Christ the King Sunday

Introduction

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

7 Look! He is coming with the clouds;

every eye will see him,

even those who pierced him;

and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.

So it is to be. Amen.

8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Christ the King Sunday

Today is what we call “Christ the King” or “Reign of Christ” Sunday.

The Church calendar doesn’t begin on January 1st. Instead it starts with the season of Advent, it moves from Advent to Christmas. From Christmas we go to Ordinary Time, into Lent, Holy Week, and then Easter.

And following Pentecost we move back into Ordinary Time which ends today on Christ the King Sunday.

As far as liturgical inventions go, Christ the King Sunday is a relatively new feast day.

It’s origins are in Catholicism. And I was surprised to learn it wasn’t established until 1925.

In 1925, Pope Pius XI wrote an encyclical called Quas Primas.

In this encyclical, he established a new Feast Day: Christ the King or Reign of Christ Sunday.

This wasn’t done on a whim. He established the Feast Day in response to growing Nationalism and Secularism. As fascism was growing, he noticed that people were finding their ultimate hope in governments and people rather than Christ the King.

The establishment of Christ the King Sunday, which was adopted by Faith traditions, throughout the globe, was meant to be a corrective to this: ultimately our hope is found in God alone.

In our own tradition, we find this in the Theological Declaration of Barmen.

Excuse me while I geek out for a moment:

Saint James is a part of the PCUSA. Our constitution is based on two works:

The Book of Order which is our polity. It tells us how our churches are to be governed and run.

The second is the Book of Confessions. The book of Confessions is a collection of creeds, confessions, and catechisms describing what we believe about God.

The confessions themselves span 2000 years of church history and were written in North America, Europe, and Africa.

One of these is the theological declaration of Barmen.

The Theological Declaration of Barmen was written by a group of church leaders in Germany to help Christians withstand the challenges of the Nazi party and of the so-called “German Christians.”

“German Christians” was a popular movement that saw no conflict between Christianity and the ideals of Hitler’s National Socialism.

In January 1933, after frustrating years in which no government in Germany was able to solve problems of economic depression and mass unemployment, Adolph Hitler was named chancellor. He played on people’s fear of communism and Bolshevism and was able to persuade the Parliament to allow him to rule by edict.

As he consolidated his power, Hitler abolished all political rights and democratic processes: police could detain persons in prison without a trial, search private dwellings without a warrant, seize property, censor publications, tap telephones, and forbid meetings.

He soon outlawed all political parties except his own, smashed labor unions, purged universities, replaced the judicial system with his own “People’s Courts,” initiated a systematic terrorizing of Jews, and obtained the support of church leaders allied with or sympathetic to the German Christians.

Most Germans took the union of Christianity, nationalism, and militarism for granted, and patriotic sentiments were equated with Christian truth. The German Christians exalted the racially pure nation and the rule of Hitler as God’s will for the German people.

To this the Declaration of Barmen said “No”.

A counter movement called the “Confessing Church” was established. One of the more famous members was the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer whose opposition led to his arrest and execution.

Two major highlights of the Barmen Declaration are that

“Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.”

and

“We reject the false doctrine, as though the State, over and beyond its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the church’s vocation as well. We reject the false doctrine, as though the church, over and beyond its special commission, should and could appropriate the characteristics, the tasks, and the dignity of the State, thus itself becoming an organ of the State.”

Christ the King Sunday reiterates this point:

Jesus Christ as Scripture bears witness is our authority and guide and the government cannot be equated with the Church.

Our passage today reiterates this point.

Exegesis

Background

Revelation comes to us as a mystery. It’s a strange letter. If you never wanted to read it, I wouldn’t blame you. It’s hard to follow.

It’s full of words and imagery that we don’t understand.

I think of it like a political cartoon.

If I saw a cartoon featuring elephant and a donkey talking, I know immediately how to interpret it.

But if you were to show me a political cartoon from 1750? I might not get it.

Revelation is alot like that. There are images and metaphors that we just don’t get.

And so, almost 2000 years after its inception it still has as many interpretations as it does interpreters.

Yet there are still some things we can say about it.

Just like my comparison to a political cartoon, It has a genre.

You’ve probably played this game. It’s an evening. You’re tired. You’re ready to unwind for the day. You sit down on the couch and you want to watch a movie. But you don’t know what movie.

All you know is what type of movie you watch. So you open Netflix or your streaming channel and head on over to genres and pick “Drama”, or “Comedy” or “Action” and scroll endlessly until you find something that catches your eye.

Revelation is it’s own type of genre. It’s a member of the genre known as “apocalyptic” literature. “Apocalypse” means to unveil or reveal.

It was a type of literature that used metaphor, visions and stylized imagery in the voice of an angel or supernatural being to help the reader understand the difficult times they’re encountering.

And the church was going through some tough times.

The letter was written to seven churches in Western Turkey. They were undergoing pressure to submit to pagan worship practices. In many cases their livlihood may depend on their participation.

