Christ the King, 2022

 

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.