| Rector’s
Sermon
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| Since September, July and August even, all we’ve heard from the Gospels have been the Kingdom of God. The primary source of all this “Kingdom talk” has been Jesus himself. Josh, Jeanne, and I, and Jim last Sunday, have immersed ourselves in the meaning of Jesus’ parables, in the miracle stories, in the illustrations of rich young men and poor widows—all of it intended to give us a glimpse of the Kingdom of God. And all of this Kingdom talk comes to a head this morning when we find Jesus in the middle of his trial before Pontius Pilate. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Pilate asks Jesus. We don’t know his tone of voice. We don’t know if he was sarcastic or bored or maybe even entirely sympathetic. We are sure that he had heard the rumors that Jesus was a sort of new king, a messiah, and that this would be politically dangerous. “Are you the King of the Jews?” But, we might even ask, what kind of king? Is it one like Pontius Pilate serves, namely the Roman Emperor? Now there’s a king and a kingdom for you! The Roman Empire. You’ve heard of it. Veni, vidi, vici: I came, I saw, I conquered. Julius Caesar. Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres: All Gaul is divided into three parts. The Coliseum. The legions. But here’s Jesus, pathetic really, standing before Pilate who represents all of that and quizzing Jesus whether or not he’s a king. What kind of kingdom could Jesus possibly represent that would be of any significance before this magistrate of the most powerful kingdom the world had ever known? As I said, really kind of pathetic. And yet that’s all Jesus had talked about for so long: his father’s kingdom. And today, this Sunday, that’s what we’re celebrating: Christ the King. When I was a small boy (some of you have heard this before) my father took me to Cecil B. DeMille’s great silent film, “King of Kings.” Even for someone who had been to “talkies,”—this was, after all, the late 40s—even then this silent film had a great impression on me. I was especially moved when Jesus was arrested, brought before Pontius Pilate, and then crucified. Jesus hadn’t done anything wrong, and my six-year-old sensitivities recoiled at the injustice of it all. And then as he lay on the cross, the bystanders mock him saying, “If you are the son of God, come down from the cross!” And I wanted him to come down from the cross. I wanted him to prove he was God’s son, that he had done nothing wrong. I thought, “that would do it. That would show them.” But of course he doesn’t, and I hear the echo of his reply to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Six-year-olds tend to reduce things to some very simply formulas, and even after the Resurrection appears on the screen, I thought, “Gee, wouldn’t it have been simpler to come down from the cross?” In any event, I wanted Jesus to win, to show them that he really was great despite the treatment he received. Maybe I thought he would be like Mickey Mantle or Joe Lewis or Sea Mantle with his gimpy legs, Lewis with his race, but winners, heroes, at least no me. And yet Jesus dies. He’s a dead king with a kingdom somewhere other than Palestine or Rome or anywhere else you can touch or see or define in a tactile way. Here we are 2,000 years later, hanging on his every word about the nature of that kingdom, authoritative like no one else in human history ever has been or ever will be. It’s part of the prayer we call his, the Lord’s Prayer—“Thy kingdom come”—a prayer that’s part of our spiritual DNA. Frederick Buechner writes that
So it’s here but it’s not here, at least not fully here, and it has everything to do with you and me. Buechner continues,
That’s where we come in. We are still hanging on Jesus’ every word about the Kingdom because it’s what we so desperately need and want in our lives and it’s what the world so desperately needs and wants—at least I hope it does. How do you know that the Kingdom has arrived in your heart and in your mind? Is it with the realization that you’re a child of God and that God’s spirit lives in you? Is it seeing in another some small grace, some kindness, some need that you could reach out and touch? That’s the Kingdom, and I believe that it’s an eternal kingdom, something that God has in store for us fully which we have glimpses of right now, right here. “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.” |
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