Sermon at Holy Trinity Church, East
Grimstead – Christ the King Sunday - Sunday 24 November 2013
Psalm 72; Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen
Today is, as we have seen, the last Sunday before Advent and
is traditionally the day when we celebrate Christ as our King – the one to whom
we pray, frequently – “Your Kingdom Come” in the words of the prayer which he
left us. But what exactly does that
mean? And especially, what does that
term mean to you and to me? In the next
few minutes I’d like to explore those questions further.
Many terms are used to describe Jesus in the bible – Lord,
Saviour, King, Messiah, Emmanuel and so on.
Indeed, Jesus was all of these things but above all he came to save us
from our sins by dying on the Cross – a Cross upon which the Roman authorities,
in the form of Governor Pontius Pilate, had placed, as a description of his
crime, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of
the Jews”. The Jewish authorities had
denounced Jesus to the Romans as a traitor of the Roman Empire by stating that
Jesus claimed kingship over a Jewish people who had, as their ruler, a puppet
King beholden to Caesar already. When questioned by Pilate during his trial as
to whether he was indeed a King he responded that his Kingdom was not from this
Earth – something which we Christians now understand but which puzzled and
concerned the Roman Governor.
Today we live in a world of relatively few monarchies. In just under a year’s time we will be
commemorating the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First
World War in 1914. At that time Europe
was largely governed by a plethora of Royal and Imperial families – in Russia,
Germany, Turkey, the Balkans, Scandanavia, United Kingdom -whose colonising
extended sovereign or imperial rule much farther afield – notably in Africa,
the Middle East and parts of Asia. It
has to be said that the fall of many of those imperial dynasties and royal
families was brought about by a realisation that absolute monarchy was no
longer suitable to nations which craved some measure of democratic rule. The absolute rule of monarchs was something
which could no longer be tolerated to enlightened people.
It is interesting to reflect that in the Old Testament we
read that originally the Hebrew nation had been governed by Judges but the
supreme ruler had always been Yahweh/Jehovah – the one true and living God of
Abraham, Jacob and Moses. God was the
King not only in Heaven but on Earth. Yet the Jewish people had sought and were
given a King (Saul) to rule over them and ultimately their system of monarchy
became divided and fell with the people being taken into exile. God had warned the people, through Samuel
that one day they would “cry out for
relief from the king they have chosen and the LORD will not answer you on that
day” [1 Samuel 8:18]. And so, eventually they were taken into captivity by
the Babylonians and ultimately ruled by the Romans after a succession of bad
kings and foreign occupations. So, the
idea of earthly kings has not, in biblical terms, been an entirely happy
one. Furthermore, the absolute authority
of some tyrant kings in our more modern day history has not been without a great
deal of accompanying suffering.
Now let me make it clear, I am not a republican! When I use the term “king” I use the term
loosely to encompass many autocratic rulers or unfair systems of totalitarian
government which have existed. Those
monarchies that have survived have done so because they have realised that they
need to rule within a democratic constitution.
I have recently come back from a holiday where I had the
uninterrupted opportunity to read a fascinating book of speeches and sermons by
former Archbishop Desmond Tutu entitled “God
is Not a Christian”. This rather
bizarre title is easily understood when you read the speeches and sermons from
which this phrase is taken – Desmond Tutu says that God is not the sole
property of Christians but because he created the world and all that is within
it, he is the God of everyone and everything.
Many of his speeches and sermons contained in the book are concerned
with criticising the Apartheid system in South Africa – an unjust system
perpetrated by an unjust regime. Quite
often, he refers, in the arguments he had with the regime to Psalm 72 the first
lines of which reads
Endow the king with
your justice, O God,
The royal son with your
righteousness.
He will judge
your people in righteousness
Your afflicted
ones with justice
The mountains
will bring prosperity to the people
The hills the
fruit of righteousness.
He will
defend the afflicted among the people
And save the
children of the needy
He will crush
the oppressor.
He will
endure as long as the sun
As long as
the moon, through all generations.
Tutu says that, any ruler or regime which shows these
qualities has no need of extensive or oppressive security forces to keep it in
control – the people will themselves want to ensure that such a regime prospers
and continues in power. The Archbishop
was often cited by members of the Apartheid government of South Africa as being
a Communist sympathiser and was accused of quoting from Communist literature. I
think it came as quite a shock to them that his manifesto, if that was what
they wanted to think of it as, was actually taken from scripture contained in
the bibles on which many of the Apartheid supporting politicians would have
sworn an oath of allegiance!
When I was made a Freeman of the City of London I was
obliged to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth and to the Lord Mayor
and Common Council of the City. But
above this, I was first and foremost to swear obedience to God – in other words
to my Heavenly King – and to me that also means reading and following scripture
and particularly the words of Jesus in the gospels.
Jesus was crucified because he spread the news about
the kingdom of heaven – no earthly domain but a place where the king of David’s
psalm would rule with that justice and compassion which was spoken of.
The two robbers on each side of Jesus couldn’t have
been more different. The first, who
taunted Jesus to save himself if he was truly Christ – meaning, in Greek, “the
anointed one” the king and son of God - had completely missed the point –
unlike the second robber who actually received more than he asked for. Realising that Jesus was indeed what he
claimed to be, and knowing that he himself deserved the punishment of
crucifixion meted out to him, he simply asks Jesus to remember him when he
reaches the kingdom of heaven and probably was thinking in terms of some form
of redemption at a future time; but he gets far more than he asked for, for
Jesus responds that the criminal will enter paradise with him that day.
The importance of this passage is, I think, that Jesus
is demonstrating that the kingdom of heaven is not something in the future and
he is not the monarch of some future kingdom but he has authority as the king
of heaven today – at the present time.
I fear that many people today, many Christians, think
in terms of heaven as a place to which they aspire to go by the good works they
do – to earn a place in the kingdom when their earthly life is over – by doing
good works and generally being nice people.
Of course there is nothing wrong in that as it stands,
but I think as Christians, in contrast to simply being nice people, we are
expected to live as though the kingdom of heaven is here – not to concentrate
on finding a way to mount the staircase to heaven but to act and think in ways
of bringing the kingdom of heaven down to earth now.
As we progress through Advent I think we need to think
and reflect beyond the Nativity. We need
to remember that the Jesus of the manger was to have a short ministry of just
over three years culminating in his cruel death and resurrection. Those tiny hands and feet in the manger
would, just three decades later, be driven through with those awful nails. And we need to reflect upon the resurrection
– which is the fundamental episode which, by our belief, defines us as
Christians, and finally the Ascension and Pentecost when we were left with the
means by which we can indeed be the subjects of a heavenly kingdom here on
earth.
Empires and regimes may come and go, but Christ’s
kingdom, will, in the words of Psalm 72, endure for so long as the sun rises
and sets and the moon shines in the evening sky… and beyond.
Let us be kingdom people and acknowledge, daily, our
service to that kingdom and our love and loyalty to Christ the King.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment