O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the meditations of our hearts. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
Every year, at the end of the church year, we observe a tradition that is 2000 years old, one that dates from the time the three magi bent their knees in homage
to the Baby of Bethlehem.
We name Jesus, here in our worship together, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. We hold him up as the one anointed by God, to be the Messiah, the King of the Jews, the one chosen by the ancient of days to be the deliverer and the Saviour of the world.
Jesus the King - it is an interesting and an important title in our tradition about Jesus - a title that bears looking at.
Being a king really meant something in Jesus' day. A king was the most powerful human being on earth. A king speaks, common people tremble.
For nations, the king was the only means of securing order and peace. The king was, civilization and domestic tranquillity personified in one person. He was to be honoured and respected and served. He was to be revered and feared and obeyed.
A king was everything and everybody rolled up into one. He was of upmost importance - so much so that time itself was calculated on the basis of when the King began his reign.
In the fifth year of the reign of Julius Caesar, In the twenty-fifth year of the reign of King David, In the year of our Lord, two thousand...
As your preacher the question I am struggling with this morning is: What does it mean for us to name Jesus King?
Especially when you consider what we have done to kings in our day and age, indeed what we have done to all sources of authority.
There is no respect, there is no honour, there is no reverence in us, for those who rule over us in the political realm.
We regard no-one as better than us. No-one as ultimate more important than us. No-one as really, in the end, worthy of our unquestioning obedience and our unflagging dedication.
We have reduced our royalty to the status of soap opera stars; we almost universally regard our politicians as corrupt and uncaring and out of touch; our judges and our police we condemn as ineffective; and the laws that they make and enforce, when they are applied to us, we often call unfair and arbitrary, and we seek to get around them.
The image of Jesus as King, is an image that is hard to get hold of, and once gotten hold of, it is an image that is hard to take seriously. It is, I believe for most of us, a fantasy image, an image that belongs to stories that begin with the words "Once upon a time, in a land far far away..."
What does it mean to call Jesus King?
In our scripture reading this morning Pontius Pilate clearly wondered this - albeit for different reasons than we here many wonder it today.
Pilate, who served the most powerful king in the world, knew what a king was. He knew about the power that a King has, the authority that he wields, the unquestioning obedience that he demands, and the power that he has to compel that obedience should it not be volunteered.
Pilate was a creature of his time, one who knew and accepted the rules, one who in fact was charged with making and enforcing the rules, and while he, like people today, sought to use those rules to his advantage, he knew what the consequences of ignoring or scoffing the rules were.
One of the rules that Pilate was called to enforce was the rule that anyone who claimed to be a king, anyone who dared to set themselves up as an authority over and against the lawful authority of Caesar, was to be executed.
It was a rule that Pilate had no scruples about enforcing. it was a rule that he had enforced thousands of times throughout Galilee.
And so when Jesus is brought before Pilate the charge that is laid against him is that he is a revolutionary - that he is one who unlawfully claims to be the Messiah, the King of the Jews.
The very idea that the bruised and beleaguered man that stood before him could be taken for a king must have seemed ridiculous to Pilate. He knew what Kings acted like. He knew what they looked like. He knew what even those who pretended to be kings acted like and looked like.
Nevertheless Pilate does his duty. He asks Jesus if the charge against him is true. He asks Jesus if he is, or if he claims to be, King of the Jews.
Jesus answers Pilate that he is a king - but that his kingdom is not of this world, and then he says:
"If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities."
Pilate understands this - he knows what a King is, and after checking Jesus once more by asking him "So you are a king?" and hearing Jesus respond with that he was born to testify to the truth, he tells Jesus' accusers that he finds there is no case against him.
Pilate cannot image Jesus as a King, the image that he has of a King, like the image that many of us have, just doesn't fit Jesus.
And so - while in the end Pilate allows Jesus to be crucified with the word's "King of the Jews" posted over his head in three different languages, Pilate himself does not believe what he has caused to be written.
