Last Sunday after
Pentecost, Cp29, November 24, 2013 Christ the King
Jeremiah 23:1-6 Ps.
46
Col. 1:11-20 Luke
23:23-33
On the playground
one can find children playing all sorts of imaginative roles. Castles, kings, princesses and dragons and
monsters, and it is a delight to see them have so much fun with unreality. Perhaps it is necessary part of learning
abstract thinking; perhaps in play acting heroic roles against monsters and
dragons, they are internalizing coping patterns with real life situations. Perhaps in being a monster or a dragon it is
a way of believing that one can optimistically negotiate the situations of
one’s life.
All fine and good
for children, but what about the followers of Jesus confessing and hoping that Jesus
would be a king both when he lived and in the decades after Jesus left this
world? When adults project their
imaginations of a king upon someone who really does not look like a king what
are we to think about them? What are we
to think about the founders of our faith community? How are people to think about us as we
project kingship upon a person who is not kingly in the earthly ways of
thinking about monarchies and political power?
From the appointed Gospel of the day: “The
soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying,
"If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an
inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews." One of the criminals who were hanged there
kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah?”
The Passion Gospel
includes the mocking scorn of the kingship of Christ by the Roman soldiers and
one of the criminals crucified with Jesus.
Why would the
early Christians retain in their recited story this incident of scorn? The Passion liturgy includes an honesty about
scorn for what happens often in life.
Things of value, people of value, justice values often get
defeated. Good people get snuffed out
before their time.
The powers that be
often mock the values of love and justice.
People who believe and practice very good things often are crushed. But in the Passion of Jesus we find the agents
of the true king of Palestine, the Caesar, crushing to death one who bore the
local myth of being a king.
What this Passion
narrative reveals in an entirely counter-logic to the earthly notion of
kingship. Lord Acton once wrote, “"Power
tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” By this definition, if one believes that God
has absolute power, then God would be corrupt.
But the teaching of the kingship of Christ was a teaching about thinking
about power in a different way.
Absolute power
corrupts mainly because it must rely upon the limitation of the freedom of
others. To dominate one must shut down
the freedom of others. Limit what they
can do and what they can think not as a program of temperance or self-control
but so that the will of the one or the few can make the energy of freedom into
the energy of oppression and suppression.
The death of Jesus
on the cross literally meant that his freedom to live was taken from him. His freedom to teach and to heal was taken
from him.
What kind of king
was Jesus? And why did his early
followers persist in the belief of his kingship? Why did they continue to perform the mockery
of his kingship each time they performed a reading of the Passion narrative?
The absolute power
of God is not like the absolute power of human government. The absolute power of God is completely
permissive of the freedoms within the limits of each creature and entity. People have freedom within their
limitations. Animals have freedoms
within their limitations. Wind and weather,
flowers and rock and molecules and atoms have freedoms within their
limitations. And the absolute power of
God is permissive of all the kinds of freedom which exist.
The way in which
this absolute power of God became known and manifested in the life of Jesus was
through winsome, persuasive, charismatic love.
The followers of Jesus believed that Jesus had the power of a king; he
had the power of clemency. “Father
forgive them.” Pardon them, commute
their sentences; they do not know what they are doing.
They believed that
Jesus had the ability to usher a repentant criminal into a kingdom life called
Paradise. Today you shall be with me in
Paradise.
Whenever the
church and Christians have tried to become a kingdom of this world in a direct way,
the church and Christians have partaken of the corruption of power. Whenever the church has respected power as
propelling the energy of service, the church has best expressed the kingship of
Christ.
Today we are
invited to the irony of Christ the King.
Indeed our liturgy is like children playing on the playground because we
must become child-like to perceive the kingship of Christ in this world where
we see so much of the corrupting effects of people who have too much power.
What kind of king
says, “Blessed are the poor.” “Love your
enemy.” “If someone needs your coat,
give it to him.” “If someone hits you on
one cheek, turn the other.” The kingdom
of Christ is a totally ironic kingdom and it forces us to see our lives
differently.
I believe that the
impact of the resurrection appearances upon the lives of the disciples was so
pronounced that they believed they had evidence of a strength and a power over
death itself. Their experience of the
resurrection appearances of Jesus made the disciple confident in presenting the
narrative of the death of Jesus because they believed that kingship would be
defined by the one who triumphed over death.
The resurrection
of Christ means that it is possible for us to perceive another kind of kingdom
and another kind of living and lifestyle even as we live within the corrupting
and corruptible kingdoms of this world. As
we perceive the kingdom of Christ in our world we don’t live in naiveté about the
kingdoms of this world but we are able to receive a Spirit of peace and innocence
as a counter balance to our lives in an often harsh world of the conflict of power.
Today, you and I are invited to the kingship of
Christ and to his kingdom. We are invited
to God’s forgiveness and to the Paradise of knowing that we are ever invited to
new excellence in our lives. Let us celebrate
Christ as our king today but let us not make Christ as king in the images of typical
earthly power, let us understand the reality of the kingdom of Christ as a new creation,
as a new and peaceful way to live and serve. 
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