Christ the King
Christ the King with baptism of baby Jack
20th November 2022
Luke 23.33-43
This is the last Sunday of the Church’s year, when we reaffirm our faith in Christ as King – and reaffirm our commitment to Christ our King.
The Feast of Christ the King has an interesting history. It came into the Roman Catholic calendar in 1925 as a deliberate attempt by then Pope to counter the rise of fascism and dictatorship in Europe. The Church of England added it to our calendar in 1997 It is a powerful reminder in these times, with all the distress and conflict going on in the world right now, that over all earthly authority stands the authority and final judgement of Christ.
At the end of the church’s year we look to the end of the age, and the end of time. For to celebrate Christ as King is to be reminded that his kingdom is not of this world, that when we call him our King we are saying our ultimate loyalty is not to any earthly ruler, not to any state or ideology, but to a kingdom that we do not see, that surrounds us and calls us on from the future, from beyond the horizon of our knowing and believing.
Later in this service, I will trace the sign of the cross on Jack’s forehead with the words: Christ claims you for his own, receive the sign of his cross – claiming him, his whole life and his whole future for Christ the King. This symbolic action was done for all of us at baptism. If you have any farming experience you will recognise the action as in effect a branding: sheep and cattle are marked to show who is their owner – so that if they ever get lost, if they wander off and get sick, it is clear who they need to get back to, who they will get help from. In the ancient world, slaves as well as animals were branded, showing indelibly who they belonged to; and we know that soldiers in the Roman army were branded or tattooed with the letters SPQR to encourage their loyalty – and so that they were not able to escape. If you have seen the film Gladiator, with Russell Crowe, this explains that moment when having been forced to leave the army after a coup, he tries to cut out the tattoo from his upper arm before he is able to find work as a gladiator.
The sign of the cross in oil on baby Jack’s forehead is much less barbaric, but no less indelible. It shows who he belongs to, who will be the commanding officer in his life, to whom his ultimate loyalty in life belongs – and who holds out to him the promise of a kingdom that is unshakeable and eternal.
Luke’s account of the crucifixion of Jesus underlines for us the values of that kingdom which we claim for ourselves and for Jack today. The cross is the centre and heart of God’s redemptive work, the very place that he saves us. One of the thieves on either side of Jesus glimpses the kingdom and recognises the King. He asks Jesus to remember him. What an extraordinary moment of faith that is. There on the cross in the place of the skull, on the outside, extreme edge of human experience, in the greatest desolation and hopelessness, the thief turns to the crucified Jesus and says, ‘Remember me when you come into your kingdom’. And Jesus responds, ‘Today, you will be with me, in Paradise.’
Inside that little exchange of words, the thief’s request and Jesus’ promise lies the secret of the Kingship of Christ, the secret we celebrate today. Jesus is not some kind of cosmic superhero who simply dazzles us into obedience and worship. That is a pagan notion, and it goes along with grand ideas of empire and victory over others and all the self-worship of which human beings are capable.
The secret is that Jesus Christ is only at the very centre of things because he is also at the edge and the margins; that he is our universal King because he has experienced all the bitter rejection and hatred humanity can pour upon him; that he reigns for ever because he has drunk the cup of human suffering to the dregs.
There is a strange comfort in this for all of us as well as a challenge. The comfort is for when we feel our own lives are on the edge, in that place where there seems to be more hatred than love, more defeat than hope, more struggle than joy. That is the place where,
if we respond with faith, Christ is King, where we call on him to ‘remember us’ in his kingdom and he promises that he will be with us and he will save us.
And the challenge is as we look at our world and we are tempted as always to believe that power and might are the only operative forces that can ever achieve anything; that the quiet, the gentle, the patient and the penitent make no difference and win no victories.
This is not true. This is the lie under which we live. It is the voice of the world and the voice of temptation. We need to trust that Christ our King is still working on the edge of things, in the margins of existence, to complete God’s rescue mission to his world, and that in those places new relationships are being formed, new hopes being forged.
A new beginning, a new start, a new birth is about to take place for Jack in his Baptism. Next Sunday a New Year begins for us all, the Church’s New Year that is. So we are reminded of our own baptism and the promises that we made or that were made for us, and we wait with all those who longed in ages gone by, for the fulfilment of God’s promise. We look forward in hope and faith, saying Yes to all that shall be; saying Yes to Christ the King.