Christ the King, 11/24/2024

Texts: Revelations 1:4-8, John 18:33-37
Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Having just come out of an election, I believe that Christ the King Sunday could not be more timely. When we think about the process of electing leaders and of giving power to someone, often the question is “Who is worthy?”. And then we imagine the qualities we think those at the top should have. Often, the world puts forward candidates, or it drifts toward those who correspond to qualities like being strong, powerful, controlled, authoritative, victorious, aggressive, calculating, the list goes on. Those crowned king or elected leaders, they fulfill this need in people to have someone that can provide them with a sense of control of the world around them. Unfortunately, we also project our inward need for God into these people. We enthrone them in our lives, we idolize and identify with them, and so we replace the One who is truly Sovereign. Often, these leaders do not lead us into more life, but rather they are mirrors of our own sins. Our penchant to idolize, to enthrone other human beings to such high degrees, curtails our sense of reality, the fact that these leaders we crown are also human beings like us, who also are dust to dust. Something very disconcerting in this political moment, is to witness fellow siblings in the faith, rejecting the downward way of Jesus Christ for another that is ill-called “Christian”, of which the fruits of their actions reflect nothing of the lordship of Christ. In many Christian groups in the US today, Christ seems to be King in name only, as they play power and politics and feel the license to insult, manipulate, control and even harm in the name of Jesus. How far that is from what the Kingship of Christ really is and what we are called to do by having Jesus as our Lord. So it is essential for us to recapture, in a spirit of repentance, of what it means to follow Jesus as Lord and King. Why do we celebrate Christ the King? We should even ponder if even the word “King” really captures what Jesus’ reign is all about. And I would like to thank Phoebe for the wonderful theological resource on this topic.

We heard read today from John’s Gospel, how Pilate interrogates Jesus, asking Him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” To which Jesus does not give any direct answer to, for the Kingdom that Jesus speaks of is not “of this world”, meaning, it is not like the world thinks of Kings and Power. It does not belong to this world, and case in point, Jesus remarks that precisely because of this, His followers are not waging war against anybody, for this Kingdom that is arriving is not a worldly Kingdom. Jesus even alludes to a slight rejection of being named king on Pilate’s terms, “You say that I am a king”, but Jesus has come into the world to testify to the truth, and anyone who confesses the truth listens and follows Him. So as Pilate would ask, “What is Truth”? Jesus comes to usher a Kingdom that is rooted in the truth of what exactly? And this is where Jesus turns everything upside down. For if Jesus is in fact “King”, He manifests something so utterly different that changes the paradigm of how human beings think about power and control. Even more so, these two obsessions of humanity, are cast aside and we are given something greater.

So what are we given by this Truth of God that Jesus has come to testify to? What is God’s Kingdom all about, which Christ ushers in? What does it make of us? This Kingdom, which is not of this world, should firstly not be interpreted simply as spiritual escapism, to say that the Kingdom is our reward after death. The Kingdom is something already active in the world, slowly growing in our midst, within the life of every person in this community. It is God shaping us in the image of Christ’s life through our baptism, we become new creation and bear in the here and now, the fruits of the Kingdom of God. Our common life of forgiveness, reconciliation, love and mercy despite our weakness, despite everything within our very selves, testify to something at work in our lives that points to the future of God’s desire. So the Kingdom of God is not of this world, in so far as it distinguishes itself from every other Kingdom the world has ever produced. The Kingdoms of this world are mostly exclusive, they trade within borders and jurisdictions, they subsist on inequality, and daily the violence of the state is on display in the sufferings of the least and marginalized of society. But when Jesus comes in divine sovereignty, He displays it in ways the world cannot comprehend. He is a king without subjects, for He rather calls His followers as friends. He calls them to ways of living that do not entail to hold power over others, but rather to embrace and love our neighbors as ourselves. When entering into Jerusalem, He could have come as the world expected, in a war horse alongside pomp and circumstance, instead He mounted the humble donkey. Jesus overturns the hierarchy of power at every turn, washing His disciple’s feet, humbling Himself, standing with and not standing over the people. When He calls with His Truth, we learn of this great gift that is the Gospel, that God so loved the World that He gave His only Son, so that ALL may be saved, that All may receive the gift of life over death, that All may be One with Him in the unity of love and mercy. Ultimately, the crowning moment of Jesus’ Lordship is not a throne and scepter, it is not a waving sword clamoring for blood, it is not a fist that calls to fight His enemies; it is the Cross, the ultimate surrender, the ultimate sharing in our human condition. If we judged Jesus as King from the standards of the world, then He would be considered a failure. He had no armies, no victories and lands and riches to call His own. He died on the Cross, an instrument of humiliation. Yet, in this moment of supposed defeat, God marked the end of death. By sharing with us in perfect solidarity, and by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, God has poured out His will of life that overcomes death. No longer do the old categories matter, the old structures have passed away, God has begun a new thing, a new creation, a new way of relating and community that is entirely centered on a love that goes to the uttermost depth. No one is left behind, we are all caught up in this wide embrace of God’s grace found in Jesus Christ.

And so we become friends and collaborators of this Strange “King”, who became one of us, and in turn made us One with Him. We are citizens of God’s Kingdom, no matter where we are. And this Kingdom that we can only glimpse at the moment, shines its light in our common life as it is led by God’s spirit of loving communion, justice, and mercy. When we pray for God in Jesus Christ to reign in our midst, we are asking for the oppressed to be liberated, for the hierarchies to be torn down, for the poor to be filled, for the sick to be healed, for the homeless to find a home, for the lonely to be in community and belonging, for the migrant to be welcomed, for the hungry to be given something to eat; for if there is something that as friends and followers of Jesus we shall be known by, it is by our love. It is a Love that comes because God is Sovereign in this wholly other and radical way. Therefore, beloved, we are called to pledge our allegiance to the Truth, the truth of this Jesus that has radically oriented everything to its true purpose, that of God’s love, justice and mercy to be an ever flowing stream of life for the world. Let us pray.