Christ the King 2021

 Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the church.  We started the year last December waiting for the birth of the Christ Child, still we wait for Jesus to return and for our King to fully be in charge.

In the United States, I don’t know that we have much of a sense of what a king is or does.  We read about Kings in fairy tales and on gossip websites, but we don’t know what it is to be a royal subject.

One of the first plays I was in in Elementary School was King Midas.  I think I must have been a narrator because I don’t even remember having a costume.  Of course, King Midas is interested in increasing his wealth, he makes a deal with some supernatural being that everything he touches will turn to gold, and (spoiler alert) by the end of the story he’s turned his daughter into gold and is grieving her death.  King Midas is the quintessential earthly king, focused on short-term selfish gain of power and wealth and his greed blinds him to the power of relationship and love and compassion.

Jesus of course is a very different king.  He’s one that at the beginning of his ministry rejects earthly kingship when the devil offers it to him as he is tempted in the wilderness. 

I’d like to focus on two things in this Gospel today.  The first is Pilate’s question, “What have you done?”  And the second is about belonging, related to Jesus’ statement that everyone who belongs to the truth, listens to his voice.  These two ideas relate to each other and interweave.

Pilate is trying to decide where Jesus belongs.  Does he belong in the category of innocent or guilty?  Is he a king or a priest?  Does he belong to the Jewish people who have handed him over?  Pilate feels that if he can just figure out where Jesus belongs, then he can treat Jesus the way he’s supposed to and feel justified about it.

Jesus refuses to be categorized and in fact can’t be categorized because he’s bigger than any human categories.  The Christ Spirit moved over the waters of creation and the Word brought forth the light and the darkness and the land and the dome and the animals and humankind and the Sabbath and everything else.  The Christ Spirit guided the people throughout the ages from slavery to freedom.  In Jesus the Christ Spirit came to reside in a human person and so Pilate is confused and Jesus isn’t really helping him out any.  Even if Jesus did help him out, he wouldn’t get it, so we have this exchange between 2 kings that is kind of messy and confusing.

Yes, Jesus is King, but not just of the Jews.  Jesus is King of the Universe, the King of Kings, including Pilate.  Because everything already belongs to Jesus, no one can give it to him or take it away, so he has no need to amass power or wealth.  Jesus can focus on what Kings would ideally focus on, the downtrodden, the neglected, the sick, the marginalized, and the hurting.  Because of this focus, Jesus was handed over and so we come to the question, “What did you do?”
          Pilate assumes some kind of guilt.  If Jesus’ own people have handed him over, he must have done something wrong or something to provoke them.  Yet Pilate can’t find any hard evidence against him.  There is not really anything to charge him with.  But Pilate is also trying to decide if Jesus is a threat.  Did he challenge Pilate’s authority by claiming Kingship?  So Pilate asks him an open-ended question, “What have you done?”

What has Jesus done?  What has the Christ Spirit done?  Where can we even begin?  How much time do you have?  We’ve already established the creation and the saving work over the centuries and eons.  Then we come to Jesus the Christ, and what he’s done.  He calls people to follow him.  He heals people.  He feeds people.  He touches lepers.  He crosses boundaries.  He calms the seas.  He raises the dead.  He forgives.  He washes.  He gives of himself freely. 

And think of all he doesn’t do.  He doesn’t ask for credentials.  He doesn’t treat rich people better than poor people.  He doesn’t blame people for their problems.  He doesn’t demand people become Jewish.  He doesn’t expect people to help themselves.  He doesn’t defend or protect himself.  He doesn’t take up arms.  He doesn’t participate in violence.

All this makes Jesus a different kind of King and a greater threat.  He answers to priorities that are completely different from those of this world.  He has a completely different focus than us earthlings.

But are we actually earthlings?  Maybe we, too belong to another Kingdom, no of this world.  That King has claimed us in baptism, claimed us creation.  We belong to this other Kingdom with priorities that are greater than this moment or our own insecurities.  Our God has a bigger view and the good of all creation in mind.  Our God has no reason to fight or injure or exclude anyone, because we all belong to God our Creator and the Word God’s son.  Because of our faith in our loving, gracious, forgiving God and our assurance that we belong, we can let go of our fears of not having enough, our fears of being destroyed, our fears of others who we see as different from us.  Then we will hear God’s voice and follow and be at peace with one another.

Today in all the scriptures, God is drawing so near.  That’s the normal thing about a King.  Very few people get close to him and ordinary people like us are nobodies to a king or president.  But today, in the book of Daniel, he sees God’s robes, the hairs on God’s head.  God is close enough to make out God’s features.

In the Psalm, the throne of God and robe of God are visible, but even more noteworthy is how loud the sound of God’s voice is.  That’s how close God is.  God’s voice is like loud pounding waves and crashing waters.  Think of the Oregon coast on a stormy day.  Sometimes you can barely hear the sound of your own voice because the of the sound of the sea.  That’s how close God is. 

In the book of Revelation, God is returning and every eye will see God, even those who pierced him, who wronged him.  Everyone will see that God is the beginning and the end, the A all the way to the Z.

In the Gospel an earthly King faces the King of the Universe.  Pilate wonders why his knees are shaking.  God has drawn near.  Pilate knows that Jesus has done nothing to deserve crucifixion.  Pilate has standards that he prefers to uphold that he wouldn’t sentence an innocent man to die.  Yet he goes against his own principles, proving the point that earthly kings are unreliable, unlike our heavenly King, the Christ Spirit. 

Jesus is so close, our brother, the one washing and feeding us.  And we got scared that he would challenge our systems and comforts and so we cried out to Pilate to have him crucified.

Christ our King is among us, in the poor and the hungry and the hurting.  Now is our chance to listen to his voice in them and rather than turn them away or run in the other direction, to listen, to learn, and grow in compassion and love.