For this final week of our “Grateful For…” series, the theme for the day is “Grateful for Christ on the Throne.” Today’s Scripture readings are Colossians 1:11-20, Psalm 145:1-8, and Luke 23:33-43.
You can also read the previous sermons in this series: Grateful for All the Wrong Things, Grateful for God’s Grace, Grateful for All the Saints, and Grateful for What God Has Done. Portions of this sermon draw on my Christ the King Sunday sermon from 2018as well as Lucy Hogan’s commentary on the John passage.
Here’s the audio of the sermon and video of the entire service from Christ the King.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Christ our King. Amen
You know how kids go through phases and are amused by things no one else thinks are funny? Growing up, we used to have Christmas Eve dinner at my grandparents’ house after church, and I remember one year, for some reason, I thought it would be hilarious to answer the door and greet each person who came in with a different holiday.
So instead of saying “Merry Christmas,” I said things like “Happy Easter,” “Happy birthday,” “Have a great Mother’s Day,” “Happy Independence Day,” you get the idea. I don’t know how many holidays I got through, but there were a lot of people over that year.
But I assure you, I did not wish anyone a “Blessed Christ the King Sunday.” (Although I kind of wish I’d thought of it.) This and Holy Trinity Sunday in the spring I think are the most obscure holy days (holidays, right? Holy Days) we celebrate in the Lutheran church.
Christ the King Sunday is actually quite a recent holiday. It started just 97 years ago, when Pope Pius the 11th worried that the world was luring Christians away from the church, that people were paying more attention to the kingdom of the world than the kingdom of God.
So, he added a new festival to the church year, “The Feast of Christ the King.” The idea was for this day to be a time to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, as king of kings, as the alpha and the omega, the ruler of the world. The intent was that this holiday would help us to see that Jesus’ dominion is not just Sunday morning, but our whole lives.
The idea caught on, so here we are as Lutheran Christians, marking Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year. We start a new year next week with the first Sunday of Advent.
Now, I appreciate Pope Pius’ intentions. I know I could use some reminding that Jesus wants all of my life, not just the part at church. We should all be grateful that Christ is reigning on the throne, and it’s a good reminder. But I’m not sure having a church festival day to try to get more people to care about church versus the world is the answer or if it’s just preaching to the choir, but the idea is good.
I wonder, though, about the language of Christ as “King.” What’s your picture of a king?
My picture of a king comes mostly from books and movies. Aragorn’s a good example. I picture a muscular man on a horse, wearing a crown, waving a sword, charging at the enemy army. Or a man with a beard sitting on a really big chair, wearing velvet robes, judging between people in court cases. And of course, wearing a big golden crown.
My other picture of a king in real life comes from the one time I was in the same room as a king. When I was a student at Luther College, King Harald the Fifth of Norway and his wife Queen Sonja came and gave a speech. He wore a suit and tie, not an ermine robe. No sword or crown either.
We all saw plenty of images of Queen Elizabeth this year, and I know her role was mostly symbolic, but she was still unbelievably wealthy, and by title, one of the most powerful people in the world.
Today, we celebrate the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. And in today’s Gospel reading, we see this King of the cosmos in his moment of ultimate victory and triumph, and he looks nothing like any earthly image of a king.
What is a king doing hanging on a cross? This is where criminals belong, a place of defeat, of despair. The description hanging over him says “This is the king of the Jews” but it’s intended to be mocking, not serious. His crown is a crown of thorns, not jewels.
What is Jesus doing there? Well, if we look at the story, he’s doing two things.
He forgives the people who are torturing him, and he promises one of the real criminals next to him that today he will be with him in paradise.
The cross is where this king does his best work.
In his letter to the Colossians, Paul describes Jesus as the image of the invisible God. Jesus is God in the flesh. Everything that exists was created through him, things visible and invisible, what we see and what is beyond our comprehension. In him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
That sounds more epic, more regal, a little more like the kind of king I expect.
Paul summarizes the entire reason God came to earth, the entire reason for Jesus’ birth, God’s entire mission by saying through Jesus, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.
The whole Bible is a story of people rebelling against God. We’ve been going over this in confirmation class. God creates a perfect world, people try to take control for themselves and mess it up. They sin. Sin creates a separation from God.
Over and over, God calls his people to return to their Lord, and again and again, no matter how hard they try to do better, they sin again, they separate themselves from God. Finally, God comes in person.
God’s purpose is reconciliation. God’s goal, God’s entire mission, is to bring us back into relationship with our Creator. The reason Jesus came is to bring us back into relationship with God.
Now, it might seem like that mission didn’t go so well, because instead of coming back into relationship with God, instead of following Jesus, we killed him.
But it’s in that moment, in that place, at the climax of the story with Jesus dying on the cross, that God succeeds. Remember, God’s work is forgiveness and reconciliation, and that happens through the cross.
The cross is not a barrier to God’s work of forgiveness; it’s the place where it happens.
God restores us to relationship with himself by becoming one of us, by experiencing the worst we can offer, by willingly dying in our place. The king does what we couldn’t do, and brings us back to God.
When the Psalmist says, “I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever….the might of your awesome deeds shall be proclaimed, and I will declare your greatness,” an execution is not what he’s picturing, but this is indeed the most awesome deed in all of history. We are gathered here to bless God’s name because of this moment in history, this moment when the King humbled himself for our sake.
Jesus isn’t just another earthly king, just another chapter in the story; he’s the key to the whole thing.
All the normal rules of living before Jesus don’t apply anymore. All the things that separated us from God don’t matter anymore. Everything we think we’ve earned for ourselves, all the stuff we’ve collected, all the best efforts we accomplish, it all pales next to what our King has given us.
Jesus ushers in a new realm, a new kingdom, God’s kingdom. In the kingdom of God, everyone gets another chance. Everything you’ve done wrong, all your sins, everything that separates you from God gets put to death with Christ on the cross.
This moment where the Son of God hangs on a cross, this moment where the King of the cosmos, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, lays down his life out of love, this is the turning point in all of history.
Because of the cross, I can stand up here and say to you that your sins are forgiven.
The criminal hanging there next to Jesus gets to hear the good news about this kingdom, that it’s not something off in the future, but something present here and now.
Jesus tells him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Not sometime in the distant future, not after the second coming, but today.
The kingdom of God is here. Its king is hanging on a cross, at work forgiving. At work reconciling the world, reconciling us to God. The leaders mocked him, saying “He saved others; let him save himself” but it is precisely in not saving himself that Jesus saves us. This man they see as defeated, as a helpless victim, is doing exactly what he came to do. This is the King on the throne.
This is the point of the story, the point of the entire church year. When we rebel against God, when we separate ourselves from God, God comes to us, in the most unexpected ways. First, it’s as a little baby. Eventually, that little baby is revealed as a king, again, in the most surprising way, on a cross.
And of course, we know the next chapter of the story, where Jesus doesn’t stay dead. We know that this king does have the power to defeat death, yet chooses to endure it. He chooses to experience the worth this world can offer, chooses to lay down his life, chooses—as we confess in the creed—to descend to the dead, or in the other wording, to descend into hell, into separation from God the source of life, so that we can receive life.
Ultimately, this is the reason we are grateful. The King on the throne is worthy of our praise, our gratitude, worthy of everything we have to give because he has given everything for us. Our lives are a gift from God, and we are grateful.
We are promised paradise, we are reconciled to God, and we are grateful. The King who reigns on the throne is our God of love. Amen