Christ the King

Psalm 46 John 18:33-40

Today is Christ the King Sunday, and it offers both comfort and challenge.

The comfort is the truth it affirms that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and the day will come when, as Paul put it in Philippians “At the name of Jesus every knee will bend… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”1 And in days of terrorism, violence and random bloodshed, that is a great comfort...

…but also a great challenge: do we believe it? When terrorists are remorseless, and the world seems helpless and values like justice, peace and respect for life seem hopelessly inadequate, can we really believe that Christ is King? That’s our challenge.

Christ the King Sunday is a new date in the Christian year. It began in 1925, when Europe was struggling to deal with the depression that followed World War I. That war destroyed the idea of human progress that had gripped the 19th century and the hopes of many that humans might even usher in the Kingdom of God by their own unaided efforts. World War I showed that to be naïve and disappointment bred depression.

As an antidote, Pope Pius XI promulgated Christ the King Sunday to remind the world of the Lordship of Christ, and many denominations now observe it and embrace its truth. It is a day when the future coming of God’s kingdom throws light on our present darkness and offers hope.

Page | 1 This truth reminds us that no matter how dark things appear at present, the darkness will not be the final word. The faith we are offered in Christ is summed up in the magnificent words of the prolog to John’s gospel, in words we will rejoice in again this Christmas season:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.2

There was darkness aplenty—literal and metaphorical—the day Jesus was crucified. That day, any notion of Jesus being a King was only a cruel joke, a mockery.

Pilate went beyond his nervous, cynical interrogation, “Are you the King of the Jews?” to foist a bitter joke on both Jesus and the Jews, in posting the charge sheet on the cross3: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” The joke was taken up by soldiers mocking4 and spectators5 taunting, King of the Jews, huh? Some King!

1 Philippians 2:10-11. 2 John 1:5. 3 John 19:19-22. 4 Mark 15:16-19. 5 Mark 15:32.

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Darkness all around, and yet the darkness did not win. Friday led to Sunday and the stunning reversal of the darkness in the light of the resurrection and the assurance that sin and death had been defeated.

And the truth of these three days is that sin and death are not strong enough to overpower the love of God. It’s a theology we’re glad to affirm and a truth we cherish.

But Christ the King also represents a challenge! We hear Jesus say to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting …”6

When Jesus says, “My kingdom is not from this world,” he doesn’t mean his kingdom is only an other-worldly kingdom, as in the old hymn ‘This World is not my Home.’ That hymn is true, although not the whole truth, and not the truth that Jesus states here. Jesus means his kingdom is not driven by worldly wisdom, nor ruled by worldly standards.

By the world's standards, power is the name of the game. The state operates through controls, the exercise of power and, if necessary, the power of violence. The Kingdom of Jesus is utterly different. It is a kingdom driven by the power of love, not the love of power; it rejects compulsion and invites participation; it does not rule by cowing people into submission, but by empowering them for service.

Violence appears so strong, we sometimes forget how weak it is. People turn to violence when persuasion fails. In personal life, if we’re losing an argument, we attack the other person, normally verbally, but if the stakes are high enough, we may resort to physical violence. In national life, it is when negotiation and diplomacy have failed or been rejected that people go to war. Page | 2

Thus the terrorist’s gun may be strong, in terms of the damage it can do; but it is weak: it shows an attempt to enforce a platform or viewpoint has been unpersuasive. Just as it was the failure of the religious leaders to counter the ministry and message of Jesus, that led them to want him dead. And Pilate’s inability to penetrate the truth of Jesus forced him to wash his hands of justice. Ultimately violence is a sign of weakness, of failure.

Remember how things came to this. As we saw in Lent and Easter, Jesus was not defeated by a power greater than his own. The cross was not a tragedy that caught him by surprise. Jesus chose the cross, provoked the cross, precipitated the cross.

Jesus chose to fight by surrendering, to win by losing, to secure life by dying. Jesus chose to endure the worst that violence could deliver, and demonstrate its weakness by disclosing that even the worst that humans could do would never stop God loving us, and never overcome God’s love.

It is by this love that he redeemed us, and to this love that he calls us.

6 John 18:36.

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Mark Galli, editor of the magazine7 Christianity Today, responded to the Paris atrocities— before the Mali ones compounded our distress—with a very moving and helpful article, “The Mystery of Hope in Paris.” He noted the candles---everywhere.

Lighting candles has become a common public liturgy following terrorist attacks. Even though candles in the West have a distinctly religious aura about them, we find atheists and agnostics lighting them as well. Even in post-Christian, secular France.

And he noted how candles give off a weak light, flickering in even a small wind, and provide a good metaphor for our fragility and vulnerability. But they also have a unique capacity to create community. He recalls living in Mexico City. There, when the lights went out (as they often did) his family would come from the rooms where each had been doing their own thing, to be together and share the candlelight. He went on,

Candles are unique in this way. People don’t gather after tragedies with flashlights in hand, nor do they use floodlights to light up these memorials. They leave candles. And they very often light their candle using the flame of another candle. They stand together, weeping with those who weep as the gentle, vulnerable candlelight bathes their face with a warm but certain hope. Candles can create community like no other source of light, with an almost life-giving quality.

Is not all this a sign of grace?

… It is said that the West, and France especially, is post-Christian...We imagine that most people remain, at best, indifferent to things religious. But when a terrorist strikes, Page | 3 these same people have the strange habit of gathering in dark places and lighting candles. They each have their reasons for doing so, but I suspect there is also a mystery that draws them, a reason sown into the fabric of their souls, just waiting for the spark of faith to be lit by the grace of a good God.

People often respond to tragedies and atrocities by asking, ‘Where was God.’ The answer of Jesus is the cross: God was there; God is there, loving the world despite its violence, redeeming the world despite its rejection of his way. Jesus reigning from the cross

No doubt the kingdoms of the world will respond to terrorists in the ways of the world—after all, Jesus said, ‘All who take the sword will perish by the sword.’8 But Galli is surely write when he adds,

7 http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/november-web-only/mystery-of-hope-in- paris.html?utm_source=booksandculture- html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=17899888&utm_content=396646407&utm_campaign=2013 8 Matthew 26:52

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… it goes without saying that we are in war and that the guilty should be brought to justice. But one hopes that in the end our justice will not be dark and merciless, turning us into the very barbarians we rightly condemn.

So in a world of darkness and pain, we have the light of Christ and the assurance that love is stronger than death and the promise that God is with us, even in the darkness.

Amid the darkness of the World War II concentration camps, Betsie Ten Boon’s dying words to her sister Corrie were, ‘We must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that [God] is not deeper still.’9

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it…” And will not overcome it.

______Lighten our darkness, dear Lord, and in your mercy defend us from dangers that surround us and fears that threaten us. Secure us in the faith that Jesus is Lord, and his kingdom is coming because your love is sure. In Jesus’ name, Amen

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9 Cited in Helmut Thielicke, How To Believe Again ET H George Anderson, London: Collins, 1973, 96.