Christ the King is a Political Statement
Thoughts on last Sunday's lectionary. The first rant ...
Last Sunday was the end of the liturgical year, the last Sunday before Advent starts the cycle all over again. In the Episcopal (and other traditions) it’s called The Feast of Christ the King.
The gospel for Sunday was John 18:33-37, Jesus before Pilate. Outside, the mob is screaming for crucifixion, inside, Pontius Pilate—the Roman governor—and Jesus are having a private conversation. “Are you King of the Jews?” Pilate asks. Jesus, who clearly does not care that his life hangs on his reply, sasses back: “Did you ask this on your own, or did others say this about me?” Pilate is like, “Your own people handed you over. This isn’t my idea of a fun day in Jerusalem. What have you done?” Jesus says, “My kingdom is not from this world. If it were, my followers would fight…” but Jesus’ way is not the way of armed conflict. Pilate, still confused, asks, “So you are a king?” Jesus says, “You say that I am a king, for this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth…” and the lectionary leaves out Pilate’s kicker… “What is truth?” And then Pilate caves to the demands of the mob and sends Jesus to the cross. That’s what real world power looks like. It sees goodness and godliness, and its first impulse is to crush it.
Jesus says his kingdom is not from this world. He’s right. His kingdom is one of forgiveness, love, nonviolent resistance, equality, justice, and yes … truth. There is nothing about this world and its political systems and structures, from the Roman Empire down to today that is anything about forgiveness, love, nonviolent resistance, equality, justice, and truth. Political systems exist to concentrate and exert power over people, to systematize trade, to protect arbitrary borders, to enable those who can work the system to build wealth, power and influence, and to keep sufficient peace that the wheels of production and procreation can grind along.
Jesus, the Jesus of the gospels, is not that kind of king. But Jesus, the Jesus of Christendom, has been lifted up as just that kind of king for 2,000 years. The scary judge, the vengeful god, the mighty backer of — well, pick your political system. The Roman Empire? The Holy Roman Empire? The British Empire? The American Empire? That’s the King Jesus of established Christendom.
Even the establishment of Christ the King Sunday was a political maneuver. Pope Pius IX added it to the Roman Catholic calendar in 1925. On one hand, he was reacting to a growing secularism in the Western world, and he hoped to turn the minds of the faithful back to Christ. But on the other hand, that Pope was embroiled in a political battle with the Italian King, Victor Emmanuel II, over who should rule Rome and the Papal States — the Italian government, or the Church. In 1870, the Italian army invaded Rome, the Pope’s army (should followers of the Prince of Peace even HAVE AN ARMY???) surrendered, and years followed where the Italian government held Rome, even as the popes refused to acknowledge the Italian’s governance. None of this was settled until the Lateran Treaty of 1929, when the Pope finally yielded everything but Vatican City, which is a small nation within a nation—the smallest nation state in the world—ruled by the Pope as a temporal, political figure.
Ever since the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 CE, rulers and potentates have tried to make Christ the King of their particular political fiefdom. All the way up to the current Christian Nationalists, who wrap Jesus in the American flag and try to justify their political ambitions in the name of their faith.
But Jesus is not that kind of king. His kingdom is not from here. It doesn’t work like our kingdoms and republics and nations work. It runs on radical, self-giving love that does not count the cost. It does not count the cost because it insists that in the end, love wins, peace wins, justice wins, and those are inexorable forces that will eventually conquer all the hate, violence, and injustice that we see in our current political systems.
Jesus is a king. He’s the king of peace. He’s the king of love. He’s the king of the first shall be last and the last shall be first. He’s the king of the widows and orphans and strangers in the land. He’s the king of prostitutes, tax collectors, and Samaritans.
If we proclaim Christ the King on any given Sunday, including the special feast day set aside for that, then we are making a political statement. We proclaim a crucified king who dies for love of the world. And we proclaim the truth of everything he died for, in direct opposition to all the things this world would have us pledge our allegiance to.
Most importantly, to say Christ is King, is to say that any number of other figures are NOT king. The first Christians said it in defiance: “Christ is Lord and Caesar is not.” The Confessing Church in Germany in World War II said, “Christ is King and Hitler is not.”
If we want to say that phrase, “Christ is King,” today, it requires political behavior from us. It requires us to adhere to Jesus’s way, not the world’s way.
We might say:
Christ is King, and Donald Trump is not. Joe Biden is not, either. Neither is Vladmir Putin or Xi Jinping.
Christ is King, and Elon Musk is not. Jeff Bezos is not. Michael Bloomberg is not. Rupert Murdoch is not. Phil Knight is not. Jerry Jones is not. Taylor Swift is not. No billionaire is king, no matter how much power and influence they may wield.
Christ is King, and basically the way anyone named above—and all their ilk—would have us live is contrary to the way Christ would have us live.
To say Christ is King is to live in a state of perpetual resistance to the way things are now, to not accept them as truth, to not pledge allegiance to them, to not cave to their ways.
It’s not actually nice or easy to say that Christ is King and live like it’s true. But it is the truth, the true way human beings are to live with one another. We just keep on choosing the other ways, the ways of wealth and power and dominance, day after day.
So what might change for each of us if we lived like it was true, that Christ is King?
I just think everything would look very, very different from how things are now. And I think we chicken out of trying to inhabit that reality. And I think we cave to the status quo over and over again.
I wonder how it could be different…