Sadly, many of you are too young to know what I’m talking about when I refer to Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It was a comedy team that began working together at Cambridge University and they produced spoofs on English history.
One routine focused on King Arthur. Having received the sword, Excalibur, from a stone, according to Monty Python, Arthur rides to a nearby castle to present himself to his subjects.
Encountering a group of peasants laboring away in the mud, Arthur wastes no time getting to the point:
“I am your king.”
“Well,” [a woman responds] “I didn’t vote for you.”
Taken aback, Arthur counters, “You don’t vote for kings”.
“Well how’d you become king then?” she retorts.
With angelic music playing in the background, Arthur responds, “The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.”
The woman’s husband, Dennis, responds “Listen, strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony…. You can’t expect to wield supreme power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!”
It’s comforting to know that Brits may be as confused as we are about kings. If anyone should be clear about it, they should. They still have one.
But it is certain that we Americans are confused about kings.
We rejected one in 1776 and then spent over almost 250 years following the royal family.
We had the good sense to call our executive officer a President but then treated them like kings. And — surprise, surprise — they began acting like kings.
More recently, some of us declared that we wanted “no kings”. But for all the protests, one side against the other, we all know that both parties are willing to have a king, as long as that king belongs to our party (if you have one).
All of this makes preaching on Christ the King Sunday almost as unattractive as preaching Trinity Sunday. That one gives clergy a regular opportunity to spout heresy. This one has become an invitation to juggle grenades.
In order to avoid it, some theologians have tried to get around dealing with this subject by talking about the “kin-dom of God”. But Jesus used the phrase “The Kingdom of God” and Paul – as well as the Old Testament and other parts of the New Testament – use the language of what we might call royal sovereignty.
So, here we are. You get to preach the Bible on Sunday, you don’t get to preach what you want the Bible to say.
So, when we celebrate “Christ, the King” what do we have in mind and what’s the point? There are a number of places we could turn to, but we have Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1:11-20) in front of us, so let’s focus there.
The first point that Paul makes about Jesus he puts this way:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers– all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Paul undoubtedly wrote these lines with the Roman Empire in mind. Romans attributed divinity to their emperors, and some of them insisted their subjects take that claim seriously. For Christians, then, the religious and political claims that Rome made on their lives were deeply intertwined. They were also untenable.
Jesus had taught his disciples to give to Caesar what belonged to Caesar. But the demand that the emperor be worshipped was a bridge too far.
The reason Paul offers is grounded in the nature of Christ’s kingship. He is the image of the invisible God. His mind is the mind of God, giving all of creation its shape and its form. And it is Christ’s power and presence that holds creation together.
Even the power that rulers wield – including that of the Emperor – is derivative. A pale imitation. A knock-off.
The kings of the world might be given their power by their subjects or they might steal it. But authority and power are God’s creation. And, unlike earthly leaders, Jesus does need a “farcical aquatic ceremony” to substantiate his claims.
The implication is clear: When we elide the kingship of Jesus with political figures or identify his teaching with systems of governance and economic theories, we trivialize and temporize the claims of Christ on our lives. The claim that Jesus makes on our fidelity transcends time and place because he is the author of creation. And, as such, his authority cuts across every system, every power, every notion of how people should live.
Earthly rulers may vary in their virtue, nations may appeal to our better angels, or they may indulge in exploitation. But every nation comes under the judgment of the one who was “in the beginning”.
The next point that Paul makes comes as a bit of a surprise. Having said what he does at the outset, one might assume that he will argue that Christians ought to build a theocracy, conquer territories, and structure life around divine dictates. That is certainly what Muhammed felt compelled to do and so do Christian nationalists on both the right and the left.
But, instead, Paul declares that Jesus is “the head of the body, the church”.
The reign of God’s, then, is sacramental. It is constituted in baptism. It is sustained by God’s body and blood. And the place where God reigns is over the hearts and the minds of his followers. God’s reign cannot be captured in a theory of governance or a view of economics.
It isn’t particularly surprising, then, that when Christ’s church has failed her Lord, more often than not, she has either sought to control the affairs of the world’s leaders or drags the machinations of the world’s leaders into the life of the church.
