In this weekend of Thanksgiving, where we are prone to deep thoughts of gratitude, comforted by the presence of family, filled by the endless containers of good food and are beginning looking ahead to the birth of Christ, it seems out of place that our text for today be the one I just read.  In it we witness and hear words of mockery toward Jesus, and see him hanging and dying on a cross. 

        It also seems out of place that the church would call today Christ the King.  If you look at the front of your bulletin, you see that we list where we are in the church calendar, which repeats itself each year.  Most of you know we are about to head into a season of advent, which is the beginning of the church year. In it, we prepare for the birth of Jesus, the one who is to save us. Yet we pause here, before the church calendar starts over to celebrate Christ the king.

        Something I learned while studying this text and preparing for today was that the celebration of Christ the King was established only in 1925. Much of the familiar parts of the church calendar, like Advent, Lent and Easter have long been parts of the church year. But Christ the King was added in 1925, by the Roman Catholic pope.  It was added in the midst of confusion in Europe, where the First World War had just ended and peace was still not certain. 

        It was put into the calendar year to remind us that even in a world filled with war, God still reigned. Christ was still in power. No human system of order will last. It is only God’s reign in Christ that is all powerful.

        On the one hand, the pictures we see when we think of Christ the king and on the other, the image of Jesus suffering on a cross don’t mesh together.  The concept of what Kings are and do in our day in age are quite unfamiliar, but certainly, an image of Jesus on the cross, is not what comes to mind when we think of Christ being in power over the entire world, let alone a new heaven and new earth.

        Let it also be said that this “King” language is inherently masculine and while Jesus was a man, this risen Christ, is more than male or female. But we are limited in our gendered language to use masculine, and I will use it through out my sermon.  That issue is another sermon for another day.

        Let us take a minute to explore this text and see what God wants to teach us about what it means that Christ is our King—and how we are to follow this Christ we call king.

        When we first begin reading this text, we are pulled immediately into the dark injustice of the situation.  We see Jesus, this man we know to be full of integrity, full of compassion and love, and we see him being put on the cross.  Now it is important to note here that he is being executed by the government, by the Romans.  The Roman government applied the penalty of crucifixion quite liberally.  It combined torture through extreme distress to the arms and legs and slow asphyxiation because one was unable to breath.  Bodies were left hanging for days to warn all those who wanted to consider future revolt or sedition against the empire.  And it is a horrible death. Even though earlier in this story Jesus is found innocent by both Pilate and Herod, Roman rulers, he is still subjected to this sentence of death. Jesus evidently is too much of a threat and though he never called himself a king or messiah, many others did and believed him to be the King of the Jews that was to restore the State of Israel.

        But Jesus does not respond to the taunting to be this sort of a leader, this earthly King.  Rather, we find in Jesus one who suffers, one who receives the mocking without response. The one who hangs from a cross.  Our king reigns from a cross.

        Stay with me for a minute with that image. 

A king who rules from a cross. 

A king who does not save himself.

A king who asks that those who are killing him unjustly be forgiven.

A king who even as he is dying, offers compassion to the murderer on his right.

        And it ends there.  Well, not really, because we know that our king, the one who suffered and died, rises from the grave and provides salvation to the entire world.  It is really through his rising that the Kingdom of God is inaugurated and Jesus becomes the king who tells us that all things have been reconciled through him

        That his power is supreme and that this Christ—this true messiah is above all political power, and he does it through dying on a cross.

        Friends, Jesus the Christ is a different sort of a king.

        Jesus kingship offers us a completely different way of understanding power, of leadership. It is not through violent military victory that we find hope, but through defeat, through service and vulnerability.  It is through this injustice of Jesus dying on the cross that we have a King, a king who offers second chances and whose justice is offered as grace, free for any who want it. There are no requirements with our king, only thanksgiving for the freedom God offers.

        Let me read a brief passage from Colossians chapter one which describes clearly who this King is:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him…He is the head of the body, the church…For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was please to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

        Christ our king is above and in all. All things are subject to him. He is the head of a new body, the Church.  That is where we belong now. Even though we still live in other sorts of systems that are needed midst of our broken world, they are not as important as serving Christ our king through the witness of church.

