Christ the King
November
24, 2013
Colossians
1:11-20; Luke 22-23, selected verses
”When the hour came, he took his place at the
table, and the apostles with him. [And
here Luke offers the words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and, in
Luke’s account, this holy moment devolves almost immediately into a dispute
about rank, privilege and who’s going to occupy the top of the heap. Continuing
then …]
“But he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles
lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But
not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest,
and the leader like one who serves. For
who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not
the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. “You are those who have stood by me in
my trials; and I confer on you,
just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my
table in my kingdom.”
[Peter, always impetuous Peter, leaps to insist
on his willingness to die for Jesus, who sadly says, “Peter the cock will not
crow today before you deny even knowing me – not once, but three times.” The
familiar story unfolds: betrayal, arrest, denials, trial, the mocking crowd,
Pilate, the conviction and, finally, crucifixion. Continuing the reading, then,
to the end Jesus’ life …]
“Two others also, who were criminals, were led
away to be put to death with him. When
they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there
with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive
them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide
his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at
him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of
God, his chosen one!” 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? Save yourself and
us!” But the other rebuked him,
saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of
condemnation? And we indeed have
been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but
this man has done nothing wrong.” Then
he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today
you will be with me in Paradise.””
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
But what kind of word is this? More to the point,
on this Sunday marked on the liturgical calendar as Christ the King Sunday, what kind of king is this? Perhaps even
more pointedly, if this Christ is, indeed, in some odd way, king, lord of our
lives, potentate of time – as one hymn puts it – if this Christ is king, then
what does it mean to belong to his kingdom? In other words, if Christ is king,
then who are we?
This text seems out of time a few days before
Thanksgiving, and just before the beginning of Advent. After all, the holidays
are practically upon us and some of us are already getting out the, uh, “fun”
apparel, I think Hallmark is calling it these days.
So why drag us through the muck of the passion of
this Christ this morning?
Perhaps it’s because there’s no more urgent
message that we ever need to hear proclaimed than the ancient and simple:
Cristos curios; Christ is Lord; Christ, the King is Lord of all life.
We need to hear this, over and over and over
again, because we so seldom grasp it and, more seldom still, are we grasped by
it.
Yet it is and always has been the essence of the
faith. It’s the declaration that leads us to ask, always, in every moment, every
decision, not the simple question – what would Jesus do – but the infinitely
more challenging one: what would Jesus have us do?
We’d rather not dwell there. Instead, we’re much
more likely to ask: what have you done for me lately? That’s the question that
the crowds ask of Jesus while Pilate is trying to wash his hands of the matter.
These same crowds that shouted loud “hosannas” a few days earlier now mock
Jesus. “What have you done for us lately?” quickly becomes “why don’t you do
something now?”
That’s the question asked by the first criminal
crucified alongside Jesus. “Why don’t you save yourself and us, if you’re the
king?”
We’ve all been there – a moment of desperation,
perhaps even life-threatening, when we cry out, “God! If you are really God,
then fix this!”
The problem in this one-sided exchange is not the
desire to be saved. We all feel that sometimes, and, after all, we all need
saving. The problem lies in misunderstanding the nature of salvation and of the
one doing the saving. Ultimately, it becomes a question of power. What is the
nature of the power of this king?
Perhaps, first, in order to approach that
question we have to ask ourselves about power, and, specifically, about our own
worship of, even idolatry of power. Because we no longer live under the power of
kings and royals, this whole language of Christ the King is challenging to our
ears.
Nonetheless, as my colleague Katie Kime insisted
in a recent Christian Century piece,
“it’s crucial that we remember that the first-century in Galilee was a time of
kings and rulers, as well as a time of huge social change and upheaval. The
roots of our faith are located here, not in isolated issues of individual
piety, but rather in resistance to the idolatry of power – specifically, the
Roman Empire and Herodian Jerusalem.”[1]
We still share that idolatry of power, and, along
with its handmaidens – prestige and affluence – it shadows so much of our
lives, our politics, our vocations, our homes, our finances.
Take our political life – please! But seriously,
we imagine and long for political saviors, messiahs from the Left or the Right
who will swoop in and fix everything, with special focus on whatever most
concerns me!
Or take our vocational life – our jobs and our
work. How many times do we find ourselves looking for more power and influence?
In my line of work, it’s striving for a bigger church, a bigger pulpit, more
influence, more power in the wider church. It is so easy, in this quest, to
convince ourselves that we seek such places because we can make a bigger difference,
and sometimes that is true, but often we seek the new job because the lure of
power is so tempting.
Maybe that’s not your temptation. Perhaps you
struggle, like so many Americans, in places closer to home. I’m regularly
amazed at the statistics that show that the average size of the American house
has doubled in my lifetime while the size of the average American family is
half what it was 50 years ago. Someday we’re going to take seriously the social
and spiritual ills that have arisen in lockstep with these trends, and, when
that day comes we’ll talk about cycles of affluence with the same concern that
we talk about cycles of poverty, because so much of our idolatry of power and
prestige works its way out in our home economics.
So, take my financial life – puhlease! But,
seriously, I don’t think I’m that unusual in swinging back and forth between
the dream of someone giving me the winning lottery ticket and the equally
dreamy notion that money would solve every challenge in my life.
In most every aspect of our lives it’s not
difficult at all to see where so many of us idolize power, prestige, affluence,
and it’s often extremely difficult to discern how Christ is, in any way, lord
of life in those places.
And yet, that is precisely what we say we believe
when we proclaim Christ is lord.
The good news in all of this comes
precisely in that proclamation: Christ is lord. The good news comes as an
invitation – to gather close round places of extreme vulnerability – a manger,
a cross, a simple table, a font – and open your life to a different kind of
power.
The invitation comes – and this is
no accident – with our own season of stewardship when we are invited to
consider the gifts of our time, talents, and treasure to the mission and
ministry of this particular congregation. As I’ve often said, such giving is
not about changing the world, it’s about changing my own life.
That’s why, when I think of power in
terms of Jesus, I think of small places. This will sound, at first,
contradictory because I’m going to name a couple of incredibly famous people,
but when I think of the power of God at work in the world I think of Martin
Luther King and of Mother Theresa. Theresa is a Saint, with a capital S. King
has a monument on the National Mall. But they both did much of their work, gave
much of themselves, from places and positions of extreme vulnerability with
nothing that the world would define as power.
Theresa, a woman who struggled with
deep and almost paralyzing religious doubt, ministered among the most vulnerable
people in the entire world, and, in that work, showed the entire world about
the power of compassion. King, a man bedeviled by doubt, despair and his own
demons, began his ministry in a church no larger than this one, and from a
fellowship hall smaller than our own launched a movement that changed the world
simply by exercising the power of love.
There are so many others who have
followed the call of the one in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Now
that call echoes in our ears. Called in love, to love, for the sake of the
world, we are sent out in joy to follow Christ the king into the least likely
places imaginable to be instruments in the endless work of reconciling
ourselves and our world to God.
It doesn’t take a huge platform or a
huge budget to change the world; it takes love and the willingness to risk all
for the sake of the prince of peace, the lord of life. Stewardship is about
changing the world, one life at a time – beginning with each of us, as we sort
out what it is that Jesus would have us do with the time, talents and treasure
we have been given.
posted by David Ensign at
6:59 AM
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