We call this coming Sunday "Christ the King", and it marks the end of the church calendar before the beginning of Advent.
Why does it matter that Jesus is king, and not just a king, but the king, the lord of all heaven and earth? Though it might not seem like it to us who live in a country that decisively rejected monarchy, saying that "Christ is king" and that "Jesus is Lord" is central to our proclamation of the Gospel. After all, as Mark gospel says, Jesus came preaching the good news of the kingdom, and there can be no kingdom without a king.
Declaring that "Christ is King" is a reminder that kings and kingdoms are not simply the stuff of history past or the delusional hope of fantasy and fairy tales. Our unquenchable longing for a true and just ruler is anchored deep within the human heart. And yet when we see the ways power is used, for personal gain, to oppress and to take from others, we begin to doubt this inner longing. We might begin to think, as I heard in a song this week, that there are no real kings, that "a throne is just a chair.”
In the face of this doubt, the proclamation of the church is that the sort of king Jesus claims to be makes all the difference in the world. In our gospel passage for this Sunday, we will hear Jesus forgive his enemies and we will hear him promise paradise to a dying criminal beside him. What sort of king says these things as he is being tortured and killed? What sort of king makes these promises in the face of what seems to be utter defeat? To answer these questions is to come to terms with the sort of king that Jesus truly is and to see him truly as the desire of the nations.
I hope you can join us!
Chris+