Christ the King Sunday, 11/22/2015

Sermon on John 18:33-37, by Ryan Mills

³³Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” ³⁴Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” ³⁵Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” ³⁶Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” ³⁷Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, + and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Well I don’t know about you, but one of my favorite things as a child was to sit in the lap of a parent or grandparent and have them read to me out of a collection of fairy tales. That feeling of being safe and secure in their arms, and the story which always begins well, then something terrible happens, and then the adventure to right what went wrong, and finally comes the victory: the return of the King, the wedding, the happily ever after. There’s something in all of us that likes to hear a good story, that needs a story to hear, that looks forward to the happily ever after. We might not read fairy tales, but why else do we go to the movies, or read a novel, but so that we ourselves for a moment might become that princess or that prince, that warrior or that rebel, battling against the odds, knowing that no matter the odds victory is certain.

Well, spoiler alert: today we are given the end of the story, today on Christ the King Sunday we celebrate the fact that we live in a story that does have an end, and it ends in the final triumph of Jesus Christ, our Lord and King. We confess it every week in our Creeds, that our King who died and rose for us “will come again to judge the living and the dead, and his Kingdom will have no end,” but today we get to fast forward, to flip to the end of the story. Which is saying something in and of itself--that we believe in a story that has an end. It means our life, this world, has a meaning, has a purpose, it’s going somewhere. Without knowing there’s an ending life sometimes seems like just one disaster after another, one dang thing after another, or like the play says, “like a tale full of sound and fury, told by an idiot, signifying nothing.” I put a meeting into an online calendar the other day, and it told me, “Meeting 7 p.m., every Thursday, until forever.” Now that’s a dark future! Meetings every Thursday forever? No, Jesus Christ is King forever, and he says today “I am the Alpha and the Omega” which means I am the A and the Z, the first and the last, he is the beginning of all this, through him all things were made, and he is also the end, when we get to the end, whether it’s next week or in a trillion years, when we get to the end, he is there, the end is Him. And if he is the beginning, and he is the end, then we trust that he is here with us in the middle, the King is our King for the whole story, as Revelation greets us today, “Grace to you and peace from him who is, and who was, and who is to come,” Christ with us now, and from the beginning, and until the very end.

And it’s interesting that though the end has not happened yet, today the Scriptures tell us what the end will be like, because when you know the end you also know how to live in the present. Isn’t this our dream, to know the future so we can plan accordingly? And here it is: the prophet Daniel tells us that he saw one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the Ancient One, to the Father, and to this Son of Man was given dominion and glory and kingship, so that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingship shall never be destroyed.

The Son of Man is Jesus Christ and his Kingship is one that lasts forever, it never goes away, because it is founded on his death once for us all, and his rising on the third day to eternal life, to live and reign forever. Think about how many of this world’s rulers were expected to last forever: the empires of Greece or Rome, the British, the Germans--even the way sometimes we think we’ll last and rule forever. Or what about the rulers of marketing and commercials and buying and shopping, the kings of Madison Avenue, they tell us this season “You need to get this if you’re a real person,” and “If you want to show love you need to send them that.” Or what about the most cruel ruler of all, death itself, which says that when it’s over for you, it’s over forever. All these powers, all these petty kings, some may last for a few hundred years but they all end up in museums, the stuff they tell us to buy will someday be at Goodwill or the dump, even death itself has been thrown on the scrapheap and unseated once and for all by Jesus, the firstborn from the dead, so it’s not our politics or our passports that unite us, it’s not the stuff we buy that makes us worthy, it’s not trying to escape death that will make us live--it’s the fact that Jesus Christ is King forever, and that he is your King forever. Daniel says this morning that he saw on that great day that “all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.” Christ’s Kingdom unites different races, different colors, unites different languages, different accents, different-sized wallets, even different times, with people of past present and future united as one, because death itself will be completely destroyed and undone, that’s the future, that’s what’s coming, we’ve flipped to the end this morning, we know what happens. And if Christ is King now in the middle of the story, then maybe we ought to begin to live that future now, for he is your King even right now this morning.

In our gospel this morning Jesus is locked up in the Roman headquarters, the praetorium, being questioned by the Governor Pontius Pilate on the charges that Jesus called himself a king. This is treason, right? Pilate upon seeing Jesus asks, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Really? You? Right! Jesus doesn’t always look like a king to our eyes, his kingdom here--as it comes to us in Word and Sacrament, as we come to trust in him in the power of the Holy Spirit, as we gather to listen and to receive, and go out to love and serve--it doesn’t look like too much of a kingdom, but it’s the only Kingdom that will last forever. So Jesus says to Pilate, “You misunderstand; my kingdom is not of this world.” Not one more dusty kingdom to end up in a museum, but a Kingdom that belongs to Jesus Christ and so will last forever; not one more kingdom that lives by pushing people around, by force, but rather by calling people in through faith and sending them out in love; not one more kingdom that divides us, but one that unites across every barrier that is torn down through our repentance and faith in him.

Then Jesus speaks to all of us this morning, speaking to us individually, as a parent speaks to a child, as a grandparent reads to a child on their knee, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Every one of you, every single one of you who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

His birth as a human baby that we’ll look to in the coming weeks, and his coming as that baby as the eternal Son of God--our King is both totally human and totally divine and he comes to tell you the truth. To call you into the greatest story ever told. Every single one of you, Jesus promises, who is rooted in the Truth listens to my voice, for his voice brings us the truth. Our call is to listen to him, just like children listen intently to a story, to listen just a carefully as we listen to “Once upon a time…”

Pilate finishes today, in a verse not printed, by asking, “What is truth?” Is he cynical, like our age, laughing at the idea of something more true than him? Or is he a seeker of truth, like all Christians are called to be, for we belong to the One who is Truth, whose Word gives truth, and who invites us into living a life of truth, for he promises to be with us right here in the middle of life, in the hard part of the story, before you can tell that things will turn out right and that there will be a happily ever after.

For there will be happily ever after. Because the One who loves you, and freed you from your sins by his blood was crucified for you under a sign that said, “The King of the Jews”, and he will come again in glory, and every eye shall see him. He has already made us here in his church to be a kingdom, priests serving God and our neighbor, princes and princesses who are children of the one true King. So come now, here in the middle of this story, come and taste of that final feast of victory that comes to us even now. For we know how this ends, Christ is King forever. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

And the Peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.

Rev. Ryan Mills
New Haven, Connecticut, USA
E-Mail: Pastor@TrinityLutheranNH.org

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