Exodus 1:8-2:10
Jesus Is Lord and Other Subversive Statements
James Sledge August 21, 2011
“Praise the Lord! Jesus is Lord!” These phrases roll easily off the tongues of Christians. But for many of us, Lord is a peculiarly religious word. We know that England has a House of Lords. We’ve watched movies where people say to the king, “Yes, my Lord,” or seen Sith lords in Star Wars. We’ve heard of people “lording” it over someone. But “lord” is not a part of our everyday language. And so it often never occurs to us what a politically charged and even subversive statement it once was to say, “Jesus is Lord.”
In the days when Christian faith was born, there were others who claimed the title Lord, Caesar in particular. It was common for people in the Roman empire to greet one another with the words, “Caesar is Lord.” And so for the very first Christians, to say, “Jesus is Lord,” not only employed a term Jews had used for centuries as a deferential substitute for God’s personal name, it also stood as a direct challenge to the authority of the emperor.
The question of who is actually lord, to whom we owe total allegiance and obedience, is often a critical one for people of faith. The faith statements that make up our denomination’s Book of Confessions include “The Theological Declaration of Barmen,” a rather cumbersomely named document in which German Christians took issue with their Nazi government’s claim to be lord over certain aspects of life. The Declaration was written by Lutheran, Reformed, (that’s us) and other Christians who were troubled by the arrangement the state Lutheran Church had made with the Nazis, an arrangement that said Jesus was Lord over spiritual matters but the state was Lord over the realm of blood and iron. The Declaration flatly rejected the idea that “there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords.”
This insistence that Jesus alone was Lord, over and against Nazi claims to be lords over the political and military realms, was a dangerous statement, one likely to be seen as subversive by Nazi officials.
And in that sense it was not unlike those first Christians saying, “Jesus is Lord” when others said it was Caesar.
Living as though Jesus or God is Lord can easily put people in conflict with others who would claim that title. Like Caesar, Pharaoh claimed to be Lord, and he demanded absolute obedience. And Lord Pharaoh said to the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, that they must kill all the Hebrew baby boys when they are born. But the midwives feared God. That’s the Bible’s way of saying they thought God’s claim to be Lord trumped Pharaoh’s. Despite the awesome power Pharaoh wielded, Shiphrah and Puah were sure that God was Lord. But that was a dangerous stance to take.
The midwives’ defiance undermines Pharaoh briefly, but he still insists, “I am Lord!” And he commands that every Hebrew boy be thrown into the Nile and drowned. But our story tells us of one mother who will not acknowledge Pharaoh’s claim to be Lord. She hides her young son, and then devises a plan to preserve his life, a plan to circumvent Pharaoh’s claim that he is Lord. But it is a dangerous business to challenge Pharaoh’s claim.
In one of the Bible’s more famous stories, this mother waterproofs a papyrus basket, places her son in it, puts it where she knows that the baby will be found, and strategically places her daughter to observe what happens.
One of Pharaoh’s own daughters spots the child. She recognizes right away that this is one of the Hebrew children, one of the boys under a death sentence from Lord Pharaoh, her father. But for some reason, Pharaoh’s own daughter now denies that he is Lord. She takes pity on the little boy and even joins in the very transparent little conspiracy with the baby’s sister and mother to defy Pharaoh.
We have sometimes turned this into the cute story of baby Moses in the bulrushes, but this is dangerous, subversive business these women are engaged in. Ancient kings and Pharaoh’s often thought little of killing one of their own children if that child challenged the authority of her father and Lord.
As the story of Moses unfolds, we will learn that God has big plans for him. He will be a critical component in God’s plans to free Israel from slavery and establish them in the land of promise. But the story of Moses is possible only because of the subversive behavior of certain women who refuse to recognize Pharaoh’s claim to be Lord. Some may do so out of their strong Jewish faith while the compassion of Pharaoh’s daughter seems to recognize God’s lordship unwittingly. But regardless, only because these women engage in the dangerous business of challenging Pharaoh does Moses have a story at all.
For some reason, the story of this God of ours is bound up in our stories. When God calls Abraham and Sarah, there is the explicit promise, In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. When the grown up Moses meets God at the burning bush, God says, “The cry of the Israelites has come to me. I have seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh.” Jesus says that when we encounter the sick and the poor and the hungry, we encounter him. And the Bible says that we are the body of Christ, that God’s love and touch comes through us. The divine story is all tangled up with ours, and very often it can move forward only in those moments when people challenge and defy others who claim to be Lord.
One of the curious things about current day America is how one of our most popular lords has become the individual. American notions of freedom and individualism have gradually been perverted into the notion of “the autonomous self.” I alone am lord and master of my life. And so it becomes increasingly difficult for politicians to act for the good of the whole or for voters to elect representatives who will do so because as autonomous selves, we are answerable to no one but ourselves. And so we simply seek our own good. We want low taxes but all of the benefits we enjoy. Cuts must fall to someone else. And there is no lord greater than ourselves to say to us, “You must sacrifice for the good of the neighbor!” at least none that we will listen to.
Christians say that Jesus is Lord, but we have become quite practiced at ignoring what Jesus actually says. We have faith that Jesus will bless us or get us to heaven, but our lord is our own wants, desires, or preferences. And we dare anyone, even Jesus, to tell us otherwise.
But perhaps we need to ask ourselves whether we’re really cut out for this lord business. To borrow a popular phrase, “How’s that working out for you?”
Seems to me that in a world where everyone is his or her own lord, we are becoming more and more fractured, more and more divided, less and less able to build community or a society that is good for all. We cluster in groups of like-minded folks, and we often do not play well with others. We get caught up in the animosities of your group versus my group. As lord, my views are and those of my group are right, and yours are wrong. Making things better requires my winning and your losing, and so working together with those who differ from me becomes almost impossible.
But into this hopeless situation the faint memory echoes. “God is sovereign. Jesus is Lord.” In Christ, God is moving history and creation toward God’s purposes. But in the strange ways of God, this usually requires people to challenge and subvert those others who claim to be Lord. This is often risky business, but in every age there are people of faith who rise to the task. There are politicians who will say “No!” to self-serving ideologies and agendas of their own party. There are people who will stand up to power and say, “God will judge us by how we treat the poor and the needy.” In every age there are those who will say, “No nation or ideology or political party or religious tradition or economic system is Lord. Jesus is Lord! And I will defy any and all other lords to serve him.”
And each time that happens, the hope of something better draws a bit nearer; the dawn of God’s future shines just a little brighter.
