What Kind of Kingdom?  What Kind of King?

By Pastor Marcia Moret Sietstra

Nov. 26, 2006  Crestwood UCC

Psalm 93 & John 18:33-37

Today is New Year’s Eve Day in the church.  That’s right, New Year’s Eve of the Christian year, the day we end a journey that began with the first Sunday in Advent last year.  It’s the day we look back on the yearly cycle of teaching about creation and the history of a people who believed God was revealed to them and wrote it down to become scripture, a year of recalling the birth and life and teachings of Jesus.  Today is known, in many churches, as Christ the King Sunday, sort of a proclamation that Jesus is “king” of all salvation history.  So today’s lectionary texts are about “kingship” and about the end of time, from the book of Revelations.  However, I didn’t choose the Revelations text for today because it would take me until next Tuesday to try to explain it.

Some of you know that I dislike “king” language because it has been so badly misunderstood and misused by Christians.  There are those Christians who see themselves as God’s representatives, God’s earthly soldiers, charged to bring about the rule of “King Jesus”, which is their version of “Jesus’ rules.”  They would like to turn America into a theocracy.  It is a self-righteous and downright dangerous theology that bares little resemblance to Jesus’ own behavior. 

The irony is that Jesus turned the idea of “kingship” upside down!  In the classic scene with Pilate, who asks him “Are you the Jewish king?” Jesus answers in his typical enigmatic fashion:  My kingdom is not from this world.  If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.  But as it is, my kingdom is not from here…For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.  [I suppose in that sense I might be called a king].

What kind of king is this?  And what kind of kingdom? 

Let me tell you a legend about a Danish king. According to the legend,¹  when Denmark was occupied by Hitler’s forces during WW II, the order came that all Jews were to identify themselves by wearing armbands with yellow stars of David.  King Christian X of Denmark said that one Danish person was exactly the same as the next one.  So the King put on an armband bearing the yellow star of David, and let it be known that he expected every loyal Dane would do the same.  The next day in Copenhagen, almost the entire population wore armbands showing the star of David.  The Danes saved 90% of their Jewish population.  The Danish people knew their king loved them and that he would identify with them to the extent of putting his own life on the line by wearing the Jewish star.  That’s the kind of humility and compassion that Jesus modeled for us as a servant leader.

When we talk about Jesus as a king, we need to balance that talk with texts like Phil. 2:6 in which Paul says, Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.

That is the irony in the Pilate text, in Jesus’ own life, and today—his kingdom is a subversive one.  A king without a throne, born in a manger to lowly peasants.  His kingdom is a kingdom of nobodies, just thousands of ordinary people on the hillsides of Galilee who came to hear that strange teacher Jesus.  It is a kingdom of the poor, who know how to share because it’s the only way they can survive.  Like them, Jesus often had no place to lay his head.  His crown was a crown of thorns, which may have made him look weak and helpless, until the truth became clear:  his real power was love, which cannot be killed.  And his truth became known: those who lose their lives for others find abundant life, the last are first, loving matters most. 

What has this to do with us today?  We live in a world obsessed with power and wealth.  Today let’s be reminded that Jesus is king not where people seek advantage, but where people seek to be helpful; not where people seek control, but where people seek community. 

Community is central to Jesus’ idea of kingdom.  It is a community in which people do not lord it over each other, but in which everyone is servant to everyone else.  Some theologians translate the kingdom of God as kin-dom of God, because it’s closer to Jesus’ meaning of kingdom as the community in which we treat each other like kin.  Author Bill McKibben writes about this idea of community.  He says, Living a life of faith means, more than anything, putting something other than yourself at the center of your life.  Even for those who aren’t religious, leading a mature life demands finding some focus other than yourself.  The great and happy secret of every guru, from the Buddha through the Christ, is that when you place God, however defined, at the center of your existence, you will become more fulfilled, not less.  To which I would add…placing God at the center of your existence requires that you name all those whom God loves as your next-of-kin. 

Today we celebrate the memories of those who have been part of our kin-dom…whether they are our biological next-of-kin, or kin who have been part of the communities we are part of.  A colleague of mine shared something with me recently, as he wrote about celebrating All Saints Day.  He visualizes the kin-dom of God spanning this world and the next, which I think is entirely possible.  Here’s what Steve Garnaas-Holmes wrote:

You may think you are all alone, counting only the loved ones that you see.  You may cling to the brave dream that we all go through this life essentially on our own, that we may find a few dear friends in this life, a trusted teacher or two, but even they cannot travel our path with us.  This is not true.  We are surrounded, accompanied, guarded, guided and blessed.

An infant lying in her crib has no clue how many people love her, provide for her.  When she cries a couple of dear faces appear.  But it takes time for her to awaken to the fact that loved ones hover over her, even when unseen, even in far-off places.  That her life is woven with many others.  That people removed from her sight care for her, protect her, send blessing toward her.  That family is more than what is visible.

And we, too, may not understand that invisible grandmothers have knit hats for us, with love that is beyond us, to wear against a cold that we cannot fathom, and sent them to us by means we, who are only human, are too young to know.  [Repeat]  We do not suspect that even as we toddle, lost in our own thoughts, souls who love us gaze at us with tender grace.  A family of saints surrounds us, living souls who, though they are unseen, still care for us.  Death is not a place, but a life stage; those who have gone before us did not stop praying for us, but only joined a greater communion who hold us in their hearts.

I love this picture of the kin-dom of God, spanning this world and the next, giving us a sense of belonging to something much larger than ourselves.  Even on those days when you may feel alone, you are not.  We were created not only for relationship to the divine, which we find in solitude, but also for relationship with each other, which we experience only in community. 

Christ the King Sunday is not a day to see ourselves as set apart to be God’s elect soldiers fighting for power and authority over the rest of the world.  Today is a day to see our commonality and kinship with all people, in every place and time.  It is a day for humility and joy, as we rejoice and give thanks for the communities to which we belong, which resemble ever widening concentric circles, like the ones that surround a pebble dropped in the water.  You belong to your families, this church, your other networks of kin-ship at work or school or in organizations to which you belong, to this community and to the larger community of all God’s children in this world, and finally, to the glorious company of saints who have moved from this world to the next.  Thanks be to God for these ties.  Amen.