Christ the King Sunday – Year C
November 24, 2013
Luke
23:33-43
A King by Any Other Name
Gene – I need to acknowledge that
I didn’t cast a positive vote on issue of your being asked to serve as
University Lutheran’s Pastor Emeritus. I
am sorry; but I need to be honest. There
was a period of time at the end of the last academic year when I took full
advantage of the students being out of town.
I missed three Congregational Council meetings in a row. It was during those months that the Council
talked this through and took action. I
would have voted, “Yes”; but didn’t have the chance.
I was around when dates for this
celebration were discussed. Is it
accurate that you are the one who suggested this date? No?
That is good. I wondered why you
would pick Christ the King Sunday. My
wondering turned into worry this past week at the most recent Council meeting,
when someone began to ask “What do we call this thing we are doing on
Sunday? Is it an Ordination? No. Is
it an Installation? No. Well then, is it a coronation?” Let’s hope not. In some situations it might be appropriate to
call you “King Copenhaver.” But I am not
sure Christ the King Sunday is one of them.
But then again, it may be. Because in a world where “Kings” are all too
often self-serving and self-promoting, it would be great to have a new and
different notion of what a king can be.
Gene, your humble response to what you one time called “All this fuss,”
is a powerful reminder of how it is that Jesus defines positions of honor and
responsibility. It is just one more in a
long line of teachable moments in which you can help all of us understand that
when we call Jesus “King,” we seek to bring to mind a kingship like none other.
The “King” Jesus seeks to be is a
king who gently guides his people to the protected places. He is the shepherd spoken of in Jeremiah’s
prophesy who will rise up and execute justice and righteousness. This king will not add to our misery and
suffering, but (as the Psalmist points out) is one who becomes our “refuge and
strength, a very present help in trouble.”
Any talk of “kings” among God’s people, must be heavily peppered with
examples of service and compassion and love.
As faithful, committed followers
of Jesus, we will have but one real king.
But we might be aided, in our pilgrimage, to have more immediate and
real-life models. And Gene Copenhaver has
certainly been a model of that for many of us.
But, before we get there – and
continue with this coronation – it might serve us well to talk a bit more about
the attempts of a title to help teach us something, and the inability of any
title to come without baggage. By this I
mean to ask whether or not it is possible for Christians living in the 21st
century to continue to benefit from the use of “king” language.
With apologies to our visitors, I
refer you back to the notes which were sent out with this Wednesday’s
e-news. I encouraged you to do some
advance thinking about the language of “kings,” and whether such language
remains helpful. I made a huge error –
Gary Smith is the one who replied first – I sent you off to Luke to find the
two words from the cross in which Jesus gives instructions. Yes, I did get it wrong. It should have been Luke, chapter 23, not
chapter 21. Errors aside, what thoughts
did you have - with regard to the use of Royal imagery? Let’s try this – turn to someone next to you
and name as many countries as you can in which there continues to be a “king,”
or Royal Family. Go ahead – come up with
as many as you can…….
Now, next question. Of those you were able to name, which would
you consider to be positive examples? Which
of those would you find it easy to embrace as a desirable form of governance? And I do mean a form of governance. No doubt, many of you probably listed England
as countries with a royal family. But
the United Kingdom’s monarchy is much more of a figure-head than a ruler – wouldn’t
you agree?
Another thought came to me
overnight – if England is our prime image of what a King is supposed to be, and
we transfer that example to our talk of Christ the King, don’t we teeter
fearfully close to the horrible situation of naming a King, and then making of
him little more than a figure-head? Does
our opinion about the royal family in the United Kingdom “teach” us that we can
speak of Christ as our “king” and then go on about our business?
So if you take the United Kingdom
out of the mix, did you come up with a positive examples of modern-day kings? Anyone?
Once you have tasted democracy,
returning to blood-line as a selection process for our ruler becomes a bitter
pill to swallow. Would you agree? Might I even be able to get an “Amen”?
In such a world, the Church has a
lot of work to do if it is going to continue to use the language of “king” as
the chosen title for Jesus. It takes a
lot of explaining about what a king “ought to be,” before you can get
wide-spread agreement that Jesus is truly the
king to whom we will devote our lives.
A quick search on Wikipedia will
inform you that the Christian church hasn’t always had a “Christ the King
Sunday.” Christ the King Sunday came
into vogue in response to the life of the Church in real time. If, in responding to the life of the Church
in our time, we come to doubt whether there is a benefit to retaining Christ
the King Sunday, or for that matter Christ the King language, we could choose
to drop the designation and the kingship language.
The goal of this festival Sunday
isn’t to whip us into submission to the One True King; the goal is to help us
understand the way of Jesus’ reign.
With enough good examples of
gracious “kings”, we might be able to salvage the image. King Copenhaver – UniLu’s Pastor Emeritus –
you are about to come into your kingdom.
We are expecting great things.
What is reasonable to expect is
that the journey we have been on for these past twelve months is making a
difference in our lives. Remember that Christ
the King is the designation for the final Sunday in the Church year. Today is the Church’s December 31.
What is reasonable to expect is
that we have had sufficient time and opportunity to learn the stories and to
form our responses.
What is reasonable to expect is
that we are all – each and every one of us – ready to state our allegiance to
the one who came among us last Christmas, died for us on Good Friday, and rose
again on Easter Sunday.
For some ninety years the Church
helped that process along by designating the last Sunday of the church year as
Christ the King Sunday and then asking everyone “Which king will you serve?” Maybe the time has come to speak of the
choice in differing language. Maybe there
is a better way – in our day and time - to speak of the choices we are free to
make and ask us whether the choices we made yesterday and the choices we will
make tomorrow are an accurate reflection of that which we speak of as our God
and Master. The way we live our lives is
the question; not at which throne do we bow our heads.
We come together as Church in
response to the call to live our lives differently. We gather in our congregations in order to
more clearly see the world as Jesus sees the world. We acknowledge all that has been given to us
and we come prepared to give something in return. Let’s acknowledge that talk of “kings” and
“kingship” may not be the best way to summarize all of that. So what language do we use? What titles would you prefer? What names do you find more appealing – and
by appealing I don’t simply mean which would you choose. I mean what names inspire you to follow where
Jesus has led the way.
What names?
I am only going to tell one Gene
story. During these weeks of preparation
he continued to speak of the campus ministry parts of his work here. He said “The ministry with students allowed
us to get away with a lot of things. “We
were free to experiment and push the boundaries and everyone just sort of went
along with it.” It is my hope that as
Pastor Emeritus, his example will help us seek approaches to ministry which are
responsive to the world in which we live rather than approaches designed to
mold the world as we might prefer it.
We need persons to guide and
direct our steps. Good and faithful
kings certainly have the opportunity to do that. So do faithful servants. Let’s pick them wisely, whatever title we use
for them. It isn’t the title which
matters. What matters is the role we
allow them to have in our lives and the challenge which they bring to bear on
our lives.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment