The Reign of Christ

I have a rare Sunday off and did not write a sermon for today, The Last Sunday of Pentecost, also known as "Christ the King" Sunday. These days I prefer to call it The Reign of Christ,. But I've left the sermon below, preached on November 22, 2004, at St. Francis Church in Holden, unedited. I think the themes are still relevant, even if there are no doubt some things I'd say differently today than I did fifteen years ago.  

Today we celebrate the feast of “Christ the King.” But what does it mean for us, as Christians, to say that we worship a king, a king who was executed as an enemy of the state? In a nutshell, that is the great paradox of our faith.

Most of the images and language we use in our worship today—including the hymns—point us toward the future. Our focus is on the culmination of human history, a focus that will continue next weekend on the First Sunday of Advent. That is, we look toward Christ’s victorious return, in glory, to set things right: to the time when every knee shall bend and proclaim Jesus as Lord, and he sets the captives free, and subdues the powers of this world once and for all. That is all about the power of God.

Yet even while we look toward that day, the gospel appointed for today is a Good Friday text, from Luke 23:33-43. It calls our attention not to the Second Coming, but the end of the first one. We are at the place of a skull, Calvary or Golgatha, where this “king of the Jews” is executed between two criminals, one to his right and another on his left. Here the cry, “hail, king of the Jews” is not a cry of the faithful, but an abusive taunt from an angry mob. The crown of thorns on his head has been put there to mock him, not worship him. And yet this plea, from one of the criminals: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Remember me.

So what is this “kingdom?” Too often as Christians we don’t pay enough attention to the ways that Jesus is such a different kind of king than we are used to. Too often we tend to hear these words as if we are talking about a completely different reality from this world, some heavenly realm high above us that is separate from this world where we live and move and have our being.

That can lead to two very different responses when we think about how that kingdom connects to the kingdoms of this world. Some (and they can be found both on the left and on the right) think it is their job to bring their version of Christian power to bear on the world. The thing is that has been tried in Christian history, as in the Holy Roman Empire. Unfortunately when Christians had all the power, they misused it as much as any other kings. The crusades and the inquisition bear witness to the fact that power can corrupt Christians as much as it corrupts anyone.

On the other end of the spectrum is an entirely different approach, one that keeps “heaven” and “earth” as far apart as possible. Faith becomes privatized and spiritualized, a matter only for an hour or so each week. A “wall of separation” develops within us that leads to a kind of spiritual schizophrenia. We can be pious in church, and “realists” in the workplace. Some people would call that hypocrisy

Is there a way beyond that impasse? I think the answer is found if we are willing to reflect on the true meaning of this day and in what it means to call Christ our “king” and our “lord,” as loaded as those words are. To make this claim is to put Jesus first in our lives. That begins as a personal faith claim: Jesus is my lord. But it is also about seeing how Christ is working in the world, how he is lord not only of our lives but "king" of all creation.

What I think needs to change is our understanding of power. We need to hear “king” and “lord” without thinking of medieval British monarchs, even legendary ones like King Arthur who use might for right. We need to let go of our modern version of that—the superhero—who always wins. Jesus lived in a time when he had his own version of that same archetype, the Roman Caesars who could control just about everything.

But when Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God, he doesn’t point to Rome or medieval England or to Superman. Instead, he talks about mustard seeds. Remember? How the tiniest of seeds, watered and nurtured and pruned can become something much larger than anyone could possibly imagine. He tells stories about finding something of great value—like a pearl—and knowing that it matters more than anything else in our lives—so you sell all you have to have it. He reveals the Kingdom of God every time he kisses a leper clean, or makes a blind man see, or speaks with a woman at a well and validates her as a human being. He reveals the Kingdom of God in our very midst whenever the hungry are fed.

Notice how all of the stories about the Kingdom of God are taken from the “real” world. They aren’t synagogue or church language. They are taken from people’s daily lives. They are stories about food, and health, and abundant life—stories about what God is doing in people’s lives. About how the world is sometimes turned upside down and the poor are blessed and the hungry are filled and the naked are clothed.

Those things continue to happen, if we only have eyes to see. If you want to see the Kingdom of God breaking in, then go to the Mustard Seed in Worcester or help out with food distribution at the Wachusett Food pantry. Or spend some time around a Habitat for Humanity work site, or explore mission work with our youth, or at Heifer Project International. That is the work of the Kingdom of God—the work where Christ is still alive and is king of kings and lord of lords. 

Jesus points us toward the world and says “bring good news there.” And then be amazed when amazing things begin to happen. Jesus holds a child before him and says, “do you get it yet?...can you see the world through the eyes of this child?...for until you do, you will not understand the Kingdom of God.” 

So I ask you, with all these kids around here in church school and youth group…are we paying attention to the good news they have to share with us here? Are we seeing ourselves, and our community, through their eyes?

This is Christ the King Sunday. But our “king” comes among us as one who serves. Our “king” dies on a cross. That reveals a very different way to think about power. It is as one preacher (William Sloan Coffin, Jr.) has put it, not about the “love of power, but the power of love.” It’s about God’s power to heal, God’s power to transform, God’s power to forgive and to redeem. Where those things are happening, there is Christ, our king and our God, making all creation new again. There the kingdom, like yeast is making the bread rise, and like salt is giving food its taste.

Christian communities like this one exist to keep that reality alive in a dog-eat-dog world. We are called to love one another, as Christ has loved us. That can sound too easy, until you actually try to love people who drive you crazy and act in some pretty unloveable ways. It’s only easy until someone hurts you. Then those primitive responses kick in: fight or flight. But Jesus, our king, points to a third way: to forgive. Because only forgiveness unlocks the capacity to love again.

So we gather again at the foot of the cross, where Jesus forgives the soldiers who mocked and killed him. Where Jesus forgives the religious authorities who betrayed him and turned him over to the Romans because he unsettled their doctrinal certitude. Where Jesus forgives criminals. Where Jesus forgives you and me. In so doing he opens up another way to live in this world, revealing a kingdom not of this world, but one that we do get glimpses of here and now. If only we have eyes to see.

Truly this is a different kind of king. Truly this is a king worthy of dominion and honor and praise, of our glad and joyful hearts, of our lives, until the kingdom really does come on earth as in heaven.