“WE HAVE NO KING BUT CAESAR!"1

Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1;11-20; Luke  23:33-43]

On this last Sunday of the liturgical year, worshipping Christians the world over mark this day as “Christ the King”.  In point of fact, this day’s celebration comes on the 100th anniversary of Pope Pius XI’s encyclical, through which this feast day was created.  Intended to crown the jubilee year of 1925, the purpose of this new feast was to honor the kingship – that is, the sovereignty, the centrality -- of Christ.  In particular, this day is meant to stand as a reminder to the faithful to recognize Christ’s centrality not only in our private, personal lives but just as importantly also in our public and political lives.

The period immediately after the First World War was a time of gathering darkness throughout Europe.  That world was being gripped by nationalist, secularist, anti-Semitic, and authoritarian-fascist dictators.  Pope Pius’s intent was to refocus the Church, the Body of Christ on Earth, to be icons – living reflections of God’s love and light in that threatening world.  As Christ’s disciples, followers of Jesus are to serve the world as Christ did: loving God and loving all people as neighbors – even to the extent of praying for and loving our enemies.  Being bearers of this Christ-like life, the calling of all the faithful is to embody a much needed alternative to the world’s operation and notion of life, which it seems always to express in terms of empire, control, and self-serving power.

As we celebrate “Christ the King”, it may strike us as odd to have the gospel lesson focus on the image of Christ-crucified.  In this, the world labels Jesus as a “Loser”.  Yet, tellingly, it was in Jesus’ rising that the cross was transformed from a symbol of empire’s threat to the triumphant proclamation that with God there is a power stronger than fear and death.

So, here we are.  We have moved through another year of following Jesus, of watching him and listening to him so that we might grow more and more into his example.  Yes, we once again enter into this worship rotation, but not to recycle ourselves in the Jesus-story as if it were some television rerun.  No, we re-enter this cycle of God’s story (familiar as it might be) in order to go deeper and deeper into God’s life of hope, liberating redemption, and life-changing mission.

“Christ the King”, coming at the end of the worshipping year as it does, confronts us with the essential “religious” issue, one you and I have noted many times before: namely, everyone is religious; the problem is what we worship, what we hold at the center.  On this 100th anniversary of the establishment of “Christ the King”, the lingering and direct question it holds is this: Is Christ the sovereign of our lives or not?

The context of those post-World War 1 years echo with haunting familiarity in our own times.  For we, too, live in a time of escalating imperial maneuvers and the rising of a politics of hate and fear.  When the “religious” question is raised about what functions as the standard for the emergence of such destructive politics and social policy, the clear (if only implicit) answer is “not God nor the God-life” but some version of a self-made, self-centered agenda, which means that those holding these manipulative agendas will say anything and do anything to keep themselves at the center and in power.  And this, I submit, is the reason that those who claim Jesus and who strive faithfully to follow him need to look to the cross for direction, if not for clarity.

As a “shepherd” who trembles at the Prophet Jeremiah’s indictment of my priestly guild, let me be blunt with you.  Not everyone who claims Jesus follows Jesus.  Again, the essential, all-inclusive statement about “everyone being religious” is the point of honest clarification, not simply on a national or world stage but also right here in our own St. Philip’s community. Not everyone who claims membership here accepts the responsibility of our baptismal partnership.

I am not being partisan or judgmental in this regard – just descriptive; but I am naming the “religion” that is so evident in this, our own social and political point in time.  And that “religion” is called “Christian Nationalism”.  It is the predominant “religious” energy that fuels many of our governmental leaders and other so-called “influencers” who shape our common life as a country and as a culture.

Again, here is my bluntness: Christian Nationalism is a prostitution of the gospel of Christ.  It uses Christianity’s facade to promote unashamedly various political, ethnocentric, and impious social and economic ventures.[2]  And this is precisely the reason those who truly strive to follow Jesus must look to the cross for guidance and a sense of what is really real.

For instance, Christian nationalism is impoverished because it seeks a kingdom with themselves at the center as a substitute for the cross of Christ.  Therefore, it pursues a victory without mercy.  Its sense of justice gets expressed as retribution and not as the hope for reunion and new life.  It acclaims God’s love of power rather than the power of God’s love.

Let me be blunt again and make my point about the cross as our life’s north star.  I do so with reference to something as visibly measurable as our participation in the Good Friday liturgy.  The attendance numbers here and in most places I know reflect that we fundamentally avoid that day because it is “too gloomy” (as a relative of mine has once said).

The unspoken truth in this assessment is that we desire to follow a “god” who will give us life’s good things without any need for us to be transformed into people who are willing and able to receive what God gives.  To bring this home, none of us is immune to the temptation of wanting a god who will “fix” things for us.  The result of falling carelessly into this temptation means having a god who is a superhero, who is on our side, to the extent that all that is required of this “religious” experience is to spike the football in the endzone and prance around.

History tells us that humanity always finds its “fixer”, the one who “alone” can make things all better for us.  History also tells us that such attempts to replace God and the call to the God-life only leads to enslavement, terror, and death.

There is a line from the “Confession of Sin” we have been using for a few years.  It says: “…we have opposed your will in our lives…”[3]  At these sobering words, I see a portion of my own life, and this confessed truth hits me squarely; and I wonder why – why would I oppose the will of the One who is Creator of all that is?  Why do I have the propensity to replace God with something more to my liking?

In this perplexity, I remember the words of Bev’s father, who would on occasion say: “When in doubt, read the instructions.”  What and where are the Author of Life’s instructions?  The answer is that they are embodied in Jesus, who (as St. Paul so majestically conveys to the Jesus-followers in the city of Colossae) “is the image of the invisible” ... [in whom] “the fulness of God was pleased to dwell.[4]

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”[5]  This is the reason that at Jesus’ trial before Pilate, when Pilate announced that he found no reason to execute Jesus, and decried: “Shall I crucify your king?” – this is the reason that the peoples’ leaders answered, “We have no king but Caesar.”[6]  On October 18th, six weeks ago, at the “No Kings Day” demonstrations that so many of us participated in, I’m not sure if very many of us who protested the usurpation of our national life’s integrity – I am not sure how many of us were thinking of the cross and this day’s declaration for Jesus as our Sovereign, as our Center, as our redeeming Lord: “Christ the King”, not just for our own souls’ sake but for the sake of the soul of our politics and our national life.

But on this last Sunday of Christian liturgical worship, “Christ the King” day does call us to remember the centrality of Christ’s cross and its demonstrated message that the crucifixion of Jesus publicly and eternally proclaims.  That message comes in many expressions, one of which is this:

Holy and gracious Father: In your infinite love you made us for yourself; and, when we have fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death you, in your mercy, sent Jesus Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all.[7]

The cross of Christ reminds us that we are made for God, and in this we are also made to share God’s life with one another.  In the cross of Christ, we have a life that fear and death cannot overcome.  No substitutes, just a constant and loving invitation to learn how to live in God’s unyielding, life-giving love.

Only God: The One beyond us; the One beside us; the One within us.  Amen.

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[1] John 19:15.

[2] N.T. Wright.

[3] Enriching our Worship: Supplemental Liturgical Materials , 1997.“Confession of Sin”, p. 19.

[4] Colossians 1:15, 19.

[5] Luke 23:

[6] John 19:15.

[7] Book of Common Prayer: Holy Communion; Prayer A, . 362.