of your children depended on you--their values, their happiness, their eternal well-being? How about the well-being of your neighbors and the people you work with? Do you see where I'm heading?
Jesus came into this world to seek and to save that which was lost. Then he returned to the Father. But before he did, he gathered around him a select group of men and women to carry on his work. There was nothing special about these men and women. In fact, they were quite ordinary. There was only one thing that distinguished them--they had been touched by the Master's hand. And when Christ left them, he gave them a charge--that they were to reach out to touch others with his love until the day comes when every person on this earth knows himself or herself to be a child of God.
That's what it means to be Christ's body. Our task is his task--salvation. This is not a social club or even a Bible study society. We study our Bibles and we enjoy fellowship together, but these activities only help to sustain us as we carry out our main reason for being: reaching out to dying people in Jesus' name.
Sometimes we forget who we are and why we are here, and that is sad.
Pastor Wayne Brouwer tells about the beginning of his own denomination, the Christian Reformed Church. One of their ministers sent a letter to a meeting of other church leaders telling them that he was pulling out to start a new denomination. The church they are a part of, he says, has too many contacts with the world around it. The church should be off by itself, separated from the rest of society, living its own little life in its own little corner. Here are his words: "The Church, the Bride of Christ, is a garden enclosed, a well shut up, and a fountain sealed."
"Do you get the picture?" asks Brouwer. "The Church is a nice little community off by itself, doing its own thing, untouched by the world. It's as pretty as a garden full of flowers, but it puts a high wall around itself so nobody else can get in. It's a well of refreshing water, but stopped up so nobody will get it dirty by taking a drink. It's a fountain of surging excitement, albeit sealed within concrete barriers so its power won't slip away." (5)
It is critical that we understand what the church is about. We are not merely a shrine where people come to offer up prayers in order to attract the attention of a disinterested deity. We are Corpus Christi, the body of Christ, healing the hurting, lifting up the fallen, calling the world to faith and repentance.
Does this mean that we turn a blind eye to the ills of society? Far from it. In every social cause that seeks to better the lot of humanity you will find members of the body of Christ actively engaged. We are the world's "do-gooders"--more so than any other movement on earth. Because Christ was a "do-gooder." Because Christ cared about the people who couldn't help themselves. And so we must care--for the victims of AIDS, for those addicted to drugs, for those who are homeless and those whose lives have been ravaged by abuse. But we are interested in more than their bodies. We are interested in their eternal souls. For you see, we believe there is a spiritual dimension to life every bit as real as the physical dimension. Christ came into the world to introduce humankind to that dimension. He called it The Kingdom of God. "You are not far from the Kingdom," he said to one. "The Kingdom of God is within you," he said to another. There is a spiritual side to life. And though it is good and noble to bind up physical wounds and to ease emotional and mental traumas, until we touch that spiritual need in people's life, we have not helped them to know who they are and what life can be for them.
We long to touch the inner man, the inner woman, and so we teach them a name, a name above any other name. I love the way songwriter Gloria Gaither expressed it years ago: "Jesus. The mere mention of His name can calm the storm, heal the broken, raise the dead. At the name of Jesus, I've seen sin-hardened men melted, derelicts transformed, the light of hope put back into the eyes of a hopeless child . . . Emperors have tried to destroy it; philosophers have tried to stamp it out. Tyrants have tried to wash it from the face of the earth with the very blood of those who claim it. Yet still it stands.
"And there shall be the final day when every voice that has ever uttered a sound--every voice of Adam's race--shall rise in one great, mighty chorus to proclaim the name of Jesus--for in that day "˜every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!'" (6)
No wonder we celebrate Christ the King Sunday as we prepare to begin a new church year. We need to be reminded of who Christ is and what Christ has done. And we need to be reminded of who we are and what Christ has called us to do. We are not our own. We are ambassadors for Christ in a fallen world.
1. Wayne Rice, Still More Hot Illustrations for Youth Talks (http://www.YouthSpecialties.com/mall/browse/#illus).
2. "Do Many Paths Lead into God's Presence?" by Erwin Lutzer, Preaching Magazine, Mar./ Apr. 2001, p. 20.
3. Tony Campolo. Let Me Tell You a Story (Nashville: Word Publishing, 2000), pp. 19-20.
4. Wear Clean Underwear by Rhonda Abrams, Villard, New York, 1999, p. 169.
5. "Does Anybody Notice?" Preaching, Jan/Feb 2000.
6. Cited in Mike Trout. Off the Air (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995), pp. 177-178.