Christ the King

Year B — Proper 29

The Rev. Gerald W. Keucher

St. John's Gospel always presents us with a kind of double vision. On the one hand, there's the way things look to people who don't get it, and on the other, there's the way things are according to Jesus and those of His followers who do get it.

To the people who don't get it Jesus is pathetic or dangerous or irrelevant or incomprehensible. To the people who do get it, Jesus is God in the flesh, the King of all creation, the One Who has God's words of eternal life.

What is the difference between those who don't get it and those who do get it? It doesn't have much to do with doctrine or philosophy. It has to do with experience. At the very beginning, John the Baptist told Andrew and Peter that Jesus was the One. When they approached Jesus, they asked Him about Himself, and He said, "Come and see." In John's Gospel the people who get it are those who have listened to what others have said about Jesus, and who have spent some time with Jesus and have come to know and trust that He is the truth.

Nicodemus didn't get it. He came to Jesus secretly at night, and Jesus' talk about being reborn made no sense. "Incomprehensible," he thought as he walked away in confusion. "Dangerous," said the leaders of the people as they schemed to have Jesus executed. "He'll make the Romans mad."

The people who don't get it see Jesus naked and beaten up and being executed on the Cross. The people who do get it are those who look at Jesus, naked and beaten up and being executed on the Cross, and see the King of glory reigning from the tree.

The people who don't get it know what a king is supposed to look like. A king is a rich and powerful figure who commands obedience and punishes disrespect. Pilate knew what a king was supposed to look like, because he worked for one. The Emperor in Rome was the kind of king he could recognize, with hundreds of legions spread around the world and a whole apparatus and system behind him that could punish the rebellious.

So Pilate looks at Jesus, he doesn't see what he means by a king. "Are you the King of the Jews?" he asks the battered, half-naked Jesus, and it's obvious that he's thinking, "Pathetic, irrelevant." In his mind, because he doesn't get it, Rome is the Eternal City, while these local rabble-rousers come and go every time there's a crowd in Jerusalem. The people who don't get it are those who don't listen and don't take time to be with Jesus. They are right next to the truth about their own lives, but they never see it.

The people who do get it look at the Rome and see a proud, cruel empire that will pass away into nothing, while Jesus' kingdom will endure and grow in hearts around the world forever. The people who do get it know that leadership means serving others, the way Jesus washed His disciples' dirty feet. The people who do get it know that there is only one command, the new commandment Jesus gave His followers: Love one another as I have loved you.

And how did Jesus love us? He didn't love the way we often love, by making other people serve His ends. He loved by giving everything for us, pouring Himself out freely. For Jesus, love is not an emotion or an idea. Love is a life of words and actions that are for others. That's how we must love one another.

The people who don't get it are taken in by appearances. If it's big, if it's powerful, if it's popular, then it must be right.

The people who do get it don't judge by appearances but discern the heart of the matter. The people who do get it know that God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

The idea that Jesus is a king was incomprehensible to the educated Nicodemus, dangerous to the leaders of the establishment, and pathetic and irrelevant to powerful.

The Church is the community of people whose lives have been transformed by Jesus. The Church is the community of those who get it. And the Church has always been incomprehensible to those who trust in their own learning, dangerous to those who trust the status quo, and pathetic and irrelevant to those who trust power.

When we celebrate, as we do today, the Feast of Christ the King, we do so as people who get it, as people who understand kingship from God's point of view.

The people who wrote Daniel and Revelation got it. Their communities were weak and oppressed, but they knew that their despisers would not prevail. They knew that God was calling them to faithfulness, not success. God was calling them to endurance, not to victory. God was calling them to commitment, not to strength. Success, victory and strength — like time, history and the whole universe — are all in God's hands, and in God's time all will be well.

In the meantime we follow a King Who was despised, rejected and executed. We can be sure that we will often appear pathetic or dangerous or irrelevant or incomprehensible as He did. We can be sure that we will suffer some of what He suffered.

But we can be confident of the final outcome as well. Whole-hearted commitment, patient endurance and utter faithfulness are what we give to Jesus and to one another when we get it. We have listened to His voice, and we belong to the truth.

As we end another Church Year and look forward to Advent Sunday next week, we can say with all those through the ages who have experienced and known the truth, "Our King and Savior now draws near: Come let us adore Him!"