Our Crucified King

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Americans collectively have some strange and unusual attitudes toward the concept of monarchy. Our nation was founded on principles declaring all persons are created equal, possess the same basic rights, and are governed by whomever we choose.

Yet we are enamored by the idea of privilege and social status, paying much attention to royalty (perhaps not the hereditary kind, but easily the celebrity kind), bestowing fame and raising upon pedestals such individuals as politicians and athletes and musicians and actors. We crown queens and kings at homecoming and county fairs. We bestow honorary titles of royalty upon people of exceptional talent and skill. Perhaps we don’t truly understand the honors we lay upon their shoulders. Perhaps we have glamorized the concept, considering we have never experienced what a real queen or king would be like. Most queens and kings in our time are no more than ceremonial heads of state. Most. The real power of government often lies elsewhere.

On this Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, we come face to face once again with the concept of royalty, perhaps a remnant of the Middle Ages when only those who wore crowns and sat on jeweled thrones were of any consequence, that even the church consolidated its power and influence using much similar structures.

The first reading offers us the image of David, the greatest king of Israel. He had his flaws, and yet his rule was considered Israel’s golden age. He was a warrior king, wise and wealthy, an imposing historical figure, a shepherd, a prophet, a writer of psalms, and a servant of God. He would be so highly regarded that the Messiah foretold by the prophets, come to throw off the yoke of their oppressors and establish an eternal rule, would be his descendant, perhaps come to restore those glory days.

But the passages from Paul’s letter to the Colossians and from the gospel of Luke present a sharply contrasting image, an image of a king whose rule is marked by the blood of the cross, who brings redemption to God’s children through the forgiveness of sins, who delivers his subjects from darkness to light, from death to life.

The kingship of Jesus Christ is nothing the human race has ever known. We can speculate all we want. The parables might even hint what God’s kingdom is like, where Christ is king. But it’s still sketchy as though somebody didn’t think this through. Still, I don’t imagine any of us telling Jesus how to be king. What we have left as subjects of the great King is how we ought to understand him and his kingdom. For if we truly want Jesus Christ as our King, there will be important consequences in the manner we see and relate with the world and each other. And clearly, we have quite a ways to go.

Jesus Christ our King hangs on the throne of his cross, bruised, bleeding, suffering, crowned with thorns, “so marred was his look beyond that of men, his appearance beyond that of mortals …”, a passage we read on Good Friday from the prophet Isaiah (52: 14) “There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, One of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured. While we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins. Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.” (Isaiah 53: 2-5) It makes absolutely no sense that we should expect a higher station than our King, or that we should get better treatment than him from those around us, or that in clear contrast with his example we should expect honor for anything we have accomplished or think we deserve. Our King is despised while he heals us. At the least, we his subjects should not seek to undo what he came to accomplish, which was to reconcile us to God and to one another, and to extend God’s compassion and healing to our brokenness. Our focus is not glory or fame or fortune, but peace and forgiveness and mercy, a striking contrast to the bravado, the chutzpah, the combativeness, and arrogance displayed by some who claim to be his disciples yet are not as concerned with doing as he asked or imitating his example. As subjects of Jesus Christ our King, we strive to place him and his priorities front and center in our own lives. We strive to imitate his attitude of patience and kindness, of peace and justice, of joyful service to those on the margins of society. He came to accomplish the Father’s will by laying down his life for us sinners, who are most undeserving and ungrateful. The least we can do is encourage each other to fulfill the Father’s will and not lead others astray by our pride and arrogance and selfishness.

There is little earthly glory in the kingship of Jesus Christ. We romanticize the concept by imagining him clothed in purple and crowned in gold, sitting at the Father’s right hand and all the created universe at his feet. But each time we gather in this place we look upon him as our king nailed to a cross and crowned with thorns. And that is always a powerful reminder of what he accomplished for love of us his subjects, and that he gave up his own life that our lives might be full, and that he calls us to live in imitation of how he lived. He is not our king because of his fame and glory, or it would make sense to work for and want the same. Rather, he is King because of his suffering, his cross, and his surrender to the Father’s will. Suffering, we need not actively pursue. The cross will always be part of our lives whether we like it or not. But surrendering to the Father’s will, that is what will set us apart from all others, because after Jesus’ example, we should choose to live for God’s glory by reaching out to the poor, bringing healing to the broken, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the lost and afraid, visiting the sick and those in prison, proclaiming the Good News of God’s saving love, giving joyful witness to the world of how we have been first transformed ourselves by God’s grace, being to others God’s peace and mercy and compassion, and bringing the light of Jesus to those who still sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

And if we need further clarification, we should only raise our eyes and gaze upon our king who hangs upon the holy and glorious instrument that brought about our salvation. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. In him were created all things in heaven and on earth. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things in himself, making peace by the blood of his cross.”