Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 22, 2009

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 know, the longer I’m in this business of being a professional Christian the more it seems to me that the elements of our tradition are, if anything, more important for the questions they raise than they are for the answers they give. This Sunday is one of those things that raises more questions than it answers. There are various ways of referring to this Sunday in the Christian calendar. It is the last Sunday before Advent. It is the last Sunday of ordinary time. And it is Christ the King Sunday, or as we call it in the politically correct UCC, Reign of Christ Sunday. Our tradition has a Sunday called Christ the King Sunday because it has always proclaimed Christ as King. And while it may at one time have been obvious to Christians what that means, it sure isn’t obvious today what it means. Not to us. Christ the King? We Americans say “We don’t need no stinking kings!” We rebelled against a king over 230 years ago and haven’t had one since. Yet here we are on Christ the King Sunday. So what in heaven’s name is that supposed to mean to us, anyway? How precisely is Jesus Christ a king? What does it mean for us to call him king? Well, to get at one meaningful answer to those questions let’s take a look at our passage from John, that interchange between Jesus and Pilate about whether or not Jesus is a king.

In that passage Pilate wants to find out if Jesus claimed to be the king of the Jews. If he did, that was a capital offense of course; and Pilate would to what the Jewish leaders wanted him to do and crucify Jesus. Jesus is evasive. He answers a question with a question. He says “you say that I am a king.” He doesn’t exactly deny being a king, but he doesn’t quite admit it either. In what for me is the central line in the passage Jesus tells Pilate “My kingdom is not from this world.” That line holds the key that unlocks the meaning of Jesus as king, and perhaps surprisingly that key is a preposition.

Before we go on, let me apologize for the linguistics lesson I’m about to give you in this sermon. Bear with me. This stuff really matters. The New Revised Standard Translation of the Bible that we use here has Jesus say “my kingdom is not from this world,” but you’re probably heard that line differently in the past. In the King James Version of the Bible Jesus says “my kingdom is not of this world.” So we ask: What does this passage really say? The passage was originally written in Greek, and in the original Greek Jesus says “my kingdom is not ek tou kosmou.” “Ek” is the preposition that the KJV translates as “of” and the NRSV translates as “from.” To understand this passage, and to understand what it means for us call Jesus our king, we need to understand what “ek” means.

Now, I’m no scholar of Biblical Greek. I don’t really know Biblical Greek, but I have studied the Greek of this passage. And I can assure you that “ek” does not mean “of,” at least not in the way that preposition is usually understood. The traditional translation “my kingdom is not of this world” is usually taken to mean that Jesus’ kingdom does not belong to this world or is not located in this world. The Greek word “ek” simply doesn’t mean that. “Ek” means literally “out of.” It refers to a place of origin from which something comes, not the thing’s location. When we leave here this morning we will go “ek” this sanctuary. “Ek” means out of. So a literal translation of Jesus’ statement would be “my kingdom is not out of this world,” with the meaning “my kingdom does not come from this world or does not originate in this world.” Jesus’ is not talking about the location of his kingdom, he is talking about its source. The source of Jesus’ kingdom is nothing in this world. It is something out of this world. The source of Jesus’ kingdom is nothing worldly, it is God. Jesus is saying that his kingdom’s authority comes from nothing in this world but from God. All of this meaning is unlocked when we understand the Greek preposition “ek”.

So we ask: What does this understanding of Jesus’ line “my kingdom is not from this world” mean for our understanding of Christ as king? Let’s start by looking at earthly kings. Some of them have claimed from time to time that their authority has come from God, but we know that it doesn’t. The authority of earthly kings is thoroughly earthly. It usually arises as a result of force, often as the result of winning a civil war or through an act of conquest. If a particular king didn’t come to power that way, his predecessors almost certainly did. And earthly kings rule according to earthly norms. That means that they rule by force. They rule through the application of violence, or at least through the threat of the application of violence. They generally rule by force for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful in their land, those who support their rule and assist them in placating or suppressing the mass of the people. Some kings are more beneficent than others, but these generalizations about kings apply to a greater or lesser degree to all earthly kings. It certainly applies to the kings of the ancient world with whom Jesus was familiar.

That’s what kingly rule grounded in the world looks like, but Jesus says that his kingly rule, his kingdom, is not grounded in the world. It is grounded in God, so we are led to conclude that Jesus’ kingly rule must look different from that of earthly kings. It must look like it comes from God. But how do we know what a kingdom that comes from God looks like? Well, as Christians we look to Jesus Christ, who we say reveals to us Who God really is. And when we look at Jesus we do indeed see something very different from a worldly king. We someone who, so far from ruling by force, rules nonviolently through love. We see someone who, so far from ruling for the benefit of the strong and the wealthy reaches out to the poor, includes the outcast, and blesses the meek. He tells his followers that leadership consists not of “lording it” over others but of being the servant of all. He teaches that the value of a life is not judged by its compliance with a set of arbitrary laws enforced by the powers that be but by its compassion for those in need. So far from threatening violence for disobedience, Jesus bids us to follow him out of love and commitment. Jesus’ kingdom, Jesus rule, grounded in and coming from God and not from this world, does indeed look very, very different from the kingdoms of this world.

And here’s why all this matters. We call ourselves Christians. Today we call Christ our king, our sovereign. That means that he is the one we say we follow, the one who in some sense rules us. And as we just saw, he doesn’t rule us by threat of force. He rules us by love. He doesn’t threaten and coerce, he bids. He cajoles. He calls us to follow. Threats and coercion are inimical to him. They are utterly inconsistent with the nature of his rule. Our question is not must we follow Jesus. Given the nature of Jesus’ reign, our question is: Will be follow Jesus? Will we commit ourselves to the way of his kingdom? Will we commit ourselves to peace and nonviolence? Will we commit ourselves to justice for all people? Will we follow Jesus’ example of outreach to the poor and inclusion of the outcast? Jesus’ kingdom is not from this world. It is from God, and that makes all the difference in its nature. We live in the world, and that’s where Jesus’ kingdom is too. But our call as Christians is to commitment ourselves to the values of that kingdom, which are not from this world but from God. Are we up to it? It’s a difficult question; but for us Christians it is one me cannot avoid. Amen.