We Americans certainly love our freedom as our individual and civil liberties remain our most precious possession. We had to fight a revolution over two hundred years ago to secure those rights and that was the LAST time we ever had to contend with any kind of a king. For CHRISTIANS, however, there is ONE king whose authority remains constant and can NEVER be overthrown- a sovereign who demands our love and allegiance, and TO whom we give it unreservedly. Of course I’m speaking about our Lord, Jesus Christ. In various places throughout the New Testament, Jesus is either hailed or described as a kind of monarch. In John 18, Jesus tells Pilate that he is a king and that his kingdom is not of this world. In 1 Timothy, St. Paul hails him as the "King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God." In the gospels, he is addressed as the "King of Israel" and in others as the "King of the Jews" by Romans and by the Magi. In the Book of Revelation, he is variously referred to as the "King of kings," "King of the ages," and as "Ruler of the kings of the earth." John Calvin along with the Heidelberg Confession and the Westminster Shorter Catechism affirmed that Christ performed three functions in his earthly ministry- the offices of prophet, priest, and king. 

And yet, what makes his kingship TRULY unique is that Jesus came NOT to assert his dominance over humanity but to serve it; NOT to perform his own will but rather the will of his Father in heaven; and NOT to exalt himself but to renounce his glory and become one with us in every way. The great characteristics of his life were humility, obedience, and self-renunciation- THESE were the great hallmarks of his life and ministry, all borne by a heart filled with love and compassion for us. Therefore, WE are urged to practice humble, self-sacrificing, self-denying, and self-giving service OURSELVES as HE becomes the one and only model for all Christian behavior. As Paul instructed the church at Philippi:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and become obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

This morning, I want to share with you a parable about a king which most powerfully sums up for ME how GREAT the love of God is and what that sacrifice cost him. It is the work of one of the great Christian thinkers of the 19th century, a Dane by the name of Soren Kierkegaard. The story concerns a ruler, a king who was exceedingly powerful and wealthy. Every statesman and prime minister feared him while his subjects were quick to lavish much praise on him. And yet, with all that power and wealth, he had developed a major problem. He wasn't fearful that some other king might rise up and attack him, or that he might lose the love and allegiance of his people- NO, his fear was far GREATER than that. He was worried because he had succumbed to something which I think each one of OURSELVES has experienced at one time or another in our OWN lives- he had fallen in love and what he feared ABOVE ALL was the vulnerability and risks that TRUE love brings with it. 

If you’ve ever been in love, then you know what it is like when your passions are suddenly hijacked and you can't stop thinking about the other person. There's an elation you feel when you find yourself with someone whom you genuinely care for and would like to spend the rest of your life with. But there are also STEEP RISKS that come with such passion, one of which is the possibility that your offer of love, as deep and sincere as it might be, may ultimately be refused. Is there any greater pain in all the world than to open your heart up to another human being only to discover that your love with all its vulnerability has been rejected? Charlie Brown of Peanuts fame experienced it again and again, at one time comparing unrequited love to a peanut butter sandwich, which he hated. 

To COMPOUND the king’s problem, the OBJECT of his love was not some regal counterpart such as a queen or a princess, but instead a LOWLY MAIDEN, a girl without title or means of any kind. She was a poor and humble commoner and the richest, most powerful man of that day was deeply in love with her. And so his dilemma was this- how could he win her love UNCONDITIONALLY, that is, how could he be loved in return for who he WAS and not for what he POSSESSED or REPRESENTED? He could, of course, overwhelm her in all his pomp and majesty by showing up in a large horse-drawn carriage in full dress uniform, surrounded by an entourage of servants and guards. However, the result would be that she might revere and respect him AS the king, but never learn to relate to him as her husband. 

You see, what he wanted from her was NOT WORSHIP but a LOVE AS BETWEEN EQUALS, for only then can love be free, love without any strings attached. But such love is easier talked about than experienced. Suppose, for example, that the king was to crown her and make her his queen so that henceforth, she would sit at his side and share in all his power and wealth and majesty, would THAT not create a marriage “as between equals?” NOT NECESSARILY for any equality between them would be wholly EXTERNAL and not INTERNAL. She would always remember that her GRATITUDE to the king for elevating her up to his station must always come before her LOVE. She would forever feel in his debt, thinking of him more as her BENEFACTOR rather than her husband. Thus, while the king would want her to FORGET he was a king and that she had once been a humble maiden, she would STILL remember who SHE was and where SHE came from. 

Then there is perhaps the most heartbreaking scenario of ALL. It’s the possibility that the young maiden would PRETEND to love him in an effort to become his queen and inherit not just a title but all the privileges and comforts that went along with it. She would YEARN for the opportunity and do ANYTHING to get it. But STILL, he faced the dilemma of never knowing for sure whether her devotion for him was sincere or not, whether she loved him for who he WAS and NOT for being a wealthy and powerful ruler. Now can you understand his quandary- if there WAS to be a genuine relationship of love and trust between them, it would have to develop IN FREEDOM AND AS AMONG EQUALS. He could not bribe or buy her love in any manner if her love for him were to be honest and true.

In other words, the king longed for the same quality and depth of love from the maiden that he HIMSELF was willing to provide HER with. He desired a love similar to what the Apostle Paul described in 1 Corinthians 13 when he wrote that love was always patient and kind, never jealous or boastful, never arrogant or rude. Such love did not seek its own way or makes constant demands but instead was willing to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. In contrast to much of what passes for love in our OWN lives, his was a devotion and a commitment that freely accepted her in all her lowliness, with all her imperfections and character defects. It was an UNCONDITIONAL love he had for that young woman and he desired the SAME from HER!

