This week, we celebrate the last Sunday of ordinary time in the church calendar. Next week, we will begin a new church year, with the season of Advent. But today, before we make this turn to waiting for the arrival of the infant Jesus, we celebrate Christ the King Sunday.
In our Gospel today, we have jumped to the Gospel of John—near the end of the story, where Jesus has been brought to Pilate to be questioned. Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you King of the Jews”…and Jesus responds “My kingdom is not from this world…” When Pilate responds with “So you are a king?” Jesus retorts, “You say that I am a king…for this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
In John’s Gospel, Pilate will go on to use his own authority as a ruler to declare that Jesus is a king: by placing “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews” over the cross on which Jesus is crucified. There is some irony in that: Pilate is using his earthly power, to proclaim the kingly power of a man he will put to death—a man who will not claim any title of kingship the world will try to place upon him.
This day that we celebrate, Christ the King Sunday, is one of the more recent additions to the church calendar, having been instituted in 1925, and moved to this time in our liturgical calendar in 1970. It was added to our calendar by Pope Pius XI (11th), as a response to growing nationalism and facism, when Europe was bitterly divided in the aftermath of WWI. He named that the aim of his papacy was “the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Christ by peace in Christ”. Christ the King Sunday was introduced as a “challenge to the church to refocus its energies on their true ruler, and away from unquestioning fidelity to earthly powers.”
For many of us, this language of Christ as king, Jesus as king, is uncomfortable, troublesome. King, and even kingdom, as the way to describe the rule of God, carries a connotation of tyranny, abusive rulers, those who have wielded power in authoritarian and harmful ways, committing generationally harmful acts of colonialism and emperialism. I myself admit, that I don’t always love hymns that unabashedly proclaim God or Christ as King, when our human experience of king-ship is rather problematic.
But to name Christ as King is then an act of subversion. To name Christ as King is to entirely flip over our understanding of kingdoms and kingship. To name Christ as King is to recognize that Jesus came to us as an infant, engaged in a lifetime of self-giving servanthood, and was crucified because this vulnerability and different way of leading caused so much fear in the existing systems of empire, that the only way to control it was to try to destroy it. But to name Christ as King also allows us to have faith that Christ could not be destroyed by these systems, that his kingdom was never supposed to fit in our perameters and understandings of the word. That he came to testify to the truth—the truth of servant leadership, value in diversity, love of God, of self, and neighbor.
In recent years, the real meaning, the real subversive understanding of this Christ the King Sunday, is deeply important for us to recognize and reclaim. This is largely because Christian Nationalism—the belief that “equates the dominance of a racially narrow understanding of America with the kingdom of God”— is on a steep rise in our country. As those within our country claim a Christianity that centers America, centers Jesus as warrior-like prophet, centers homogeny, sameness and falling in line, we are called to remember the new-kind-of-king Jesus who flipped tables, fed multitudes, engaged in conversation with those with whom he disagreed, welcomed the stranger, confided in and trusted women to lead, and organized a community of diverse followers. Last week I quoted the Bishop of Minnesota, Bishop Loya, but he has been on fire with his words as of late and thus, I share his words again. He writes:
I, for one, am unwilling to cede the language of God’s kingdom that is given to us in the scripture to such a gross distortion…The point is that Jesus is unlike any and all political and institutional powers in the world. Instead of privileging one tribe, language, or nation, Jesus builds the Beloved Community gathered around God’s feast of love. Instead of making himself big in order to win, Jesus comes to us small and humble. Instead of clinging to his identity with entitlement, Jesus leads by serving. Instead of putting himself first, he lives by dying. That is how the God of all creation presides over the whole cosmos.
Next week, we will begin a new church year with the start of the season of Advent. This season is marked by the anticipation, the expectation, of waiting for this king to arrive. This week, we celebrate Christ the King Sunday in order to remind us, maybe particularly as we enter the season of Advent, of what kind of king we proclaim, what kind of kingdom we seek, what kind of king and kingdom we are being invited to. I’m rarely one for resolutions at the turn of the secular year—that structure of change is just not one that works for me, personally — and I don’t necessarily think Advent is a season that is asking such a thing of us. But I do wonder is we can consider Pope Pius XI’s challenge: How can we, the church, refocus our energies on our true ruler, and away from unquestioning fidelity to earthly powers?
What are small ways (or large, if you’re ambitious) that we can begin or continue to orient our lives away from the systems and powers of this world? What is a small way that we live out that which we are also waiting for? What is the small way that we manifest that kingdom of peace and love, in the midst of a world that would tell us only that kingdoms are comprised of power and control and sameness? What is a small way that we orient ourselves to the truth that Jesus speaks of?
The truth of a kingdom where we are called to respond to one another with kindness, generosity, and welcome; the truth of a king who cried for justice stands with those who are forgotten or pushed aside by the powers of the world; the truth of a kingdom whose diversity reflects the multi-faceted face of God; the truth of a king who would walk among us, learn from us, be with us, live and die for us; the truth of a kingdom that dwells in the gift of abundance, not the fear of scarcity; a king who would call our name, and remind each of us that we are worthy of the truth of the love of God, and find our place of belonging; a kingdom and king defined by love, justice, and peace.
A small way. A small practice. A small curiosity. To turn us more and more towards our humble, subversive, truthful Christ our King. AMEN.
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