Luke 23 33-42
November
20, 2022
Christ the King
King
Midas is a story about a King who loves gold,
He
is already richer than anyone else, but he wishes
that
everything he touched would turn to gold.
He gets his wish, but he finds that this is not
a good thing.
Everything he touched did turn to gold: flowers, furniture,
he couldn't sleep because his bed was gold,
he
couldn't eat because his food turned to gold.
Then
he touched his daughter and she turned into solid gold.
He
got everything he wanted, but he was miserable.
Shakespeare's Richard the Third is the story about a King
who
as a prince stopped at nothing to get to be King.
He
puts his relatives in jail, has some killed, and tells lies about others.
He
finally becomes King, but he can’t enjoy it because he’s so
anxious
and suspicious because of everything he did.
He
eventually kills one of his brothers and his wife.
At
this his kingdom rebels against him and
and
on the night before a great battle,
the
ghosts of everyone who he has killed come to visit Richard.
They tell him that he will die. And the next day,
Richard is killed in a battle
against his own nephew.
King
David was the great King of Israel,
the
chosen one, the anointed one.
He has everything he wants: power, wealth luxury,
many wives, many concubines, but
one day he sees Bathsheba bathing on a roof top.
Even
though she is married and he has eight wives of his own,
he
decides that he wants her. They have an affair, and
she becomes pregnant with his child.
So David sends her husband into a dangerous
battle and he is killed.
God
is not pleased with David for this, and David’s relationships
with
his children are cursed for the rest of his life.
And he eventually ends up killing his favorite son in battle.
These are all familiar stories about Kings.
They
might even be what we think of when we hear the word “King”.
Kings,
in the typical sense of the word, are people
who have absolute power. Who are answerable to almost no one.
They have the lives of other people in the palms of their hands.
These
stories show how that absolute power can corrupt a person.
Many
stories about kings are about how they use their vast power
for
their own means and these stories usually have tragic endings.
We
have seen this repeated in other powerful people in the world.
People
who fill their own egos and their own lust for power
and
eventually self-destruct, often taking out those around them.
Today is Christ the King Sunday,
when we remember
that Christ is the true King.
He is the true
king because he is God come to earth
and no one is
more powerful than God.
To show this, lots of artists have
portrayed Jesus
as we’ve seen
other kings:
On a golden throne,
in a crown, wearing a velvet cape
with angels waiting
on him. But that is a mistake.
We remember that
Jesus isn’t the true King
because he’s the
richest, or because he’s the more
glorious, or
glamorous than other kings.
Today in the gospel, we get the real
picture of Christ the King:
 |
| Calvary Octavio Campo |
Not controlling the systems or the
government, but a victim of them
not using his power to even save himself
While
he is on the cross, the people taunt Jesus saying,
“If you are
a real king, why don't you come down
from that cross and save yourself?” And
that is a legitimate question.
If Jesus was King, was the Messiah, why
didn’t he save himself?
Luther and other theologians have said it’s
because
God wanted
to be revealed on the cross.
God wants us to be see him there.
The all-powerful creator of everything
wanted us to know him in the lowliest of
places,
arrested, beaten, crucified, in pain, given
the death penalty,
utterly controlled, not even able to
scratch his own nose.
Jesus on the cross is not a mistake or a
tragedy – it is a message.
Through Jesus’ crucifixion and death
God is showing us the horrible ways the world,
and many kings,
most often use power: to control and punish
others,
to get their objectives met, often at the
expense of the poor
and the vulnerable and the rejected.
And through the cross, God is showing us
what true power is.
It is not the ability to get whatever you
desire,
and to acquire many possessions, or have control over others.
True power is the power to give yourself for
the good of others.
Jesus was put on the cross because he, he welcomed
the wrong people, and he spoke out
against the powerful, and he didn’t follow
the traditions that excluded and hurt others.
We as the body of Christ are asked use our power in
the same way.
That is the way that we are called to be powerful.
Lots
of churches get this wrong.
There are big churches who acquire lots of
power and people and money, but they use it only to get
more power and more people and more money.
Their pastors have the best of everything and they want,
gorgeous houses, expensive cars,
political clout
and
their message is that they and their members should
succeed and should be wealthy too.
(Oh yeah, and then you can help others somewhere
down the line if you really want to.)
These churches don’t understand Christ the King’s model of power.
They want the cushy throne and the velvet robe.
But
neither do churches who shy away
from the power of the Holy Spirit can bring.
Those
churches who keep to themselves
and
stay meek and quiet and cautious.
Who
only focus on their own personal salvation.
Who
want to stay on their own private route to heaven,
who
don’t want to bother anyone else.
Who
keep their faith and their convictions to themselves,
letting
the world do what it will without comment.
Those
churches don’t get the example of Christ the King either.
Having power in itself is not bad.
Power
is something that the Holy Spirit gives us as believers,
But
Jesus came to be a model for a new kind of power.
For
churches, the question is always
“what
are we doing with our power?”
Glide Memorial church is a Methodist Church in San Francisco.
In 1963 it was a dying
church in a rough neighborhood. Now it has over 10,000 members.
It
has a prestigious and world renowned choir,
people
listen to what the church and its leaders have to say.
People
like Leonard Bernstein, Quincy Jones, Billy Graham,
Oprah
Winfrey, and Bill Clinton, have come to their worship services.
They
auction off a dinner with Warren Buffet each year to benefit
the
Glide Memorial foundation,
last
year it went for $19 million dollars.
celebrities and politicians. They have many members and lots of money.
They have relationships with benevolent foundations
and multi-million dollar corporations. They a are powerful church.
And
Glide Memorial is also the largest social service
organization
in San Francisco.
They
serve three meals a day for the hungry.
they
do ministry and drug counseling inside drug houses
They
have provided space for prostitutes to meet,
They
have been active in fighting AIDS since it started in the 80’s
offering
HIV testing after Sunday services.
They
have justice arm that advocates for the poor
and
for all sorts of human rights in San Francisco.
They
are a powerful congregation.
They
are prosperous and numerous and well known.
They
have power to do whatever they want.
And
this is what they want to do with their power.
The pastor
that grew this church, Cecil Williams,
could easily have used this to his own advantage
to get a name and wealth
and prestige for himself, to get planes and
multi-million
dollar homes and golden toilet seats
for
himself and for his family like lots of other powerful pastors have.
But
the church and the pastor use their copious power,
intentionally,
to benefit the vulnerable around them.
The poor, the homeless, the immigrant,
the sinner, the addicts, the ones who are rejected,
those
who have been abandoned by society
and
even by many religions. Cecil Williams
started out by
actively opening up his church to gay, lesbian,
and transgender people in the 1970’s when
no one else was doing that.
He understands
Christ the King. Glide understands Christ the King.
They
are not afraid to build their power,
and
then they are not afraid to give it all away for the sake of others.
That
is a church modeled after Christ.
No
golden thrones, no velvet robes.
As
followers of Christ, we are asked to be powerful
to
not shy away from being prominent and prosperous.
But
then we are asked to use that power
to
be serve others who need it.
And
that is because we follow the story of a different kind of King -
A
king who wandered from town to town and had no home.
Who
was more powerful than anyone could even imagine,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
Who
used his power to gather all sorts of people around him.
Who
spoke the truth to the powerful, and challenged the status quo.
Who
shared his table with commoners, poor people, prostitutes,
sinners, and lepers.
And who called his subjects to
love, forgive and serve one another.
This is
real power. True power.
This
is the power of God.
This
is the power of a true king.
No comments:
Post a Comment