Christ the King Sunday, so that’s what we’re about this week
John 18:33-37; Revelation 1:4b-8; Psalm 93; Daniel 7:9-10,13-14
There’s a lot of things going on today, most of which aren’t big deals outside of liturgical churches. Today is Christ the King Sunday – the day we celebrate the coming eternal reign of Christ that is at the same time going on now but not yet fully realized. It’s also the last Sunday in the church year, as next week we, in a way, come full circle and prepare again for Christ’s coming: both as a baby at Christmas and as King of kings and Lord of lords when he comes again in glory.
The Kingship of Christ has a whole lot of different aspects to it. For starters, Christ is King of all Creation, the supreme ruler of everything in the world. This is the kind of thing talked about in our lessons from Daniel and Revelation today. In Daniel, we have an excerpt from a vision Daneil had in “the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon”, likely around 580 BC. That’s just a random bit of Bible trivia for you today, but in Daniel’s vision he saw four large beasts, looking all different kinds of fierce, come up out of the sea.
Daniel was freaking out a little bit about these beasts, as one could understand. His dream/vision was turning out quite a bit like a nightmare. The fourth beast was the strongest of the group, and made all kinds of boasts and it conquered the other three beasts. As Daniel wasn’t quite sure what to do, he saw “the Ancient of Days” take his seat, and make a much more imposing entrance than the fourth beast. When the Ancient of Days appeared, which is just another way of referring to God, all four beats were thrown into a fire.
Then, standing before Daniel, was one like a son of man who was also given authority over all people and nations. Daniel wasn’t entirely sure what all this meant, and so like anyone would, he asked one of the people standing around him what was going on. Daniel then has the meaning of the vision explained to him, and the final message is “God Wins”.
The reading from Revelation today gives the same message as Daniel, only quite a bit shorter in the section we read. It’s message is the same as the whole book of Revelation, and really when you want to get down to it the whole Bible: “God Wins”. As kind of an aside, this section of Revelation is about as close to an explicit mention to God’s Triune nature as you get. “him who is, and who was, and who is to come” is God the Father; “the seven spirits before the throne” is the Holy Spirit – the seven is a number symbolizing the completeness of God’s spirit; and stated obviously, Jesus who is the Christ.
And so we know the end of the story. God wins, and rules over all of Creation unopposed by the powers of the Adversary. But what about right now? We can all easily see that the Adversary is still fighting the last skirmishes of a lost war, evil still is present and active in our world. This is part of where our Gospel lesson comes in. Jesus is in the midst of his trial before the crucifixion. And so Pilate, interestingly enough, asks Jesus a very good question: “Are you the king of the Jews?” Even more interestingly, Jesus tries to avoid answering. Eventually Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world… But now my kingdom is from another place.”
After this, the rest of the trial of Jesus would be ironic if not for the shamefulness of it. Jesus IS the King of the Jews, and yet his own people reject him and sentence him to death. Even the charge hung above his cross speaks the truth, “Iesus Nazarentus Rex Iudæorum” (Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews). The charge was written in three languages: Latin, the official language of the empire; Greek, the language of commerce; and Aramaic, the language of the people. There could be no disputing that Jesus was the King of the Jews.
The kingdom of God as it is revealed to us is not one of human strength, but of human weakness. The kingdom of God is seen in poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking, and persecution because of righteousness. Christ the King is revealed to us now not in the clouds or power, but in the shame and suffering of the cross. There will come a time Jesus is revealed in the clouds, and he assumes his rightful place as King of kings and Lord of lords, but that time hasn’t come yet.
And yet on the cross, God won. Colossians 2:13-15 reads: “When you were dead in your sins … God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” The cross was where God’s victory over sin, death, and the devil was decided.
That means anything else evil does is just fighting a losing battle, the last stragglers of a defeated force. God won, God wins, and God will win. That is truly the message of Christ the King Sunday. God won on the cross. God wins in our lives every day. And in the end, when Jesus returns and all sin death and evil are gone, God will reign forever and ever.