Tribute for our King

 

Luke 23:33-43

Proper 29 / Year C

Sir Austen Henry Layard was leading an excavation in present day Iraq in 1846 when the team made a significant discovery.  They unearthed a six-foot-tall obelisk made of black limestone with twenty different carved panels on its sides, each depicting a scene of military a conquest during the reign of Shalmaneser III, the King of Assyria for thirty-five years beginning in 859 BC.  In its day, the obelisk functioned like a cable news network does today – a 24/7 report to the masses on recent events of interest… with interpretive commentary in cuneiform script.

What makes this object relevant to us is one of the panels contains the earliest depiction of a Hebrew King: Jehu, who reigned over the Northern Kingdom of Israel for twenty-eight years beginning in 842.  In the panel Jehu is prostrate, face to the ground at the feet of Shalmaneser.  Behind him is a train of servants bearing gifts of various kinds for the Assyrian ruler.  These gifts are tribute, a common practice throughout the ancient Middle East in which conquered nations present money, precious metals, and expensive objects to their conqueror as symbols of submission and acknowledgment of his authority. 

Not all tributes are forced.  Some are voluntary, such as when the Queen of Sheba seeks an audience with King Solomon, whose wisdom is heralded throughout the region.  Her offering signifies honor and respect.  It is one of many examples of voluntary tribute recorded in the bible, the best known being the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh given to the newborn King of the Jews by eastern magi.  It is a practice continued throughout history and even in our day when heads of state making official visits exchange gifts symbolic of their country and people.    

The Jewish sacrificial system has roots in the practice of tribute.  Various offerings are prescribed for certain yearly festivals; each signals an acknowledgment of God’s greatness (God’s majesty) and one’s own absolute dependence on what God’s reign and rule provide.  And the offerings cannot be any old thing one has lying around; it is to be the best of the best – the best lamb, the best bread, the first fruits of the harvest.  The gifts offered (as we say) must be fit for a king.

Jesus, through his life and death, turns the notion of tribute on its head.  Never once in his life does Jesus demand a tribute or gift.  Christ our King has not conquered us.  He has conquered sin and has set us free.  He is, as we heard in today’s gospel reading, a ruling King who pays tribute to death by offering himself on the Cross in order to vanquish death.

Every Sunday we enact something like a tribute when we collect our offerings and present them at the altar.  But Christ has transformed this practice because there is only one gift which is a sufficient to present.  In his hymn When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, Isaac Watts describes it this way:

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

  that were a preset far too small.

Love so amazing, so divine,

  demands my soul, my life, my all.

Christina Rossetti, in her carol In the Bleak Midwinter, comes to a similar conclusion:

What can I give him, poor as I am?

  if I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

  yet what can I give him: I will give my heart.

Both describe a type of offering known as an oblation.  The prayer book describes this act as being “an offering of ourselves, our lives and labors, in union with Christ, for the purposes of God” ^{p. 857}.   The physical things we offer on Sunday morning – the bread, the wine, our treasure – represent our life and labor.  As we offer them to God we offer not just them, but all we are and all we have.  When we sing “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me,” we are making an oblation, offering ourselves with a very specific intent: Use me, O Lord, to make the world more like the place You want it to be. 

And as God receives these oblations, the Holy Spirit does something amazing.  It falls on the bread and wine, transforming them into something more than bread and wine.  They become the Body and Blood of Christ – holy gifts which God offers to us.  And when we pray “may your Holy Spirit descend upon us” we ask to be sanctified, literally made saintly or saint-like; a people who set ourselves apart in order to be agents, working to manifest God’s dream for this world.

I am mindful of the powerful symbolic message which accompanies everything we present at the altar and I believe, in receiving it, God transforms it to be more than what we present in the same kind of way the offering of five loaves and two fish becomes enough to feed 5,000. 

I am especially glad this morning to add a new practice to our ritual.  Beginning today we will include in what we present an item or two donated to our feeding ministries.  At a practical level, they will serve to remind us of the opportunity we have to support our soon-to-be open again Food Pantry.  As an oblation they represent us and we trust God will use them to be and do more than we can ask or imagine.  

Our oblations speak of our relationship with God who we seek to honor through what we offer.  They reflect our belief Christ is our King and that we are committed to aligning ourselves with our Lord’s royal reign, giving all we have and all we are in witness to God’s goodness and love.