Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

The Feast of Christ the King (Proper 24) Year C
Deacon Richard Buhrer

There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”

The same words are used for the Roman emperor that we use to refer to the Lord: “Son of God.” The word for emperor and king and for empire and kingdom are the same in the Greek that was the universal language of the first century. Christians were persecuted under the Roman Empire. I think we look back on the persecution see it as a terrible misunderstanding: Christianity posed no threat to the establishment of the Roman Empire. But to a Roman reading or hearing the Christian proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the language would sound revolutionary and seditious.

If one looks closely and prayerfully at the Scriptures, it becomes clear that there is indeed a revolutionary and potentially seditious implication of the Gospel. In serving Christ and fulfilling our baptismal vows, we do not try to turn the tables on the powerful in the world; we are not trying to win the game of power: we are called by the Gospel to stop playing that game.

In the Sermon on the Mount,  Jesus said:

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven…. You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.[1]

As one theologian put it: “… in the measure that we learn unconcern about our reputation, in that measure the Father can produce in us the same love which he has for his Son, and the same love which he and his Son have for the human race. Here is where we have to make an imaginative effort, or at least I do. That love is in no way marked by any desire for vindication, for restoring besmirched reputations, for turning the tables of this world, and all that might seem to us to be just and proper, given the horror of the violence of our world. That love loves all that! It loves the persecutors, the scandalized, it loves the depressives and the traitors and the finger pointers. That love doesn't seek a fulminating revelation of what has really been going on as a final vengeance for all the violence, even though we may fear that it will be so. That love is utterly removed from being party to any final settling of accounts. That love, the love which was the inner dynamic of the coming of the Son to the world, of Jesus' historical living out, seeks desperately and insatiably that good and evil may participate in a wedding banquet.[2]

All the rules we have learned about just retribution and “fairness” and the settling of accounts are obliterated in the blood of Christ. The Kingship of Christ is different from every human  king we have known: The king is no longer the ominous judge many of us have been lead to believe in; instead he embodies self-emptying love that sends rain on the just and the unjust, the sheep and the goats, the wheat and the tares.

How do we participate in this Kingdom?

First, we should mistrust every binary definition of the world into us and them: liberal and conservative, gay and straight, white and non-white, male and female, terrorists and victims, Jew and Aryan, on and on it goes. It seems embedded in our DNA to define ourselves against one another. This is something that Christ and the saints keeping calling us to eschew. I believe that every time we define ourselves against any perceived enemy, we jeopardize our very humanity. There’s a bumper sticker I used to see fairly often that said “Mean people suck.” I like the Buddhist answer to that in another bumper sticker that said: “Mean people are suffering.

Continuing in a Buddhist vein, I think the second thing we can do is to treat every sentient being we encounter with kindness and compassion. In practical terms, this means keeping a cheerful heart and a kind demeanor in every encounter. I want to emphasize that I think it is perfectly possible to be kind and angry at the same time. But this does require the commitment to struggle to return good for evil, kindness for cruelty, love for hate. The real challenge is to remain conscious of this during the mundane experiences of our lives: treating retail clerks, bureaucrats, waiters and waitresses and one another with kindness in our momentary interactions.

There is a great and holy irony to reading today’s Gospel on the Feast of Christ the King. In it we see Jesus at the absolutely lowest point in his brief and painful life: hanged upon the cross. But even from this vantage of suffering and pain, we see Jesus living out his own teaching about love and kindness and compassion: “One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”[3] The remarkable thing is that in this moment, in the blink of an eye, this rebel and sinner was taken into the heart of God. Inclusion in the Kingdom of Christ does  not come from lives well lived but from hearts open to love. Those of us who have spent our lives in the service of Christ will receive the same reward that those who whisper repentance in the moment of their death. This is the new justice of the Kingdom of Christ. This is what we are called to live out in our lives.

There is a hymn sung on Good Friday in the Orthodox tradition; let this be the theme of our prayer today:

"You made the Wise Thief worthy of Paradise, in a single moment, O Lord. By the wood of your Cross illumine me as well, and save me." [4]