"Christ The King -- Hanging On A Cross!" Christ the King Sunday November 25, 2007

(First, read the passage for this sermon: Luke 23:33-43)

So the marketing machine is in full swing for Christmas! The stores are full of Christmas decorations. (They have been, for weeks). Christmas carols have been playing over loud speaker systems. Christmas trees are for sale all over.

Did you see the Wal Mart ad in last Sunday’s newspaper? It proclaims, “You can e-mail your wish list to the whole family at walmart.com/toyland!” There are 12 spaces on the Wal Mart Wish List. On the lines next to each item are notations such as, “If you buy me 20 gifts this year, MAKE THIS ONE OF THEM!” (Twenty gifts?!) Next to six of the lines is a multiple choice check-off where you can choose among these four possibilities: “Want it!” “Need it!” “Must-Have!” “PLEEEASE!!” (Oh, there is one notation next to one line that reads: “Please buy me this gift. I would love to donate it to a less fortunate boy or girl.” (And I’ll keep the other 19 gifts for myself, I guess.)

That’s only the most offensive example of the marketing onslaught that will threaten to overwhelm us in the coming weeks. We will be encouraged to think that the purpose of Christmas is to buy stuff. As much as we give in to this, we lose sight of who the Jesus is, whose birth we’re preparing to celebrate during these weeks.

Technically, I shouldn’t even be speaking about this, this morning. Advent, the season of preparation, doesn’t begin until next Sunday. But the juxtaposition between that Wal Mart ad and this morning’s gospel reading is just too much to ignore. The marketing machine is in full swing for Christmas – and what do we read from Luke’s story? We read the gospel writer’s description of Christ the King, who is hanging on a cross! Let’s spend a minute with these startling mixed metaphors.

First a little bit of “Liturgical Year 101” review. Next Sunday, Advent begins. The first Sunday in Advent is the first Sunday of the new church year. This morning ends the previous church year: it the Sunday of Christ the King. In the gospel readings for this day, the title “king” becomes a metaphor. The story makes it clear that Jesus contradicts any conception that we may harbor, about what a king is! Christ the King is surely something else.

What do you think of, when you think of a king? You think of a man who is grand and glorious, right? You envision much pomp and circumstance! You see a man surrounded by a powerful military, perhaps. A king is the commander of legions of loyal subjects, who are loyal and obedient mostly out of fear. (If not, then “Off with their heads!”)

In Jesus, we do not see such a grand and glorious king, driving the lead tank into battle. Instead, on this Sunday, with this theme, we see Christ the King hanging on a cross.

The cross has become such an ubiquitous symbol that it’s lost its offense. Crosses are even sold in jewelry stores! We cannot lose sight of the fact that the cross, of course, was the lethal injection syringe of the ancient Roman Empire. It was the empire’s method of capital punishment. It was the way the empire executed its criminals. Is it possible to recover some of the shock in these verses, as they reveal how God has saved you and me? With all of our conceptions and assumptions about a king and his power and glory, the astonishing fact is that God has saved us through humiliation and through weakness!

Look again at the masterful story that the gospel writer has crafted. Jesus is crucified at the place outside the city wall called, “The Skull.” Two other condemned criminals are on their own crosses, on either side of Jesus. Jesus is officially identified by a sarcastic sign that reads, “This is the King of the Jews.” The watching crowd, including any supporters Jesus might have, is silent. Meanwhile, Jesus is humiliated by those who speak – by the Roman leaders, and by the Roman soldiers, and even by one of the criminals crucified with him! It is important to pay attention to what they say. The leaders taunt Jesus, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers jeer, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Even the one of the criminals says, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!"

Do you notice the word that they all use? Those who are taunting Jesus are ridiculing claims that he is sent from God to bring salvation. Obviously, from all appearances, that cannot be true! Right? He shows absolutely no ability to save himself, let alone other! Some king!
Here’s how brilliant this story is, for you and me, reading in faith: in their humiliating taunts, the leaders and the soldiers and the one criminal are alerting us to the fact that Jesus the Christ does indeed save us! The shock, indeed the offense, is how Jesus is the Savior of the world.

Jesus the Christ is the king who has come to suffer extreme humiliation – even his clothes are taken from him while he’s on the cross! – to bring forgiveness through that disgrace and dishonor. And notice the radical significance of this: on the cross Jesus prays, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." Here’s what’s happening. Jesus, crucified, unsupported by anyone in the silent crowd, taunted by the leaders and the soldiers and even one of the criminals, is praying for forgiveness for his executioners!

Wow.

How astonishing is this forgiveness that Jesus is enacting! He taught his disciples about it, and you and I give words to it each week, in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, and we forgive those who sin against us.” How shocking it is to actually mean that! How offensive to our sensibilities of fairness: that people should “get what’s coming to them!”

In the story from Luke, titles of Jesus are hurled at him in sarcasm by the leaders and the soldiers and the one criminal – “the Messiah of God,” God’s “chosen one,” “the King of the Jews” – and it turns out that all of those titles are true! We come to realize that through the irony of the taunts!

And the passage pushes the offense even further, for you and me middle class Americans with our conventional religious assumptions. Notice that the one person in the story who sincerely identifies who Jesus is, is someone we today would suspect of being a terrorist: a Palestinian criminal who is also being executed!

Wow.

What does this morning’s gospel story reveal to us, on this Sunday of Christ the King? It places Jesus the Christ, Christ the King, God become flesh, deep into human suffering and brokenness. The story reveals to us that, no matter how deep is the muck of suffering and sinfulness that you and I are mired in, that is precisely where God is. That is where God is, bringing forgiveness and salvation. Right there in our muck.

Pray on these things, if you will. How might this liberate you from Christmas preparations that are entirely beside the point of celebrating what God has done in becoming human flesh? Maybe you can stay out of Wal Mart entirely!

I pray, instead, that you will celebrate the birth of this Jesus, in a way that leads you into the great joy of God’s gift!

In the name of God who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia