"A Strangely Christian Thing to Do"

Christ the King Sunday

Luke 23:33-43

Rev. Everett L. Miller

It is a strangely Christian thing to do, declaring a day Christ the King Sunday, then celebrating that day by reading the story of his being crucified on a Roman cross. It is ridiculous really. The early Christians knew that much more thoroughly than we do as when Paul wrote, “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” Here is a peasant from the backwoods of Galilee, rejected by the leaders of his own people, sentenced to death by the local representative of the real king of kings, the Roman emperor Tiberius, and now fastened to a cross between two dying criminals. What kind of king is this? Can you imagine having been among the first generation of Christians trying to explain that to people?
If you had been alive in the year 9 BC, about 40 years before Jesus’ death, and just a few years before his birth, you could have read a proclamation about the Roman emperor at the time, Caesar Augustus, that calls him Savior and god manifest. It also says “Caesar has fulfilled all the hopes of earlier times, and even the birthday of Caesar Augustus “has been for the whole word the beginning of the good news.” Sounds kind of familiar doesn’t it?

We could have also read an inscription on a statue of Augustus, which read, "The God Augustus, Son of God, Caesar, Absolute Ruler of land and sea, the Benefactor and Savior of the whole cosmos.”

In the ancient Roman world, it would have been quite common to hear the words, “Caesar is Lord” on the lips of most any citizen and many subjected peoples. It was a statement of allegiance to the empire, like a pledge of allegiance to Caesar and to Rome. So to say “Jesus is Lord” was ridiculous, offensive, and an affront to the government, because what you were supposed to say is “Caesar is Lord.” The implication within the confession of faith, “Jesus is Lord,” is that Caesar is not.

In Acts, which was also written by Luke, there is a report of a controversy in the city of Thessalonica. A crowd comes looking for Paul and Silas, but finds only Jason, a local man who had been working with them. Luke writes, “they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting: ‘They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus’” (Acts 17:6-8). You can see why so often the early Christians were persecuted and executed at the hands of the government.

Luke was a Gentile living within the Roman Empire writing to people like him, Gentiles living in the Roman Empire. He states, himself, in the introduction to his gospel that he is writing not to convince people to become Christians but to encourage those people who already believed in Jesus so that they “may know the certainty of the things [they] have been taught.” Luke’s readers are people who have already taken the risk of saying, “Jesus is King” or “Jesus is Lord.” Yet, they look outside their windows and all they see is the influence of Caesar and his empire.

Towards the beginning of Luke, the angel of the LORD says to the shepherds outside of Bethlehem, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” Luke is dangerously reminding his readers that it is not the birth of an emperor which is the beginning of the good news, but the birth of Jesus.

At the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday, Matthew, Mark, and John all have the crowd yelling, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD.” But Luke has them calling out, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.” It is very important to Luke that the readers of his gospel, which includes those of us on the other side of the world 2,000 years later, get the point that no matter what it looks like outside our windows it is Jesus who is the real king.

So now we come back to Jesus on the cross. In addition to being executed, he is also being tempted one last time. If you recall when he was tempted by Satan in the desert, the last temptation was, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.” Now they are saying things like, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen one.” They are saying, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” Then one of the other men being crucified with Jesus says, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” He is being tempted to prove that he is the King that his disciples claim him to be by saving himself instead of dying on the cross for the salvation of others. They are saying, “If you are the King, then show us some power. Kings don’t die on crosses. Criminals do. What kind of king is this?”

But Jesus is not a king like the kings of this world. He is not the king of the Jews that was expected, coming with violence to overthrow the Romans. He is not a King of Kings like Caesar in his palace in Rome with millions of soldiers at his command. He said it himself, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” and “I am among you as one who serves.” Jesus will not prove his Kingship by saving himself, for that is not the kind of king that he is. And it is a strangely Christian thing to say, but Jesus proves that he is king, by being up there on that cross. Jesus proves his strength through taking on weakness.

But according to Luke (he is the only one who reports this) one of the criminals comes to Jesus’ defense. Luke tells us that one of the criminals had “hurled insults” at Jesus. But the word in Greek actually means “blaspheme,” as in breaking the third commandment, “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God.” Luke is saying that to say something against Jesus is to say something against God. So the other suffering criminal, groans out in agony to the other man, “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then the man speaks to Jesus, saying something we should all pray every day. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” By saying this to Jesus, this man is professing his faith in Jesus as King and showing that he realizes that Jesus is not the usual kind of king and that the Kingdom Jesus announced is not the usual kind of kingdom. Despite what the leaders of the people, and the Roman soldiers, and the other criminal say, this peasant from the backwoods of Galilee, who is fastened to a cross in between two dying criminals is, in fact, the real king of kings. And Jesus’ last interaction with another person in Luke’s gospel before he dies is to turn to the man and say, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” His last act of ministry is to welcome a criminal into his heavenly kingdom. That is the kind of King that Jesus is, not the kind who will prove his kingship by saving himself, but by saving a man who has been lost every day of his life but this one. This criminal, by losing his life, is gaining it. That is another strangely Christian thing to say.

