The Real Kingship of Christ by The Rev. Donald L. Hamer, Rector
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Trinity Episcopal Church
Feast of Christ the King – November 24, 2013
By The Rev. Donald L. Hamer, Rector
Luke 23:33-43
My first recollection of thinking of Christ as a King was as a child in another Christian tradition. I remember it as a very special event, with gold vestments and lots of decoration, much as one would experience for the coronation of a new monarch or a royal wedding. I envisioned Jesus sitting on a throne of gold, wearing a crown and holding a scepter in his hand, presiding over some grand room with marble floors and pillars and throngs of admiring servants, administrators and subjects gathered around, attentive to his every act and word. And to listen to most of the passage from Colossians this morning, that is the kind of image conveyed.
There’s only one problem with that vision. It’s a fantasy. It was a figment of my imagination. And it was not rooted in anything that anyone ever saw Jesus say or do.
Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last day of the season after Pentecost and the final day of the church year. There is a reason we as Episcopalians celebrate a liturgical year – a cycle in which, on a yearly basis, we remember the time before Jesus was born, the events of his life and finally, after Easter and Pentecost, the long period since Jesus’ time in which the church has attempted to live out and further the mission for which Jesus came in the first place. And so on this Sunday we look not only to the reign of Christ in Heaven; we also look to his model of leadership and Kingship which he provided during his life and finally on a cross on a hill outside Jerusalem called Golgotha.
And that model of kingship was radically different from anything the world had seen before. It was a kingship that involved identifying not with those in the traditional power structure but those who were traditionally on the outside of the walls of power, the margins of society. It was a kingship that was marked by feeding the hungry, attending to the sick and dying, giving light to those who lived in darkness, providing hope to people who had no hope. He modeled to the authorities an alternate picture of what life in this world might be like.
His model of kingship so unnerved the religious and secular authorities of the time that they thought he was dangerous – a threat to the existing order that served them so well. When they couldn’t overcome him with words, they determined he had to die, and so they conspired against him – the religious and the secular, hand in hand – to put him to the most humiliating and torturous of deaths, the death of a criminal.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus speaks three times from the cross. The first time, he speaks to his Father asking him to forgive the very people who have conspired against him. The second is the dialogue between Jesus and the two thieves who hang on either side of him. And the third is Jesus final word to his Father as he turns over his mortal life in God’s hands.
Let’s look at that dialogue for a moment and see what it tells us about the kingship of Christ. At the beginning of today’s passage, when Jesus had uttered words of forgiveness, the leaders and the soldiers surrounding him scoffed and said, “If you are the messiah, the King of the Jews, then save yourself. Come down off that cross.” The first thief picks up on this theme, challenging Jesus’ identity. “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
This challenge from the leaders, the soldiers and the thief are really a temptation, similar to the temptations presented to Jesus by Satan in the wilderness following his baptism. In those temptations, Satan challenged Jesus to turn stones into bread, and to throw himself off the Temple as proof that God’s angels would bear him up and save him from harm. This challenge on the cross is no different – it tempts Jesus into being someone he is not, into doing something that it not a part of who he is or why he took on a mortal body. It tempts him to be an entertainer, a miracle worker, a magician – one who is willing to amaze and strike awe for the sake of meeting the expectations of others.
But that is not the type of King that Jesus is. Jesus spent a lifetime talking about the kingdom of God and what it looks like. Listen to just some of the things he says and try to find the pattern:
In Mt. 21:1-30, Jesus tells a story of a son who says he is going to do what his father asks but doesn’t, and a second son who initially refuses to do what his father asks but ultimately does it. It is the second son, Jesus says, who is faithful – actions are more important than words. It is he who will enter the kingdom of heaven. He repeats the same admonition in Mt. 21:43, telling his listeners that the kingdom of God is for those who produce the fruits of the kingdom, not those who waste them or use them only for themselves.
In Mark 4:30 Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, which while it is the tiniest of seeds, grows into the greatest of all shrubs. Jesus is telling that from a very little can come great things in God’s kingdom. In Mark 10:14 he says that the kingdom of God will be for people who can approach God like little children, open and willing to accept. In Luke 6:20 Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” In Luke 9:2 and 9:11, Jesus sends out his disciples to proclaim the kingdom of God by serving and by healing, as he does himself with those gathered around him. Later in Luke 10, Jesus connects his own presence and the presence of his disciples with “the kingdom of God coming near.” In Luke 13:21, Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a woman adding yeast to three measures of flour. Jesus is teaching us that in the kingdom of God things that alone are quite ordinary can work together to make something wonderful.
In Luke 17:35, following the cleansing of the ten lepers, Jesus tells a group of Pharisees, “‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’ And finally, the entire chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel tells about the values in the kingdom of God: Recovery of a single lost sheep even at the risk of 99 others; the joy over the finding of a lost coin; the celebration over the return of a son who had left home and squandered his own inheritance.
Do you see a pattern here? Jesus’ whole life and ministry is a prelude to the interchange between him and the second thief. What does the second thief see in Jesus that the other’s don’t see? We don’t know. But he doesn’t ask Jesus for a miracle, he doesn’t ask Jesus to save him. All he is says is, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And the last words that Jesus speaks to another person during his lifetime are, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
As we look at the life and the death of Jesus, he reveals the elements of his kingship. It involves looking past our own failures and forming a relationship based not on our merit but on his own goodness and love. It involves a risk in casting our lot with a savior who refuses to save himself; it involves recognizing opportunities to further God’s desire to draw the entire world into unity. It involves believing that people are better than their failures, and that God is willing to look past the sins of our youth or even our last days. It involves looking past that which is staring us in the face and looking forward to the possibilities of what
might be. Jesus is a king who asks us not to adore him, but to follow him where he leads.
We might say that those who participated in Jesus execution – the secular and religious leaders, the soldiers, those who mocked him, the first thief who chided him – all of these people lived in ordinary time, limited by their own circumstances and lack of vision and petty self-interests, where the powers of violence and greed and death have the last word. The second thief, however, lives already in the Reign of Christ. May God bless us with his faith, and help us to remember that through our baptism, we are the ones chosen to continue to Jesus’ work as we too are summoned to the Kingdom of God, and to bring it ever closer in our own time. AMEN.