GOD'S KINGDOM PRESENT, GOD'S KINGDOM COMING

Christ the King

            The Sunday known in the church calendar as “Christ the King” frequently gets overlooked.  Christ the King Sunday often arrives as the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and many have their minds on that traditional American holiday.  But I want us to reclaim Christ the King Sunday, because it is the last Sunday of the church year, because it is the exclamation point at the end of the year-long statement of faith begun on the First Sunday of Advent, because this is the day we proclaim to the world that Jesus Christ is King and Savior.

            I thought of how absurd that affirmation sounds.  It certainly appears to be a struggle to proclaim Jesus Christ King in light of his death at the hands of the powerful.  It all doesn’t sit well in the mind, which wants to know in what way Jesus can be conceived as a king when he appears to be weaker than the might that pinned him to a cross.  When as a stranger you enter a room where a meeting is about to take place, you can soon size up who the powerful are.  People go up to them to consult with them, to flatter them, to try to gain favors from them.  When you look at the events that preceded Jesus’ death and the carrying out of his execution, you immediately see the people who have the power.  There are the religious leaders who have the authority to arrest Jesus and to put him on trial.  And they have their trial, one in which they find Jesus guilty of blasphemy.  They shuffle him to Pilate, the Roman governor, who finds no fault in him.  Neither does Herod the King.  So dissolve to the wild scene of the crowd, this crowd now so disappointed in Jesus because he didn’t turn out to be the kind of Messiah they expected.  We see them now turn on him and scream for his execution.  Power to the people!  Democracy in action!  Now we see Pilate again, the man with the power, order that the will of the crowd will be done.  Indeed, it is difficult to celebrate the kingship of a man who hangs limp on a cross at the hands of those who had the power to put him there.

            What’s more, the one we wish to celebrate as King today was taunted from all sides.  It wasn’t enough that Jesus should be hung on a cross to die a slow death, he had to endure the taunts of the people there.  Crosses in Jesus’ day may not have been as high off the ground as usually depicted in art and in films.  The head of the victim might only be a few feet higher than the people on the ground.  Imagine the insult, the humiliation, and the pain of Jesus’ crucifixion.  The taunts from the religious leaders still ring in our ears.  “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!”  The soldiers chime in their own chorus of abuse.  “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”  Now with some of his last breaths taken on earth, one of the criminals hanging next to Jesus blasphemes him.  “Are you not the Messiah?  Save yourself and us!”  We’d like to proclaim this Jesus as the world’s King, but you can see the difficulty our gospel text presents.  Jesus is crucified by the strong, and taunted by religious leaders, soldiers, and a dying criminal.

            And yet, did you notice what Luke does?  Everything the taunters say as insults, those same words on our lips are affirmations of faith.  When we say those same things, they are our statements of faith.  The taunters at Jesus’ crucifixion declare who Jesus is and the significant role he plays in God’s redeeming plan.  The religious leaders said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!”  We say, “Jesus is the one who saves.  He is God’s Messiah, God’s chosen one.”  And we say, “He didn’t save himself, because it was through his death and resurrection humankind is being saved.”  And the soldiers said, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”  There’s that word “save” again.  And we say, “Jesus is the one who saves, but not himself because he dies as the innocent Suffering Servant of God, dying for the sake of the guilty.”  And then the criminal:  “Are you not the Messiah?  Save yourself and us!”  If only that plea had been genuine!  On our lips, we mean those words as affirmations of faith.  “Jesus is the Messiah.  He is the one who saves us.”  Unwittingly, all of those who taunt Jesus affirm the faith of the church.  Jesus is the Messiah, God’s chosen one, the one who saves the world.

            Of course, why do we affirm this hanging Jesus is in any sense a king?  Because God raised him up from the dead.  God overturned the human verdict that pronounced Jesus guilty.  By raising him up from the dead, God demonstrated that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior, our King.  Luke tells this masterfully in the way he weaves the fulfillment of scripture all through the scene of today’s gospel lesson.  He was hung with two criminals.  While hanging on the cross, Jesus prayed for those responsible for his crucifixion, saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”  Isaiah 53:12, painting the picture of the Suffering Servant of the Lord, says, “Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”  Casting lots to divide his clothing there at the cross, referring to Jesus as God’s “chosen one,” giving him sour wine to drink, all have Old Testament allusions that pertain to these actions.  Luke’s point:  The events surrounding the death of Jesus are all part of God’s saving plan, fulfilling scripture.  Luke’s affirmation can be made in light of Jesus’ resurrection.  God’s redemptive plan was unfolding in the life and death of Jesus.  God raised him from the dead.  That was Jesus’ enthronement!  That was his coronation!  And so we confess that Jesus Christ is King!

            But it remains to be settled where the kingdom of our Lord Jesus can be found.  You look in our country and see violence everywhere:  murders, drive by shootings, even fights at sporting events.  War rages in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Terrorism is rampant in the Middle East.  Where among all of this violence can it be said that God’s kingdom is found?  Our gospel has a clue, and with the help of that clue we can see the presence of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Where is it?  There on the cross; right there, during the agony of Jesus’ dying; right there as people are taunting him; right there is where we see the kingdom of God.  The gospel’s clue to the presence of God’s kingdom comes from the lips of Jesus.  “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”  Right there in that forgiving act, we see the presence of the kingdom of God.  Jesus came, as he had said, “to seek out and to save the lost.”  God’s reconciling activity became gloriously visible, even while Jesus suffered on the cross.  Even as he died, Jesus offered forgiveness.  It is with this clue from our gospel that I offer the audacious claim that the kingdom of our Lord is visible to the world whenever his followers engage in forgiving others.  I’ll say that again.  The kingdom of our Lord is visible to the world whenever his followers imitate him and forgive others.  Can you see it?  Terry Anderson, a hostage in Lebanon for seven years, knows how hard it is to forgive, but he did it anyway.  It was a journey made slowly, but, as he wrote, it didn’t begin after he was released, but while he was still a hostage.  There’s God’s kingdom.  Sarah grew up in a family where criticism, fighting, ridicule, and violence were the rule.  When Sarah began to follow Jesus, things changed.  In the middle of a fight, she would ask for forgiveness.  She began to return blessings for curses, and forgiveness when she was wronged.  There’s God’s kingdom.  Pope John Paul II met his would-be assassin in prison.  Mehmet Ali Agca asked forgiveness for his crime, and the pope granted it.  Pope John Paul II said, “I spoke to him as one speaks to a brother whom one has forgiven.”  There’s God’s kingdom.  You may remember the name Gregory Biggs.  He was the man who was hit by a car in Forth Worth and left to die, impaled in the windshield.  Chante Mallard was the driver of the car that hit Gregory Biggs, the driver who left Mr. Biggs to die without help.  Brandon Biggs, Gregory’s son, forgave Chante Mallard.  There’s God’s kingdom.  In the fall of 2003, a group of Amish kids in Ohio hid in a cornfield and engaged in a prank.  They threw tomatoes at passing cars.  One driver came back with a shotgun and fired into the cornfield, killing one of the kids.  The father of the dead prankster was a friend of the shooter.  The victim’s mother said, “I had forgiven him before I knew who it was.”  There’s God’s kingdom.  The kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ is visible wherever and whenever you see his followers forgive others as God in Christ has forgiven them.