Claiming that Christ is our king does have implications for eternal life, but it also has implications for the way we live our lives right now. We have to make decisions everyday as to how we will live in culture and with other people. We have to keep reminding ourselves that Christ is King. Culture is not. Christ is King. Addiction is not. Christ is King. My desires are not. Christ is King. Wealth is not. Christ is King. I am not.

Sometimes our affirmation of Christ as King has to do with big, public issues. I recently saw the movie Amazing Grace, which is about the efforts of William Wilberforce to abolish slavery in the British Empire, something he did because he knew that on that issue he could not support the king’s policies on slavery and claim that Christ is King. In Germany during the 1930’s and 40’s Christians like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were adamant that Christ was their King, Hitler was not. Also, it is no accident that the civil rights movement in the American South grew out of churches and was led by a Baptist pastor, people who claim Christ as King. Living in culture and having Christ as king is often difficult. Sometimes we have to make difficult, even dangerous decisions when there is a conflict between what culture tells us to do and what Christ would have us do.

There has been an instance of this quite recently for thousands of Christians here in Oklahoma. Oklahoma House Bill 1804, the new law that cracks down on undocumented immigrants in Oklahoma has caused many Christian churches and individual Christians to ask themselves if they can both follow Christ as King and follow this law. Adding to the fire is the fact that it has also been announced that in the next legislative session there will be an additional bill proposed that would “essentially make it illegal for anyone to help an undocumented person.” Many churches have decided that the answer is that they cannot completely follow this new law and at the same time be able to say in truth that Christ is their King.

Many Christians have signed what is called a “pledge of resistance,” which has been sent to Governor Henry. Interestingly enough, resistance to this law has united Christians from many different denominations in a way that I have never seen in my lifetime. The pledge itself was written by a Quaker and a Nazarene. The Oklahoma Conference of Churches, which is made up of the sixteen Christian denominations including the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and Episcopalians has come out in resistance to the law.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City declared in a document sent to the state government: “We stand together, in solidarity, in defiance of this law because of our allegiance to a higher law; the law of love of God and humanity.” The Southern Baptist Convention said: “As Christians, that should be our No. 1 focus -- God first, government second. While we will obey the law to the best of our ability, when people come to our church to worship with us, we are not going to ask for proof of citizenship."

I have never heard of anything uniting Southern Baptists, Catholics, Nazarenes, Presbyterians and many other parts of the body of Christ the way that support for immigrants, documented or undocumented, has united us. And here is why so many churches have come together on this: We all answer the question, “Who is the ultimate authority in your lives?” the same way. The answer is Jesus Christ. We are united because Jesus is Lord, Christ is King, which means that we do everything we can to obey the laws of our land, but if that law would cause us to break the laws of God, we have a decision to make.

Here is why there is a decision to make with this particular issue. Throughout the Old Testament, God said things like this to the people of Israel: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19: 33-34). In addition to this we read in the New Testament Scriptures of Joseph, Mary, and an infant Jesus having to flee Judea, to become immigrants in Egypt. We read of our Lord Jesus reaching out to the Samaritans, who the Jews did not want around. We read of our Lord saying, “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.” We read of our Lord saying, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared from the creation of the world…I was a stranger and you invited me in…Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did for me.”

A question that many Christians have been asking themselves and others lately is this: If a family of undocumented immigrants came to Jesus’ door asking for help, would he help them? Well, he healed people on the Sabbath even though the Law said he couldn’t. He reached out to people who were declared unclean, even though the Law said he couldn’t. He reached out to the Samaritans, although the leaders of his people said he couldn’t. Of course he would help them because that is what he came to do, “To preach good news to the poor.” And because that is what he would do, those who have faith in him are to do likewise, because Christ is King. So whether or not you personally agree with the stand all these churches and individual Christians have made, you at least have to admit that they mad this stand because of their belief in Christ as King.

As I said, it is a strangely Christian thing to do, declaring a day to be Christ the King Sunday, then celebrating that day by reading the story of his being crucified on a Roman cross. But, ironically, Luke’s telling of Jesus’ death on the cross helps to answer the question, “What kind of king is this?” He is the king who refuses to save himself to show his authority, but instead he gives his own life for the salvation of others to show his authority. He is the king who refuses to fit the expectations of culture, but instead fits the expectations of God, forgiving his executioners and turning to a dying criminal and assuring him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” So may we be willing to face the same accusations faced by Jason and others in Thessalonica. May there be enough evidence to convict us if we are accused of “saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.’” We can’t expect everybody to understand this. After all, “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

May Christ reign as the King of our lives. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.