        In our time, I often ask myself, why church?  Well today is a good day to find that answer: it is because we worship a King with power over all things, and desire to serve him and we need this community to help us figure out how we are to be imitators of his life and proclaim to the world that a new way of life is available, even as we live in a world with all different kinds of leaders and civil systems.

        For centuries, the Christian church as misunderstood this leadership of Jesus and interwoven the kingship/Lordship of Christ with the present political systems of the day. It has abused this power given to us by God and made human government and rule a synonym with God’s reign.  It has taken God’s power over the world and taken it for its own. 

We see this in the crusades of the middle ages, where the political powers of the day took Jesus as their leader and killed many Muslims, saying that God’s power gave them the right to kill in order to Christianize the pagans. 

        We have see this in colonization, where military leaders and missionaries worked together and would force others to become Christians—that part of taking other lands was to make them Christian, because God reigns over all people and that in order for these colonizers to fulfill that call, many indigenous people were forced into submission of a false understanding of Christ’s reign on the earth.

         We even see it in our current context as some seem to think that making the United States a Christian nation will make it what it is supposed to be.

        On the other hand, we see within the Christian tradition a separatist movement, where people believed the church to be completely disengaged from the world, a haven for those to wait as they look forward to the second coming of Jesus.

        But as we see in our text for today, there is a much different picture of what we mean by Christ the King. We see a King actively engaged in the world, serving the world in fact and working for its restoration through his own death and resurrection.

        But Jesus didn’t take over the Roman Empire. Jesus did not become the physical ruler of Israel, a messiah to reinstate a political rule.  Jesus also didn’t retreat into the desert. No, Jesus went deeper and broader.  Jesus has become the Christ and has overcome all the short fallings of the entire world.  God’s rule is above all of that.  God’s rule is above the economic systems of socialism, capitalism, and above democratic and dictator forms of government.

        In fact, our king is so amazing that he requires nothing of us.  All reconciliation has been accomplished and peace is established through him. It is God’s grace that has saved us, not our own works.  This king—this dying and suffering King has made us free.

        And so we have a picture of this Christ our King—and we are freed.  And in our gratitude for this freedom—it is only in gratitude—we witness.  And this is why we need the Church. Karl Barth, an important theologian of the early 20^th Century says this:  “The church must remain the church. It must remain the inner circle of the Kingdom of Christ…it proclaims the rule of Jesus Christ and the hope of the kingdom of God. This is not the task of the civil community.”

        We witness to the world that there is this new way.  There is life abundant give to us through Christ our King. Through this body of believers gathered here this morning and around the world, we proclaim Christ crucified. 

        But I am beginning to hear mutterings through the crowd. Enough of these theological ramblings.  Even if I believe that yes—Christ is my King.  What does in mean to serve him?

It means that we lead lives dedicated to Christ’s service over all other things. Because Christ has defeated and is above all things, we must operate in this new way, through the following of a Christ who became a king through dying on a cross. 

        It means we live in the tension, day after day of discerning what our king would have us live and be. It means not giving in to the temptation to worship other “gods,” like those of image brought on by consumerism, like those of empire or the greatly promoted understandings of national and economic security.

        It means we are called to witness to the political systems of power to admonish them to conform to this new way of life that serves a King on a cross. 

        It means living by a different set of values that cares for the marginalized, that seeks to love our enemies and turn the other cheek.

        It means living a life of intentionality, of living with risk because the risk of death has already been made.

        It means living with the knowledge that your allegiance is ultimately to God.

I have often heard that people don’t like it when churches or preachers get political. The funny thing is, is that because Christ is above and reigns over all things—that includes our politics.  It also includes what we buy, where we spend our time, who we hang around with and the lifestyles we choose.  In our gratitude for this new abundant life of freedom, we respond by actively engaging the world so that Christ reign may come a reality. 

        May we be reminded on this day when celebrate Christ our King, that God calls us to give our allegiance to the new leader of our day—Christ.  That we live intentionally to discern how God wants us to live and be in this world and that through our lives, we may give witness to the world that Christ does reign—through a different means and a different model, but reigns as a servant and calls us to this service as well.

        Amen.

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