And today I wonder if it is the same for us.
I wonder if we, like Pilate, name Jesus as King but for one reason or another just don't believe it, or take it seriously, or understand what it means.
We take a lot of things about Jesus rather lightly after all. We often name the name of Christ and either do not accept or comprehend or believe what we are saying.
So when we here in the church today name Jesus as King, when we call him Lord, do we know what we are doing? Do we accept it and believe it? And if we accept it and believe it, do we understand it?
Clearly the more radical feminists amongst us do not accept it or understand it.
They reject Jesus as their king because they know that not only are Kings male, which is bad enough for some of them, they also know that Kings rules autocratically, that they dictate rather than consult, that they make orders rather than arrive at consensus, that they demand obedience to themselves rather than seeking to serve others.
Radical Feminists take too seriously the image of King that Pilate had - the image that history hands down to us of Kings, and not seriously enough the words of Jesus - "My Kingdom is not of this world, it if were, my disciples would be fighting to prevent me from being handed over."
Others among us take up those words of Jesus, words that were meant to describe the nature and the source of his authority, and twist them so that his kingdom ends up being "other-worldly".
They accept and believe that Jesus is a King, but regard his kingdom as being something we hope to experience someday, in the great beyond as it were, but not as being something NOW for us, or if it is NOW - it is now only in some vague "spiritual sense" - it is not meant to have real impact on how we conduct our lives and act together as social beings.
Some do this by saying that business is business, and that religion has no place in it, just as it has no place in politics.
Others do it by making excuses for their behaviour, they withhold from Christ the obedience he asks of us in witnessing to others about him because it is too pushy or because they do not want to offend; they refuse to obey his command to love and forgive others as he loves and forgives us because the person they have a grudge against doesn't deserve to be loved or forgiven; they fail to help their brothers and sisters in the Lord and to contribute to the needs of the saints as he asks because they have already tithed the mint and dill from their gardens and the rest of their wealth they have "dedicated to the Lord" in some other way.
Still others accept and believe that Jesus is King and misunderstand, by trying to force Christ's teachings upon others, as if is kingdom was from this world.
They do this by insisting that laws be made to compel prayer in the school, by seeking to ban gambling as contrary to the Spirit of Christ, and working to enact legislation to abolish abortion clinics as an abomination to the Lord.
What does it mean for us to name Jesus King? Well, it certainly doesn't mean any of the above.
Jesus is not a worldly king. His power is not from this world, nor is it meant to be exercised in the way that the world exercises power.
Jesus exercised his power by serving others, by forgiving others, by healing others, by giving to others, by sacrificing himself for others. His power is the power of truth, the power of faith, the power of hope, the power of love - the power of life itself.
On the other hand Jesus' kingdom is not something that is in the sky by and by. It is real, it is present, and it makes demands upon us.
Jesus calls us to obedience, to faith, and to love here and now. But Jesus does not force or compel us. He calls us to allow God to enter into our lives and to rule our lives. He invites us to walk by the light he himself has shed. And he shows us in his own person and in the lives of those who follow him that when we turn to him that there is healing and wholeness to be found.
Pilate found Jesus not guilty of being a King like the kings we normally think of. But he executed him anyway - to please the crowd which had assembled before him.
But Pilate's question to Jesus - are you a king - remains as an important question - a fundamental question.
It is a question about sovereignty, about rule, about who is in charge when it is dark and the world is falling apart, about who we can turn to when we are in need or when others are in need, about who we should go to when we seek justice for others and when we look for mercy for ourselves.
Jesus answered that he is in charge - not in the way of the world - not with force and violence, but with love and with life.
He answers that he has control over the darkness - that he is the one that, because of the faithfulness of God to him, vanquishes death and brings healing and peace to all who follow him.
It is this king that I name today and seek to follow.
It is this king that I pray you will also name and follow,
for in him is life, and that abundantly. Amen
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