Christ the King Sunday
Just when you thought we could stop talking politics, this morning’s gospel reading brings us back. This morning’s reading from John’s Gospel is about untangling religious and political authority, truth telling, and the cost of being on the underside of political power.
Lately my morning readings have brought me to the book of Revelation, which I’ve approached with hesitation and a certain amount of exhaustion: a hmmpff as I slump into my morning chair. “You again.”
But what the Book of Revelation has offered, in a helpful way, is a picture of the enthroned Lamb of God, coming face to face with Empire, and being reminded of our Lord’s response.
That’s a reminder I’ve needed these past few weeks, and it’s one we get in this morning’s text.
As we prepare to receive this message on Christ the King Sunday, let us pray.
“God of all goodness and mercy, who reigns with peace and promises the healing of the nations, be near to us, we pray, in all the ways we need. Holy Spirit, steady our hearts and our minds, that we might be responsive to Your movement among us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to You, Lord God. Amen.”
Like most, if not all of you, kings aren’t something I’m all that familiar with. We don’t live in a nation ruled by a king. Most modern nations aren’t.
In one of my favorite books, Wearing God, which explores the Bible’s many under-explored metaphors for God, Lauren Winner, writes: “I don’t live in a society in which I have daily contact with, or even daily thoughts about, shepherds or kings, but many other biblical images for God are still very much part of my daily life…” (15).
Bread and clothing, fire and a parent, “Unlike my church, with its four favored metaphors, the Bible offers hundreds of images of God” (6). Homeless man and tree. Light and wine. Mother hen. All of these are biblical metaphors for God, most of which go unmentioned in our churches, unexplored in our personal readings, leaving us with a malnourished imagination of God.
So why this metaphor of King, especially when it is so removed from our daily experience and imaginations?
Nearly 100 years ago to the date, Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King in 1925. He did so to remind Christians around the world that their allegiance was to their spiritual ruler in heaven, as opposed to any national ruler, which was, at the time, Benito Mussolini—responsible for the deaths of about a million people in the years to come, and the suffering of many more.
In the face of rising fascism across Europe, the Church needed to be reminded of its true authority. Protestants soon followed, adding Christ the King Sunday to their lectionary.
Pius XI went back and forth between condemning and embracing Mussolini over the next decade, and Mussolini returned the favor with the Church. Nearly 100 years later, Christ the King Sunday still serves a pressing need. The Church still needs to be reminded of the dangers of such allegiances.
Even as we struggle with the metaphor of king, the ancient world knew quite a bit about kings. They had examples of kings who sought the wellbeing of their people. The ancient world also had examples of those who ruled according to their own personal interests—promoting and demoting, rewarding and punishing as suited them.
Both the good and the evil are reflected in our biblical images of kingship.
Psalm 93 & Zechariah 9:9-10: the Righteous King
In this morning’s psalm reading, we find the following:
“God is Sovereign, clothed in splendid apparel;
God is robed in majesty and is girded with strength…
Your testimonies are very sure,
and holiness adorns your house, O God, forever and for evermore.”
The Psalmist describes God’s sovereignty in terms of surety—you can count on it—and holiness—it is good and true.
Likewise, six centuries before Jesus, the prophet Zechariah spoke of a future king who would reign in the image of God—over all peoples. This king would come in humility, would reign with peace, and would be cause for celebration for all:
“See, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Zechariah writes.
“and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.”
Psalm 52: “Big Man”
Unlike these examples, however, the Bible also includes examples of terrible rulers. In Psalm 52, in the Message translation, we read:
“Why do you brag of evil, ‘Big Man’?
God’s mercy carries the day.
You scheme catastrophe;
your tongue cuts razor-sharp,
artisan in lies.
You love evil more than good,
you call black white.
You love malicious gossip,
you foul-mouth.
…Good people will watch and
worship. They’ll laugh in relief:
‘Big Man bet on the wrong horse,
trusted in big money,
made his living from catastrophe.’”
That’s Psalm 52, reminding us that boastful, selfish, lying rulers are nothing new. Nor are those leaders who turn “good men” away from the truth.
