Lectionary texts: Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Colossians
1:11-20 and Luke 23:33-43
Our lives are given us, a gift, from God, thrown into
a particular time and place, a family, and circumstances, within the flow of
history. I did not have to be born at all, and, given that I was, my life would
have been very different had I been born in another century, or body. The call
on my life is to join in with God’s saving work, from where I am, as fully as I
am able. The life I have been given is given with potential and with constraint,
not a blank canvas, but a work already begun by those who came before me,
generations before, just as I pass something on to those who come after me.
God did not have to come into the world, but chose to
do so, in Jesus. Jesus comes, full of amazing potential. As the Creed puts it: ‘God
from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one
Being with the Father.’ Or as Paul writes to the church in Colossae: ‘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.’
And yet, Jesus comes, accepting the constraints of
temporal existence. He is born at a particular moment in the Story of a
particular people. Moses comes first, and David, and Isaiah, a Story shaped by
liberation and the instruction that enables lives to flourish, by the rise and
fall of a kingdom among the empires, by the words of the prophets. Jesus is
born of Mary, in Bethlehem, under Roman occupation. As he grows, his ancestors
give shape to his own self-understanding. As he meditates on the Law and the
Prophets, he understands himself to be sent to the lost sheep of Israel. Why
are they lost? Because God has found generations of shepherds sent to watch
over his flock to be unfaithful, to be unsafe; God has scattered his flock
among the nations for their own safety; and now, God sends another Shepherd
King, to search them out and bring them home.
At the culmination of Jesus’ faithful response to the
life given him by the Father, he is proclaimed King of the Jews, on order of
Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, passing judgement not on the innocent man
he has been pushed into having executed, but in judgement of Jesus’ own people,
who did not recognize him for who he was. Like Jesus, like you and like me, Pontius
is a person, given life by God, thrown into history at a particular moment, a time,
and a place, lost to the record, but likely into wealth and political and
social connection, and likely serving in the Roman military before becoming the
fifth governor of the Roman province of Judea. While in this position, Jesus is
brought before him, for his decision or indecision, one might say a difficult
decision, certainly a decision with consequences, whatever his ruling on the
matter.
The Jewish leaders question whether this man, Pontius
Pilate, is a friend of the Caesar, whether what he does with the life he has
been given is faithful or faithless towards his king? What should we say? That
he keeps faith towards his emperor, but is faithless towards a god he did not worship?
Nevertheless, the Jewish god takes Pontius Pilate’s actions and turns them to good,
whereas ultimately, though not immediately, he loses the confidence of the
emperor in Rome.
We read, also, of two criminals, executed alongside
Jesus, one on either side. And of how one of them joins with those who mock him;
but that the other recognises a king. One sees an executioner’s scaffold, the
same as his own; the other, a royal throne: ‘Jesus, remember me when you come
into your kingdom.’ Again, we know nothing of the circumstances that had
brought these two men one to Jesus’ left and the other to his right on this coronation
day. Perhaps they were simply trying to make the most of the hand they had been
dealt. Perhaps they could have done far worse. Perhaps they threw their lives
away. But they don’t appear on this page out of nowhere, even if their story is
hidden from our sight.
Jesus says to the penitent thief, ‘Truly I tell you, today
you will be with me in Paradise.’ A Persian word for the royal hunting ground,
or pleasure park. In the garden of the king of one of the surrounding nations
across whom God has scattered his sheep. Not because this garden is heaven, but
because Jesus is the faithful Shepherd King who to the very last has sought and
found this lost sheep of Israel, in a far-off place, from where he will bring
him home. Today, in Paradise; on the third day, in a reunited Israel and Judah.
We live in a society that tells us, and especially our
young people, before it is too late, that you can be whatever you decide to be.
But that is a lie, and a paralysing one at that. We cannot be anyone, creating
ourselves, out of nothing, a blank sheet. But we can be someone, confronting
the life we have been given as honestly as possible, owning it in all its
brilliance and bitterness, and offering it back to the Giver of Life, as fully,
as faithfully as we are able.
Because he was faithful with the ‘small thing’ of bringing
back the lost sheep of Israel, the Father has exalted Jesus and made him King
of kings. Not, simply, ruler over all earthly powers, though he is that, but the
High King of a family of kings. The Father has rescued us from the power of
darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, not as
subjects but as fellow heirs, as sisters and brothers of Jesus our Christ. You
are a crown prince of heaven. You are a princess royal. You are given a throne
to sit beside Jesus, and a crown on your head. Yes, it is a cross-shaped
throne, like his, a reminder that we are called to lay down our lives for the
sake of others. It is a crown woven of thorns, but thorns crafted of pure gold,
for God has taken every hurt you have endured and need yet endure and
transformed the darkness into light, the suffering into glory. We do not live
our days in a Paradise, a pleasure garden, but participating in the reconciling
of all things, whether on earth or in heaven, that it is God’s good pleasure to
bring about through the faithful Son, by making peace through the blood of his
cross.
God is at work today, through Jesus, transforming you
from one degree of glory to another as you gaze upon the King of kings, as we
cast our crowns before him in wonder and worship, until, one day, we will be found
simultaneously our own unique selves and looking just like Jesus, so clear will
be the family likeness. Male or female, Nigerian, Iranian, Chinese, White
British, young or old, Jesus standing among his sisters and brothers.
So today, on this Feast of Christ the King, may we be
freed to love the Lord our God with our whole being, all that we are, every
choice and action, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. Amen.
