Christ the King Sunday, 11/24/2019

Sermon on Luke 23:33-43, by Samuel David Zumwalt

33 And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. 34 And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments. 35 And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!” 36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine 37 and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” 38 There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” 39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” The Gospel of the Lord.

FOLLOWING JESUS: UNDOUBTEDLY

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

And so, we have arrived at the ultimate Sunday of this liturgical year. Simply, for some Lutherans to call this Sunday “The Feast of Christ the King” is an achievement of the 20th century ecumenical movement in that this feast was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925. In earlier American Lutheran hymnals, the liturgical year ended with the last Sunday after Trinity. In the Lutheran Service Book of the LCMS, it is simply “The Last Sunday of the Church Year.”

Regardless of by which name it is called, the Gospel lesson points us to the theology of the cross. God’s Son Jesus is crowned with thorns, mocked by political and ecclesiastical authorities and the common folk, and yet He is indeed Christ the King on the cross. We Lutherans do not focus our theology on the sovereignty of God in eternal glory. Rather, we confess a theology of the cross. We follow undoubtedly God’s Son Jesus the King, who suffers and dies for sinners. Already, in Luke 1, at the annunciation by Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, the Incarnate Lord was named Savior (“God saves”). Already, in Luke 1, at the Visitation by the Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, Our Lord’s mother sang His Father’s praises: “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.” God’s Son, Savior, has come to be lifted up on the tree of the cross to save us who had been overcome by that tree the tempter used to draw us into rebellion against the only God. Only by His dying could our death be destroyed. Only by His obedience could our disobedience be removed. Only by His precious Blood could our sins be forgiven. It’s the theology of the cross, or the death of God’s Son, Savior, is wasted!

We need the Feast of Christ the King, the Last Sunday of the Church Year, to remind us that our mortal bodies must wither and die. Christ has died. We must die. Christ is risen. We will rise. Christ will come again. We follow Him undoubtedly through death to life in Paradise, the King’s

Garden from which our first parents and we were lovingly banished before we could choose eternal separation with the malevolent tempter who can never be God. Alas, he has his minions.

The sovereignty by which Christ the King was crucified under Pontius Pilate is penultimate. Kings and kingdoms will all pass away. The grass withers. The flower fades. The Word of the Lord endures forever.

Those whose hopes are for this life only see death as sovereign. In the culture of death, they wield it as a means to an end. Keep your laws off my body, so that I can kill any biological interruption to my sovereign life. Keep your religion out of my sovereign life, or I will call down death on your business, your reputation, yes, your ability to be anything but my willing serf. For my sovereign will is your command. All this can be yours if you will but fall down and worship my sovereign will. Thou shalt shut up and pay thy taxes and receive our sovereign indoctrination at your expense, because our sovereign will is, like the proverbial cod liver oil, good for you, because we say so! It’s confusing, isn’t it? Death is sovereign, but this side of death, we are.

Gestas, as the early Church called the crucified criminal who bitterly cried out to Christ the King, is a man after this world’s heart. He cannot imagine why someone named Savior isn’t saving him from the just consequences of his sins. He cannot imagine how someone can be called Savior and not save Himself from the sovereignty of death. That’s how the theology of glory always works. No suffering. No just consequences. No death. Ooooh, that cross is so depressing! Scratch beneath the erudite veneer and suave mockery of the new atheist, and you will find Gestas’ descendants. At seven or eight or fourteen or fifteen, their childish faith was undone by their fealty to the sovereignty of death. Besides, when God is dead, we can do as we will.

Dismas, as the early Church called the other criminal, is, as Daniel T. Niles once wrote, “one beggar showing another beggar where to get food.” He knows that the punishment he is receiving is just. He is not a victim. He is not, like Mongo in the film Blazing Saddles, “only pawn in game of life.” Dismas is crucified next to the Savior, Christ the King, and in the clarity of the truth about his life, Dismas confesses, by the Holy Spirit, that the Suffering Servant of God is innocent. The true King of Israel has become man for Dismas and his salvation. Christ the King is aptly named Savior, because He will destroy the sovereignty of death by His innocent suffering and death. He will purchase Dismas back from sin, death, and the old evil one, not with silver or gold, but by His holy and precious blood. The Blood of the Lamb will cover Dismas and all those who are crucified with Jesus in Holy Baptism, and the angel of death will pass over Dismas eternally and over all those who are raised with Christ from the dead in Holy Baptism.

So, then, Christ the King says to Dismas’ plea to be remembered when He comes into His Kingdom, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise” (23:43). Only the King can bring Dismas to His Garden. The angel’s flaming sword has been sheathed (Genesis 3:24), and the way to the tree of life is no longer barred. Looking on the Crucified Christ the King, Dismas has eternal life, not because of any merit or effort, but because Dismas was called from doubt to trust.

Lest we miss that Christ the King has innocently suffered and died for all the guilty, even for Gestas and you and me: at the moment of our Lord’s death, the Roman centurion overseeing Jesus’ execution, then, by the Holy Spirit, praises God, saying, “Certainly, this man was

innocent” (23:47). As the centurion looks, he begins to see with new eyes. Jesus is Lord… not death … not Caesar… not those authorized to wield Caesar’s imperial death machinery. In the end, another Caesar and every Caesar and would-be Caesar must bend the knee to the Crucified Christ the King. The One born in the animal stall and placed in a feeding trough is the King of kings and Lord of lords. He, who was raised on the third day and ascended on the fortieth, will come again to judge the living and the dead. And His Kingdom will have no end.

To say that we follow Jesus undoubtedly is not to pretend that we do not have our doubts or fears. There is a Gestas in all of us. There is also in us a murderous Caesar and his governor, too. There is an ambitious, implacable religious leader in us as well. There is the crowd in us full of bloodlust, too. There is also that Adolf Eichmann, that bureaucratic cog in the death machine, who sees himself as no monster, no criminal, no brother Cain, and not responsible in any way. The banality of evil lurks in each child of earth. The old Adam, the old Eve is with us until we draw our well-deserved last breath.

Oh, how we need Christ the King, the Crucified Savior, to save us lost and condemned creatures. The Holy Spirit points us to the Crucified Christ in all our doubts and fears, and, then, we are called undoubtedly to follow Jesus.

With empty hands, with sin-sick hearts, we beggars reach up in like manner to Dismas’ reaching out. Certain, that Christ the King is innocent. And not we! We cry out: “Jesus, remember me.” And He does, by His true Body and most precious Blood, re-member us to Himself, that we might have in Him the eternal life and love that He shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Friend of sinners. Have mercy upon us all!

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

Samuel David Zumwalt
Wilmington, North Carolina USA
E-Mail: szumwalt@bellsouth.net

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