Most people who know me are aware that I am a J. R.
Tolkien fan. I absolutely love the
Hobbit, and the trilogy, the Lord of the Rings.
One of the main characters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is a man
named Strider. He is a Ranger from the
north, tall, lanky, quiet but with a definite authority about him. He is fearless, but not a bully. The Hobbits call him Strider because of his
long legs. When he enters the story, no
one is really impressed with him. He
seems a bit suspicious, a bit strange, but he knows a lot about what is going
on in the world, and he seems much older than he is.
Many
people treat him with disrespect and disdain, but the longer this Strider is
around the more you become impressed with him.
Slowly throughout the books you learn that this weather beaten Ranger,
is actually Aragorn, the rightful heir to the Kingdom of Gondor. At the end of the book, He comes to Gondor to
claim his rightful kingdom, but the Steward of Gondor, the man who was reigning
until the rightful king should return did not want to believe that Aragorn was
that man. He wanted to hold on to his
power, he didn’t think Aragorn was worthy of the position. So there is a conflict of Kingdoms, the
Kingdom of the Stewards who had been entrusted with leading the kingdom in the
absence of the King, and the rightful King who returns to receive His
Kingdom. It’s a great picture of Jesus
coming into our world, and I’m not sure that Tolkien, a Christian, didn’t have
that in mind.
When
Jesus returned to the world He had made, He had the same kind of problem. He came off as poor, unlearned, without any
social standing and yet He was the rightful King come to inaugurate a new
Kingdom. But the people in power, the
religious leaders who considered themselves the stewards of the Kingdom didn’t
welcome Him. His authority challenged
theirs, His claims angered them. And we
see that the story of Jesus is the story of Kingdoms in Conflict. A new Kingdom is being inaugurated by Jesus,
but this new Kingdom challenges the old one, resulting in constant
conflict.
But that's not the end of the story--because we experience the same things in our lives. Each one of us are our own kingdoms, and we reign over
them, we’re the Kings and Queens of our little fiefdoms. And then along comes Jesus claiming that He
is King over us, and we balk, we hesitate, or we strike back in anger. Our kingdoms are also in conflict.
Aragorn wins his kingdom back, and so will our Lord. For us, the question we need to ask is: does Jesus have to win His kingdom back from me, or will I gladly hand it over? Am I being a good steward of the "Kingdom of Dan?" Will I give Him the keys to my kingdom? Will I truly allow Him to rule over my kingdom, or try to keep part of it back? We enter His peace when we surrender, we enter His joy when we give up what we cannot rule effectively anyway.
