Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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An old folk legend was popular all over Europe in the middle ages. It was the story of a good king who truly loved his people and cared deeply for their welfare. Once a year, the story goes, this king would disguise himself as a commoner and go out to live among the people, unrecognized. Sometimes he would appear as a carpenter, sometimes a butcher, sometimes a peasant working in the field, and so forth. Only by living among the people, the legend said, could a king understand his subjects' needs, their hopes and their dreams. The people, for their part, took a moral lesson from the story: that one should live right all the time, for one never knew if the person beside him in the field or at the market might be the king himself.

On Christ the King Sunday we usually speak of Christ as King in heaven. We remind ourselves that Christ is by no means dead, but (quite the opposite) he is seated today at the Father's right hand, reigning in glory. "For thine is the kingdom," we say, "and the power, and the glory." Not on some future day, but right now. Or we sing, in Handel's Messiah, words from the Book of Revelation: "The kingdom of this world has become the Kingdom of our God, and of his Christ. And He shall reign for ever and ever, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Hallelujah!" He isn't dead. He isn't just a figure in history. He is alive and well and reigns in heaven. That's what we usually talk about on Christ the King Sunday.

Jesus was Mocked as a Nothing-of-a-person

Today let us consider another kind of kingship, which also belongs to our Lord, Jesus. This morning's scripture, from Luke's Gospel, reminds us what a big joke Jesus' claim of kingship became here on earth, especially in the last hours of his life. For if there was anything that tickled the funny bones of the soldiers who mocked him, or of Pilate who condemned him, it was that this nothing-of- a-person, this vagrant, homeless one, had claimed to be a king! So they mocked him as a king, just for yucks. Gave him a robe of royal purple. Gave him a crown, not of gold but of thorns. Bowed down to him, as one would bow down to a ruling monarch, and shouted, "Hail, King of the Jews." Pilate thought it cute to hang a sign on the cross, over Jesus' slumping, dying body. "This is the King of the Jews," it said. It was the mother of all ironies, of course, because Pilate in his madness was right! His little sign comes down to us, over the ages, showing what a cruel, stupid and hollow fellow he was, but also but also showing how God can be right even when all men are wrong.

Real Power is in Humility and Service

In a way, all of Christianity asks the one question: "Where is real power?" "Who is king of the mountain?" "Who's at the top of the pecking order?" And our faith gives an answer so radical, so unexpected that it knocks our socks off: the meek have power, the poor have power, the contrite, penitent man has power, the low-level employee has power, the lamb has power, the oppressed and the abused have power, he who hears God's word and does it has power. But the apparent power all around us in this world, the power of military strength, or of money, or of inherited titles, that kind of power is illusion, plain and simple. And any enterprise based on such power is bankrupt -- a lesson that many people have learned too late. But our faith teaches, if you want to be powerful you must choose the path of suffering love, or sacrificial love, which Jesus chose. Power comes not from being served but from serving. Not from having one's feet washed, but from washing the feet of others.

You remember, I'm sure, that inspiring little essay, once very popular, called, "One Solitary Life." It revealed that Jesus never traveled more than fifty miles from the place he was born, never commanded an army, never wrote a book. And yet, his one solitary life has influenced human history more than all the scholars who ever taught and all the armies that ever moved, and all the kings who ever reigned. It is that kind of power we put our money on. Julius Caesar, it is said, wept when he and his army reached the Indus River, because he was twenty nine and Alexander the Great had reached it at twenty three! Vanity of vanities! And now both men are gone, their monuments lie toppled in the sand, their great empires have disappeared, their beautiful buildings have crumbled. But the humble Gallilean is still king. Because His kingdom is not based on the trappings of worldly power, it is forever.

Jesus Came as One of Us

If the good king leaves his palace and comes down to live among us, disguised, as Jesus did, that in itself is a departure. Few kings show such interest in their people. Aristocrats don't walk with commoners. A friend of mine has a daughter who married into German nobility. Her husband is a count or a viscount, or something, and he really does live in a castle (my friend was always showing pictures), and he really is the most important citizen of his town, as his ancestors have been for generations. My friend's daughter, a young American girl, married into all this, and accepted most of it, but one thing always bothered her. In church, in that little town, there was a special box where she and her husband were expected to sit -- higher than the common folk, above the crowd. She told her husband that she would not sit there -- such social distinctions, even if they had some value elsewhere, had no place in church. So they came on Sundays and sat in the pews as everyone else. After a few weeks a delegation of townspeople arrived at the castle, asking them please to sit in their proper place. It seemed wrong, unsettling, they said, not to have them there. We are so addicted to the power game, played by worldly rules, that we don't know how to exist apart from it. Human rankings are important to us. Competition is central. I'm better than he because I have more money, so I can feel superior. More people answer to me. I have traveled more places. I have the bigger desk, the better job, the fancier car. We jockey for position on the power ladder in many ways all the time.

Jesus Does Not Approve of the Power Game

That system, where some people have power over others, and lord it over them, is a system only of this world, Jesus said. It will not last. It will not stand the test of time. In Luke's Gospel, when the soldiers mock Jesus as a want-to-be king, the Greek word Luke uses for "mock" suggests something about a person's nose. Perhaps, it should be translated not "they mocked him," but "they looked down their noses at him," or even, "They thumbed their noses at him." That's the sense of it. They engaged in that disgraceful behavior because it made them feel superior to Jesus. They sold their souls for the cheap thrill of feeling that they were better than somebody else. They lined themselves up on the wrong side of the power curve. We do it all the time. I'm better than he because he's black. I'm better than she because she's a woman. I'm better than they because I make a bigger salary. I'm better than my neighbor because he speaks poor English, or wears out of style clothes, or doesn't keep his trees trimmed. And therefore I don't have to think about these people as real human beings. I'm in a different class from them. I don't have to love them.

Jesus Emptied Himself of Wordly Power

"The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and saying, 'If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.' There was also an inscription over him, This is the King of the Jews." When we come to the cross we come either in derision (like the one thief) or in confession (like the other). No one comes dispassionately. We can deride the suffering Christ, with his silly beliefs in the power of God and his ridiculous claim to be king -- we can mock that and insist that the only real power is worldly power. Or we can confess that we have lived too long by these rules, and that it has not brought us happiness, and that we see in the dying Christ one we would like to imitate, who empties himself of worldly power to avail himself of heavenly power. There is the power that lasts forever, and there is vainglorious power. Jesus rightly wore the color purple, a king's color. Because he was, and is, King. That is so whether we recognize it or not. The Gospel train is not going to stop and wait for us, while we are torn between the world and Jesus. For each of us, the train is leaving the station. We have to either get on board, or stay in here and live in a power hungry world. How wonderful it would be, on this Christ the King Sunday, if even a few of us, even one of us, today would choose the way of the cross, and follow the man with the sign over his head, and make him our king, indeed.