Author and English Professor Abram Van Engen, who hosts the “Poetry for All” podcast, writes the following of Psalm 52:
“The lying tyrant carves gulfs into the ground. Falsehoods open reality like canyons, and ‘good men’ fall in, devoured by the pit opening at their feet. These are the effects of a tyrant’s lies. Even the good fall into them.”
“And so the psalms move,” Van Engen continues, “leaping from place to place and time to time. It is one of the glories of poetry to give us the words we need, even when our need in the present day may not be the one that made the poem. Poems live long and large, far and wide, necessary even beyond the first need, speaking the words that keep us tethered to the truth.”
We return to these writings of prophets and poets of scripture for the truth they speak in our own day—of rulers and of our relationship to them.
Still, when I hear the word “King,” it will inevitably mean something different than when this word fell on ancient ears, and certainly when Pilate asked the question in this morning’s gospel reading…
“Are you the king of the Jews,” Pilate asks Jesus, following a sham overnight trial and severe beatings. “Are you king of the Jews?”
In all four of the gospel accounts, these are Pilate’s first words to Jesus. Pilate is seeking the contours of Jesus’ authority. Who are you? What does your reign look like? What will it involve?
30 years before Jesus’s birth, Herod the Great came to power by violent means, defeating the Parthians to the East. And for his reward, Rome named Herod “King of the Jews.” “King of the Jews,” Herod was called, though he lacked the appropriate ethnic and religious background for such a title.
Pilate knows what a king is. He knows what power kings hold. And while he knows little of the ins and outs of Jewish culture, Pilate does know his history.
So when Pilate gets word about Jesus, when Jesus is brought before him, and when Pilate asks, “Are you king of the Jews,” there’s a sub message being spoken here: “Do you plan to come to power by violent means, too?”
Jesus, of course, doesn’t look like a king. Beat up, clothes stolen. His appearance reflects his humble origins and ministry. Jesus’ followers, few as they are, have all abandoned him. All of this is painfully apparent to Pilate.
Pilate doesn’t think Jesus is a king. But that’s not the real question Pilate is after. Pilate is asking a different question: Does Jesus think he’s king of the Jews?
The context that Pilate is missing in this question—like so many others, then as now—is not whether Jesus thinks he’s king, but what kind of a king Jesus imagines when he hears the phrase, “King of the Jews.”
There were many among God’s people in Jesus’s day, just as there are today, who imagined a king who would come to bring about a political uprising for God’s people—even a violent one, if that’s what was needed.
Perhaps this is what Pilate had in mind when he asked this question.
After a frustrating and entirely in-character question— “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”—Jesus’ response names the fact that he represents a different kind of kingship.
“My Kingdom is not from here,” Jesus says.
Jesus insists that his Kingdom, like he and his disciples, take orders from elsewhere. As such, Jesus’ Kingdom is like no other.
If it were, you could expect a violent uprising, Jesus’s response suggests. But no, “My Kingdom is not from this world.”
Pilate must breathe a sigh of relief at this response, even as he’s left scratching his head.
Jesus isn’t the kind of king that Herod the Great was, nor the leader Rome envisioned threatening its rule. Jesus’ Kingdom doesn’t come from this world, he insists. But it is for this world. That’s why he has come. “That’s why I was born,” Jesus says. “That’s the truth I’ve come to witness to.”
“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”
The truth that Jesus came to testify to is not reflected in political authority that constantly feels threatened by others.
The truth that Jesus came to testify to and embody puts into question all other authority.
Even at this point in the exchange, the lines between the accuser and the accused, judge and the judged, are beginning to blur.
The Lordship that Jesus instantiates for this world—for all peoples—does not set itself up by the promise of excluding others, the establishment of rigid boundaries, and the violent policing of land.
No. Jesus’ Lordship is not a self-legitimating means of securing power for oneself and those who qualify as “like us.”
Jesus’ Lordship is not threatened, nor does it secure itself with anxious threats.
For anyone interested in following this unkingly King and name him as the Christ, we must remember the truth that he came to testify and embody.
Unlike other leaders who feed off our primal fears, Jesus’ Lordship renounces our lust for power and control.
Jesus’s Lordship insists on our vulnerability to one another and our active commitment to love—even to our enemies—and then says, “I’ll go first.”
Jesus’s concern isn’t merely that his followers hear the truth. Jesus’s concern is that His followers belong to the truth, and follow where it leads.
“Everyone who belongs to the truth,” Jesus says, “listens to my voice.”
“What is truth?” Pilate asks, as if to discount Jesus’ question as philosophical platitudes.
“I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “I am,” Jesus says—as the culmination of Jesus’ “I am” statements in John’s Gospel. “I am.”
Truth is what Jesus is.
Those who listen to Jesus’s voice and follow it—above and before all other claims to authority—are those whose lives reflect the truth, help to create the world as God imagines and promises it will become.
What of today’s “Big Men”?
Still, even as we hear this exchange between Pilate and Jesus, we’re mindful of the fact that many today are fearful of another rise in dictators and fascism. This fear is compounded by the fact that many who call themselves followers of Jesus are tempted to hear and follow the voice of “Big Men” like Psalm 52 describes, leaders who are entirely unChristlike.
What then?
Kenneth Roth, an attorney, activist, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch, writes in an article for Harvard Law that autocrats around the world are seeing a rise in instability in their previously unquestionable rule. Autocrats watching on, Roth suggests, are running scared.
But, he goes on to note, democracy is under its own attack—especially in places where “citizens are more rural, less educated, vote primarily on cultural issues, and haven’t benefited from the global economy.”
In these cases, huge swaths of a nation’s population are ripe to exploit their discontentment, Roth notes, even using an anti-rights message.
When democratic leadership is not seen as serving significant segments of the population, it can begin to come apart at the seams.
Rather than losing hope, however, Roth emphasizes that these are all things that those concerned about democracy can and should do something about.
What, then, is the call for those living under the rule of political authorities who fail to honor God’s vision for humanity and creation?
Remembering the kind of King Christ is a good start, reminding us that any authority that fails to honor the truth that Christ’s Kingdom represents are short-sighted at best and doomed at worst. They are their own end.
And, remembering that those who belong to the truth “Listen to my voice,” Jesus says.
Such a call is an invitation to live in a way that exposes the lies of kingship represented by so many who are consumed by power.
In the noisy clamor of this world, the church is the place where we return, again and again, to be reminded of how to listen to Jesus’s voice, and how to model our lives on Christ’s life.
Those whose lives testify to this truth are:humble, counting others as better than themselves.
They act as servants, especially in service of the poor, the most vulnerable, the alien and foreigner.
In so doing, Jesus’ followers put into question any authority who sets itself up as counter to Christ’s authority.
Chris Huebner: Non-Empire Hope
When, however, so much of Christianity has handed its hopes, dreams, and imagination over to political rulers who make a mockery of Christ’s name, we must turn to those within our tradition who have, for hundreds of years, lived in counter-cultural relationship to political authority.
This past week I returned to a book that has been a helpful, re-orienting voice: A Precarious Peace, written by the Canadian, Mennonite theologian Chris Huebner.
Each of those conditions is important: Canadian and Mennonite.
The Mennonites, of course, are among our Anabaptist sisters and brothers, that branch of Christianity that has, since its inception, set itself apart in its commitments—politically, economically, and otherwise.
It is here, from within the Mennonite tradition, that I was reminded of a Christian hope that is not indebted to promises of Empire.
“To allow ourselves to be haunted by Christ,” Huebner writes, “is ultimately an expression of hope.”
“Our hope is that we have been given a hope that consists in something other than ourselves. Our hope involves the possibility of putting ourselves in question. Our hope is grounded in a way of life that is triumphant precisely because it renounces triumphalism. It is in losing our hope that we may find it,” (Huebner, 211–12).
In losing hope, as many of us often do, perhaps we may recognize where we’ve misplaced our hope, and turn to hope more deeply, more actively, in our true King—who humbled himself to the point of death in love for his friends and his enemies.
In the days, weeks, and months to come, may the shape of our lives reveal Christ as our King.
Amen.
