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| "Crown" by Get Bullish, on Flickr |
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord. Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord. The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when 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. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”
Colossians 1:11-20
May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for 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. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Luke 23:33-43
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 left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
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C.S. Lewis once said, “Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in His great campaign of sabotage.”
It is Christ the King Sunday. Today, we consider the peculiar kingship of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, in whom dwell the whole power of God and the whole vulnerability of humanity. Christ is the righteous and rightful king, foretold by the prophets. But he is also the king in disguise, whom the world will not be able to easily recognize. He is a king of reversals and a king of subversions and not a king of human empire.
We are living in a world filled to the brim with power struggles, wars, conflicts, and political turmoil. The gap between the king we want and the king we get is a huge one. And it leads us to the question at the heart of our readings today:
What kind of king were you looking for?
The Israelites are looking for a king who will restore them. Jeremiah’s words today are to a people who have seen kings and leaders of all stripes fail them, and fail them miserably.
The land around them has been at war. Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon have all been wrestling for control. Now Babylon has reigned victorious, and so now the future of Israel and Judah is under Babylonian rule instead of Egyptian rule. The Babylonian king has forced some of Jerusalem’s kings and leaders into exile and set up a new king, who rebelled against him, prompting the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and sending the Israelites themselves into exile. The 400 year reign of David’s descendants has been broken. God’s chosen people have been conquered. The very home and dwelling place of God has been destroyed.
It is a dubious time for Jeremiah to speak of God’s plans for restoration and God’s promise of yet another new king. And yet it is right here, in the midst of impending exile, that Jeremiah preaches his of God’s plans to one day bring them back to their land and restore them as his chosen people. Not only that, God’s promises to raise up a new king of David’s line, restoring the historic kingly lineage. This will be a just king and a righteous king, one who will erase divisions, gather the flock, and reign with lasting justice, peace, and security for the people.
A tall order for any human king. And as the march of Old Testament history confirms, no human king would actually come to fulfill God’s promise through Jeremiah. Yes, there would come to be periods of flourishing for God’s people, but there would also continue to be times of trial. There would be faithful kings, and there would yet be unfaithful kings. The temple would be rebuilt, but now when we get to Luke’s gospel, the temple has been destroyed for a second time, and the people are still looking for the coming of a Messiah. They are still looking for their king.
What kind of a king were you looking for?
The leaders in today's gospel knew exactly what kind of king they were looking for...and they knew that Jesus wasn't it.
"He saved others," they mocked; "let him save himself if he is the Messiah." It is a statement of disappointment. And it is an unintentional statement of faith. It tells us two halves of the story: the Messiah that we expect, and the Messiah that we get.
Over and over, Jesus is taunted, first by the leaders, then by the soldiers, and then by one of the criminals hanging next to him: “If you are the Messiah, if you are the king, if you are who you say you are, why don’t you just use your power and save yourself?”
That's what we expect, isn't it? If it is true that Christ has all the power of God, why wouldn’t he wield it? Why not parade it out and demand his rightful throne? Why not save himself from certain death and conquer the world through divine might?
Power is what we expect of kings and what we expect of God. We want leaders and saviors who prove to us that they are more powerful than our fears and our enemies. We want flashes of light and feats of strength. We want miracles to burst in and we want to see blessings and glory abound. We want security and favor and power and victory.
This is the vision of Jesus’s return that we find in so much of our popular Christianity - the warrior-Jesus, heralded by trumpets, riding back to earth on a cloud, with sword in hand and vengeance in his eyes; a Jesus who comes with a rocket-launcher to judge the world with fury as he fights the cosmic battle between life and death.
The problem, of course, is that this warrior-king whom we are looking for is not the king that we get.
The king that we get brings victory over empire, evil, and death precisely by giving himself over to these very powers. In the eyes of the world, Jesus has been walked all over and taken advantage of. He has sullied his chances of making a good name for himself by instead sticking himself among the unclean, the poor, and the sinner. He rejects the advances of the religious elite. He rejects temptations to power and status. He urges his followers toward lives of poverty, dependence, and sacrifice for the sake of others. He dies on a cross.
"Saving himself" and, by extension, "saving the power of the powerful" is the farthest thing from Jesus's vocabulary.
