The Taste of Cherries--November 22, 2021

The Taste of Cherries--November 22, 2021

"Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, 'Are you the King of the Jews?' Jesus answered, 'Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?' Pilate replied, 'I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?' Jesus answered, 'My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.' [John 18:33-36]

For a brief window of time, my kids absolutely refused to try real cherries, because they had only ever had artificial-cherry-flavored medicine, which they understandably hated.

Just sit with that for a moment.  They refused the genuine thing--actual, dark red, fresh, still-on-the-stem cherries (we're not talking those unnaturally bright ones from the jar here)--because all they had ever known was a terrible counterfeit that came with the bitter taste of "cherry" cough syrup.  For the longest time, all my wife and I could do was to assure them that real cherries tasted different, and so, so much better than the artificial flavor of medicine, and to keep inviting them to try some.

Blessedly, at some point, my son and daughter were brave and curious enough to try an actual fresh cherry, and they have been gobbling them up each summer when they are in season ever since.  But the disgust that came from only having had a poor substitution for the real thing has stuck with me for a long time ever since... because we keep doing the same to the reality Jesus calls the "kingdom of God."

All of human history has been lived in that window of time before tasting the real thing... and all we've known are pretenders and frauds.  Of course, if all you've had is the artificial, you'll never recognize the genuine article; in fact, you'll likely think the real is the fraud because it doesn't look like what you expect, or taste like what you were used to.  That's how we end up crowning Caesar and crucifying the Christ.  

Maybe it's not surprising that Pontius Pilate, the imperially-authorized Roman governor, should be so confused about who Jesus is and the Reign of God he embodies.  After all, Rome is one in a long line of empires past and present that conquer, dominate, kill, and steal to prop themselves up. You would expect someone like Pilate to be utterly confused about Jesus, who is basically a homeless street preacher with a penchant for hanging out with nobodies.  But even Jesus' innermost circle of followers seem dangerously wrong about how the genuine Reign of God operates.  After all, as Jesus tells Pilate, "If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over..." and of course, that is exactly what had happened just a matter of hours before he said it.  There they had been in the garden earlier that evening, and when the police and their lynch mob arrived to arrest Jesus, when Simon Peter decided to take "law and order" into his own hands and started swinging his sword at them, assuming that Jesus endorsed his plan.  Jesus had to tell even his closest followers, including Peter himself, that they weren't to deputize themselves and take up weapons in some misguided attempt to preserve the Kingdom or protect the King.  They had become so used to violent (counterfeit) regimes that they assumed God's Reign worked the same way. No wonder the world around so often thinks God is just an even bigger version of Caesar or Pharaoh: religious folks have been claiming to have God's endorsement to kill in the name of preserving order since Simon Peter's self-appointed vigilantism in the garden.  We have fallen for frauds so badly we don't recognize the genuine Reign of God standing in front of us because the One who brings it looks like an unarmed loser.

As Robert Farrar Capon put it so powerfully, "We crucified Jesus not because he was God but because he blaspheme: he claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It's not that we weren't looking for the Messiah; it's that he wasn't what we were looking for.  Our kind of Messiah would come down from the cross.... He wouldn't do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying."  And that's just it: we are so used to counterfeits we assume that if Jesus is a real "king" he'll be like what we're used to: locked and loaded to destroy evildoers and crush his enemies in the name of Law and Order, rather than laying down his life in suffering love with hands that are empty, save for the nails.  It's like we've only ever had "cherry-flavored" medicine and assume that the actual fruit is a fake because it doesn't taste the same.

The Good News on a day like today, then, is that no matter how wrong we get it, Jesus insists on being the real deal, whether we like or not, and whether we recognize him or not.  Jesus insists on being a different kind of king, regardless of whether Pontius Pilate or Simon Peter is the one who wants him to fit their mold.  And he keeps pulling us into his upside-down kingdom--only to have us discover that we're the ones who have been turned the wrong way all along.  The Reign of Self-Giving Love is the right-side-up way, and it always has been, just as it always has been God's way.  We're the ones who have had it wrong--not Jesus.  We're the ones who have never tasted an actual fresh cherry off the stem.  Jesus is the real deal.

Today, rather than trying to make Jesus fit our expectations (and always having it leave a bitter taste in our mouth), what if we let Jesus show us what God's Reign is like on his own terms--and then let that change the way we see everything else... and how we live in a world full of phony kings and kingdoms?  What if we were curious and brave enough to taste the real thing Jesus offers us?

Lord Jesus, show us again your strange (to us) way of reigning in the world... and help us to step into that Reign with your kind of love.