Christ the King

Luke 23:35-43
The Rev. Sara Fischer

Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.

I spent the holiday weekend relaxing—and feasting—with a group of close friends. I took that opportunity to do an informal survey about the feast of Christ the King. I asked a handful of people, ranging in age from nine to forty-nine, what was the first thing that came into their mind when they heard the phrase “Christ the King.” I got a lot of interesting answers. One person told me that she grew up in a small town with a high school named “Christ the King,” which had a really great football team. Several people said the phrase Christ the King made them think of Christmas. This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing. Or, Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King. Someone said “isn’t it the name of a parish?” Another person said it made them think of Handel’s “Alleluia chorus.”

Now, these friends of mine are all very intelligent folks, but they are not extremely theologically sophisticated, and several of them are not even Christians. But even faithful churchgoers don’t quite get this feast. It’s the last Sunday of the church year, a triumphal celebration of Christ as King. Christus Rex. Not the Christ the teacher, or the good shepherd, or the crucified Christ, but the Christ on the other side of the crucifixion, the Christ who reigns in glory over a world transformed by love. Christ the King is often represented as Christ in cruciform—in the shape of a cross—but fully clothed and wearing a crown, reigning.

So this morning I want to spend a few minutes reflecting on two questions: What kind of a king is Jesus, and what kind of kingdom does Jesus reign over?

What kind of a king is Jesus? Or, to put it another way, on this triumphal feast, the last Sunday of the church year, our New Year’s Eve, when we dress our altar in white, why do we have a Good Friday gospel reading? This gospel reminds us that we cannot look at Christ as King in triumph without remembering Jesus on the cross. The irony is that perhaps nowhere is Jesus more kingly—in the unique way that he is king—than in the scene we have in today’s gospel. The cross is Jesus’ triumph.

Jesus is no ordinary king. Last year on this day I read the story of “King Backward.” (I’d read it again, except I’m sure you all remember it and I don’t want you to be bored.) Suffice it to say that King Backward had everything backward, from being born in a barn to entering the capital city on a donkey to dying on a cross. It is here on the cross that we see just how Jesus rules.

The power of the cross is the refusal to use power. The political leaders, the soldiers, even one of the criminals hanging next to him all challenge Jesus to use his power to prove himself and to save himself. But (as anyone who has ever spent any time in twelve-step programs knows), true power and true salvation come only when we experience our complete powerlessness. Jesus’ power here, his control, is his act of letting go, self-emptying. The image of Jesus on the cross is the image of powerlessness.

Jesus’ power is the power to wait, the power to let God act, to live out of the knowledge that suffering is a necessary part of transformation, that, as the old Baptist hymn goes, you cannot have a crown without a cross.

There is one person in today’s gospel who recognizes Jesus’ kingly power in this moment of profound powerlessness: the other of the two criminals hanging next to Jesus. Throughout the gospels, the people who recognize Jesus for who he is are always the mostly unlikely ones, not professors or lawyers or theologians, but the itinerant fishermen, the despised tax collectors, the lepers, the dying, and the desperate. This is still true on the cross. The person who has lost everything is the one who is able to recognize Jesus. And so the truth is spoken by that desperate criminal who says “Jesus, remember me when you come in to your kingdom.”

Jesus’ response—today you will be with me in Paradise—leads me to that second question: Over what kind of kingdom does Jesus reign? The answer is to be found in the world around us. Jesus reigns over a world populated with desperate people, people like you and like me, longing for God’s kingdom to come. The Kingdom of God is like a rich feast where there is a place at the table for everyone. The Kingdom of God is a fishnet full of all the fish in the sea. The Kingdom of God is field full of buried treasure. The Kingdom of God is a meal of loaves and fishes where no one goes hungry. We help to bring in the kingdom when we provide small kindnesses, when we recognize the spark of the divine in one another, when we realize that strangers and enemies are our family and our neighbors. When we let go of our own power and give ourselves over to God’s power. The Kingdom of God is the world transformed by love.

Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise. Today. Not someday after the end of the world as we know it, but today. Jesus, who gives all of his power over to death on the cross, reigns over his kingdom today. The kingdom of God, Jesus’ reign, is not “pie in the sky by and by,” it is the kingdom we strive to build when we follow Jesus.

The condemned criminal who says “Jesus, remember me” is often called “The thief who repented.” I like to think of him as “the thief who recognized Jesus.” In a few weeks we’ll hear John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. One way of defining repentance is to say that repentance is to recognize Jesus, and recognize that the Kingdom has come near to us. This is our call at the very beginning of the church year and it is our call at the end, and every moment in between: recognize Jesus, and recognize the Kingdom of God.

The feast of Christ the King is the New Year’s Eve of the Church year. What are your New Year’s resolutions? What will you give up in the New Year? What will you let go of? Sometimes we cannot recognize the work of God in the world around us and in our own lives until we have let go? It is through this recognition that, to borrow words from today’s Collect, we are freed and brought together under Christ’s most gracious rule.

In closing, I’m going to go back to my Thanksgiving Day survey: One person in my informal survey said “Christ the King” made him think of the hymn, “Crown him with many crowns.” We’ll sing this hymn as our closing hymn today:

Crown him the King, to whom is given, the wondrous name of Love. Crown him with many crowns, as thrones before him fall, crown him ye kings with many crowns for he is King of all.

As we celebrate the king of all, I pray that we may indeed be freed and brought together under Christ’s most gracious rule.