Christ the King Sunday C 20 Nov 2016 A & C
Jrm 23.1f, Song Zech (Lk 1.68f), Col 1.11f, Lk 23.33f
I wonder what you’d think about a king who goes about among his people disguised as an ordinary person. That’s just what King Abdullah II of Jordan does. Every now and then in the Jordanian newspapers, a new article will pop-up to say that today, their carefully disguised king joined the queue at a taxation office or a hospital, or he spent the day driving a taxi.
While he’s standing in the queue, he talks with people about how they’re being treated; what sort of service they’re getting. And people do confide in taxi drivers; if there’s something wrong in their life, they’ll often tell a taxi driver about it. I know; I’ve been one.
This is King Abdullah’s way of finding out for himself what sort of experience his people have of his government; what life is like for the ordinary people in his kingdom. So the people who work behind hospital desks and tax office front-counters must always wonder if the next face they see behind the beard of a shabby old man might actually be that of their King. Maybe they behave now as if everyone is their king—just in case. Wouldn’t that improve things!
King Abdullah does this because he cares for his people. He wants to find out what he needs to do so he can to make life better for them. I like a king who does that, and today is all about the King who’s done that for all of us. God came as one of us to experience what life is like for us – to know how we are treated, and to make things better for us. None of us is beneath this King’s notice!
Today, we’re told about some of the ways God makes things better. In our reading from Jeremiah, we’re told that bad shepherds will be dealt with, and God will take their place. Bad shepherds wreck lives; they betray trust and fracture the community of God’s people. They publicly disgrace the name of God. Jeremiah said this would change.
Jrm 23.5 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
So the expectations were huge – and people waited and hoped.
In our canticle this morning, Zechariah’s Song, we sang with an old man who’d waited all his life for this prophecy to be fulfilled. Zechariah had been promised that his son, John, would finally get God’s people ready for the coming of that righteous king. Lk 1.17 Finally, Zechariah held that child in his arms: John the Baptist, harbinger of the Messiah. And Zechariah sang,
Lk 1:76-77… you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.
This is a glorious getting ready. You expect so much; hope so deeply; all that cripples us will change. What a wonderful King this will be. But nothing prepares us for the most glorious moment of that King’s revealing: the one we see today, when we meet our King, dying on the Cross.
He didn’t just come disguised as a vulnerable person like King Abdullah does; he actually became one. And he didn’t just come for a quick, harmless experience of people’s inconvenience before being whisked off in a motorcade back to the palace like King Abdullah does. He suffered all that oppressed people do; he died the way the most ill-treated victims of tyranny do; by government-sanctioned murder. This time, it was the Romans who were the false shepherds.
So how does God make things better. We heard Jeremiah describe it as God replacing bad shepherds with a good one. But even if you replace a bad shepherd, they leave behind a terrible legacy: pain and suffering, confusion and hopelessness, betrayal and bitterness – no clear sense of right and wrong any more. Jesus takes this terrible legacy to the Cross so it can die with him once and for all, and in its place he offers healing forgiveness.
Before Jesus dies, leaders, soldiers, even one of the condemned hanging beside him—each taunt him with the same demand: Save yourself! But he’s not in it for himself. He’s not a false shepherd; not a false King. If there’s a cost to be borne, he will bear it, because ultimately, he’s the only one who really can. He doesn’t save himself; he’s determined to save us all. And as Zechariah sang it, he does it through forgiveness. He bears the cost himself – the spread of the disease stops with him.
Listen to Jesus, as much a victim of evil as anyone can be; listen, as he asks God to forgive his persecutors. Father, forgive them; for they don’t know what they’re doing! Suddenly, the legacy of pain and suffering, confusion and hopelessness, betrayal and bitterness, of no clear sense of right and wrong – suddenly that legacy, and even the power of death itself – all of it is defused. That King – not seated on a throne, but hanging before us on a senseless, violent instrument of tyranny – that King is both the good shepherd who has come to us, and the embodiment of the new reign.
The other criminal still asks him for a future hope: Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.
What we witness here is the complete conversion of a human soul from criminal to saint. He names what he has been, renounces it and turns to Jesus. He calls on Jesus’ name and asks to be remembered when Jesus comes into his kingdom.
But Jesus replies that the Kingdom is here now: Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. Jesus receives him immediately – takes him at his word and receives him. Today you will be with me in paradise; restored to everything you might have hoped to be.
This is astonishing. The people Jesus keeps company with here show that none of us should ever imagine ourselves beyond the reach of Jesus’ love, and no-one should ever imagine themselves beneath the notice of our King. And most astonishing of all, this is all here now – today – within each one of us. Amen