Sunday 20-11-16 CHRIST THE KING Jeremiah 23.1-6; Song of Zechariah; Col 1.11-20; Luke 23.33-43 I attended Christ Church St Laurence for the first time in my late teens and had a disturbing experience. There we were, saying the creed, or maybe singing it, and suddenly at a certain point the congregation seemed to disappear. When I realised they’d all sunk to their knees I felt rather conspicuous so joined them, only to find they were all standing again. Later I asked someone why and it was explained to me (it was the era of the 1662 Prayer Book) that when we say ‘And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man:’ we were actually recollecting and reciting the most awe-inspiring, amazing event in history, that the God who is from everlasting to everlasting, took human flesh and became a baby, the image of the invisible God a helpless, vulnerable and dependent infant. Ever since, even where that custom is not practised, I have never repeated those words without thinking of and marvelling at the sheer wonder of the Incarnation. Such is the power of the symbolic act. Today we honour that firstborn of all creation, Christ the King. In the picture painted by Luke of the scene at the Cross, Jesus has stood on its head the meaning of kingship. In the words of Tom Wright, ‘now he is hailed as a king at last, but in mockery. Here comes his royal cup-bearer, only it’s a Roman soldier offering him sour wine…here is his royal placard, announcing his kingship to the world, but is in a fact a criminal charge explaining his death’. Now I have a problem with slogans and clichés, especially Christian slogans and clichés. ‘Christ the King’ could easily become just a slogan, a bit of triumphalism, a chance to have a celebration, an opportunity to belittle other faiths, or to show contempt for unbelievers. Then I stop to remember that there cannot be a king without a kingdom, so the question is, what kind of kingdom are we talking about? The kingdom of God has no power structure, as we understand it. And whenever the Christian church has tried to use such power structures, to use the tools of the world’s kingdoms, it has been at its spiritually weakest. We think of the Crusades, the Inquisition, or co-operating with the slave trade in Africa. And when it has intermingled with the state, like the Holy Roman Empire, Cromwell’s England, Calvin’s Geneva, or the Religious Right in the USA, the faith becomes distorted and impoverished. Today we can be thankful for one glimmer of hope - the era of so-called Christendom is over. Now we can understand more than ever Jesus’ words to Pilate in John’s gospel: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’. Jesus himself described the kingdom of God as having different rules and different expectations from the rules and laws of humanity. Actually it was indescribable, so he had to resort to stories. He said the kingdom of God is like the love freely given when a son foolishly asks his father for his inheritance, takes it and squanders it. Then when he returns hoping his father will conditionally forgive him, is met with celebration and rejoicing. Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a shepherd who cares so deeply for his sheep that when one is lost doesn’t give up until it’s found. Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a rich man who gives a party, and when all the other rich people are too busy to attend opens it up to the poor and the marginalised. For Jesus, the kingdom of God is the great reversal, when the mighty are put down and the humble are lifted up. Today we look at Christ the King through the lens of Luke’s gospel - Jesus himself lifted up, crucified with two criminals, one on his right and one on his left, taking upon himself all the evil and rubbish and sin of the human race. And it’s a stark reminder that Jesus once
promised that when two or three are gathered together there am I in the midst. On this crucifixion day that promise becomes literally and horrifically true. Jesus is in the middle of them and not to one side. Even in the darkest times Jesus is there in the midst, he is always the centre of our lives. Even for the sceptic and unbeliever, he cannot be side-lined. But Jesus in the midst is not always a sign of comfort. He is also the great divider - the two criminals represent that division - those who deride Christ the King, and those who reach out to him, even in despair and hopelessness. We notice the dying criminal does not preface his request with either of the royal titles being tossed around that afternoon, Messiah of God or King of the Jews. He addresses him only as ‘Jesus’. The speaking of that name, however, evokes a world of meaning and of hope. In Matthew’s gospel the angel of the Lord instructs Joseph ‘You are to name him Jesus for he will save his people from their sins’. The name Jesus means ‘God will save’, and that is the name, and therefore the hope that the dying criminal speaks. It is so little and so pitiful that it hardly ranks as a deathbed confession, only ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom’. There is no shred of evidence that afternoon that such a kingdom existed, ever had or ever would. But somehow the criminal taps into that most desolate and hopeless moment, and it is at such a moment that salvation breaks through. During all the scoffing that went on before, Jesus said nothing except to pray that his tormentors be forgiven. But when the dying criminal reaches out, Jesus finally speaks, not with judgement, not with any teaching or a theory of atonement, but only: ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’. And so Jesus, the king of the Jews is with the dying criminal in his hell, as he is with us in our hells, whether our hells be despair or loneliness, sickness or grief, depression or addiction, remorse or guilt, mental illness or dementia, family tragedy or conflict. Like the criminal it’s not a question of struggling to get out of our hell and then to find him; he is there with us in the depths. And here is the essence of the gospel. The criminal had done nothing to justify himself. He knew there was no hope for him and no good thing in him. He just managed to gasp out a dying and despairing plea. It’s hard to know if he expected to get anything out of it or whether his request was selfish and self-motivated. But it was his last act on earth and it was enough. It was the reaching out that justified him. He would have just heard the words ‘Father forgive them, for they do not know what they’re doing’’ and so he was confronted with the power of forgiveness, the grace of forgiveness and the total illogic of forgiveness. For Luke, this man was the first to be saved by the death of Christ the King – the proto-type of all the redeemed. So it is on the cross that Christ fully reveals his kingship and he calls us to belong to his kingdom, or in the eloquent words of today’s Collect, to be Instruments of his kingdom, to love the unloved and to minister to all in need. To be an instrument of his kingdom is therefore to be Christ to others, to live the Jesus life. This in itself is indescribable so I need to resort to stories.
And the story is of a blind boy who ran a market stall on a busy station in Chicago. People were always rushing by him. Some stopped to buy fruit for their journeys. One day a business man was hurrying to catch the last train of the day. Unwittingly he crashed into the stall of the blind fruit seller. The fruit went everywhere, apples, oranges, pears – all over the place. The business man paused, saw his train about to depart, and then stopped and began collecting the fruit, and bringing it back to the boy. In the meantime his train departed. ‘Mister’, said the blind boy, ‘are you Jesus?’ and for that moment at least, the man realised that he was. Recently I came across a parable that suggests to me that the kingdom over which Christ reigns has no limits and goes beyond all the barriers we so often like to erect, or in the words of the hymn writer F W Faber, ‘the love of God is broader than the measures of our mind’. Anthony de Mello tells of a Jewish congregation that was intrigued to see their rabbi disappear each week on the eve of the Sabbath. They suspected he was secretly meeting the Almighty, so they deputised one of their number to follow him. This is what the man saw: the rabbi disguised himself in peasant clothes and served a paralysed Gentile woman, a Christian, in her cottage, cleaning out the room and preparing a Sabbath meal for her. When the spy got back the congregation asked, ‘where did the rabbi go? Did he ascend to heaven?’ ‘No’, the man replied. ‘He went even higher’.