There was also instances of harassment from Jewish neighbors who rejected the Christian movement as a legitimate form of faith.

These were communities marked by external pressures. There was uncertainty about their future. Nothing about their life was easy.

I imagine there was great temptation to yield. It would be easier to just go along. It would be tempting to create political alliances that would make things easier for them.

But instead of giving, Revelation begins with praise.

The Unceasing Authority of God

The New Revised Standard Version Introduction and Salutation

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

7 Look! He is coming with the clouds;

every eye will see him,

even those who pierced him;

and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.

So it is to be. Amen.

8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

This is all about praise to God.T

his hymn of praise is bracketed by two references to God’s ultimate authority:

“him who is and who was and who is to come”

and

“I am the Alpha and Omega, who is and was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

In the face of persecution and hardship, they were reminded the God is control. Their ultimate allegiance belongs to the one who is eternal.

Kings may come and go, but God won’t.

That which true 2000 years ago, was true in 1925, 1934, and is true to today is the ultimate authority of God.

History repeats itself. History will always repeat itself. There will always be challenges. There will always be threats.

Yet throughout it all God remains.

And what type of God is this?

The Sacrificial Love of Jesus

We see it in the person of Jesus Christ:

The New Revised Standard Version Introduction and Salutation

Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Recently a friend shared an article from the Onion on Facebook.

For those of you not familiar with the Onion, the Onion is a long-standing satire and comedy website that presents itself like a real Newspaper.

The headline of this article read:

“Bible Scholars Say Early Mistranslation Distorted Story Of Jesus Crucifying The Romans”

So rather than Jesus being crucified by the Romans, it was Jesus doing the crucifying.

A choice quote from the article:

““A careful study of the Synoptic Gospels in their original Greek plainly shows how Jesus of Nazareth led an angry mob that humiliated, tortured, and ultimately crucified members of the Roman army,” said Oxford research fellow Clement Atherton, explaining that a translator’s mix-up of passive and active voice had led generations of the faithful to misunderstand the Passion, in which Jesus crowns Roman centurions with thorns, nails them to crosses, and pierces their sides with a lance.”

It makes for a funny alternative world! Because as we know and are reminded from this text:

Jesus came to us and loved us and served us even to the point where it cost him his life.

Revelation is written to a community under persecution. To affirm Christ as King was to reject Roman rule. It was to reject the Babylonian empire. It was an affirmation of a different type of King.

It was a King who loved, who served, who gave all.

It was an identifiation with a King who also knew what it meant to suffer, to face rejection, and to ultimately die for it.

This is a totally different type of King. This is a totally different type of Kingdom.

Take Away

We follow Christ’s example as a faithful witness.

The Barmen declaration called Jesus “is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.”

Revelation called Jesus the faithful witness.

We have an unwavering commitment to tell the story of Jesus as he was, not how we want him to be.

We reject opportunties for short cuts or to make things easier for ourselves.

We serve sacrificially.

In 2021, the church in the United States is in a priviledged position.

Whatever persecution, the churches of Turkey and Asia Minor faced are foreign to us.

I’d argue that the great temptation that church is facing is the will to power. There’s a feeling or perception that the influence of Christianity is slipping or waning and we want it back through whatever means necessary. Even if it means subtly tweaking the Christian story and message to fit our own narrative.

I recently read an article that tried to understand those within the Christian faith who objected to getting vaccinated on grounds of faith.

The author suggested that this was a byproduct of Western Christianity’s need to spiritualize all things. Everything we do must have an ultimate reason and if one doesn’t exist, we invent it.

So this article argued that we start from a position “I don’t want to get a vaccine” and then work backwards to find a religious reason.

If this argument is true, it creates an interesting dilemma for myself and perhaps you: Am I following Jesus’ example as a faithful witness? Am I following a pattern of life that is consistent with who Jesus is?

Or, am I deciding something to be true and erecting a picture of God who endorses what I want to believe to be true.

Remember that Onion article I talked about earlier? It has a point right? When we think of Christ the King, don’t we want to think of a winner? Someone who used their immesurable power to take what is theirs?

But what do we find instead? A servant.

A servant who remained truthful. Who loved us and freed us by giving of himself even to the point of dying as an innocent.

To follow the way of Christ the King is to reject the will to power, influence, and prestige. It’s to reject the desire to force people to conform to an ideology.

Instead it’s a way of deep love and deep sacrifice.

This was been an awful week for Whatcom county. Yesterday I was talking with Sarah and Lindsay about what they saw when cleaning out Sumas elementary school. It reminded them of a Hurricane zone.

Yet out of this hardship I continue to hear stories of sacrificial giving: people offering the goods they have. Literally wading through hazerdous zones to clean up. People donating money. Churches openng their doors.

This is the way of Christ the King. This is the lifestyle we live.

Conclusion

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. tuff