Year C

Luke 23:33-43

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

Christ the King

Once there was a great king who decided to share his wealth with his subjects. He had a spacious compound created in front of his castle and in it he placed all his treasures. At its center he positioned his throne. He sat down and called his subjects together and announced: “I am about to share all of my treasures with you. Choose whatever you wish in this compound, and it is yours. Choose wisely and do not leave the area until I have dismissed you. His subjects began to scramble over his possessions, taking whatever they wished. In the scramble an old woman, small in build and great in years, approached the king to ask: “Your majesty, have I understood you correctly? If I choose anything in this compound it will be mine? The king assured her that she had understood. The old woman paused a moment in thought. Then she looked at the king and said: “Your majesty, I chose you!” The crowd grew silent, waiting to hear the king’s response. The king smiled at the woman and said, “You have chosen most wisely.” There was abundant joy in the land that day for the old woman was much loved, and everyone shared in the kings treasures.

On this last Sunday of the church year, this is the kind of king we are celebrating today. As we stand ready to enter the new year in Advent, we celebrate this “other” new year’s eve not with champagne but by honoring Jesus Christ as king. Jesus Christ is a king in a way that gives new meaning to the concept of royalty. Our understanding of royalty might be shaped by our reading and hearing about the British monarchy, for instance. It certainly has had its problems over the years. But Jesus’ kingship is different in that it is shaped by the generosity, love and abundance of the monarch and it is also shaped by the response that we are invited to make to the kings invitation. Like the king in the story, Jesus emptied himself and made himself available to humanity in love. He made himself vulnerable to our choices.

For us, says the Rev. Francisco Garcia in the Living Generously meditation today, “Jesus is the most concrete, palpable, and supreme revelation of God’s love in the world. Today’s verses from Colossians tell us that “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” Jesus entered into the world to serve as an example of nobility-a divine, countercultural force to challenge the oppressive, violent, and greedy ways of earthly kings and kingdoms.” To proclaim this Jesus as king is to proclaim a different kind of power; one of servanthood as he bends to wash the feet of his followers, rises to serve at the table so that others might eat, heals sickness and casts out demons, raises up the lame, and gives sight to blindness and then hangs on a cross for the sake of God’s love. So that all may have the abundant life he came to bring.

This king’s power is far different than most expect. The world’s kind of power is what Jeremiah cries out against in his cry of outrage against the kings who abused their God given power. Using the image of shepherds to speak about the kings, the prophet cries out over their lack of concern for the people: “it is you who have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them.  Their greed for power and prosperity leads them away from the justice they are called to provide for the people. Looking back through Jeremiah, we are able to see his expectations for a righteous king, a king Christians find fully realized in Christ Jesus. Not a military ruler, but a leader who is present with the people, all the people. This king’s ethic modeled what the prophet Micah’s call to the people was all about: “to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” This is the model our king Jesus calls us to.

As we look to Christ as the model shepherd or king, how are we to engage with our world? How do we consider our call to live as God’s people in a world that struggles with war, racism, sexism, famine, lack of work? What should our responses be to the issues of poverty, health care, hunger, clean water, violence and abusive power? How should we reach out to those who do not know God’s justice, kindness and love? We are called over and over in the gospels to model Christ’s example to love God and neighbor and each one of us has to determine what this means for our life and for the life of the church. This passage in Jeremiah cries out against those who have abused God given power but “the days are surly coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”

A king was raised up and the promise fulfilled in the shepherd Jesus Christ, whose love and concern led him to make the ultimate sacrifice; to give his life on a cross. The king we follow is the king on a cross. The throne we expect and the power, riches, wisdom, strength, honor, glory and blessing that this king is worthy of, does not seem very obvious as he hangs from the cross. Yet, the cross is the very heart of the revelation of Christ as King and the very essence of our understanding of God. The cross is the sign of God’s victory over sin, death and the power of evil. It doesn’t look like it and it didn’t to the people that day when they witnessed the crucifixion. Religious leaders, soldiers, one of the criminals and common folk alike mocked him. “King of the Jews,” they laughed, he saved others, let him save himself. This King was saving others: them and us. By the very act of hanging on that cross, this king secured salvation for the world and showed a love, compassion and justice so very powerful as Garcia said, it would challenge and call humanity to live as we were intended to live.

One person recognized the truth, a thief hanging on a cross nearby responded with a request for forgiveness and reconciliation: Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom. This Jesus who died for outcasts, for executioners, for men and for women, for Jews and for Gentiles, for the sinner and the righteous will welcome us as well. We just need to choose wisely and to respond to the king’s invitation. Will we choose to become a sign of God’s love, compassion and mercy for the world and accept this king who rules from a cross? Who calls us to a life of service, self-sacrifice, to respond with care to the hungry and the persecuted?

Jesus is not like the kings of this world, he redefines kingship. We have the opportunity today to make Jesus more of a king than ever, by committing ourselves to him with our lives, by taking seriously his words, and by following seriously his way of life. It all boils down to choosing wisely. Here at the end of the Christian year, as we look forward to what is to come, let us choose to grow in this king. Let us choose to reach out to bring in and invite all who like the thief on the cross need to hear “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Thank you Lord, our king and our savior.