Sermon for the 23rd of November - Feast of Christ the King

As we celebrate this feast of Christ the King, one theologian suggested that we might simply contemplate the glory of God made visible in Jesus. A kind of second transfiguration: a feast for standing still, gazing at the beauty of the One who gathers into himself—through birth, life, death, and resurrection—the fullness of “Emmanuel, God with us.”

 Yes, BUT. I am very much a practitioner of contemplation. But I have to confess that the mere contemplation of divine glory has never been quite enough. Theology has to be engaged with the real world.

 What speaks more powerfully to me is the story of the Diocese of Christ the King in South Africa. It was founded deliberately in one of the most divided, impoverished regions of the country, in the final, violent years of Apartheid.

 And when the diocese’s first bishop chose where he would be installed, he didn’t chose a cathedral, or a place of prestige, but Sharpeville—the site of one of the regime’s most notorious massacres. That choice proclaimed a very particular kind of kingship: Christ’s kingship made visible not in serene distance, but in radical solidarity, costly justice, and hope planted in the soil of suffering.

 That resonates more deeply with today’s Gospel than any remote adoration of a perfect equation of divine glory. Today we hear our final passage from Luke before the new church year. Throughout this year we’ve traced Luke’s portrait of Jesus—a Jesus whose social vision is more radical, more inclusive, more boundary-breaking than the other gospel writers. And today, at the foot of the cross, we see all of that gathered into one scene.

“Let him save himself.”
“Save yourself.”
“Save yourself and us!”

Three cries of derision in ten verses. Luke presses the word “save” upon us, but what does salvation actually look like?

From the very start of Luke’s gospel, Jesus has been found among the wrong people: among the crowds at the Jordan; among tax collectors and sinners; among women considered impure; among the poor, the excluded, the suspicious. And now—at the very end—he hangs between criminals, people we might today call dangerous, violent, or simply beyond help. The shame he has shared throughout his ministry he now bears in full.  “Let him save himself.”

But instead of self-preservation, we hear words of forgiveness and of consolation. “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

 Jesus’ compassion reaches even to the soldiers—ordinary men carrying out the violent machinery of empire. Leaders and nations still rely on such machinery. We want security and order—of course we do—and yet we prefer not to look too closely at what that order sometimes requires. We recoil when we see brutality on the news, but we also benefit from the systems that ask others to do the things we would rather not think about. Distance keeps our hands clean.

 But at the cross, distance collapses. The one hailed as king becomes the victim of the violence we all, in various ways, tolerate. And instead of condemning, he intercedes. Instead of calling down power, he absorbs the world’s brutality into prayer.

 The soldiers mock him because the only kingship they understand is the kingship of force: “If you are the King, save yourself.”  The leaders mock him because they cannot imagine that God’s purposes could unfold through weakness or apparent failure: “He saved others,” they say, “let him save himself.”

Their idea of salvation is success. Their idea of kingship is control.

We are not so different when we equate strength with truth, power with credibility, order with righteousness. Where might is right. The cross interrupts all of that. It shows us a kingdom whose power is love poured out, whose triumph looks—to every worldly eye—like defeat.

And then there is the criminal who turns to Jesus. He has no illusions left; there’s no chance of escape. Yet he chooses not to curse, but to reach outward—to make a human relationship in the face of death. He sees the mockery above Jesus’ head, and somehow, in that place of horror, he glimpses a different kind of reign. Perhaps he has heard rumours of Jesus’ compassion. Perhaps it’s the calm courage with which Jesus suffers. Whatever it is, awe gives birth to faith, and he dares to ask:
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

And the reply:  “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

 The first citizen of Christ’s kingdom is a criminal, executed justly by the standards of his world and yet welcomed home by the God of mercy and forgiveness. At the place of the Skull, Paradise begins. The King ascends his throne, and his first royal act is mercy.

 This is the kingship we celebrate today. Not a kingship of dominance or distance, but a kingship that descends into the world’s wounds, gathers the outcast, and opens the gates of home to the most unlikely people.

 This leaves us with an uncomfortable challenge and invitation: To belong to this kingdom, are we prepared to take our place among its citizens—among the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the criminals, the forgotten, and all whom Christ calls his friends?  For it is there, on the margins and at the cross, that Christ the King reigns.

Reference:

Joe Hawes, Christ the King, All Saints Fulham, 25th November 2007