Jeremiah 23:1-6
Luke 23:33-43
On Christ the King Sunday we celebrate and
remember that Christ had many roles and functions, and that one of them is as
King, King of us, King of creation, King of all. But the underlying question is, Who is this
Christ? Who is this king?
When we think of royalty, when we think
about rulers of any kind, we have certain visions in our minds. We have certain understandings of the kind of
strength, power, and authority that it takes to lead a world, a country, a
state, a city.
But always, always, when it comes
to God, when it comes to Christ, we are handed a vision and understanding that
does not, and frankly cannot, be
anything like what we think. In order
to understand this king, I think it can be helpful to return to our
original Biblical stories of what a ruler and king are.
The Hebrew people were told, from the
beginning, that God was their God. They
were told that because of who God is, God’s strong presence in their lives,
God’s overarching leadership and most of all, God’s amazing and faithful love,
that the Hebrew people needed no other ruler, no other guide. But the Israelites were scared. They were scared to be a nation without a
clear leadership who could defend them, lead them into battle, show them as a
united and strong people. They insisted,
they asked for a ruler. God gave them
judges, people who could help them make decisions and interpret right from
wrong. But again, these were not what
the people wanted. They were
afraid. They didn’t believe they could
rely on God alone against other nations.
We hear the rest of this story in the book of 1st Samuel, chapter
8. “Now when Samuel got old, he appointed his
sons to serve as Israel’s judges. 2 The name of his oldest son
was Joel; the name of the second was Abijah. They served as judges in
Beer-sheba. 3 But Samuel’s sons didn’t follow in his footsteps.
They tried to turn a profit, they accepted bribes, and they perverted justice. 4 So
all the Israelite elders got together and went to Samuel at Ramah. 5 They
said to him, “Listen. You are old now, and your sons don’t follow in your
footsteps. So appoint us a king to judge us like all the other nations have.” 6 It
seemed very bad to Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us,” so he
prayed to the Lord. 7 The Lord answered Samuel, “Comply with
the people’s request—everything they ask of you—because they haven’t rejected
you. No, they’ve rejected me as king over them. 8 They are
doing to you only what they’ve been doing to me from the day I brought them out
of Egypt to this very minute, abandoning me and worshipping other gods. 9 So
comply with their request, but give them a clear warning, telling them how the
king will rule over them.” Then Samuel explained everything
the Lord had said to the people who were asking for a king. “This
is how the king will rule over you,” Samuel said: “He will take your sons, and
will use them for his chariots and his cavalry and as runners for his chariot. He
will use them as his commanders of troops of one thousand and troops of fifty,
or to do his plowing and his harvesting, or to make his weapons or parts for
his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers,
cooks, or bakers. He will take your best fields, vineyards,
and olive groves and give them to his servants. He will give
one-tenth of your grain and your vineyards to his officials and servants. 16 He
will take your male and female servants, along with the best of your cattle and
donkeys, and make them do his work. He will take one-tenth of
your flocks, and then you yourselves will become his slaves! When
that day comes, you will cry out because of the king you chose for yourselves,
but on that day the Lord won’t answer you.”
But the people refused to listen to Samuel and said,
“No! There must be a king over us so we can be like all the
other nations. Our king will judge us and lead us and fight our battles.” Samuel listened to
everything the people said and repeated it directly to the Lord. Then
the Lord said to Samuel, “Comply with their request. Give them a king.”
So the people were given kings. And we’ve had those kings as models for us
ever since. We have come to expect that
rulers are people who provide us at least a modicum of stability or protection,
but that do so at a very high price. We
expect this. No matter where you stand
politically, or who you support or what kind of government you value, we all
know that there are costs we’d rather not pay to having human leadership, human
rulers. Still, we don’t feel “safe”
without them.
And yet, God continues to show us another
way. God continues to show us God’s
way. And God’s way is different. And when we could not see it from what the
judges had to say, and when we could not accept it based on what the prophets
had to say, and when we could not live it based on what God said to us through
scriptures and stories and people and history, God finally sent God’s son to
us. God sent Jesus to show us this other
way, this different way. Jesus came, the
real king, the ultimate king, who acts nothing like we expect or understand rulers
or leaders to behave. He doesn’t walk
around with body guards protecting his every step. He doesn’t insist on taking from us to increase
his wealth or to pad the pockets of his friends. He doesn’t take from the poor to give to the
rich and he doesn’t take from any of us for his own need or his family’s
need. He doesn’t build a strong defense
system or any kind of defense system at all.
