Christ the King Sunday. November 24, 2024

Beloved: today is Christ the King Sunday; it is always celebrated on this, the last Sunday of the
Church’s calendar year. It serves as the last Sunday before we begin the season of Advent, which is a season of hopeful expectation, a season of preparing room within us for Love to find its way home in our hearts, minds, and spirits. Emmanuel, God with us.

Let me share the history of this holy day called Christ the King Sunday with you because, you see, ELCA Lutherans only added this holy day to their calendar in the 1990s, the Episcopalians added it in the 1970s; it is a fairly “new” holy day.  But it all began back in 1925 with Pope Pius XI. 

You see in the 1920s fascism was on the rise in Europe. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, fascism “refers to a way of organizing society with an emphasis of autocratic government, dictatorial leadership, and the suppression of opposition.”

In the 1920s in Italy it was Benito Mussolini. Growing in power at the same time in Germany was Adolph Hitler, and in Japan it was the Imperial Way Faction with Hirohito as the Emperor. In response to these nationalistic, oppressive regimes, in 1925, Pope Pius XI instituted Christ the King Sunday—-reminding Christians to whom their allegiance belonged. Not primarily to a nation or a ruler, but to God. To a Way of Love, to a Life that is grounded in Love, to the Truth that Love is who we are. That’s how Christ the King Sunday started—as a pushback against Nationalism and oppressive regimes corrupted by power and greed.

And, Beloved, like it or not, we are living in a time—the world is living in a time—when fear is showing up as nationalistic yearnings and tendencies once again. A time when we have forgotten that, as theologian Barbara Holmes puts it, “everything is enfolded into everything.” But this holy day, this Christ the King Sunday, reminds us of our global and Creation-centered obligations, relationships and identity. It reminds us of who we are and whom we follow; that our origin and citizenship comes from God’s Kingdom, not any worldly or earthly identity.

“King” and “Kingdom” are kind of wonky words for Christians because they have too often come wrapped up in oppressive regimes that we have often fought to separate ourselves from, especially as Americans, right? We fought to be freed from the tyranny and oppression of a King. And, if we remember our story from the Bible, there was a time when God tried to tell us that earthly Kings are not meant for us who are followers of the Way of Love.

Our story tells us that after God’s people reached the Promised Land and had settled down, the people realized that they were “different” from other nations. When they looked at other nations, the people thought the other nation’s power came from the fact that they had a King, so the people cried out to God: give us a King! God’s response was pretty much: Hmmmm, that’s not a good idea. But the people wanted their nation to be like all the other nations, so they continued to cry out: Give us a King!

And Free Will, a trait of Love, means God lets us have our way when we demand it; God is not a tyrannical authority.  And here’s the thing Beloved—the Truth within this ancient story and the Truth in our own contemporary story for us who claim Christ is this: When we follow in God’s ways, when we walk in the footsteps of the Christ—--we will no longer look, act, respond or choose like other nations. The desire to look and function like the way of the world that prizes money, power, possessions and luxury—this desire leads us to “miss the mark”--in other words, to sin. To forget who we are and whose we are.

In chapter 8 of the Gospel of John, Jesus says: I am not of this world. (Which: hint, hint Christians, means neither are we to be) In Greek that word “world” can also be translated as “system.”  Jesus is not of these worldly systems that enrich the powerful and oppress the poor, these systems that are built to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, any system that gives tax breaks to the rich while requiring the poor and the middle class to carry the weight on their backs. These are the systems that Christ takes no part in; these are the tables of injustice that Jesus flips and demands to be changed. 
Beloved: that is who our King is. God’s Kingdom, God’s Kingship is “otherworldly” to those who work within the world’s systems. Because Love, as the Magnificat proclaims, turns this upside-down world rightside up. And this holy day, this Christ the King Sunday, comes along each year to remind us that when we follow the Way, the Truth and the Life of the Christ—-we actually live and move from a completely different country, a different landscape, moving from an altogether different citizenship, led and obedient to an authority whose primary concern is communal—worldwide communal—whose primary objective is the wholeness and wellness of each and every speck and being of Creation.

Beloved, our baptism is a radical act. It is the claim that our life is not our own. It is God’s. God–specifically Christ—is our authority—--our “King” to use this world’s term. And to follow this King is to leave this world’s systems and objectives behind. Literally, to die to one way of life and to be raised up, restored and renewed to another way of Life. And when we live this new life, casting aside how we once were for who God made us to be, when we do this—-God is glorified. 

​Most of us, for most (if not all) of our lives, keep trying to have it both ways. To live as this world does, and then sometimes—whenever it’s not too costly—to let God’s ways take a turn. One question I have started to ask myself is this: Am I trying to have a seat at the table that Jesus has flipped? And what if, Beloved, what if we were to take our baptismal promises seriously? What if we were to take our Biblical narrative seriously—what if we were to understand our citizenship not from any worldly nation, but from God’s Kingdom come?  Beloved, what would change in your life, in our life together, if we lived as if Jesus is our King?