But of course, we know that love as WE'VE experienced it in the REAL world is never quite so pure or ideal. After all, if WE had been the king and desirous of that maiden, we might have sweet-talked her and then seduced her the same way King David seduced Bathsheba. Perhaps, we might have been satisfied simply being her sugar daddy- bribing her with gifts just to keep her around. We might even have taken the attitude, “Well if I can’t have her, then NOBODY will!” and so we kidnap her and keep her locked up in a gilded cage like the Phantom of the Opera did to the beautiful Christine, or possibly even DESTROY her. I remember seeing a bumper sticker on the back of a car in California years ago which read "If you love something, you will let it go. If it doesn't come back to you, then hunt it down and KILL it." Although it was meant to be facetious, it does underscore what the Bible itself says, that our hearts are "desperately wicked," so MUCH so that we don't even know the depths of our evil. What was once love can very easily deteriorate into a destructive passion we use to possess or control others with which in the process may ultimately destroy OURSELVES.

But the love felt by our king is always more concerned about the OTHER person than ourselves, and that is where the FREEDOM of love comes in- we can take the risk of losing the one we love because we’re not so preoccupied with ourselves that it becomes a threat to our own pride and personhood. We can learn to accept losses because even in failure we can find some of life’s greatest lessons that help us to grow and become stronger for it. If we let them, they can help us to better understand ourselves and our fellow human beings, help us to function as better persons, and help us to better deal with life itself. To quote from Tennyson’s famous poem on love, “I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; ‘Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.” 

Well now we come to the $64,000 question: How DOES the king ultimately resolve his predicament? He certainly couldn’t COMMAND or LEGISLATE her love. Neither did he want to BUY the maiden’s love by overwhelming her with beautiful and expensive gifts. Nor did he want to STEAL her heart by luring her to his palatial estate and promising that it and all its grandeur would belong to her if only she would just accept his proposal. Rather, the king’s love for her was such that his concern was first for HER happiness and HER concerns rather than his own, that he would much rather NOT have her at all if she could not be content living with and loving him. His love for her was both FREE and UNCONDITIONAL and in return, he yearned for HER will, HER heart, HER love, offered back to him as pure and as deep and as free as HIS was.

Well, the king solves his problem, not by elevating the maiden to royal status and thus making her his queen, but by doing just the OPPOSITE, that is, by DESCENDING from his regal throne and joining his life to hers in all her poverty and commonness. The king freely abdicates all of his glory and honor and wealth and security to become a commoner HIMSELF and thus share in the same low estate as the girl he loves. What’s MORE, in his act of self-surrender, he divests himself of everything FIRST, without the slightest guarantee that she WILL agree to marry him. He abdicates his throne FIRST so that once he relinquishes it, it thus becomes FINAL; there could be no change of mind or heart, no chance of ever going back to what he was REGARDLESS of whether she accepts his proposal or not. Could there ever be a GREATER RISK or TEST of his love than THAT! In this way, if the maiden DOES fall in love with the king, he will now know FOR SURE that it will not be for his position and power and wealth for all these are gone forever. ON THE OTHER HAND, the maiden will know just how much the king loves HER- SO much so that he has surrendered all power and privilege in order to spend the rest of his life alongside her in all her lowliness.

Well, I think you realize by now that this is so much MORE than a story about a king and a young maiden, that it is REALLY about God and God’s love for us- his lowly creation. The truth is that WE are that beloved maiden and God is that king who has appeared to us, not in all his glory but as a homeless pauper, “in the form of a servant” which is no outer garment, no disguise, no temporary station, but God’s TRUE form. Such is the love that God has for US for it not only proves how much God LOVES us but it ensures that our love for God is FREE and UNCOERCED. God doesn’t COMMAND our love. Instead, he WINS it over when we discover how Jesus Christ, out of love, abdicated HIS throne before he had any guarantees that we would ever RETURN his love; when we realize how he surrendered his power and majesty and glory to become “one with us” and thus win over our hearts from a position of poverty and weakness. Without God’s identification with us in the person of his Son, we might fear God for the overwhelming power that God is, but NEVER would he claim our hearts and minds and souls in love. 

You see, TRUE love involves TRUE equality with the beloved, and the only way in which that could have been brought about so that the love between God and his creation was achieved freely and without coercion was for God to voluntarily give up his throne, to freely surrender his power, his majesty, and his glory, and to become "one with us” in every sense of the word. It is the ONLY way in which God knows HOW to love, and Christ himself--through his BIRTH in a lowly manger, his LIFE as a poor itinerant, and his DEATH as a criminal--serves as PROOF of it. As such, we cannot help but be driven to the same conclusion that Kierkegaard did: “It is not impossible that it might occur to man to imagine himself the equal of God, or to imagine God the equal of man, but NOT to imagine that God would make Himself into the likeness of man and suffer for us. For without such a sign from God, how could it possibly enter into the mind of man that God could ever love us so.” Let us pray...

O God, we praise and adore you. You are truly without beginning or ending; your reign is eternal and your being all-powerful, and yet you chose to reveal your power in the most powerless and vulnerable manner there is- as a baby. As you shared our humanity in Jesus, you gave the world a new understanding of power. We know now that power is not to be used to dominate, but to serve others as Christ did. As he helped transform the love of power by the power of his love, may we discover that same love and humility in our OWN lives. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.