"What Kind of King?"
Jeremiah 23:1-8; Luke 23:33-43
Reign of Christ Sunday
We have come to the last Sunday of the
Church year: Christ the King Sunday,
which is also known the Reign of Christ Sunday.
The scriptures and the songs this Sunday give testimony to how Jesus is
God’s way of ruling in this world and in the world to come.
In a presidential
election year in the United States, politics take center stage during a long
campaign and in the months that follow.
Much of the focus of the campaign has been on leadership, temperament,
experience, and fitness to lead the country. What kind of leader do people want? In the days following the election, political
pundits are speculating on what kind of president Donald Trump will be. What kind of leaders will he choose for his
cabinet and staffing the administration?
How will newly elected leaders at all levels of government conduct
themselves? The possible answers to
these questions have energized or emboldened some and terrified others, and our
nation remains deeply divided.
So I’m grateful
that Christ the King Sunday comes when it does.
A short time after we elect a person to be the leader of the free world,
the most powerful person on the planet, the feast of Christ the King reminds us
that no matter who has been elected, God is still sovereign over all the
universe, and that God in Christ is the true model for moral and just
leadership.
The feast of Christ the King was a late addition to the
church’s calendar. It was inaugurated by
Pope Pius XI in 1925, in the attempt to resist political demagogues and their
messages. While the church had always
celebrated images of Christ as King, the church seemed to need a special day to
remind them who was in charge.
On the first
celebration of Christ the King, Mussolini had been head of Italy for three
years and had established himself as dictator.
A rabble-rouser named Hitler had been out of jail for a year, and his
Nazi party was growing in popularity.
And the world lay in a Great Depression.
In such a time,
Pope Pius asserted that Christ is “King of the Universe.” The feast of Christ the King became the
church’s great “nevertheless” to
tyrants and dictators and their messages and to the growing modern notion that
religion was now a “private affair.” The
pope thought the time was right to re-focus on the One who is ultimately the
king in our lives, as people of faith.
No matter what—nevertheless--
Jesus Christ is Lord and he shall reign for ever and ever.
All of the Scripture readings
today speak of a very different kind of king.
In the Hebrew Scripture lesson, the prophet Jeremiah speaks to the intense longing of the people of
Israel for a different kind of king. He proclaims a word of hope that God will send the
leader they need—a king who will deal wisely and execute justice and
righteousness in the land, during whose reign the people will live in safety.[1]
The disciples who remembered the
story of Jesus on the cross remembered a different kind of king, who had
compassion for the suffering of the criminal on the cross beside him. And so, when Luke wrote his Gospel, he pictured
Jesus as a king who was very different from the kind of Messiah many people
were hoping for, which was a powerful military ruler who would deliver them
from their oppressors—the Roman Empire.
The letter to the Colossians is
written to encourage people in a world where the leaders have betrayed the
people, a time of persecution for the church.
In the face of pain and suffering, people of faith could say that Jesus
Christ is a very different kind of king—the one in whom we see God with our own
human eyes…the one through whom we are able to see all things in a new light.
This letter to a persecuted and threatened
little church summons the faithful to sing of Jesus, “He is the image of the invisible
God…whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been
created through him and for him…. In
him all things hold together.” This is language
that can help us to imagine what it means to be “transferred into the kingdom
of God’s beloved son.” Christ is the
“image of the invisible God”…the icon or window that becomes more and more
transparent and helps us to see more and more of the ongoing appearing of God
in the world.
In each of
the scripture passages the lectionary has given us today,
and each of the hymns—a claim is being made about power…and about ultimate
rule, about who’s in charge. We can find
comfort and assurance, knowing that the kingdoms of this world may totter and
sway, but the kingdom of God endures.
The passage we heard from Jeremiah begins
with a woe oracle: “Woe to the
shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!”[2] Blame clearly rests here on the “shepherds,”
a well-known metaphor for kings in both the ancient Near Eastern world and in
the biblical texts. Since the leaders
had failed to take care of the people as shepherds are meant to take care of
their flocks, God promises to attend to them for their “evil doings.” The leaders wouldn’t have wanted to hear this
word from God: “You have not attended to them.
So I will attend to you.”[3]
This was a common
theme during this time. The prophet
Ezekiel used a similar image and spelled out in more detail the failure of the
leaders. Rather than feeding the sheep,
they have fed themselves, gathering the fat and the wool for their own use,
literally living off the “fat of the land.”
They
have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bound up the injured, bought
back the strayed, or sought the lost.[4] The list is significant because it tells us
quite clearly what government is for in God's eyes, and it "promises"
judgment to those leaders who fail. Bad
leaders, the prophets say, bring judgment not only on themselves, but wreak
havoc on their entire nation, including those caught up in disaster through no
particular fault of their own.[5]
Who is the Christ? What does Christ reveal to us about the
character of God…and about the kingdom of heaven?
This is a different kind of king we
hear about in the gospel story. The
people had been hoping for a king like King David—for a powerful military and
political leader who would help them overthrow the Roman oppressors. But Jesus turned out to be a different kind of
king.
Jesus was proclaiming the kingdom of
God—but what a paradoxical kingdom he revealed!
It reversed the ways of the world!
If you want to be part of God’s kingdom, you have to stop trying to be
big and important and independent, and be like a little child. The last are going to be first, and the
first will be last.
Jesus preached good news to the poor
and release to the captives. He taught
by word and deed and blessed little children.
He offered healing to those who were sick and encouragement to those who
were brokenhearted. He scandalized those
who were in power in the religious establishment by eating with outcasts and
forgiving sinners.
What was happening to the King of
Kings and Lord of Lords on that Good Friday?
Unjustly condemned for blasphemy and sedition, Jesus was crucified, suffering
the depths of human pain and giving his life for the sins of the world.
Jesus refused to come in power, but
instead in vulnerability. The king was
hung on the throne of a wooden cross—reviled and forsaken and mocked. He doesn’t vow revenge or retribution even on
those who crucify him, but instead offers forgiveness. He doesn’t save himself by coming down off
his cross to prove his kingly status—but remains on that instrument of torture
and humiliation, the representative of all who suffer unjustly. He doesn’t promise a better tomorrow, in the
sweet bye and bye, but offers us redemption today.
When we find ourselves not complete
and in charge—but shattered, hanging on the crosses of our own failures and
brokenness, we can look to Jesus to save us…to make us whole. When we are most vulnerable, we are more open
to see God with us in our pain and need.
This King—the King of Love-- doesn’t
control us by might or judge us, but meets us in our brokenness and offers us
healing and new life and invites us to be partners in God’s redeeming work.
The scriptures teach us that the measure of
faithful leadership and faithful living is how we treat those who are most
vulnerable—widows… orphans… and foreigners… and the sick…the outcast… the
possessed, the poor...the marginalized…the “other.”
In his teaching and
ministry, Jesus shows us that every act of love is an act
of resistance to the forces of darkness,
division, and hate.As Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
And so, let us look for the cracks-- as small as they might be--the cracks in systems of injustice…the cracks in the fears some people have of those who are different or of a life that’s different than the old life.
We are called to be the
light of Christ in this broken world-- to
let the light of Christ shine in and through us, to shed light on whatever
justifies and validates hatred and violence and to expose it for what it
is. May we shine the light of love on those
who have been excluded, marginalized, and silenced. May Christ’s light shine through us as rays of hope for our hurting world.
May it be so! Amen.
Rev. Fran Hayes Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
Nov. 20, 2016
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