First Reading // Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm 46:1-11
Second Reading // Colossians 1:11-20
Gospel // Luke 23:33-43
Today marks our yearly celebration of Christ the King Sunday . . . And what a king he must be. So great that we declare him to be king of kings and lord of lords. In our scripture from the prophecies of Jeremiah this morning, God says, “I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” These words almost paint a picture for us of Jesus’ power, of his majesty, of him seated on a grand throne at the very right hand of God.
Then with the Psalmist we declare together, “God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be shaken; God shall help it at the break of day. The nations rage, and the kingdoms shake; God speaks, and the earth melts away . . . The Lord of hosts . . . is with us” . . . I get goosebumps. The halls of power? The very earth itself? Shaking and melting from nothing more than the voice of the Creator? What a fantastic and powerful God ours must be!
Then we read in Colossians words from perhaps the most ancient of Christian hymns, that: “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; [that] 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 himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” How impressive, how beautiful, how awe-some must it be to witness the Christ, the Messiah, whose very being binds us together, who causes the cosmos itself to cohere.
And so we turn at last to our Gospel! To our Savior! Here he is! We get to see him in the written word before us! And so in Luke we read, “When they came to the place that is called The Skull they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his*” Wait, hold on . . . (shuffles pages) something must be wrong, because there’s no way that guy is the king we’ve been hearing about, regardless of the wooden sign hanging over him. No way they just nailed the Messiah to a tree and killed him. That’s completely absurd . . . disgusting . . . outrageous. That’s not the truth. I refuse to believe that’s the truth.
I wonder what the disciples were thinking as they stood around Jesus that morning. When the events of the past few days had left their world seemingly wrecked. When it seemed every one of their hopes had been utterly dashed. I wonder how sad they must have been. How confused. Angry. Frightened. When the Messiah they expected would begin a revolution against the greatest empire the world had ever known, when that supposed-Messiah was brutally murdered on a cross . . . a manner so vicious, the empire wouldn’t even do it to their own citizens. Everything about this Gospel experience feels wrong when we see it alongside the texts glorifying and testifying to what our Messiah, our Savior should be. This Gospel is supposed to be “good news”, but feels like just the opposite. Yes, Jesus does say to one of the criminals crucified with him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” But that’s big talk after a day of being brutalized by the powers of the state, while you’re hanging on a tree, slowly dying.
So . . . Christ the King Sunday, huh? This isn’t the kingly face we recognize. This isn’t the kingly face we expected. What does it mean, that when the Messiah came to humankind in the person of Jesus, this is how the Son of God chose to present his power? What does it mean for us, as followers of that God, and of that Jesus? What kind of quote-unquote “rule” are we talking about? What kind of king?
Just about three months ago, I helped lead orientation for the ELCA’s Young Adults in Global Mission program, often shortened to the lovely acronym “YAGM”. The 10-month experience sends young adult volunteers into communities all over the world to live and dwell with the people there. For two years the program has been on hiatus, since COVID cut short the 2020 year of service. But to get to see the program resume, to get to see the joy and excitement on the faces of twenty-four incredible young people, about to begin a year unlike anything they can imagine, in service to the global church . . . Few experiences in my life have been so fulfilling to witness. But I do admit I’m biased, I served in the program myself back in 2018 and 2019, in a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina. If you’ve gone on a mission trip or service trip, even if it was much closer to home, you might remember the feeling of anticipation before the journey. Even though you know that no matter how you imagine it, it will still surprise you or defy your expectations, you can’t help but think about what it will be like.
I wonder if this isn’t unlike what the disciples were thinking, before the terrible events of Jesus’ passion. Remember that just five days earlier, they had watched Jesus ride triumphantly into Jerusalem. The donkey-steed was a strange touch, they thought, but the people still cheered, waving palm fronds and even laying their very cloaks on the road before him. Jesus had uttered phrases like “I shall tear down and rebuild [the great] temple in three days.” He had performed miracles that were exceedingly rare – opening the eyes of the blind and even raising the dead back to life. These were all things that their holy texts had said the Messiah was supposed to be able to do. The Psalms, the great prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the books of the law all said this is what is supposed to happen when the King of Kings comes to fulfill God’s covenant with Jerusalem. People received Jesus like a king, because many of them expected he was the one who would change everything to be just the way they had prayed for and hoped. The one who would teach them how to live. And then instead of that, he ended up getting arrested, horribly beaten, and killed. The head they looked upon was not crowned with gold, but instead with woven thorns. The face they looked upon was not bright and gleaming with oil, but instead was dark and bloodied. He was not seated on a throne, but instead hung from a tree. A cursed way to die. It was all opposite. All wrong.
When I think about conversations with YAGM volunteers from years past and present, it doesn’t matter where we were – in rural Madagascar, in the bustling Soweto township of Johannesburg, South Africa, or in downtown Mexico City. None of us, in the beginning, expected to find Christ in the faces where he most plainly appeared. One of my dear friends saw him in the face of a missing migrant-man, who was traveling by means of La Bestia, the Beast. An infamous train-track that runs north towards the U.S. border, and whose name comes from the many pieces of infrastructure that seek to break the bodies of those who would try to jump the train. Another of my friends saw Christ in many quiet conversations with his host family’s house-keeper, when there was no one else to talk to, and only in a language his tongue labored to speak. I myself found it in the bent body and wrinkled face of Osvaldo, whose disability a year earlier might have meant I dismissed him out-of-hand. However, never have I seen “the joy and love of Christ” expressed more plainly than in Osvaldo’s denture-d smile.
So often, when we think of Christ as a ruler, we might be inclined to think about how the “rule” of this world often works. But it was Jesus himself who said, “my kingdom” or kin-dom, as I often phrase it, “is not of this world”. So often we expect power to come from the top down. From our government. From our pulpits. From our teachers. From our parents. But we learn today in Colossians that ours is not a “from-the-top-down” kind of God. Ours is a “from-the-bottom-up” kind of God, and in that God and Christ, all things come into being. It’s difficult to see when simply reading this, but when we share in these words from Colossians, we join them in singing one of the oldest Christian hymns in existence: we sing about a Messiah, who in the image of an ordinary human being, the fullness of God was pleased to reside. A God who suffered death and was buried. Only to rise on the third day.
Ours is not a “top-down” kind of God. In Jesus, God took “from-the-top-down” power, put it to death, and when the tomb cracked open showed us a different way. A from-the-bottom-up kind of way. For some, this might seem like weakness, but if we begin to doubt God’s incredible power, I urge us to remember what we have already declared with the ancient Hebrews in our Psalm: the power of the Creator is such that simple speech brings matter into being and causes it to melt away. But Jesus shows us how God chooses to use that power. To revive. To reconcile – which is a fancy way of saying “to bring all things back into the fullness of my love”.
Christ the King Sunday is an opportunity to celebrate a different kind of power. To celebrate new growth from the bottom-up, even as the top-down way of this world seeks to gray and wither us. It is such a vibrant way to be, to live in a bottom-up world, if we can learn to accept its truth. A world that brings all of creation back into the fold through the divine embrace. A way of life that encourages us to be the very arms reaching out to those whom others attempt to cast out. And it is in this world that we are called to live, to break bread, and above all else to share with one another the joy and love that is Christ’s peace. Ours is a world where, even when it seems that death is all that surrounds us, we can look to the cross and hear Christ say, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Amen
If you would like to view a recording of the sermon, it can be accessed at United in Faith Lutheran Church’s YouTube page here, timestamped at 33’54”:
In peace,
Eric