Nov 24 | “This is our King,” (Reign of Christ Sermon, November 24th, 2019)

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. [[ 34Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’]] And they cast lots to divide his clothing. 35And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’ 36The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, 37and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ 38There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’
39 One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ 40But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ 42Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ 43He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

Luke 23:33-43

Somehow the wheel of the year has come around again and we’re staring down the barrel of Reign of Christ Sunday, one of the stranger and perhaps more uncomfortable Sundays of the church year. Bearing the full and rather ostentatious title, “The Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe,” as well as the more common “Christ the King Sunday” or “Reign of Christ Sunday,” it was instituted in the Western church by Pope Pius XI in 1925. This feast commemorating the ultimate authority of Jesus was apparently instituted in a papal encyclical responding to disputes over the ownership of former papal states. After half a century of struggle and sieges, the Holy See, now limited to Vatican City, acknowledged that the Italian State owned these territories. The Lateran Treaty outlining this agreement was signed four years after the establishment of Reign of Christ Sunday.

This context was interesting for me to discover so soon after I finished Robert Paxton’s book The Anatomy of Fascism. Alongside these huge institutions battling for earthly dominion in early 20th century Italy, another movement bubbled beneath the surface, appealing to the basest instincts of humanity. The establishment of this feast was clearly anything but apolitical. The Roman Catholic Church, not immune to the desire for power, recognized the wave of nationalism sweeping the region, and provided an important counterpoint to the grasping hand of King Victor Emmanuel II: There’s only one King, and we forget at our peril. Subtle, but pointed. The church couldn’t afford in those heady days to be too upfront in their criticism. It was scandalous enough to have lost their properties to the state – they couldn’t possibly invite further disgrace.

The Gospel of Luke throws out such subtlety in its crucifixion narrative. This passage couldn’t be more scandalous, and the whole chapter surrounding it highlights this.

It begins with Jesus brought before Pilate. The religious authorities accuse Jesus of undermining the Roman Empire by calling himself a king. They were determined to protect their people from further bloodshed by the Romans. This was the easiest way to do that, to disavow Jesus as an insurrectionist.

The writer of Luke, of course, knew that this strategy wouldn’t work, because the community that formed that Gospel lived through the destruction of the temple forty years after Jesus’ death. Hindsight is 20/20.

Luke then includes something which isn’t present in the other Gospels: Pilate passes Jesus off to Herod, Rome’s puppet king. It doesn’t go well. Jesus shows contempt for Herod, who demands a performance of miracles. Herod sends Jesus back wearing, Luke notes, “an elegant robe.” Again, mockery – and irony.

Because this is our king.

Once Jesus returns, Pilate wants him flogged and sent away. It’s worth noting that Pilate is not portrayed as sympathetically as he is in other Gospels. He merely hopes to quell a potential uprising, which might have been in the air during the days surrounding the feast of Passover. Perhaps he had heard that Jesus made friends with rich folks like the centurion and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward and worried about his rhetoric contaminating the upper class. Perhaps he didn’t want a riled up crowd to know they could push him around if they yelled loudly enough. But the voices of the crowd prevail, and Pilate finally acquiesces, sending Jesus to be crucified. We hear the story of Simon of Cyrene, not given any context for being forced to carry the cross – for Luke the reason’s not important; the king needs a footman. We hear the story of Jesus meeting women on the way to Golgotha, and he addresses them in words that sound almost psalmic – again, royal undertones.

And finally we come to the crucifixion between two criminals. One on his right, and one on his left, almost an echo of the demand from James and John to rule alongside Jesus. It was pretty uncommon for ordinary criminals to be crucified. Crucifixion was reserved for insurrectionists, challengers of the Roman state. There was almost certainly some political slant to the crimes of the criminals. If they were thieves, as tradition often says, maybe their theft was less about obtaining wealth and more about humiliating a high-ranking official by stealing his horse or some other valuable item.

Whatever the reason, Jesus is placed between them, again in a grotesque mockery of royalty. He is, in a sense, named King of the Criminals as well as King of the Jews.

This doesn’t seem like a fitting figure for a day with a name as grandiose as “The Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.”

One of the earliest criticisms Romans leveled against the infant church was that we had aligned ourselves with, or in Paul’s case, named ourselves slaves of, a king of criminals and bandits. It’s scandalous.

Almost as scandalous as that very king being born in a barn.

It’s an inspired move, having this Sunday just before Advent. It’s is the perfect preface to the life of this man to whom we give praise, honour, and glory despite his beginning and ending in scandal; this man who began as a howling baby born in a byway under questionable circumstances; this man who like us lived through joy, sorrow, uncertainty, terror, and pain, weathered humiliation and fear and grief and sleepless nights and disappointment; this man who, like the Membari family for whom we have been praying, lived many months without a home, and had to trust in the goodwill of others despite knowing intimately the depth of human depravity; this man who made a mockery of social class and appropriate rules of engagement; this man who once again sees humanity’s deeply paradoxical nature as he hangs between two criminals, one of whom adds his voice to the insults and derision of the crowd, and one of whom defends him even at the very threshold of ignominious death – and not only defends, but understands, quite naturally, that he is in the presence of royalty: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Leave it to a criminal undergoing capital punishment to know what’s really going on here. And leave it to God, through Jesus, to redeem and welcome that very criminal to Paradise.

Source: Wikipedia

Was this God’s greatest scandal of all: coming among us to suffer an excruciating and shameful death? It’s hard to say for sure, because scandal is sown pretty liberally through Holy Scripture. So many of the stories of God’s use of holy figures are scandalous: unwed teenage mothers, little boys in the temple, sheep-keeping sons, persecutors of the church, murderers, tax collectors, exceptionally sloppy prophets, sex workers – God doesn’t dwell much on occupation or character when it comes to equipping reluctant saints. I don’t know if that’s good news or bad news but it’s what we got!

Indeed there may be days where we wake up in the morning thinking the greatest scandal God ever pulled was calling us to church!

And perhaps that’s the real good news. God chooses us, whether we’re living our best life or in the pit wondering how we’ll ever manage to climb out; whether we feel like saints or sinners; whether we think the battered, rickety, beautiful boat that is the church will steer us true or sink us miles from shore (God chooses the church too, how scandalous is that?)

God chooses us, because a scandal, better than anything else, helps us know and name our values; helps us question everything we thought we knew; helps us see with entirely new eyes.

I can’t think of a better prayer with which to end than the one gifted to us by the writer of Colossians: “May we be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may we be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.”

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