For the King

Propers: Christ the King, A.D. 2016 C

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What makes Superman a hero? It’s not his power. It’s not that he can hit harder than anyone. Nobody much cares for the Superman stories where he wins by punching. The truly great Superman stories are the ones in which he is tempted to transgress his moral code—tempted to use his fists because it would be, oh, so easy—yet he refuses to do so. He finds another way. What makes him Superman is that he refuses to use his powers in the ways that the rest of us would.

That’s why Superman is, and has always been, a Christ figure.

What makes Jesus the King of Kings? It’s not His power, though He certainly has plenty of that to spare. We are talking, after all, about the One who called all worlds into being with but a Word, and who shattered the land of the dead simply by setting foot in it. He could snap His almighty fingers and call Mars to knock Earth out from under His feet if He so desired. No, what makes Christ the King is not His power but His goodness, the fact that He is Goodness itself in the flesh. This is what the wicked thief does not understand.

In our Gospel reading today we have the rare treat of sharing the story of our Lord’s Crucifixion outside of the greater Passion narrative of Holy Week. Here we read it in the context of Jesus’ Kingship, the Cross His throne, the thorns His crown. And of the two thieves crucified alongside Him, one absolutely does not get it. “Are You not the Christ?” he snarls. “Save Yourself and us!” This thief makes it perfectly clear that if he were the Christ—if he were endowed with infinite power and sovereign authority—oh, there would be hell to pay. He’d leap right off that cross and burn up his tormentors with unquenchable, righteous fire.

This is, in fact, what people are constantly expecting Jesus to do, both in the Bible and in our own day. For some 500 years, the people of Israel had been expecting the arrival of God’s promised Messiah, the Cosmic Christ who would descend from Heaven upon the clouds and scourge the earth with fire and sword. Surely He would burn up the heathens and cut down the wicked and purify the Temple with the blood of His enemies. Surely He would lead heavenly armies to purge the gentiles and pagans from the land and restore the holy to their rightful state, making Israel great again.

Even the Apostles expected this, expected a great and terrible King. John and James wanted Him to call down fire from Heaven; Judas wanted Him to spark a rebellion; Peter expected to wield the sword in His defense. There’s a reason the Cross came as such terrific shock, despite all His efforts to prepare them. One expects certain things from a king, after all. Dying in agony—in public humiliation stretched high upon the Cross for everyone to see—is not one of them.

But the other thief, he gets it. He sees what no one else appears to see. “Do you not fear God?” he asks his fellow criminal. “We indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this Man has done nothing wrong.” And then—here’s the kicker—the thief turns to Christ and says: “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.”

My God, what a thing to say. To turn to this Man, naked and flayed, bloodied and broken, stretched out in agony and pierced through with nails, and to realize the He is the one true King—not in spite of His sufferings but even because of them—and then to utter into the very face of death, “Remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.” It is as scandalous an utterance as it is astounding. This prisoner is not submitting to Jesus’ power, or to His dignity, or to His sovereign majesty. He is submitting to Jesus’ goodness, to His innocence, to His purity. He is submitting to the one who is the Way and the Truth and the Life, the Light in whom there is no darkness at all. And to this wicked, guilty, convicted thief, the God of all Creation then promises: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

What a thing it is to bow. To submit to one who is worthy. Some think it weakness, but it is not. To bow, truly bow, not out of fear or custom or social standing, but out of genuine recognition of One who is Good and True and Beautiful, is an astounding liberation. Indeed it is the only worthy response possible before the one true King. Jesus’ perfection does not threaten our self-worth but elevates it. Submission to His will is the only way of freeing our own.

To proclaim Christ as Lord and King and God is to proclaim with defiance that nothing and no one else can be, that nothing can rule us, nothing can control us, for we are subjects and brothers and friends of the Most High God of Heaven and earth. He has claimed us as His own and bought us with His Blood. What then do we have to fear, when He has liberated us from the yoke of servitude? Even nailed to our cross, we are freed to claim Paradise as our own!

Ah, but we are Americans, you say, and have never been slaves to anyone. But of course we are. We are slaves to sin. We are slaves to desire.

We are slaves to our bank accounts and bench press and belt length and all the other ways in which we define our worth, comparing ourselves to others, always striving, slaving, screeching for more: more money, more power, more pleasure, more respect, more reward, more food and drink and floor space and Facebook friends, more, more, more! And the more we clutch at, the less we have, and the more deeply we become enslaved to ego and expectation and the constant exultation of our lonely, desperate, dying selves. And all the while the devil chortles from his inverted throne in hell.

But the King will have none of it. Christ will not tolerate the slavery of His people. He will not stand idle while we squirm in disarray. He comes with a mighty hand to shatter the chains of our bondage, to free us from all the terrible little tyrants that torment us day to day.

“You are not your pocketbook!” He thunders. “You are not your job, or your degrees, or your house or your friends or the facile façade that you throw up on social media! You are mine, do you hear Me? You belong to Me! I am your King and God and Sacrifice, and I will pour out My life for you, as I always have; I will plunge into the very pit of hell to rescue you from this damnation; and I will not let you go, ever, until you bless Me! I will raise you up from death to life, for I am now and forever your King!”

In a world of petty tyrants, petty tortures, petty worries eating away at us wheresoever we turn, be not afraid. For we have a great King, wonderful in might, perfect in majesty, Good and True and Beautiful beyond measure, in whom there is no darkness at all. We tend to idolize democracy, the fickle wills of mortal men, but it is the Monarch of Creation who has truly set us free. Let us now turn to Him together. Let us bow with sweet relief. Let us know the holy strength that flows from honorable, humble, happy submission to God’s own creative, infinite, self-giving Love.

Let this world’s tyrant rage. In battle we’ll engage. The Kingdom’s ours forever.

In the Name of the King. Amen.