More to the point: Save me!

We have expectations for kings.

Expectations formed from our lives in this world: Romans and Jews alike perceived kings in relationship to politics and government: armies of chariots, wealth and privilege, possible rivals perceived as threats to the established order of who’s "in" and who’s "out," who gets to "call the shots" and who will be the economic underdog or the cannon fodder.

I venture to say some of those perceptions still hold true today, although we’re more apt to expand our "king" language to encompass dictators or other heads of state as well.

Given those perceptions, it’s interesting that the concept of "King" provides a frame story for Jesus’ life: from his birth, where the wise men came humbly seeking the infant, born King of the Jews, until his death under a sign bearing the epithet: "King of the Jews."

It is a title Jesus neither sought, nor applied to himself.

Kingdom, yes: we hear Jesus preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven, and there’s urgency and an immediacy in his message: it’s coming, it’s here, it’s in our midst!

But Kingship, no.

Kingship is attributed to Jesus by others – never by himself – probably because he understood how easily the concept of his kingship could be misunderstood.

He knows the risk of being misunderstood – not only his being misunderstood, but the whole nature of his kingdom, and resulting not unsurprisingly in his torture, mocking, and death, as we hear in this morning’s lessons. It reminds me of Samuel Butler’s image of a club of scientists excited by the discovery of an elephant on the moon – only to find it was a mouse in their telescope.

Pilate – and the Sanhedrin – treat Jesus as a mouse in the telescope of his followers.

They don’t understand his kingship, and so they mock it.

We don’t understand it either, I think, and so we shy away from it.

"Christ the King" sounds so foreign to our ears, so – well, political and/or archaic.

Yet today, and every last Sunday of Pentecost in the church year, we celebrate Christ the King.

What are we celebrating, I wonder?

I believe we are celebrating our identity as Christians, our citizenship, as it were, in the kingdom of God.

I believe we are celebrating our commitment to a radically different way of being in the world: a way of living as a follower of Jesus not limited by the world view and rules of nations and principalities; not limited by self-interest and acquisitiveness, either for power or for wealth; but, a way of living expansively, according to the love of God which binds together all of creation.

The literary critic Leslie Fielder believed that the great theme of American literature was the search for identity. "Americans have no real identity. We’re all uprooted people who come from elsewhere," she said.

I would take it further than that: I believe that we are all, Americans or not, seeking identity: Who am I? What does it mean to live in this world? Do I matter? Why am I alive?

We find the answers to those questions, our rootedness and our belonging, in our baptism. The gift of baptism is a conferring of Identity as "Christian," as citizen of the Kingdom of God. We are named as Christ’s own forever.

Our challenge, today and always, as the this-world demands and frustrations, anxieties and concerns impinge upon our lives, is to remember our citizenship in the Reign of God as preached by Jesus.

It’s not easy to do.

Even the disciples, in the immediacy of their relationship with Jesus, had a hard time "getting it."

(It’s an irony not lost on us today, when we see that it is criminals who achieved that honor: crucified with Jesus, one on the right and one on the left.)

As we celebrate "Christ the King," we need to remember the nature of the kingdom over which Jesus rules.

Our citizenship in this kingdom has no locus, and transcends the particularities of our life circumstances.

There is abundance in this kingdom, an expansiveness, where love and forgiveness and grace flow freely to all who turn to God with true repentance and faith.

It is a kingdom where all are transformed.

No wonder we celebrate this day!

The Kingdom of God is unique, of course, because its ruler, Christ the King, is unique.

Jesus is a very different kind of ruler.

He rules over our hearts, not our bodies.

Not because he takes them – appropriating them involuntarily.

He takes them when we offer ourselves to him; it is a receiving, rather than a taking.

His kingship does not demand our obeisance.

Christ the King does not conscript us, nor tax our endeavors.

He stands in the midst of us – we are each on his left and on his right.

And it is in our recognition of his kingship, that gasp of "knowing" when we take him into our heart and say, with the criminal crucified next to him, "Jesus, remember me…" that we receive his assurance: "Come. You are with me. Today and always.

Amen.