The Reign of Christ the King Sunday

November 24, 2019

The Reign of Christ the King Sunday

Luke 23:33-43

Does anyone here remember 1925?  Show of hands…I personally do not and I didn’t think anyone here did either.  It was 55 years prior to my birth.  But a lot of things happened in 1925:  we had not been clear of World War 1 for long at this point, and Adolf Hitler, who had been incarcerated, was released from prison and promptly held a rally proclaiming the relaunch of the Nazi party.  The Great Gatsby and An American Tragedy were both published.  Calvin Coolidge was inaugurated as the 30^th President of the United States.  John Scopes was arrested and found guilty for teaching the theory of evolution in Dayton, TN.  Something else happened in 1925 as well that you may not be as familiar with.

Today is the last day of Year C in our liturgical calendar.  Today is The Reign of Christ Sunday, or Christ the King Sunday.  When we think of the lectionary and things in the church calendar, most of us thing of medieval times and of all things, old; or, at least I do.  Christ the King Sunday came to us in 1925, not even 100 years ago, and was instituted by Pope Pius XI during a time of great unrest and anxiety in our world.  Today we celebrate this Sunday as the last Sunday of the lectionary or liturgical calendar. 

Christ the King…that’s something we affirm with our praying, our hymns, and the exposition of scripture, but I often wonder if you and I as western people actually know what we are saying and if we actually do affirm Christ as our King.  Because, we as western people, we as people who were born here in the United States, have lived here our entire lives, who were born to parents who were born here and lived here their whole lives…we are a people who live in a land that was founded on a unified principle:  NO MORE KINGS.  The people who signed the Declaration of Independence did so for that very reason and declared we would no longer be under the rule of a monarch.  So, it’s no wonder that we might be somewhat jammed up on this subject, being that we have no idea what it’s like to be ruled by a King or Queen.  So, for the rest of this sermon, for simplicity and understanding, I want to put us in the mindset of “ruler” or “politician” (although not orthodox, this is the closest to our perspective that we will attain).

When I take this personal perspective and marry it with the lectionary texts today, I want to say that I’m a little confused.  This is Christ the King Sunday and we view kings as all powerful, all ruling, and all controlling, but this morning’s text is anything but royal.  In Luke’s Gospel, we are reminded of the suffering of Christ at his gruesome death.  We are very familiar with this account.  Here we have this man who we refer to as our King, Jesus, who has been beaten near to death at this point.  He has been forced to carry his instrument of torture and death to the place his life would be taken from him, and there he has been hung between two criminals.  He had committed no crime, he had done nothing wrong, but he would pay the ultimate price.  As he hung there awaiting death, those that surrounded him mocked him.  They gambled for who would own the soon dead king’s clothes.  They ceremoniously dressed him in a purple robe, the placed a crown on his head made of thorns, and they placed a sign on his cross, displaying his identity:  The King of the Jews.  All of this, of course, being paradoxically done to psychologically break the one whom they tortured.  One of the criminals hung with him joined in their mocking, hurling sarcastic insults. 

The biggest question I had at the beginning of exploring this text was, why are we juxtaposing the Kingship of Christ with the crucifixion of Christ? 

Because Jesus rules by example.  Because Jesus shows us the way in lieu of telling us the way.  Because in the crucifixion of Christ, our preconceived notions of power are shattered. 

During his short time on earth, Jesus taught us many, many things; things that he continues to teach us through his death.  Jesus lived a life that demonstrated submitting to violence over committing violence.  He taught us forgiveness in portions that stretch our capacity.  He taught us to invite vulnerability and not exploit it.  He taught us many things that you and I don’t exactly correlate to power.  And that’s the point.

Jesus continued to undermined this preconception of power by doing something else; he interceded for those who were mocking and torturing him, and asked for forgiveness, because they knew not what they were doing.  They knew not what they were doing.  They truly had no idea.  Whether they had been swept up in the frenzy of the moment, or they truly wanted Jesus dead, he asked that this not be held against them.  He asked God to look upon them with grace. 

To bring this somewhat into the contemporary, I started thinking about the person and persons who “rule” our country…our politicians.  So, I immediately started thinking about the debates, both in recent time and previous.  Those that we look to rule us, to guide us, and to govern us, I saw nothing in their behavior that resembles the example we are given in Luke today.  Instead, what I and many of us see, is self-serving politics, self-fulfilling agendas, and the exploitation of vulnerability.  I’m not picking on a particular politician, a particular party, or a particular agenda; these are generalized statements, and these are the people we pick to rule over us.

So, then, what does it look like for us to pledge our allegiance to a king who does what Jesus does?

Then, in what is one of the very few beautiful moments in this gruesome picture of horror being played out on the stage of Jesus’ life, he received confession from one of the men who hung with him and invited him to be with him in paradise.  I think this image came at just the right time in our lives as we prepare for Thanksgiving this week.  If you’re traveling for Thanksgiving instead of everyone traveling to you, well, congratulations.  But, if you’re one who is hosting this traditional meal, there’s one thing we all worry about:  room.  Do we have enough space for everyone, do we have enough chairs for everyone (or, at least this is the worry for my very large family).  Every year something happens like clockwork, and that’s the leaf for the table comes out of the closet and a few people wrestle with pulling the table apart, which is inevitably stuck since it hasn’t been opened up since this time last year, and we put the leaf in, enabling a few more people to come to the table. 

What it looks like to pledge our allegiance to a ruler that does what Jesus does is to serve a master who always has another leaf to go in the table, a king who invites everyone to the great banquet and has a place set for every single one of us.  Thanks be to God.