Instead, instead he shows us something very, VERY different. He feeds anyone who comes to him hungry. He heals anyone who comes to him sick (and
sometimes even the dead such as Talitha and Lazarus). He listens and allows even the most rejected,
the least “acceptable”, the least “worthy” to physically touch him. He includes children, women, people of different
nationalities and backgrounds such as the Serophoenician and the Samaritans. He doesn’t reject them because they aren’t
“the chosen ones” or part of his nation.
He includes tax collectors and prostitutes and doesn’t reject them
because their behavior is wrong and isn’t what we deem acceptable. He doesn’t take their wealth and live in a
big mansion with servants or luxury items.
He lives poorly, simply, and asks for nothing in return. He relies on the kindness of strangers and
does not worry about his own survival or well-being. He leads with truth rather than threats or fear
or negotiations.
And when THIS king, this king that we
cannot understand, this king who acts completely differently from what we want
or expect or demand from our human rulers, when this king is killed, as of
course he would inevitably be, this king still, on the cross, in his dying
moments, behaves completely differently from any king we can imagine. He doesn’t send for his troops to rescue
him. He doesn’t call for a start of war
or revenge. He doesn’t threaten the end
to those who did this to him. He doesn’t
shout out “you will be sorry”, and he doesn’t fight back in any way.
Instead, as he hangs there on the cross,
as he dies, as he suffers the deepest pain, and he continues to think about
others, others who are suffering. And
again, it isn’t the “good” people he worries about in that moment. It is anyone, anyone at all who is suffering. He is hanging on the cross next to two people
who have done terrible wrongs, who are being killed as criminals for some
atrocity or another. Maybe they were
both murderers. Maybe they killed
children. We aren’t told. What we are told is that in that moment Jesus
doesn’t ask. He doesn’t care what they
have done. What he cares about is that
they are scared and suffering. And in
that moment, this king, who does not “rescue” them or himself, even when he is
goaded on to do so, instead, in that moment, as he suffers, hanging on the
cross – he offers to the criminal crucified next to him the promise of
paradise. He reaches out with the
strength of knowledge and love that goes beyond any personal suffering, and he
offers life, real life, to the scared and dying human, imperfect person next to
him.
This is the KING that we are given, the
REAL king, the savior, our God. He does
not jump off the cross to save himself, despite the pain, and the inevitable
death that he faces. He does not
“negotiate” or buy popularity or play politics.
He lives life following God to the fullest, and he pays for it with
death, a death he accepts even while he loves and cares for those around him,
even those whom, like this criminal next to him, we would probably not deem
worthy of that love or care.
Walter Brueggermann said it this way –
“Every (government) regime is frightened…..
It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of
imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing alternative futures to the
single one the (earthly) king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” Well, again, the king that we see, the king
that Jesus presents is not this kind of king.
This is the king who IS the prophet, who IS the artist…who takes all of
our understandings of rulers and leadership and what it is to command people,
and he turns them on their head.
This week is Thanksgiving. And then we begin Advent. And all of them, Christ the King,
Thanksgiving, and Advent connect… all are about seeing God in the unexpected
places, being grateful because we have seen God, and expecting that God,
Christ, King, Jesus as a baby – will not be what we expect.
I struggled with the sermon this
week. I struggled to write it because I
am saying the same thing that is being said across the country on this Christ
the King Sunday. That Christ the King is
nothing at all like the kings and leaders we think we need. That instead Christ the King is the King GOD
wants us to have – a king of love, compassion, service, selflessness,
faithfulness – God wants us to have nothing else but God for our king, our
leader, our ruler. What is new in
that? What new word can I bring that you
have not heard every year on this Sunday?
What stories can I possibly tell you to illustrate this reality? But then I thought, the thing is, we need to
hear this every year. Because we are
still, STILL looking for that earthly king to lead us. We still are.
And that is not the king God calls us to have lead us.
So how will we recognize this Christ? How do we recognize this King? As we enter Advent, as we come to God with
thanksgiving in our hearts for all we have been given, how do we know our
loyalty is to the right king? How do we
know we have found Christ again?
We will know him, as
we always do, by his love. By his
unfathomable, unimaginable, kind, caring, unconditional and all-encompassing
love. We will know him by the people he includes,
which is everyone, and by the fact that he loves even those who offend us
deeply. We will know him by his unexpected
appearance among those we don’t usually count, or see, or care for. We will know him by his love. Amen
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