In civic conversation Christians have argued that one kind of governance or another is God-given — or worse yet, they argue that Jesus is the earliest advocate of modern governance. But, apart from the historical nonsense that is required to make those arguments stick, the bigger problem is that it reduces the reign of Christ to political formulations and Christ’s church to partisan cheerleaders.
This is not our vocation. Our vocation is to live under Christ’s rule, and that rule is forever calling us to prayerful self-examination, confession, repentance, and a dependence upon the body and blood of Christ. If we Christians have anything to offer those who live under the authority of first one after another of those who wield derivative authority in the world, it is to note that their authority is constantly under the judgement of God. And we can say that because we ourselves are equally upon God’s mercy and forgiveness.
Paul then describes how the reign of Christ the King has been brought to bear on our lives:
…he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Over the years, I have had people say to me, “As you know, I read the prayers of the people, but I can’t do this any longer, because I just can’t bring myself to pray for this or that president.”
In response, I usually make a number of observations:
One, we pray for presidents and governors as representatives of leaders everywhere and at every level. They are just stand-ins for rulers everywhere. Two, if you don’t particularly approve of one of them, that is just an even better reason to pray for that person. And, three, if Jesus told you to pray for your enemies, surely you can pray for those with who you differ.
But the most important point I make concerns the purpose of those prayers. When we lift those prayers, we pray them “That there might be justice and peace on the earth.” Our goal is not the success of a specific leader. We aren’t praying that they will do everything they want to do. We aren’t praying that the electoral fortunes will be improved. We are praying “That there might be justice and peace on the earth.” And that goal may or may not accord with what our leaders do.
But – more to the point – the justice and peace that we pray for is not about your notions of justice and peace or mine. We are praying for the justice – the world made straight, the place of safety and belonging – that only Christ can give —– and we pray for the peace – the wholeness, the healing, the resting in God – that only Christ can make possible.
And how does Christ the King guarantee that kind of healing possible? Paul argues that it is possible because Jesus is the only one who has conquered the last enemy, the primal enemy, the enemy that not only ends life but bedevils it from beginning to end –- the power of death.
Far too many Christians do is that they assume that the death of Christ on the cross and his resurrection from the dead has no bearing on anything but the grave and what happens on the other side of it. In the meantime, all too often they think that God has put them in charge of the world’s politics, where the real work of the Christian life gets done.
But here is the problem with that line of thinking: Even our civic efforts will be empty and sterile, if we treat them as somehow separate from the cross and the empty tomb. The reconciling work of Christ the King is forged in his sacrifice and his Resurrection; and we are called to stand at his side, offering hope to a dying world. Conversely, when we substitute our theories for his work in the world, if we despise the life of the church or make it a partisan cheerleader, if we fashion our own notions of justice and peace, then we will be like the contemporaries of Jesus who — when he failed to meet their expectations — called for his crucifixion.
Where does this leave those of us who live under Christ’s reign> Our circumstances differ markedly. Some of us live in nations where citizens have little or no voice. Like the Roman Christians, they live with rulers and cultures that are hostile to their faith. Others – like you and me – live in some form of democratic country, and we enjoy the freedom to express our faith.
But despite the differences, we hold many things in common:
- We have one King.
- We carry Christ’s kingdom with us – as individuals and as communities.
- Even where we can make civic choices, we need to bear in mind that no party, no ruler of any kind will deserve our unqualified fidelity. That belongs to Christ, alone.
- No definition of what we work for in this world can be defined in secular terms, and we should not be ashamed to own that commitment.
- The fight in which we are engaged – alongside Christ – is waged against the power of death.
- Death in its diminutive forms – which takes man forms: human misery, alienation, poverty, hunger, prejudice, and cruelty. To name a few.
- And death itself, the power of which is conquered by the power of Christ manifested in his Resurrection and awaits the restoration of all things in the world to come.
And – if you have ever wondered why that battle is unending, and why no temporal ruler can conquer poverty, crime, or injustice – this is why. No king, even one with a sword and a “farcical aquatic ceremony”, can do that. Death will only yield to the power of God in Jesus Christ and, in the meantime, every triumph will be temporary.
Photo by Carlos N. Cuatzo Meza on Unsplash
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