The Problem With Kings

 

Christ the King?

YHWH, HaShem, the Lord God of the Exodus and Wilderness experience in which a disparate group of slaves and refugees were made into a people eventually named Israel – which literally means “one who struggles, or wrestles, with God,” – this God has issues with kings. Those of us who have been reading the First Book of Samuel at our Monday thru Friday Noonday Prayer & More have studied the transition made from God raising up Judges, leaders, to meet the needs of the current crisis (which usually had to do with idolatry, the people abandoning the Lord for foreign idols), to that moment when the people demand from the last of these, the boy Judge and Prophet Samuel, to persuade God to give them a king. God instructs Samuel to tell them that kings, in the end, never work out very well.

 

But the people whine, saying, “All the other countries have kings! We want to be like them! We want a king!” The Lord grudgingly instructs Samuel to anoint Saul to be their first king, and as promised by the Lord of the Exodus, things do not go well. Verna Dozier, a modern-day prophetic voice in the Episcopal Church, calls this the Second Fall: First there is the incident in The Garden, and now the Demand for a King. The Third fall, according to Dozier, would be a long way off: Emperor Constantine converts to Christianity around the year 313ce, and the church, which had for nearly three centuries been an alternative to life in the Empire becomes the Empire – a problem from which finds we are still trying to find our way out of this role and back to being a People of God. But that’s for another day.

 

We hear Ezekiel, having railed about the failure of kings to shepherd God’s people resulting in the people being scattered in diaspora far and wide throughout the ancient world, depicting the Lord God of the Exodus personally seeking them out and reuniting them all together again in their promised homeland. “I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land.” [Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24] Kings, it turns out, make for lousy shepherds!

 

Which begs the question of how it is that the Last Sunday of the Church year suddenly, in 1925, was designated Christ the King Sunday by Pope Pius XI? By any measure, the Bible, from First Samuel forward, is steadfastly critical of the lack of shepherding skills among the kings of Israel. Why on earth depict Jesus of Nazareth, one who gathered up the poor, the lame, the sick and the brokenhearted into a people who learn to care for one another as Christ the shepherd cares for them, as a king. Some years ago I entered the Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul in Bath, England, and picked up a brochure that asks, Who is Jesus? This is what it says:

 

“Jesus was born in an obscure Middle Eastern town called Bethlehem, over 2000 years ago. During his first 30 years he shared the daily life and work of an ordinary home. For the next three years he went about teaching people about God and healing sick people by the shores of Lake Galilee. He called 12 ordinary men to be his helpers. He had no money. He wrote no books. He commanded no army. He wielded no political power. During his life he never travelled more than 200 miles in any direction. He was executed by being nailed to a cross at the age of 33.

 

“Today, nearly 2.4 billion people throughout the world worship Jesus as divine - the Son of God. Their experience has convinced them that in the wonders of nature we see God as our loving Father; in the person of Jesus we discover God as Son; and in our daily lives we encounter this same God as Spirit. Jesus is our way to finding God: we learn about Jesus by reading the Bible, particularly the New Testament and we meet him directly in our spiritual experience.

 

“Jesus taught us to trust in a loving and merciful Father and to pray to him in faith for all our needs. He taught that we are all infinitely precious, children of one heavenly Father, and that we should therefore treat one another with love, respect and forgiveness. He lived out what he taught by caring for those he met; by healing the sick - a sign of God's love at work; and by forgiving those who put him to death.

 

“Jesus' actions alone would not have led him to a criminal's death on the cross: but his teaching challenged the religious and moral beliefs of his day. Jesus claimed to be the way to reach God. Above all, he pointed to his death as God's appointed means of bringing self-centered people back to God. Jesus also foretold that he would be raised to life again three days after his death. When, three days after he had died on the cross, his followers did indeed meet him alive again; frightened and defeated women and men became fearless and joyful messengers.

 

“Their message of the Good News about Jesus is the reason this Abbey Church exists, here in Bath. More importantly, it is the reason why all over the world there are Christians who know what it means to meet the living Jesus, and believe that He alone has the key to human life.

May your time in the Bath Abbey Church be a blessing to you, as it is already to us in the church.”

 

This king of ours still challenges all our assumptions and understandings of power and meaning and truth. To a criminal hanging nearby on another cross he says, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise!’ [Luke 23:43] Not tomorrow, not a month, a year or an eon from now, but today. For those looking for a description of the paradise Jesus speaks from the cross, look no further than the 25^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel which describes a great day of reckoning – as all humanity is judged as sheep and goats; those who follow his example and those who do not. [Matthew 25:31-46]

 

When I was hungry you fed me; when I was thirsty you brought me a drink; when I was naked you clothed me; when I was in prison you visited me; when I was a stranger you welcomed me. Those listening say, “But when did we see you hungry, thirsty, naked, in prison or as a stranger?” As you do this for the least of my sisters and brothers you do this for me.

 

The one we call King on this final Sunday of the Christian Year identifies himself with a common thief, with those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, in prison, strangers and resident aliens.

This, says Christ, is what ‘today in paradise’ looks like. This is what real kings do: identify themselves with those who are most in need. This is what true kings, real kings, do. Not like the bad shepherds of Ezekiel 34 or Jeremiah 23:1-6 who scatter God’s sheep and do not attend to their needs – that is, do not love them the way God loves them. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”

 

We live in a time in which idolatry of all kinds drives us apart from one another. There are still others who choose to lead by sowing division rather than unity; who neglect the needs of others to pursue their own personal idolatries. Yet, we are called by this Jesus, and the Lord God of the Exodus, to be those people who execute justice and righteousness in this and every land. We are to welcome the stranger and meet the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked and those in prison. This is what it means to follow Jesus, plain and simple. Jesus is what a Good Shepherd and a Good King looks like: one who gathers and unites people, not one who scatters and divides them. This is the vision of paradise he promises to us all, here and now. Today. Let those who have ears, hear. Let those who have eyes, see. Come, follow me, says our king, and I will give you rest.

 

Christ the King. Our king is an odd sort of king, but a King of Kings! A Lord of Lords! And he shall reign forever and ever! May his reign be a model for all others who would be kings and leaders of people, God’s people, all people. May our time together with him this day be a blessing to us, and may we become a blessing to all the persons we meet, here, there and everywhere. Especially those in need of any and all kinds. Especially the stranger.

Amen. This is truth. It is so.