Christ Our King

11-20-16 (Christ the King Sunday, Year C)

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 23:33-43

Christ our King

We have a strange convergence of events happening today in the life of our church here in Vandalia - today is Christ the King Sunday, the Sunday where we put our utmost emphasis on Christ’s divine Lordship over all things, but we also take the time today to gather, both as this community of believers inside of these four walls, but also as a part of the Church Universal - the believers gathered in every time and every place, in order that we might welcome new members into our fellowship: Brennan and Brogan are being welcomed into the body of Christ through their baptism, and Jim and Doris are being welcomed as they transfer their membership to this church.  And to complicate matters just that much more, as you just heard the choir remind us in that beautiful medley of hymns, this Sunday is the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and so many of us are already in that “holiday spirit,” even as we still have another week before Advent begins.

So, then… why, of all the passages I could possibly be exploring and preaching on, why are we hearing a passage that we’d typically think of as being reserved for Lent?  Since I preach from the lectionary, my initial answer is simple: it’s one of the texts that was put in front of me for the week.  But I have to confess - as I looked at the texts to put them into the weekly update, I asked the same question, myself.  Of all the passages that use royal imagery of God, the depictions of Christ as ruler and Lord in the book of Revelation, the letters of Paul… even the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem in the Gospels… why do we instead turn to this moment of agony and conflict between Christ and these two criminals hanging on crosses beside him?

Our first clue for this seemingly strange selection actually comes from the Old Testament reading in the book of Jeremiah.  Jeremiah writes in a politically fraught time - the Babylonians had sponsored an insurrection and placed king Zedekiah onto the throne of Israel instead of Jehoiachin, the grandson of Josiah whom many people had wanted to be the next king, but who wound up being exiled, instead.  The people are distraught and angry, as is Jeremiah, and so he speaks into their situation, relaying the promises of God.  God’s message is clear: the leaders who treat God’s people unjustly, who lead God’s flock astray and in ways that are not pleasing to God - those leaders will be themselves scattered.  Moreso, they will be held accountable for their actions.  Meanwhile, God announces that God has a different plan: God will gather God’s chosen people back to God’s self, bring them back to the land that they were promised, and then set a new king over them - a king from the line of David who will rule with justice, wisdom, and righteousness.  And his name will be “The Lord is our righteousness.”

The Jeremiah text looks ahead to a future king promised by God - the gospel texts show us exactly who that king ends up being.  And instead of a gold crown encrusted with jewels and riches, the king the Gospels portray wears a crown of thorns.  Instead of a king who comes in and conquers the political enemies of his time, the Gospels show us a King who leads in humility, who returns hatred and violence with prayers of forgiveness, and who promises life to others even as he loses his own at the same time.  Nevertheless, we also know that we still are presented with a king who conquers - it’s just that instead of overthrowing and putting to justice the political enemies of his day, this king goes to the root of it all, conquering death itself in order that we all may inherit eternal life.

This is the king that we lift up and celebrate on Christ the King Sunday - and it is by this very same king that we ourselves are claimed in our baptisms.  As we are cleansed in those baptismal waters, and as we renew those baptismal vows together each time we come together to witness the baptism of new brothers and sisters into this body of Christ, we are reminded of this king - the grace we have been given on the cross, and the gratitude with which we are therefore called to go our and live our lives from this point forward.  We are encouraged to lift up Christ our King not just as the focus of our worship, but as the standard by which we are to live our own lives as people marked by this baptismal covenant together.

And so we gather together today - and we gather perhaps feeling a lot of similarity to the situation into which Jeremiah spoke in the first place.  We gather as a people in conflict - a people who are struggling to move forward in a contentious time, where hateful things are being said and done in the names of leaders.  And at the same time, we are also preparing for this day where we gather together to give thanks for the nation in which we live and for all those whose blood, sweat, and tears went into making it a place that all of us can call home together.  For many in this country, there will be any number of reasons for which it may be hard to feel thankful.  For still many others, it may seem hard to understand why anyone wouldn’t or shouldn’t feel thankful right now.  In all of these situations, we need to let grace be our center.  In all of these things, we should feel the tug of our own baptisms and the promises we have made at this font together - in our baptisms, we set aside these things.  We set aside the personal and political agendas, the things that seek to divide us and drive us apart from one another and apart from God, and we take up the mantle of Christ.  We let Christ’s prayer move us away from holier-than-thou imitations of “Forgive them for they know not what they do,” and let them work in us to say “Father, forgive me, for I know not what I’m doing.”

And as we live into that forgiveness together - as we rise up out of those baptismal waters, dead to our old selves and alive in Christ… we hear the fulfillment of that promise given to us once more: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”  May we remember our baptisms - may we remember and exercise toward each other the grace that we have been given in Christ.  And in that grace, may we always and evermore be thankful - in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.