By Ajung Sojwal

“…the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
–Matt. 20:28

Most people these days have a visceral reaction to the word, “Lord,” including me. For that matter, Jesus too seemed to have had problems with the use and understanding of what or who a lord is. In one of the gospel stories, his disciples jockey around him for positions of power to which Jesus said to them,  “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:25-28).

The vision of Jesus on a throne with a crown on his head and a scepter in his hand exposes most our embarrassing lack of imagination, and the real problem of a distorted view of the person and work of Jesus with and in us. Mind you, this distorted view of Jesus has been there right from the beginning of his ministry, which we happen to see today in the rise of Christian Nationalism in America. If we take the time to prayerfully discern and make the effort to peel away every human imposition on Jesus, there may yet be hope for us to unshackle the lordship of Jesus in our lives from the heavy burden of appeasing him, which, by the way, he is addressing with his disciples in the passage above.

It is a matter of daily wrestling with my faith in the person and work of Jesus that I am slowly beginning to understand that Jesus as Lord in my life is about him taking the initiative toward me. There is a joyous sense of freedom to see Jesus as the one who comes to me, who seeks me out, for whom lordship isn’t about conquest and domination but about making God’s unconditional love real for me and in me. To embrace this initiative taking Jesus as Lord is to know I am set free from every twisted notion of a God who needs to be defended, to be placated or to be put on a man-made throne.

It is hubris to imagine Jesus needs me to affirm him as lord! And, it is a death trap to believe Jesus as Lord is to do with making sure I am not offending him. The lordship of Jesus in all four gospels isn’t about conquest of any kind, it is about the Lord of abundant life taking the initiative to bring about salvation for us from our strive for lordship over one another, lordship over ideology, and even for lordship over whose image of God is more true. 

Nowadays I feel the need to pray, “Jesus, save me from my own beliefs!” 

Ajung Sojwal is the Priest-in-Charge of All Saint’s Episcopal Church, Palo Alto, CA. Ajung and her husband moved to the Bay Area after serving for many years in churches in the New York, Connecticut and New Jersey area. Ajung is passionate about conversing and learning to engage in community as the incarnational Body of Christ in a suffering world.