Christ the King

I believe Christ is less interested in his kingship and more interested in our kinship.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. Today is the last day of the lectionary year as Advent starts a new Lectionary Year, the series of readings selected for each Sunday. Today is the day where we Christians declare yet again that Christ is our King. Our Lord and Savior.

These are loaded, political terms.

Lord and Savior only applied to one person in the ancient world: Caesar. Caesar was lord, saving the world through Roman rule. Caesar was king of the whole world. The early church was put to death by declaring Jesus was king and Caesar was not.

This is an important statement. It tells where our ultimate loyalties are. It is not with the halls of power. Not with one political party or another. It’s with Jesus.

Jesus is standing in front of Pilate. Pilate doesn’t know what to do with him. Pilate has an entirely different worldview than Jesus. Pilate is about peace at the end of a sword. Pilate understands kings who control through violence; quell the masses, divide and conquer. That is the way of the world. You’ve got to break a few eggs if you want to make an omelet you know. What’s a few dozen lives and the oppression of entire nations of people for the comfort and personal security you can feel from it?

Jesus is not interested in comfort or personal security. His kingship looks very different from how Pilate thinks of it. Jesus is about kinship. Working with the poor, the oppressed. Healing the sick. Welcoming in the outcast. Humanizing people against stereotypes and the prejudicial thinking that dehumanizes people.

Jesus sees the other. Jesus spends time with the unwanted. Kings hang around with only the important people but the King of Kings hangs around with the unimportant.

Father Greg Boyle is a wonderful example of this. He is a Jesuit priest assigned to the hotbed of gang activity in south central Los Angeles. He works with gang members. He works to rehabilitate them and to re-humanize them to others. He tells the story of one of the homies, Mario, who was petrified at his first speaking engagement. Mario was one of the most heavily tattooed homies Father Boyle ever worked with but he was also the most gentle.

When a woman at that program asked what wisdom he imparted to his children, Mario expressed the hope they would not be like him. With all the bad things he had done, his wish was that his children would be nothing like him.

The woman who asked the question countered with, “You are loving, kind, gentle and wise. I hope your kids turn out to be like you.”

A thousand strangers clapped for a long time, and Mario held his face in his hands and wept.

Boyle talks about the kinship that descended upon that room “A room of strangers had returned Mario to himself, and they were returned to themselves.”³

Listen… we understand kingship easily. It’s taxes and war and red tape. It’s political talking heads and talking points and yelling out opinions on social media. That we understand all too well.

What we don’t understand is kinship. And that is what Christ means when he says, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

Kings are rich in stuff. All the gold and material things. They live in big castles or white houses. They command armies. We can point to all the stuff that makes up a kingship. But have you every had to be a reference for someone you loved? Have you ever had to write a eulogy of someone your soul was bonded to? That’s the unseen, intangible realm of kinship.

I once had to write a reference for a beloved friend of mine, Jon. Words completely failed me. I told the story of how we met. Jon asked what my sense of call was as a pastor.

Being young and brash, I stated, “I came to counter the evangelical message. I am called to dismantle the Christian Right. I had bad experiences on that side, starting in college with Campus Crusade and continuing. Tell me about your call.”

Jon stated, “I am UCC but found a home in evangelical circles starting with Campus Crusade.”

God is funny like that. I wanted to go to war, I wanted to rule. I was about to mistake my ordination for a coronation. God sent Jon to remind me that I am a humble servant. And God provided a guide in Jon. Someone who starts from a vastly different starting place than I do, but we always manage to land in a similar place. We shouldn’t work well together, but we do.

I credit Jon with keeping our friendship going as he asks great questions. He doesn’t stop at the initial words, he waits. He has the ability to withhold his judgment and look beyond the words to a deeper meaning.

That’s a very Christlike thing to do. Pilate can’t do it. He’s busy listening to see if Jesus will announce that he is a king or not. Jesus says, “It’s you who said it. I’ve only been telling the truth and y’all arrested me and are trying to kill me for it but you haven’t heard it yet.”

That truth is what Mother Teresa stated when she diagnosed what was wrong with the world: we have forgotten that we belong to one another. Or as Greg Boyle states, “Kinship: not serving the other, but being one with the other. Jesus was not ‘a man for others’ he was one with them. There is a world of difference in that.”1 It’s easy to imagine ourselves as kings. Hard to see how connected we are. Yet Jesus is less interested in kingship and more interested in kinship.

My hope is that you endeavor to see how connected you are to others. My hope is that you feel your worth by telling someone else how much they mean to you. Write a thank you note to someone in your life. Send an email or text or post on their social media wall in the coming week. Take a break from this game of thrones that the would-be kings are playing. Instead, play another game. A game that focuses not on winning, but in bonding with someone else.

Talk in what the poet Hafiz calls “With That Moon Language”

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud;

Otherwise, someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one

Who lives with a full moon in each eye

That is always saying with that sweet moon language,

What every other eye in this world

Is dying

To hear.2

1 Greg Boyle. Tattoos on the Heart. Page 188.

2 Hafiz. The Gift. Translated by Daniel Ladinsky. Page 39.

³ Greg Boyle. Barking to the Choir: The power of radical kinship

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