Christ the King Sunday 2021

Today is Christ the King Sunday. The Feast of Christ the King is actually a relatively new addition to the church calendar. We’ve only celebrated it for 96 years. In 1925, after the end of the first World War, Pope Pius XI felt that the church needed an annual reminder that Jesus is her true and only King. When Pius surveyed the state of the Church around the time of World War I, he was greatly concerned with the rise of secularism and nationalism that he saw within the Christian community. So he set aside this day - on the last day of the liturgical year - to call the Church back to her most fundamental claim - that Jesus is Lord. And it is very fitting for the church, 96 years later, to continue celebrating this feast, because we likewise need to be called back to that fundamental claim: Jesus is King.

There is nothing more foundational to the Christian faith than the declaration that Jesus is King. Each and every week, when we gather here on Sunday mornings, we declare our allegiance to the Lord Jesus. In fact, it’s the very first thing that we do when we gather for worship.

“Blessed be God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And blessed be his Kingdom, now and forever. Amen.”

And yet, to declare that Jesus is King is one thing, but to live like he’s king is something else entirely. To live like Jesus is king is incredibly difficult. It’s difficult for many reasons, but one that we can probably all relate to is that none of us like being told what to do. We all have this independent streak in us that wants to live life on our own terms. And boy does this start young.

My son has very little say over the events of his life right now, because if he did, he would not live to see his second birthday. He’s constantly doing things that will harm him, and yet when I pull him away from whatever it is, he does this thing where he goes limp and becomes dead weight. It’s his tiny act of rebellion. Already, he’s asserting his independence. Even at one year old, we want to live life on our own terms.

And from the beginning to the end, the Scriptures circle that universal desire to be king as the culprit for all the suffering and pain we experience in the world. Because think about it. If you’re a king, and I’m a king, then we are set up for a collision of kingdoms, which is the definition of conflict. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes said that this was the state of nature, a war of all against all, because each of us are seeking to enact our will and our way on the earth.

This is the world that Pope Pius observed a hundred years ago and it’s the world that we know today. A world of fractured kingdoms locked in an unending conflict.

The prophet Daniel was well versed in the world of conflict. He his friends were carted away in exile to one of the most brutal empires the world had ever know - the kingdom of Babylon. You see, what Babylon would do is they would invade a neighboring kingdom, crush any resistance, and then take the best and brightest from the conquered people, and assimilate them into the Babylonian culture. So this is what they did with Daniel and his friends. They were given new names and new clothing. They were taught a new language, and they were even given jobs in the government.

But even as they were living in Babylon as Babylonians, they retained their faithfulness to God, which got them into no small amount of trouble. Again and again their faith would come into conflict with the ways of the kingdom, and they would be sentenced to death, only to be delivered at the last moment. This is where those stories you heard as a child come into play: Daniel and the lion’s den. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo and the fiery furnace. They face those terrible things because they were unwilling to compromise on their devotion to God.

The story is one of resistance. Daniel and his friends are resisting Babylon. But their resistance doesn’t remove them from the empire - they don’t cloister themselves away. They actually work for the government. They are a part of the machine and a part of the culture. They are participating in Babylon while also maintaining faithfulness to their God. And we see that it is very difficult. They are constantly being tested and challenged. And you get tired after a while of this constant pressure. You get tired of hearing about King Nebucadnezzar winning another war. Another people group killed. Another atrocity committed. You get tired of hearing about the successes of Babylon, and you begin to wonder, when will it end? How long will the kingdoms of the world do what they do?

And that is when God gives Daniel a vision in Chapter 7, part of which we read today. First, Daniel sees three terribly grotesque and monstrous beasts coming up out of the sea. One is like a lion, one like a bear, and one that is just described as having a lot of horns. But they are all beasts - and they represent the kingdoms of the world. And that’s a fitting image, isn’t it? What does a beast do? It looks out for its own interests and survival. It is rare to find a compassionate lion or bear. They look out for themselves and their own. Anything else is a threat. It’s a fitting image for the way the nations of the world behave, isn’t it?

But then, Daniel is taken up into the heavens in verse 9 and we see that even as the beasts gather below to trample and devour and destroy, the Ancient of Days, a great name for God, he sits on his throne as King. And Daniel sees that before the Ancient of Days the beastly kingdoms are destroyed and made powerless.

And then, the camera pans back to the heavenly realm, and we are told this in verse 13:

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

Daniel says that one, like a son of man, is presented before God and God gives him full reign over all the earth and his kingdom that will never end. All of this is given to a figure that is called “one like a son of man.”

Question for you: what was the most common way that Jesus referred to himself and his mission of earth? We call him Christ, and he accepted that title when others used it about him, but he never actually used it for himself. Instead he would call himself…the Son of Man.

Jesus was claiming to be this figure in Daniel 7, the one who is given dominion and glory and a kingdom, the one whom all peoples, nations, and languages should worship. This is who Jesus was claiming to be, and what he had come to do. He had come to take the reigns as King.

This is why when Pilate asks if Jesus is a King, Jesus tells him yes, but “My kingdom is not of this world.” He’s talking about the origin of his kingdom and kingship. It isn’t from the world, it’s from God. Which means the kingdom over which he reigns will operate very differently than the beastly kingdoms of the world.

In Christ’s kingdom, the poor will be blessed, those who mourn shall be comforted, the meek shall inherit the earth, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice will be satisfied. In Christ’s kingdom, people will not act like beasts - acting only out of self-interest - but they will give themselves up in service and love for the benefit of others. Enemies will be reconciled, and all the many factions of the world will be brought together under his gracious rule.

When we declare that Jesus is King, we look forward to that day when Christ is recognized as king by every soul on earth. It is a statement of hope. The only solution to the world’s myriad list of problems is the kingdom of God. And so we say, Jesus is King, as a proclamation of hope.

But we also declare that Jesus is King as an act of mission. When the church cares for the hurting families of the local school system, we do so as a declaration that Jesus is King. When the church stands up for the rights of minority groups and the unborn, we do so as a declaration that Jesus is King. When the church works to break cycles of poverty, we do so as a declaration that Jesus is king.

It is as Leslie Newbigin said, “if the gospel is to challenge the public life of our society... it will not be by forming a Christian political party or by aggressive propaganda campaigns…it will only be by movements that begin with the local congregations, in which the reality of the New Creation is present, known and experienced and from which men and women would go into every sector of public life to claim it for Christ…but that will only happen as and when local congregations renounce an introverted concern for their own life and recognize that they exist for the sake of those who are not members, as signs, instruments and foretastes of God’s redeeming grace for the whole life of society.”

It is good news that Jesus is king and it is good news that his kingdom is not of this world. Let’s pray.