November 25, 2007 –Christ the King Sunday
Luke 23:33-43
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
If you’ve called the Customer Service line of any major business lately, you’ve probably been shuttled into the Answering Machine Marathon, which begins something like this: “For instructions in English, please press 1.” And then it goes on to say that if you want instructions in Spanish, press 2. Of course, those instructions are in Spanish, and for obvious reasons. But it’s curious that there aren’t more language options in this melting pot of a country of ours. In fact, Kansas City Baptist Temple displays its announcements in 10 different languages, because that’s how many nationalities are represented in that congregation. It makes sense, if you want your information to be received and understood by the widest possible audience.
That’s the logic that was at work when the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, ordered the sign, the epigraphe, that hung over Jesus as he lay dying on the cross: “The King of the Jews.” He ordered the sign in the three major world languages of the day, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, so that anyone passing by would understand what was happening.
In one sense, it was a legal requirement. When the state executed someone the charge for which the person had been convicted had to be displayed. But in another, deeper sense, it was a strong public announcement. “You want to challenge the powers that be? This is what happens. You want to suggest that there is another power at work, a kingdom that is governed by forgiveness and justice and mercy instead of brute force? This is what happens. You want to challenge the world’s power? This is what you get: a broken, bloody so-called messiah, the King of the Jews.”
That was the sign’s intention. But in fact, when Pilate ordered the creation of that sign, he was, unbeknownst to himself, ordering the proclamation of the first Christian message. When the religious leaders and the soldiers who were present at the Crucifixion ridiculed Jesus with shouts of “King of the Jews,” they were, unbeknownst to them, preaching the first Christian sermon. In fact, they all spoke a truth that they did not know: that there, even in the most unlikely circumstance, with all the obvious evidence to the contrary, God was at work, for good, for life.
This is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday in the church year. Next week we begin a new year with the season of Advent. So today is really a culmination of the entire year of preaching and teaching about Jesus; it all comes to a point today, at the foot of the cross.
Christ the King Sunday is actually a fairly recent addition to the Christian calendar. Christians have always celebrated Jesus as Savior, as the Good Shepherd, as a teacher and healer. But it wasn’t until 1925 that the Church made it official and declared Christ the King Sunday. It’s important to note the historical context. In 1925 in Italy a dictator named Benito Mussolini had been in power for three years. To the north, a rabble-rouser named Adolf Hitler was busy forming his Nazi Party. The United States and the rest of the world were settling into something called the Great Depression. In the midst of that grim international scene the church knew that it was important that the world hear that there was a greater, more profound reality, something called the Kingdom of God, led by Christ the King.
Actually, when we celebrate Christ the King Sunday we’re returning to the roots of our religious tradition. When it was first established, the nation of Israel was unique among all the nations of the world in that it had no earthly, human king. God was its king. It was governed by a succession of prophets and judges. But in time, the people became nervous about their security because they were surrounded by nations of massive military might. They became jealous of those neighboring nations’ prosperity. They began to demand a king of their own so they could survive and prosper in the world.
Finally, God relented and gave them a king – King Saul, the first king of Israel. And what followed was a series of kings that turned out to be no better than the kings of other nations. They abused their authority and neglected the people. Finally, God sent word through his prophet Jeremiah – this is our First Lesson this morning – that there would come a day when God himself would come and care for his people, would find them and gather them back to himself; one day he would send a king who would do for the people what they could not do for themselves: save them, and restore them to relationship with God’s self and one another.
It would be about a thousand years before God indeed sent a king who was in keeping with God’s original intention for a king, a servant king who would protect his people with his very life.
When the disciples heard Jesus teach about something called the Kingdom of God, they at first assumed it was a kingdom like any other, where the strong dominated the weak, the haves dominated the have-nots. So they asked, “Who’s the greatest in this kingdom, who’s a leader?”
And Jesus responded, “Do you want to be great? Allow yourself to have a child-like faith, innocent and accepting. Do you want to be a leader? Start by serving, and serving those most in need.”
In all of his teaching about the Kingdom of God, Jesus never condemned ambition; he changed the values to which ambition was attached. He never condemned power; only its use to dominate others. He never rejected greatness, but he found it in identifying with what he called “the least of these.”
And this servant-king taught his friends to look beyond temporary events and to perceive a greater, more compelling, truer, kingdom at work.
On Thanksgiving morning, the headline in The New York Times was striking: Stocks Plummet on Ugly Week for Investors. “A late sell-off sent stock markets down sharply yesterday, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing at its lowest level since April. The plunge came as investors remain frightened and uncertain about a credit crisis that does not show any signs of easing.
“’Sentiment just keeps getting more and more bleak,’ said James W. Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management. ‘This week it’s been all about fear overtaking greed.’”
Presumably, Mr. Paulsen will be happier, and he suspects we all will be, when things get back to normal and greed overtakes fear as the primary motivator of human behavior.
But Christians perceive and lay claim to a greater truth: In the midst of the grimmest news and most difficult challenges, Christ is King, and in this King, God is at work for good.
Do you want to experience real hope this morning? Not the fleeting happiness that comes from optimism or wishful thinking, but real, down-deep, sustaining hope? I encourage you to take your bulletin home today and spend some time with this Second Lesson. The Apostle Paul wrote it while in prison; he wrote to a small band of frightened Christians living in Colossae, and his words sing with hope in the promises of God. Read his words with your family; read them to a friend; take your time and read them for yourself. Find hope in God’s promise that in Christ, all things hold together. All things, even the most unlikely.
And so it was that there was only person at the Crucifixion who truly perceived who Jesus was: one of the criminals who was crucified with him. He had the faith to see that, all evidence to the contrary, this broken, bleeding, half-dead Jew was none other than the King. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Remember me. I recently read of a 4-year-old boy who just couldn’t wait for his brand-new baby sister to come home from the hospital. He couldn’t wait, he told his parents, because “I have to talk to her, I just have to talk to her!”
So when his baby sister came home, they all gathered at the kitchen table, and the little boy leaned over his mother’s arm to look into the face of his new baby sister, and he whispered, “Tell me about God. I’m starting to forget.”
We gather here in worship every Sunday so that we don’t forget. We gather to break the bread and pour the wine to remind each other that God came to us in Christ so that we might know forgiveness of our sins and restored relationships with God and with one another. We gather to remind each other that even in the most difficult of life’s situations, in the unlikeliest circumstances, God is at work for good, for life.
Amen.
