When Jesus Sits--April 15, 2021

When Jesus Sits--April 15, 2021

"When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs." [Hebrews 1:3b-4]

When I sit down, late on a sunny spring Saturday afternoon after mowing grass or doing yard work, it's because I'm tired.  That's not really good news for anybody else--it's just a sign of my forty-year-old tiredness and the need to rest my feet for a bit or cool down with a tall pint of something refreshing in a glass.

But when Jesus sits down, take note. It's a word of good news for the world, because it means his work is done, and he is enthroned to inaugurate the Reign of God.  When the writer of Hebrews says that Jesus, the Son, has already "sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high," it's a way of saying the battle is already over, the victory is accomplished, and the labor that brings forth a new creation is complete.  Like the old Easter hymn puts it, "The strife is o'er [over], the battle done; now is the victor's triumph won! Now be the song of praise begun. Alleluia!" All of that is conveyed in the image of Jesus having "sat down," because it's the standard way folks in the ancient world talked about victorious champions and reigning rulers.  You have to keep standing and on your guard if the fight is still going on, but when the contest is over and a winner remains, you can sit down in confidence.  That's what Jesus has done.

Okay, now, that all sounds great.  It's great to picture Jesus victorious and to sing the well-worn anthems about Jesus' glorious triumph over death, or the feast of victory for our God.  The nerd in me can't help but picture that final scene in the original Star Wars when Luke Skywalker gets his medal of honor for having fired the shot that destroyed the Death Star, and Han Solo gets his for having kept the Empire distracted enough to let him get that shot it (but poor Chewbacca doesn't get a medal, even though he was just as much a part of saving the day...).  The notion that Jesus has begun God's Reign and is already victorious in his resurrection, well, that sounds wonderful.... but--

But, well, here's the thing. If Jesus really has accomplished the victory he has set out to win, well, then we're going to have to give up our notion that we're part of some ongoing crusade that we must win for God.  You would think it would be easy for Christians to just let go and let Jesus be the one to have achieved the victory, but we keep finding ways to insert ourselves into the story as though the fight were still undecided and God needed our power, our money, our political clout, or our angry internet memes to tip the war in heaven's favor.  At one point in history, just a few centuries after Jesus himself rose from the dead, it was Constantine claiming that God's voice had endorsed him to take control of the Roman Empire with the cross as his logo, to kill and conquer with God's supposed blessing.  A few centuries later, we were insisting that Christians had to go fight wars in Palestine in order to liberate "the Holy Land" from enemies in a "Holy War" with the cross as our banner--literally where the word crusade comes from.  The next thing you knew, you had armies of Catholics making war with armies of Protestants across Europe, each convinced that God needed them to win battles to ensure that "God's side" came out victorious.   And once enough European blood had been spilled in those wars, they turned the battle to the Americas, to Africa, and to Asia in a quest to colonize and conquer, once again with the supposed blessing and calling of God.  

In our own era, we've got religious voices insisting that it's up to Christians to fight some kind of culture war, or else... well, or else somehow, they suggest, God's victory could be undone.  Those religious voices warn that if Christians don't exert enough influence to make the rest of society fall in line (often by making alliances with political parties that may or may not actually have anything to do with Jesus), some terrible future awaits--almost as if Christ's victory isn't really assured.

If Jesus really has won the victory already and has, in fact, "sat down" as the true Lord of the universe, then we don't get to inventing our own new pet crusades or culture wars as necessary additions to ensure God's triumph.  The victory is a done deal, and it was accomplished, not by angry mobs starting an insurrection, or enough money being raised for a political action committee, or by Christians needing to arm themselves to fight off their supposed enemies (imagined or real), but by Christ himself, whose way of winning is the self-giving love that goes to a cross and breaks open the power of death through the other side.

Jesus doesn't need us to take up arms to fight for him.  Jesus doesn't need us to give our allegiance to a Caesar or a Constantine or a candidate or a culture warrior just because they drape themselves in the language of religion.  He doesn't even need us to clap hard enough to make Tinker Bell come to life again.  The showdown with death is over. Jesus has already won it and has sat down.

That may be humbling to us who want to cast ourselves as the heroes in the story, rather than the ones who need saving, but it is deeply good news.  The strife really is o'er.  The battle really is done.

Lord Jesus, let us dare to believe your victory really is accomplished already, and let us instead be witnesses to the triumph you have already brought about in the cross.