Christ the King - That Kind of King

This past week was Thanksgiving for our neighbours to the south, and it was tremendous.  Oh, the sales!  Oh, the sheer amount of STUFF you could buy, it was glorious!  And, the best part: we now have those sales here in Canada!  Come on, now, who took advantage of all those great deals?

‘Taking advantage’ of a great deal is a really good use of language.  Because you literally ‘take advantage’ of the person living in a third-world country who made the stuff that you bought – partly, it’s the benefit of living in Canada – that we can pay incredibly low prices for stuff that is made a a few thousand miles away, transported here, and eventually sold here.  Nobody’s making a fair wage in this system.  But, if you are lucky enough to live in the first world it is part of the system we operate in, and you can’t get out of it. 

Every so often, I’ll pick up a book about someone who’s voluntarily left North American society – usually to go to Thailand, or India, or somewhere that the climate is warmer and the western dollar goes a little further. They’re disconnected from a western address, but not from western society – they still communicate through telephone, email, cell phones, iPad, whatever.  There’s often a self-congratulatory tone to the book that centres around the author’s satisfaction with finding ‘spiritual awareness’ or ‘spiritual renewal’ in their avoidance of western culture. 

That drives me up a wall.  I’m too much of a Lutheran, too ready to confess I am captive to sin and cannot free myself, to buy into the idea that I can remove my awareness of my culpability, and participation in, systems that cause harm to other people.  I’m willing to admit that that’s likely the result of my education, forced awareness of these systems.  But I think it also is an awareness of the world; that a lot of the trappings of my life that I consider as necessary are, in fact, privilege.

Beloved of God, here’s an admission: the world we live in doesn’t work.  It needs a Saviour, it needs a Messiah, it needs a king; but I don’t know if we’ll ever agree on what kind of king it needs.  A king like David, say.  The reading from 2 Samuel today is the ‘last words’ of David – one of about 10 instances of last words from David in scripture.  Why are there so many?  Because David became the image of the perfect king.  If you know the history of David, even just a little bit, you’ll notice that’s pretty ironic – because David is not a nice man.  Murder, adultery, complicity in rape, and a few other things mar his record.  But David remains the king that looms large in Israel’s imagination.

If you’ll remember, though, God was not in favour of the Israelites having a king.  Earlier in 1 Samuel the Israelites go to Samuel and say “tell God we want a king”.  Samuel does, and God replies, ‘tell them they don’t, because a king is going to oppress them, tax them, drive them to war, rule them by force, and make their lives miserable.”  Samuel tells the Israelites just that; they reply “yada, yada, yada, we know; just give us a king, already”.  And along comes Saul, and then David, and then Solomon, and then a long line of others, down to a single point.

It comes down to an arena in Jerusalem: Jesus and Pilate stand, facing each other.  Jesus, the descendant of David, whom the crowd has called “King of the Jews”, and Pilate, the representative of the Roman empire.  The irony is that Rome is the empire that the Israelites asked for: mighty, controlling everything around it, complete with all the warnings and detractions that God warned them about.  They are mighty, over all; they rule most of the known world.  Jesus is their great hope: that he would be Rome, but tolerable; that he would bring oppression and fear to other lands, where before it was Israel that had lived in oppression, and fear.

But it’s gone, now.  And has been for over a millennia and a half. 

Two kinds of king stand, face to face.  One rules in might, with legions, and armies, the strength of economy.  One rules in love, with community, with boundaries, but with kindness.  But the people have already made their choice, and if you read on in the story you find that choice – we have no king but Caesar.  We admit to no king, but the one that can deliver us what we want, when we want it; we want a king who looks like a king, who acts like a king; who is going to let chosen people act with impunity and invulnerability. 

Two kinds of king stand, face to face.  One knows that he has the power of death over the other; but only One knows the power of life; the power of truth.  Jesus stands seemingly under Pilate’s judgement, and that of the people; but he stands as the king of all and all that is to come.

You say that I am a king…for this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth…everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

The truth is, that Jesus is the kind of king of who doesn’t do ‘kingly’ things; he heals the sick, loves the widow, the orphan, the adulteress, and the outcast.  Jesus is the kind of king who welcomes sinners, and eats with them.

We confess that we are captive to sin, and cannot free ourselves.  To be free we need a Saviour – a king who rules in love, not wrath; because life only thrives in love.

The crowds rejects that kind of king, because they want a king who claims power, and control; not glory, or dominion, from the Greek word referring to ultimate authority.

But give praise to God, beloved, that the kind of king you have is the kind of king who welcomes sinners, and extends to them an invitation to his table. 

Give praise to God, beloved, that the kind of king you have is the kind of king who stands before the kind of king you think you need and refuses to acknowledge that temporal authority can ever touch the eternal.

Give praise to God, beloved, that the kind of king you have is eternal; is the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning, and the end; and that all will see him when he comes in glory.

Give praise to God, beloved, that all will see him not because he comes with armies to conquer, but because they have seen him in you.  That because of your baptism into death, that kind of king has become part of who you are; that kind of king has brought you to be a part of something greater than yourself, greater than you can ever imagine.

Give praise to God, beloved, that that kind of King loves you, died for you, and lives for you; give praise to God, and live for that kind of king.

Amen.