Christ the King 2025

Sermon: Christ the King 2025

Texts: Luke 23:33-43, Colossians 1:11-20, Jeremiah 23

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

As you probably have noticed for some time, I begin my sermons by saying the prayer I just said, that we should receive the gifts that come from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Today, the last day of the Christian year before we head back to the beginning of the Christian story, we celebrate precisely the fact that as Christians we render honor to only one Lord and Savior. The only one that can give us these things that we yearn for, grace, peace, and mercy. But in the world that we live in, perhaps now more than ever, our attention is pulled apart by the clamoring of many lords who seek our loyalty, who claim to give what they cannot even give themselves. We live in the age of influencers, everybody wants you to follow them and do as they do. The market has a leadership surplus, whether we agree or not as to the quality of the leaders. But Christians, for the longest time, although not always practiced, make the radical affirmation that this whole kings and leaders business is passé, a thing of the world that is passing away. As Christians we render our loyalty to one eternal king, who’s reign shall never end and whose kingdom of love is ever approaching. As Christians there is only one Lord who showed us a different way to exist in this world, to live out an existence that is rooted in being there for others. As Christians, our sense of leadership and kingship is different than the world’s, for the One we consider as king is a different kind of King. Christ as King is so distinct, that how Jesus exerts His kingship is not even recognized by the kings of this world. Jesus’ kingship is not exerted by domination or tyranny, it is not based on power, wealth, status, or fame. His kingship is expressed in service, humility, solidarity, love, mercy, and ultimately, on

that shameful death on a cross. His claim to authority is in submitting perfectly to the Will of God, the path of love, which led Him to the point of being crucified by the kings of this world. And that acceptance of His service to all of us, opened the door for the reorientation of the whole world. His Resurrection, being the eternal Yes of God to the life of Jesus, an affirmation that One such as this Jesus is how the world is returned to its original goodness.

The way of kings in this world is unfortunately often marked by violence. The prophet Jeremiah decried such “shepherds” who “destroy and scatter the sheep” of the Lord. The prophet reveals that God stands against these rulers who do not tend to the people’s needs and instead drive them away with their faithlessness. There is then this promise at the center, in which the Lord will gather together His people under Himself and bring justice to them. While we readily accept the violence of kings as part of human nature, as the consequences of ruling, God wants to broaden our perspective. He wants us to see that our lives are not meant for this hierarchy we have created. Our lives are meant to exist safely within the presence of justice, in the embrace of community, and being in trusting relationship with God and neighbor.

In the many ways that the rulers of this world have failed to achieve this justice, God has taken matters into His own hands. In the face of Jesus Christ, He has revealed how God is, and therefore How He rules. And what He has done is that He has liberated us from the games and schemes of the kings of this world. Paul says as much in his letter to the Colossians: “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” By letting us share in the life of the Kingdom of God through Jesus, we no

longer need to cling to the kingdoms of this world with the violence that we do. We can see them in their right place, as a belonging that can never supersede the demands of love and justice that spring from being called Children of God. And how great does God expand our imaginations, for through Him we can claim a universal belonging, that in Christ’s love and rulership over all things, we can shed borders away and instead act out the belovedness of God when before we enforced the divisions. Paul continues in his great hymn to the rulership of Christ: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things”. What does it mean then, beloved, to be a people transferred from darkness into Christ’s light? To exist within the reconciliation of all things in Christ? Take note of the implications beloved. In this human face of Jesus, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him all things were reconciled. That means that all those hatreds we bore, all the exclusions and mistrust need no longer hold power. That also means, that we can see through the lies that the kings of this world often peddle against our neighbors. How can it then be true, that a child of God for whom Christ died for, who stands within the embrace of Christ the King, how can we think any less about a neighbor? Christ as King of our lives allows us to see the world in a new light. We have a new relationship to the world rooted in the mercy and peace of God. Imagine the possibilities of such a perspective! We know that when Christians apply themselves under Christ’s rulership, amazing things have happened, even though the world might consider it foolish. How Christians are able to love and care beyond borders, how we transcend the limitations of our little identities, and instead embrace the world with a God-sized love for it! To be led by love therefore

revolutionizes how power is viewed in this world. True power resides in love and mercy and gentleness and trust, and forgiveness, and welcome. True power is to uplift your neighbor, not put them down. True power is to recognize your beloved smallness within the grandeur of all that exists by God’s grace. True power is to take up your cross and carry it, with patience and joy for the sake of justice and love. Such is the Way that Jesus lived.