Because, as thorny as it is for us to admit, the truth about Jesus is that he is always seeking to subvert power and he is never working for the sake of the empire. He is always doing the work of sabotage. He is always standing on the side of the oppressed, and never on the side of the oppressor. There has never been a king, a kingdom, an empire, or a government that Jesus has not critiqued or even sought to topple with his subversive message of love for all, of justice for the last and the least, of solidarity and care for the ones in the shadows. In Christ, we have a king and a kingdom whose heart is keenly focused on rejecting power and standing with the powerless.
What kind of king were you looking for?
"He saved others," the leaders mocked, without realizing that this is exactly what Jesus intended to do.
He saved others. Three words that tell us that Jesus's mission on earth has, indeed, been fulfilled. This whole season in Luke, we have been referring back to Jesus in the temple in Luke chapter 4, where he unrolled the scroll of Isaiah and read "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." In other words, from the beginning of his ministry, Jesus's mission has been precisely to save others, and especially outsiders. Those who have no hope. No resources. No status. No advocate.
Martin Niemöller was a Protestant pastor during the turbulent years of WWII, who spoke publicly against Adolf Hitler and who spent seven years in concentration camps. You might not have heard of him, but you have perhaps heard some variation of his most famous quotation:
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
We could add verses to this, couldn't we?
First they came for the Muslims, and I did not speak out--because I was not a Muslim. Then they came for the welfare moms, and I did not speak out--because I was not a welfare mom. Then they came for the underemployed factory workers, and I did not speak out--because I was not an underemployed factory worker. Then they came for our young black men, and I did not speak out--because I was not a young black man. Then they came for the homeless working poor, and I did not speak out--because I was not among the homeless working poor. And so on, and so on, and so on.
“The spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus our king says, “to bring good news to the poor. To proclaim release. To let the oppressed go free. To speak up. To save others.”
Jesus stands with all of these, and then some. His kingship takes the form of saving others, to the denial of himself; not fearing the empire, but speaking up and standing up and bringing the light of God's salvation to the world, beginning with its absolutely darkest corners, and challenging his followers to do the same, both as an act of faithfulness to God and as an act of resistance to the world’s empty powers.
What kind of king were you looking for?
We have a king in Christ who hangs on a cross to stand in solidarity with the lowest of the low, facing the worst of the worst fate common to us all: death itself. We have a king who shows us that salvation isn’t just heaven and forgiveness and clouds and angels, but that salvation actually looks a lot like a thief on a cross, being told by God himself, "Today you will be with me in paradise."
For each and every one of us, when we are wounded, when we are grieving, when we are broken, when we are out of hope, when we no longer have anyone left to speak up for us, there is Christ. Speaking up for each of us from the cross, just like he spoke up for the criminal hanging next to him. Our promise is that when all the kings of this world fall, when power becomes powerless, when wealth fails, when empires shatter, when darkness looms, when our bodies and our souls are scared and truly vulnerable, when it feels like we have been backed right up against a cross, Jesus is standing there right next to us, and next to all who suffer, backed up to the same crosses and injustices of this world, ready to turn his head to say, “I will remember you in my kingdom. Today and always, you will be with me. I am not the king you were looking for. But I am the king who is your salvation.”
It is by the cross that our good shepherd will fulfill Jeremiah’s hopes that God would gather together the scattered flock once and for all. It is by the tragedy of Christ’s innocent death that we see him as champion for all the innocents. It is by the execution of Christ, the personification God’s justice and peace, that God’s justice and peace will be executed in all the land and that God’s new kingdom is being established on earth as it is in heaven.
The truth and the good news for us is that Christ our king is, indeed:
the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation,
the one in whom all things in heaven and earth were created,
the one who is before all things and in whom all things hold together,
the one who has first place in everything,
the one in whom the very fullness of God is pleased to dwell,
the one in whom God was pleased to reconcile to himself all people and all things
the beginning of our resurrected life, the firstborn of the dead,
the one who has rescued us from darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of light,
the one in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins,
the one who brings us peace.
But make no mistake. This good news comes not through the flexing of the arm of might, but through the outstretched arms of Christ on the cross. Arms wide enough to embrace all our fallen world. Arms loving enough to lift up the broken. Arms strong enough to shove us out into the world to embrace it with holy love that stands up to power for the sake of justice, righteousness, and peace.
C.S. Lewis once said, “Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in His great campaign of sabotage.”
What kind of king were you looking for?
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