Christ the King

​Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last day of the Christian year.
 
Ending the year by celebrating Christ as our king makes good sense. After all, that is how the Christian story ends, with Christ reigning over God’s kingdom for eternity.
 
But the royal imagery of this day might seem a little strange for us, as citizens of a nation founded on the rejection of kings and the very idea of monarchy. It might seem strange, until we look at the biblical idea of monarchy, which turns out to be surprising. Monarchy was the normal form of government in the biblical world, but the Bible offers a very different, much more critical, perspective on human kings.
 
It starts at the very beginning. The people of Israel first emerged as a group in Egypt, where the king—called Pharaoh—oppressed and enslaved them. Not a very positive introduction to kings!
 
God used Moses to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and lead them to the Promised Land, where they established their own nation. Those first few generations remembered their experience in Egypt too well to want anything like a king. During the period of the Judges, they had virtually no central government at all, and certainly no kings.
 
But later generations forgot what living under king could be like, and all their neighbors had kings. Eventually “all the elders of Israel” went to Samuel, the great prophet of their day, and asked him to “appoint for us…a king to govern us, like other nations.”
 
That was a bad idea! God told Samuel that in asking for a human king, the Israelites “have rejected me [God] from being king over them” (1 Samuel 8:4-7). God allowed Samuel to grant the people’s request for a king. But God also had Samuel warn the people how much they would come to regret their request (8:9).
 
And regret it they did. Of the dozens of kings through all of Israel’s history, only a handful were faithful and just. Even the good ones like King David had bad moments. And David’s bad moment was really bad. David committed adultery with the wife of one of his senior generals, then had the general murdered to cover it up. But at least David repented. Most kings didn’t even do that, and, in the end, the sins of their kings led to the breakup and then total collapse of Israel’s kingdom. In Israel, the experiment with monarchy had failed.
 
Fast forward to the time of Jesus’ birth. Things had not gotten better as far as kings were concerned. The Israelites were dominated by Rome, which ruled through Herod as their client king. We know Herod best from the story of the slaughter of the Innocents after wise men from the East told Herod about the child born to be king of the Jews (Matthew 2:16-18).
 
Here is the point. By the time of Jesus’ ministry, human kings had a long history of oppressing and misleading their people.
 
We might think that terrible history was just because the Israelites never found the right person for the job. We might think they just needed to find a righteous person to be king and everything would get better.
 
Many of the Israelites clearly thought just that. So, after Jesus miraculously fed thousands of people and they recognized him as a great prophet, they planned to “take him by force to make him king” (John 6:15). At last, they must have thought to themselves, we will have a truly good king.
 
But Jesus wasn’t interested. Jesus responded to their effort to make him king by withdrawing to a mountain by himself where he could pray undisturbed.
 
For the rest of his ministry, Jesus continued to push back against people, including his own disciples, whenever they assumed he would one day rule more or less like the kings they knew, just better.
 
At one point, the apostles James and John asked Jesus to let them sit at his right and left in his kingdom. Jesus responded with what should have been obvious by that time. Jesus wasn’t going to be that kind of king, and he wasn’t interested in that kind of kingdom. Jesus told them, “The rulers of Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:21-26). And Jesus set an example by washing the feet of his disciples.
 
During Jesus’ trial, Pilate asked him directly, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world.” Pilate had no idea what Jesus was talking about. But we do. God’s people are not ruled by any human king. God’s people are ruled by God alone. And God’s rule looks different than any human king’s rule ever.
 
We get the final word on Jesus as king in our Gospel reading for this morning. For the reading on Christ the King Sunday, the Church gives us the story of the crucifixion. Jesus, suffering on the cross, with the inscription hanging over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
 
Presumably Pilate meant that inscription ironically—something like, this is what happens to anybody in the Roman Empire who claims to be king. But we know the inscription is the literal truth. Jesus is the King of the Jews.
 
But Jesus is not a king like any other king. Jesus is a king who willingly relinquishes power, who accepts the cross on behalf of his subjects. Jesus shows us that true power, true sovereignty, is exercised in sacrificial love. That was a counter-cultural message when Jesus was crucified, and it is a counter cultural message still today. Can you think of any major political figure from anywhere in the world who rules like that?
 
Christ the King Sunday reminds us that we have no human king. Christ the King Sunday reminds us that we are subjects of the crucified king, the king of love, the king who loves as God loves, the king who is the God of love.
 
Christ the King Sunday is therefore also an invitation to a radical faith in God alone, and in the power of God’s love, love which can seem so weak, love which can be crucified, but love which is God’s will for us and which triumphs in the end.
 
The message of Christ the King Sunday is always important for Christians, for lots of reasons. It should shape how we live our lives as individuals, as a parish, and as citizens.
 
But on this first Sunday after the announcement of my retirement, it has a special message for us. Our faith is in the God revealed on the cross, not in any human being. God’s people do not rely on human priests any more than God’s people rely on human kings. Christ alone is our true priest.
 
In a few months, our parish will enter a time of transition. At some points the transition may be difficult. Transitions often are. But transitions are also an opportunity for us to remember what is really important, what brings us together, what keeps us going. Transitions are a time to reaffirm our faith in Christ alone, our crucified king.
 
During the time of transition here at Saint David’s, my hope and my prayer is that you will continue to serve Christ the King by staying faithful to Christ’s message of loving service to each other and to the world. In Christ’s name. Amen.