Truly, nothing hones more powerfully the meaning of a “different kind of King” than the story of Jesus ‘crucifixion which we heard in Luke’s gospel today. How much those with worldly power mocked him, flaunted their power over Him, tried to crush Him and assert themselves over Him. “Save yourself! If you truly are a king!” “Use your power!” “Speak to us in a language we understand, use violence!” Yet, Jesus on the cross would not assert His kingship based on violence and strength. He would not assert His power as dominion over his abusers. He’s a different kind of king. Jesus demonstrated on the cross, upon that hill of death, the unbreakable and indomitable power of God’s Love and Mercy. The incoming victory of life was at the other side of this ultimate solidarity with those brought low. Jesus’ kingship is on the side of life that refuses to break down to the temptations of violence: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” For God, mercy is more powerful than destruction. Grace more abounding than hatred. His desire for life more ardent than death. The powerful of this world are shown to be ignorant. They think they know what life is about, but they really don’t know. They are so enslaved by sin and death, Jesus can only feel sadness and compassion for them, for how awfully they have missed the mark. How much does God wish that these wayward shepherds, these

brutal people, to turn away from their sin. The crucified Jesus is an eternal testament that this is the result of our waywardness. This is humanity under violence. But Jesus shows us His different way. He shows us that humanity need not live in the way that crucifies the innocent. He shows us that God as only Lord means universal fellowship in humanity.

There are two voices that are crucified alongside Jesus. I believe the church often speaks through both condemned men. As Christians, we live under the shadow of the cross, and we should not be surprised to be confronted with the many crosses life raises for us, we have our life through what happened to the Crucified Jesus. Our Easter faith is always going through the crucible of the cross. So the church, as it follows this different kind of king, when the cross inevitably finds us, we often respond through the voices of these two men. Often, our Lord Jesus does not act as our worldly logic dictates. Often King Jesus does not sign an executive order to do as we think the world should be, even if those ideals are high and mighty. Often, we begrudge our Lord Jesus precisely because He is not like the kings of this world, because He does not waltz into the city triumphantly on a horse with an army behind Him, like Ceaser and force and manipulate people to act as we want them to act. “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” we say. We must be careful when our thoughts stray like that. One thing is to thirst for justice, another is to forget oneself entirely by the allure of power. In such moments, the church has often abandoned Jesus on the cross, have given up their faith, and instead have given themselves up to those shepherds who scatter and kill. When we reject our Crucified King, when we lose sight of Him, we then put our trust in the mechanisms of violence, in systems that

crucify more people than they save. We think wrongly that if power was in our hands, that we would make the church greater than what King Jesus is able to through the weakness of the cross, through the vulnerability of love and compassion, through the accompaniment of the least of these and the poor. It is when the church has forgotten this that they’ve given themselves to the barbarisms of dictators, or even worse, the church itself becoming authoritarian. In that moment, we are no longer Christ’s church, we are simply another earthly kingdom passing away, mistrustful of an all embracing love for the whole world, even the world that rejects it. Christ’s reign knows that only love is able to save, only love can open the avenues of belonging, only love can respect the divine image that resides in every human person.

And so, we are left with that other voice. A humbler one, one who knows their sin, who knows their limits, who can still see innocence, one who can still ache with solidarity. This thief of heaven, as some have called him, realizes that without mercy, without compassion, there is no Kingdom, no Paradise. Here is a voice that has not lost his touch with what is right, he recognizes that the one being crucified alongside him, is the One who saves. Not by any contrived scheme, but by the integrity of His love. He knows that his fading life has only one lifeline, that of God’s mercy. And so he stakes his everything in that advocacy for the Crucified One. He stakes his faith in that whoever God is, He is this One beside him, and that He can only say “Remember Me”, rule according to your steadfast love, O God. That “Remember me”, has so much power beloved. When the church knows that Jesus is Lord, when the church trusts Jesus, it can put its life peacefully in the hands of Jesus. Knowing that in whatever Jesus is doing, knowing that in this humble way of love, only there is salvation. Jesus’

answer, “Today” not tomorrow, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise”, is the response to the church that sees Him as He reveals Himself. That is Jesus’ response to us, fellow thieves of Paradise, that we put our trust in this different kind of King. And that beloved, makes all the difference. When we recognize power as something belonging to God alone, when we know that we are simply fellow siblings in Christ, called to represent the Kingdom through Jesus’ way of radical compassion for the poor and outcast, then we can see all things in their right light. Whatever power is available to us, it is for love’s sake, in the name of Jesus. It is power that is not retained or accumulated but given up for the life of the neighbor. That is the way of King Jesus. One that gave everything up, one who suffered all, so that His all encompassing goodness could be available to all, so that all might live, and live abundantly. That is the platform no earthly kingdom can replicate, and so we put our trust in the daily outpouring of God’s grace and mercy. Thanks be to God, that we are not called to fight over crowns and seats. Thanks be to God, that we are simply called to love and care for the world in the measure that we are cared for by God: tenaciously. Let us pray: