Proper 29C; Luke 23:35-43 – St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 11/24/2013

Jim Melnyk: “Holy Partners”

The Church has been around for nearly 2,000 years – or about 30 times my current life span. Maybe the short span of what we call modern time is one reason calling this Sunday “Christ the King Sunday” seems so strange to me – a feast day that came into being in the Roman church almost 100 years ago and into our Episcopal tradition even later. It was in 1925 that Pope Pius XI created the Feast of Christ the King to be celebrated on the last Sunday before Advent. His thinking, at least in part, was to “advance the message of God in Christ over and against that of the political forces moving in the world at that time – [led by] people like Mussolini and Hitler.”[1]

Then again, it’s more than just the relative newness of the feast that gives me pause. The incongruity of our language makes me shake my head each year when we come to this day. We can get rather glib about concepts such as kingship and what that might mean to the world and what it would have meant to Jesus.

Let’s face it – when it comes to the concept of kings or kingship, what images most immediately come to mind for us? Fairy tales? Absolute power? Abusive power? Royalty versus peasantry? Divine Rule? Or perhaps, based on our modern day living, do we think of figure heads of state and tabloid fodder – news about royal weddings and royal babies and an elderly queen’s way of waving to the masses, or the ruler of some fictitious monarchy in a Hallmark romantic comedy? Most modern day American concepts of kingship have nothing to do with the theology behind the creation of the Feast of Christ the King. But then most of human history and humanity’s concepts of kingship have nothing to do with the feast day either.

Our Gospel lesson for today opens with Jesus hanging on a Roman cross with a hastily scrawled sarcastic placard nailed above his head – mockingly calling him “The King of the Jews.” This is Pilate’s comment about anyone who might challenge the kingship of the emperor. We’ve come nearly to the end of the story since we proclaimed Jesus’ advent a year ago next Sunday. We’ve come to what the world expected was the end of the story. Jesus has been betrayed by a friend, abandoned by his followers, indicted by political and religious corruption, beaten and bloodied, and nailed to the only throne he will know this side of eternity. The people taunt him: leaders – soldiers – onlookers – even one of the criminals hanging nearby. “If you are the Son of God, save yourself! If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself and us!”[2]

Theologian Jim Douglass, author of The Nonviolent Coming of God, writes: “An executed messiah. A powerless king. What kind of a king winds up on a cross at the place called The Skull?”[3] Douglass makes us think, how could someone who is supposed to be the Son of God – the Incarnate Ruler of the Universe – how could Jesus allow himself to come to such a scandalous end? Where were the legions of angels – the flaming swords – the cleansing fires of heaven? How could this happen in the presence of omnipotence? “He saved others; let him save himself!”[4]

Douglass tells us, “Whether it’s the first or the [21^st] century, redemptive violence is the ruling myth. The messiah or superhero in this myth saves himself and us from death at the hands of evil enemies. The means of redemption from evil,” writes Douglass, “is killing, massively if necessary. How does a king with no army who dies on a cross fit into our myth,” he asks? “It doesn’t.[5]”

“The king on the cross, the gospel tells us, is the only one who can save us from the myth of redemptive violence. Jesus saves us,” reminds Douglass, “from the willful illusion that we will be freed from evil by killing our enemies. [Jesus] leads us into the opposite end of killing: suffering and dying, which are the body of nonviolence; love and forgiveness of enemies, which are its soul. The messiah can’t kill evil. But by dying to evil [Jesus] can transform it through love.”[6]

In his book, The Bible Makes Sense, Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “The church is always on the brink of forgetting who it is.”[7] We are children of God – sisters and brothers of Christ – heirs to both Christ’s suffering and Christ’s glory! But, “we live in a society where we nearly have forgotten what humanness is about.”[8] We live in a world that seemingly embraces a form of humanness that creates isolation and alienation, that creates disputes between the haves and the have-nots, that creates civil strife and death, that creates harsh and uncivilized partisan bickering – a form of Darwinian humanness that seems to hold fast to Douglass’ myth of redemptive violence. Brueggemann writes of a different vision the Scriptures hold for humanity.

“The Bible,” he writes, “holds for us an invitation into [a different experience of] humanness…. We need not always be securing ourselves at the expense of others. We need not [always] regard ourselves as the last defense of what is right.”[9] So. What do we do with this subversive king – this Jesus, who speaks words of forgiveness and inclusion even from the bloody throne of the cross? What do we do with a king who says, “If you seek worldly power and influence, look elsewhere?”[10] What do we do with a king who says, “My kingdom is not from this world,”[11] but whose life and death makes this world a part of his kingdom – his community or communion of heaven?

We are a people invited to become Holy Partners with our God. That is a gifted understanding of God shared by our Jewish sisters and brothers. We are Holy Partners in a heavenly calling – and this Sunday we are invited to consider the wonder of that calling. Imagine that – the king of heaven calling us to be partners in creation.

So where do we start? Perhaps we begin by remembering who we are. Women and men, children and youth – each created in the image and likeness of God – each called to recognize that image in everyone. Perhaps we start by choosing to live our lives as if the one who reigns in this world is not Pilate or Caesar, Prime Minister or President, CEO or Corporate Board, but God. Perhaps we start by reminding the world that the myth of redemptive violence doesn’t fit the life and teachings of Jesus.

Perhaps we start by demanding our religious, political, economic and social structures abandon the illusion that we must vilify one another when we disagree. Perhaps we start by standing up for the gospel-oriented resolutions passed at Diocesan Convention this weekend: safe and affordable housing for all people, finding ways to advocate on behalf of fellow human beings living with mental illness, and finding ways to support pre-trial release and bail bond reform in a legal system that unjustly penalizes the poor.

We are one people – certainly divided and broken – but we are one people living on this fragile earth, our island home. And we will never find the kind of peace that is the Dream of God by seeking for it in the halls of power, at the business end of a gun, or by exercising painfully efficient economic frugality. The only peace that comes through the myth of redemptive violence – be it military, political, or economic in nature – the only peace that comes through the myth of redemptive violence is the silence of the grave. For those who live by the sword will surely die by the sword as well.[12]

Rather, we are called to live by the words of Jesus from another “Christ the King” Sunday’s lesson: “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me…. Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of those treated as the least who are members of my family, you did it to me.”[13]

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[1] Carey G. Mack, quoted in Synthesis Online

[2] Luke 22:39, paraphrased

[3] Jim Douglass, Preaching the Word, Sojourners Online

[4] Matthew 23:35

[5] Jim Douglass

[6] Jim Douglass

[7] Walter Brueggemann, The Bible Makes Sense, 83

[8] Ibid, 89

[9] Ibid, 89 (emphasis mine)

[10] Michaela Bruzzese, Preaching the Word, Sojourners Online

[11] John 18:36

[12] Matthew 26:52, paraphrased

[13] Matthew 25:35-36, 40, paraphrased