Whose Son is He? Matthew 22: 41-46

Dear Followers of Jesus...

I am Daniel Bowen's son. (It is a long journey and story to get there, because of name changing, adoption, etc,) but Dan Bowen is my dad. Ask other people and they will tell you that he is my dad. One could add a footnote by suggesting that i had two dads, but that just complicates things. Dan is my dad. I am his son. And there is a deep respect and recognition of the hierarchy that accompanies that distinction. It is, as earthly father/son relationships go, as it should be.

He would never call me LORD.

So why does David call Jesus LORD? When asked whose son is Jesus, the religious folks said: David. But then Jesus turns their answer around on them. He expects this answer, and he is ready to add his rebuttal. If David is Jesus' father, how does David call Jesus LORD? It doesn't work. Fathers do not call their sons LORD, unless there is some weird Jerry Springer dynamics happening. It just doesn't work.

But according to Jesus that is just what happens. David calls Jesus LORD. We all know this reality, because we stand on this side of 2000 years of history. We know the true geneology of Jesus, and we recongnize that though Jesus came from the line of David, through Joseph, Jesus' true Father, well that Father was in the beginning and will be in the end. So David is not Jesus' father, and in fact David recognizes this truth and honors the role that Jesus plays in the Kingdom of God. And this raises a challenge to us, doesn't it?

Is Jesus our LORD? What does it mean to invite and embrace the LORDship of Jesus over our lives? Does it mean that we accept salvation as a one time gift, and then we ignore all the other stuff Jesus cares about: justice, peace, love, mercy, authentic worship, choosing God over money, caring for orphans, widows, and aliens? If we embrace the LORDship of Jesus, shouldn't our churches and our lives reveal our submission to Jesus?

In the case of honoring my dad, Dan, it means i will do my best to live in a manner that makes him proud of me. Dad doesn't lord over me, but i do want to honor him because i love him. And it should be this way if we love and want to honor Jesus. We must live in a manner that honors Jesus, period. We must live in a way that pushes back against the world as is, and it invites us to live otherworldly, so that the world will know that we are His disciples. Not by our purity. Not by our dogmatic rhetoric. Not even by our salvation principles. But by our love. Amen.

Shalom,
jerry