What can we say November 25? Christ the King

     Pentecost (or “Ordinary Time”) ends with anything but an ending. The long story of the Christian year “ends” with a crowning – reminding Tolkien fans of the grand climax to The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn is finally the king, although he and the rest bow to the smallish hobbits, who are the true heroes of the story. Tolkien totally got biblical royalty and theology.

     Jesus’ kingship was the one he declined to describe to Pilate, the one that refused power “over,” the royalty whose palace was a manger, whose regiments were missionaries, whose attendants were the unwanted, whose throne was a cross, whose crown was made of thorns, whose treaties were with the needy. On the road to Jerusalem he’d spoken of those who lord it over others: “but it shall not be so among you” (Mark 10:43).

 

    Revelation 1:4b-8 is a stunning passage, inviting us to marvel more than to explain or preach. In the days when there were as yet no Christian scriptures besides to Old Testament, there were Christian prophets, who would be inspired by the Spirit to stand up and reveal God’s powerful and ultimate intervention to beleaguered, persecuted believers. Jesus, just a few years after his crucifixion, was extolled as “the one who was, who is, and is to come, the faithful witness” (the Greek here is martus, martyr!), “firstborn of the dead, the ruler of all the other kings.” Investigators poking around to expose Christians who refused to bow down to the emperor must have laughed their heads off at such chatter. Again, the earliest Christians followed what we now call George Lindbeck’s “rules” – to say as expansively as possible how great Christ really was, is, will be.

     How subversive was their worship of Jesus? It could cost you your life. It did cost them ridicule, and business suffered. Yet for those who attached themselves to this alternate king, “they loved not their lives even unto death” (Rev. 12:12). Hard to envision in our world where being a Christian, or going to church, elicits a yawn. And yet aren’t people looking for something costly? Something worth dying for? Something painful? Is this why so many get tattoos? – to be marked, to endure pain? Jesus was, after all, pierced.

     Jesus’ tattoos (thinking imaginatively here!) might be conceived as the Greek letters Alpha and Omega. God in Christ overflows all language, he exceeds creation itself, even as he embraces all of creation. He even embraced all those powerful images of the emperor the Christians saw daily – in architecture, iconography, statues and public festivals. Into such a world, Christ spoke and then the Christians spoke simple words, “Grace and peace,” not as a polite greeting, but as the very irruption of God’s way into the world.

     Fixated in awe and wonder as we should be on Jesus, he came, and now rules, so we might be his Body, or as Revelation 1 puts it, “a kingdom of priests.” I am a priest. My job is to help my people live into their own priesthood. The Latin pontifex, “priest,” means “bridge-builder.” We build a bridge to God, not merely for ourselves, but for others. Can I be a bridge to God? I might get walked all over – which is the goal, right? And anybody can be such royalty and priesthood. The Roman emperors claimed the title pontifex; we rules with Christ legitimately in this way. I love the moments in John Irving’s Cider House Rules when Dr. Larch would read Dickens to the orphans at night, and then leave the room just after saying “Good night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.”

     John 18:33-37. How fitting then that we also read the pathetic yet glorious moment from Jesus' trial before Pilate. Was Pilate a sniveling miscreant, as he is cast so often – as in the 1973 Jesus Christ Superstar? 

I vastly prefer the portrayal in the 2000 video production in which Fred Johanson masterfully and movingly portrays Pilate as physically imposing, muscular, powerful – and yet with deep emotion, a huge, troubled heart: watch his “dream” and also the absolutely stunning “trial” scene. 

    Jesus’ comment, “My kingdom is not of this world,” has given much solace to overly-spiritual people who prefer a Christianity that is unpolitical, nonphysical, an unhinged from the realities of a world needing change almost as much as the spiritual people do. But his kingdom is so very relevant precisely because it has a different, holy, eternal origin, and paradoxical, inverted strategies of implementation. 

Listen to Raymond Brown: “Jesus does not deny that his kingdom or kingship affects this world… but he denies that his kingdom belongs to this world” – and “Jesus does not deny that he is a king, but it is not a title that he would spontaneously choose to describe his role.”

     Jesus’ vocation is truth – which is always sacrificed in the world’s securing and application of power. 

I love Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel image of Jesus before Pilate – whose face is at once etched in frozen rage and yet a puzzled intrigue. We too should be fascinated, not having Jesus figured out at all, waiting longingly to see what this rule will be like. Advent and Christmas will be the answer to Pilate’s query – and ours.

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 Looking toward Advent: My book, Why This Jubilee? Advent Reflections, has much of what I've used as preaching material over the years, and also serves as a good group study for your people.