November 22, 2009:  THIS SORT OF KING

Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37; Psalm 132:1-12 (13-18)

Eileen Parfrey   --  Springwater Presbyterian Church

            The problem with a Sunday observance based on theology—Reign of Christ Sunday, for instance—the problem with a day like today is that, what you have to talk about is theology.  How boring is that?  Where is that certain something to take home to help you in your daily walk with Jesus?  Not to mention the complication of how Americans feel about monarchies.  The best I could come up with was a lovely story about my seeing the Queen of England when I was 17 years old and spending the summer in Aberdeen, Scotland.  And that didn’t even begin to address the underlying question regarding the reign of Christ, namely, “What sort of king?”

           
            I was pretty stumped, until I started listening to a book, The Spider and the Starfish.  The author uses two metaphors to explain organizational styles—spiders and starfish.  A spider is governed by a central position, a head.  Cut off the head, the spider dies.  A starfish is a decentralized network.  A starfish is a basically a central body, out of which legs radiate; there is no head.  Cut a starfish in two, you get two starfish.  Cut off a starfish’s leg, the leg will turn into a starfish and the original one will grow a new leg.  Cut a starfish into a bunch of pieces, they’ll turn into a bunch of starfish.  Why this works is because the starfish’s intelligence is spread out through the whole system.  If one leg of the starfish wants to do something, it has to convince the rest of the legs to do it, too.
 

            An organization like a spider is hierarchical and centralized.  Examples of spider organizations might be General Motors or the Roman Empire.  Attack the head of a spider organization, and your threat is deadly. An organization like a starfish is decentralized.  It is flexible, equal, requires cooperation, and is in constant change.  Like the chopped-up starfish, it will grow or spread when it’s broken up.  The more you fight it, the stronger it gets.  Examples of starfish organizations are Al-Quaida and Alcoholics Anonymous.  No one “owns” AA, no one is in charge, everyone is responsible for keeping it going.  If someone wants to start an AA chapter, they go ahead and do it.  There is no need to get permission, and each chapter is free to develop in its own way.  If a person wants to join AA, they subscribe to the Twelve Steps.  They are free to drop out and come back at any time.

To illustrate the starfish organizational style, the author tells the story of potential investors asking an early developer of web-based technology to give them the name of the president of the internet.  This happened in 1995, when paper and stamps were still being used to send communication, when “Google” was not yet a verb, and addresses did not start with www.  It was inconceivable to the investors that the internet (whatever that was!) had no president, no headquarters building.  Who enforced the rules?  The developer explained that people subscribed to standards, that things “just worked” or didn’t, and then they changed.  To the investors, if the organization was leaderless, it was no organization.  Who is in charge of the internet?  Who sets the goals, develops strategy?
 

            I think Jesus originally conceived of his followers’ organizational structure as more like the internet or Alcoholics Anonymous than like the Roman Empire.  When Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, the Church began to look more like the Roman Empire than AA.  Hasn’t it ever puzzled you that Pilate cheerfully executes Jesus, but does nothing to hunt down his followers and eradicate the threat once and for all?  That is an eloquent statement about how Rome understood the threat.  A personality-dependent revolutionary group would be neutralized by doing away with the charismatic head (like a spider).  It wasn’t until the Jesus followers kept showing up and doing those counter-cultural ways advocated by their founder that the higher ups decided to persecute them.  Do you remember early church history?  The more the church was persecuted, the more it was fractured and driven out of town, the stronger it got and the more it spread.  People started their own chapters, and the only requirement was that you subscribe to some central tenets.  Starfish.

            If you were to push me today to say “what sort of king” Jesus is, I’d have to say he’s more like the president of the internet than the Pope.  Jesus tells Pilate his kingdom is “not of this world.”  In that conversation, it probably was an explanation for why his army hadn’t moved in to protect him and wipe out the opposition to his reign.  By the time we get to the list of titles in John’s Revelation, the Church has begun to understand a little more what that means that his kingdom “is not of this world.”  John calls Jesus faithful witness, firstborn of the dead, ruler of the kings of the earth.  These titles give an assurance that there is a future beyond death and that we continue Jesus’ witness to that effect when we give up the self-centered, temporal priorities for our lives and focus on God’s priorities.  The anxiety-peddling talking heads and consumption-oriented advertising industry spend every waking moment trying to convince us that they are the rulers of the kings of the earth.  We can buy their spiel, but that is exactly the culture to which the Church is supposed to be counter.  According to John the Revelator, we are a “kingdom of priests,” which doesn’t mean we’re all issued pulpits and congregations.  Rather, that is a call to be mediators.  By that I mean, it is our job to live the word of God publicly and to pray for the forgiveness of the world (as well as ourselves).  Like a starfish showing its starfish-ness by simply being a starfish, Jesus’ followers show God’s way by living God’s way.
 

            OK.  So how?  By priorities, especially.  Last week I mentioned the radically counter-cultural statement we make when we intentionally give away our money as an act of worship.  Not what’s left over after our needs are met, not to buy stars in our crown in heaven.  Just out of gratitude.  Time and energy priorities are every bit as crucial.  Things as simple as what it takes to learn what that archaic, obtuse book (the Bible) has to say to our here-and-now.  Or the care we show for the welfare of others (especially those not like us), when we greet and befriend people others might consider losers, when we forgive those who hurt us, when we hold others accountable, when we practice living simply and consuming less.

            “My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said.  And then he stepped back so that we could prove it.  Starfish all the way.

After preaching this sermon, one of my parishioners (a trained scientist who works at the OMSI education station in Fossil, OR) sent me the following communication:

I'm not sure your assertion about sea stars' regeneration is entirely correct.  They do have some vital central organs and nervous system that has to remain intact.  It's my understanding that they can re-grow arms if the stomach is un-dammaged, but I'm not sure the legs can grow a new stomach.  I really like what the analogy says about the church though.  I've also heard that sponges are animals with those sorts of properties- they can be put in a blender and put themselves back together because each piece is the same and just as important as any other.  We always talk about the church as a body, but I like the notion of the church as a sponge body.

Alas and indeed, I was merely quoting the book The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A Beckstrom.  And exaggerating only a little.  One type of starfish can regenerate from little bits, but not all. I stand corrected (partly).