Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 23, 2003

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

You may have noticed in your bulletin that today is "Reign of Christ" Sunday. At least, that’s what we call it in the oh so politically correct UCC. It’s traditional name is Christ the King Sunday. It is always marked the last Sunday before Advent, that is, on the last Sunday of the Christian liturgical year. It is, I think, worth paying some attention this morning to the fact that the tradition calls today Reign of Christ (or Christ the King) Sunday and that it has such a Sunday every year at the end of the liturgical year. What are we to make of that?

Frankly, I’ve struggled with that question all week. I mean, does Christ really reign? Is Christ really our king? What could such a statement possible mean? Does Jesus Christ really rule the world? If we mean by that does he make the decisions about what happens in the world, about what policies governments pursue, about how justice is administered and how resources are allocated, which is what earthly rulers do, then we’d have to say that he’s doing a perfectly lousy job of it, wouldn’t we? I mean, what with all the wars, the famine, the widespread political and economic oppression, the massively unjust allocation of the world’s resources, the governments, like ours, that resort to military force at the drop of a hat, that pursue economic policies designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many, that despoil the environment for short-term, short-sighted economic gain for the wealthy, we pretty much have to conclude, don’t we, that whoever is ruling the world in this sense is doing an appallingly poor job of it. Is that Jesus Christ? I sure don’t think so; but if not, what does it mean to celebrate Christ the King Sunday?

Now, before we try to answer that question, let’s get one thing straight. We simply cannot consider this question without sounding political. The terms "king" and "reign" are, after all, political terms. We see the necessary political connection in this day in the Scripture readings. The passage from 2 Samuel is presented as "the last words of David." Who is David? A king of course. He was the greatest king Israel ever had, and the Hebrew tradition always remembered him that way. He didn’t create the Jewish kingdom, but he united it and expanded it to its greatest extent ever. The tradition presents him as a wise and just ruler, a ruler anointed by God to be sure but nonetheless a very secular ruler. After claiming to be speaking the words of God David says: "One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning...." That is, the just ruler is a blessing to the land and finds favor in the sight of God. There is no distinction between religion and politics here. God wants just rulers. This message is even plainer in the famous words of King James translation of this passage: "He who ruleth over men must be just." Period.

We see the political implications of Reign of Christ Sunday in the Gospel lesson as well. It’s a passage from John’s version of the Passion Story. It is properly a Holy Week text, but it shows up in the lectionary here because it raises the question that we’re asking this morning, namely, what it means to say that Jesus Christ is king. In this passage, Jesus has been betrayed and arrested. The Jewish religious authorities have turned him over to the Roman secular authorities, probably because they want Jesus crucified, and they don’t have the legal authority in the Roman system to do that themselves. Apparently the charge against Jesus is a political one, namely, that he has claimed to be king of the Jews. If he had it would clearly be sedition under Roman law, since the Romans had their own puppet king in place as king of the Jews. It’s a political charge, not a religious one.

So Pilate begins his interrogation of Jesus by asking him if he’s guilty of the charge: "Are you the King of the Jews?" As is so typical of Jesus, especially in John, he doesn’t give a direct answer. Rather, for reasons that aren’t at all clear to me, he asks Pilate: Are you asking this on your own or did someone put you up to it? Pilate says something else rather evasive. Then Jesus essentially claims that he is in fact a king. He says: "My kingdom is not from this world." And if you have a kingdom as Jesus here says he does, then you must be a king. King and kingdom are, of course, political concepts. There can be essentially no doubt that the early Christian tradition thought of Jesus and his message in political as well as religious terms. This story from the Gospel of John clearly shows this to be true.

But what sort of king is Jesus? During his earthly life he didn’t do, and now as the risen Christ he doesn’t do those earthly things I mentioned a few minutes ago. He doesn’t set the policy of any government. No one owes him taxes. No one is compelled to do his will. He doesn’t act anything like an earthly king. So what can it mean to say that he is a king? Why has the Christian tradition from the very beginning thought of him that way?

It would be very easy to say, as the Christian tradition has said ever since it became the official faith of the Roman Empire nearly 1,700 years ago, that Jesus is indeed a king but that he is the king of a kingdom that doesn’t exist in this world but in heaven. By transposing Christ out of this world and into the next we remove the political implications of all this king talk. We make him harmless to established authorities, which is exactly what the established authorities have always wanted to do with him, and still do. That’s why you are probably much more familiar with the King James Version translation of Jesus’ statement: "My kingdom is not of this world," rather than the NRSV’s nor from this world that we heard this morning. That translation supports the notion that Jesus’ kingdom has nothing to do with this world, and I strongly suspect that that’s why the translators of the KJV, who were after all working for a very worldly king, translated it that way.

But there’s a great big problem with ejecting Jesus from the world and making him the ruler only of heaven; and there’s a big problem with the KJV translation that supports doing so. The Greek original of Jesus’ words is ek tou kosmou, which means literally "out of the world." Thus, from this world is a much better translation than of this world. The literal meaning perhaps put Christ’s kingdom squarely in the world, not out of it. Jesus is talking here not about the location of his kingdom, as "of this world" suggests but about its origin, the source of its authority. Its authority comes not "from this world" but from God. It is a kingdom the way God wants kingdoms to be, not the way the kingdoms of the world are.

This idea that Jesus’ kingdom is very much in this world with its authority coming from "above," from God, is consistent with what the other Gospels besides John say about the Kingdom of God. Actually, the Gospel of John talks very little about the Kingdom of God. John and John’s Jesus talk mostly about Jesus. The other three Gospels, however, report Jesus talking not so much about himself as about what he clearly called the Kingdom of God. (Yes, Matthew changes it to Kingdom of Heaven, a change that itself causes problems because it suggests to us the location of the kingdom rather than the source of its authority, but that’s just because Matthew was respecting the Jewish prohibition against saying the name of God.) A central statement about the Kingdom of God in these Gospels is: The Kingdom of God is among us. It is among us. Here. Now. It’s not off in some other dimension of being that we access only after we die.

And Christ is its king. Jesus rules it. And because Christ rules it, it is a very different kind of kingdom than the kingdoms of the world that have always tried so hard to expel Jesus and his kingdom from their midst. It is a kingdom where the one who rules truly is just, as David claimed to be but on a great many occasions in fact was not. It is a kingdom that truly demands and works for justice for the poor and outcast, justice understood not as due process but as true welcome at the banquet table of life, where the needs of all are met, where, as our Communion prayer always says, sharing by all means scarcity for none. It is a kingdom that demands and works for peace, understanding peace not just as an end as the militarists claim but also as nonviolence as the means to that end.

And we’re all citizens of it. True, as far as I know everyone in this room is also a citizen of the political entity called The United States of America; but as human beings we are also citizens of the Kingdom of God, and because we are Christians we are aware of that fact. Yes, we are ruled by a secular, worldly government. That is a fact of our lives that we cannot and should not ignore. But it is also true: Jesus rules! Jesus rules the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of peace, justice, compassion, and mercy for all people; and we are citizens of that Kingdom too. The government of the United States demands our allegiance, but so does the Kingdom of God. And so we have to ask ourselves: Where does our true allegiance lie? When the demands of our government, whatever they may be, and the demands of Christ our King, demands for justice, mercy, and peace, come into conflict, as I believe they do more often than not, to which political entity will we give priority? When we have to choose between them, which will we choose? Which will you choose?