Christ the King B: What Does This Mean?
Dear Partner in Preaching,
So much in John’s Gospel turns on questions.
Have you ever noticed that? How frequently John records questions, whether from Jesus or the person to whom Jesus is talking. From the first chapter with Nathaniel, through Nicodemus and the woman at the well, including multiple encounters with religious authorities, and all the way up to this passage, Jesus is regularly asking or answering questions.
On one level, I suppose this is simply a good narrative technique to advance the plot. Questions offer a good rhetorical foil to move into the subject matter at hand. But at another level, there is something about questions that digs a little deeper, revealing more of what’s going on.
Which is just what is happening, I think, in today’s reading. “My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus says, “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
What does this mean? Okay, so this isn’t exactly Pilate’s question, but it’s close. Instead, Pilate answers, “So you are a king?”
And with this question Pilate gets to the heart of his concern. Pilate, quite frankly, doesn’t really care if Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. He’s interested in whether Jesus is a potential political threat, a potential opponent. Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and Pilate needs to know what, exactly, Jesus means by that.
To tell you the truth, I think we should be interested in that question as well. What does it mean for our daily work, relationships, future plans and more to say that Jesus is King. Perhaps the word “king” seems too old-fashioned, or odd, or distant, or patriarchal to have much meaning. But what about “Lord,” the earliest and oldest title the Church ascribed to Jesus: “Christos Kurios!” Jesus is Lord!
But maybe even that is too abstract. While I’m not wild about “The Reign of Christ Sunday” – simply because “reign” doesn’t seem much less foreign or odd-sounding than “king” – it at least makes the question more active. What does it mean for us not simply to name Jesus as king but to actually expect Jesus to exercise reign over our lives? To submit to his rule? What does it mean not simply to call Jesus “Lord” but to give him lordship – authority – over our lives.
Reign, submission, lordship – these, too, are rather foreign sounding phrases, more akin, perhaps, to what we’d expect to hear from the neighboring evangelical/fundamentalist church. Part of that is likely because those phrases – lordship, submission, rule – have been so often linked to larger structures of (predominantly patriarchal) dominance that it’s hard not to view and hear them with suspicion.
But part of it might also be that as modern/post-modern, relatively affluent first-world citizens we find the idea of submitting to anything or anyone a little hard to imagine, if not downright offensive. We can talk about Jesus being “Lord” with some modicum of eloquence, but when push comes to shove, we’d prefer to make our own decisions, thank you very much, about how we spend our time, energy, and money. Convinced of our own autonomy and independence, we are grateful that Jesus is Lord… as long as he doesn’t actually demand any significant or sacrificial allegiance. Until….
Until, that is, life proves much of our confidence an illusion, if not delusion. Until, that is, illness comes, or until the markets sour, or until an important relationship ends, or until a job falls through, or until a loved one dies, or until a child is caught in addiction, or…. Tellingly, the list of “untils” that reveal that our sense of independence is as foolish as it is fragile is nearly endless.
Christ the King: What does this mean?
Martin Luther asked a similar question about Jesus’ kingdom. Or, more precisely, the kingdom of God that Jesus commanded his disciples to pray for. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” we pray. And Luther, in his Small Catechism, asks, “What does this mean?” And then provides the following answer: “The kingdom of God certainly comes by itself without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may come to us also.”
It means, I think, that Jesus is king, whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, and whether we attach any significance to it or not. That may feel like rather bad news if we’re intent on being kings and queens ourselves…or, put perhaps more succinctly, if we’re intent on doing what whatever we want whenever we want with whatever we happen to have. But it’s also good news if we’ve realized that we’re not in control, that we don’t have it all together and don’t have to! It’s good news if we’ve realized that our lives are fraught with an unnerving uncertainty that we try to keep at bay – especially and ironically during this season where we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus! – through overconsumption. Then… then the word that God is God and we are not, that Jesus is king, that there is something, someone beyond our abilities to create or control… Well, then that is incredibly good news.
The point of proclaiming the rule and reign of Christ is not to verbally give some form of allegiance or offer some form of submission, as if the Christ who did not equate equality with God as something to be exploited (Phil 2) was mostly interested in a making a power play. Rather, when we confess Jesus as king and inviting the reign of Christ, we are praying that Jesus’ rule of peace and justice and equity and equality would come… also to us. That we might be a part of it. That we might share the wonder of that reign with others, participate in it, feel it made real and actualized in our own live, and experience the joy that comes from being caught up in and aligned with the purposes of God.
Our opportunity perhaps, Dear Partner, is to help our people imagine not just Jesus as a different kind of king than we usually imagine – though that is also helpful – but to invite our people into the reign of Christ now, to help them see their works of compassion and care as being caught up in Christ’s rule now, to remind them that God’s kingdom comes on its own whether we pray for it or not and that we get to be a part of that as it comes also to us.
Christ the King – what does this mean? That we are drawn into a different way of being, here and now, equipped to love and serve with joy, to confess with candor, to recommit ourselves to the healing of the world with confidence. Because the kingdom of God is coming…on its own…even now, and we get to be part of that. Thanks be to God. And thanks be to God for all those who proclaim this message.
Yours in Christ,
David
Post Image: “Ecce Homo” by Antonio Ciresi, 1871.
I find it interesting that most Christians understand Jesus’ saying, “my kingdom is not of this world” as if the sentence stops there and we can easily draw the conclusion that his kingdom is of “the other world, the world of heaven”. But the sentence explains that Jesus’ kingdom is not of the world where people fight over power and control by using violence, but his kingdom is a kingdom of nonviolence. For the first 300 years the people of the way accepted rather to be killed than join the Roman army.
That ended with emperor Constatine…What do you think?
A very helpful perspective, Liliana. Certainly a vital key in understanding and participating in the new kingdom. Sadly, much (all?) of our violence is based on fear and hate. Sadly, much of the fear and hate we see is founded in religion. And sadly, our violence isn’t only physical but also verbal and psychological.
Peace be with you.