The splintered throne
Today is not just the Sunday before thanksgiving, it is the last Sunday in the Christian year, which centers around the theme of Christ the King. This time of year gets to be very busy – for those who were in the board meeting this past week, you know the full schedule that December brings with it (and those who weren’t, will soon know). Add to that, all the busy things from our personal lives and its even worse. All that to say that after today, our minds turn to Advent and Christmas, when the Christian worship year begins again. So let’s pause for a few moment today, while we can still take a breath, and consider this day we call “Christ the king”. What does it mean for us as God’s children, and what is God’s good word to us this last Sunday before we journey anew to Bethlehem?
One of the prophetic scriptures that is read is today’s OT scripture in the lectionary, Jer. 23:5,which calls Jesus our “righteous branch”. In Col. 1:15, Paul calls Jesus the “firstborn of all creation.” The text we read from Luke towers over these lofty titles as it brings us back to our Lord’s crucifixion. No, I do not have my season mixed up. This text might seem out of place as we focus on Christ the king today – I kean, a king on a cross? It might seem out of place to read about Jesus crucifixion as we prepare to celebrate Jesus’ birth, but I don’t think it is. I think it paints the true nature of our King, lifts our hearts in thankfulness for what God has done for us.
This is a special scripture, because of the 4 gospel writers, only Luke records in detail the conversation that took place between our Lord and the two thieves who died with him that day on Calvary. Yes, here we find, as in the other gospels, the mocking crowd and the derision of the soldiers. But only Luke includes a verse where Jesus says, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” At that place of horrific human suffering where abandonment meets death, Jesus dies on a rough hewn cross beneath a darkened sky and above a murderous earth. This one who is the King of the Jews, the King of the universe, offers mercy in the midst of it all. And that is how this scripture, that we associate with lent and holy week, fits in here on Christ the king Sunday – the splintered throne.
It is here, on this splintered throne that our Lord, hoisted above the ground and pegged to a cross between two thieves, is enthroned as the forgiving King. Here, Jesus, if you please, holds court before the crowd of insulting bystanders and a corps fo profane soldiers. Here Jesus hangs on a splintered thrown, the instrument of his death, with two lost sons of God who stole and murdered their way to Calvary. Here Jesus dies not so much as King of the Jews, as the sign over his head said, but as Christ the king, full of love and mercy. So even though we spend a lot of time here at the splintered throne during Holy week, reflecting on the sacrifice God made for us, I want us to take a few moments to kind of look at things with new eyes, in a way we may not have before.
For one thing, look with me and see Christ the King as the giver of life in the midst of death. The sheet bloody horror of death by crucifixion cannot be imagined. Scholars tell us that to die on the cross, for most people, was to die from exposure, dehydration, and suffocation over the course of several days. The Romans, in a chilling definition of the word, perfected death by crucifixion. They used death on the cross as both a reminder to their friends and a warning to their enemies. So death by crucifixion was gory and cruel. At this place of suffering, even in the midst of his own suffering, Jesus chose to offer forgiveness and life in the midst of death. We who worship this One who gave his life for us would be wise to follow him by giving such gifts to others. If we think about it, we realize that all around us on a daily basis are expressions of death in some form or another. The violence that is all around us speaks for itself – people knocking out strangers for the fun of it, children killing their teachers, young people killing because they are bored, people who turn to gangs for a sense of belonging because they have no one else who seems to care, children lost in the system, people who are afraid to come out of their homes or let their kids play outside because of the violence surrounding them. These are things we can look at and see and know they are death producing. But then there are other things -things like racism that diminishes another’s humanity, indifference that ignores another’s identity, sarcasm that mars another’s self-worth, obscenity that profanes another’s intelligence, unacceptance that refuses to embrace another for who they are, all these conspire to inflict death of another sort. Unlike the things we mentioned earlier, these things may not physically end another persons life, but they kill something precious within that person that was fashioned by the hand of God.
When Jesus said, “Father forgive them” he meted out from that splintered throne the gift of life that he still offers everyone of us today. Anytime we speak of act in ways that lift the human spirit, that ennoble human dignity, and that value human worth, we honor Christ the King who died on the cross to show us that the way of forgiveness is the only way to authentic and everlasting life.
Then there were the two thieves; one on the left and one on the right of our Lord. Like Jesus, they have been convicted and sentenced by Roman justice. But unlike our Lord, who died innocent of the charges leveled against him, these two men were terrorists, murderers, and thieves. In his own words, one of the criminals said, “We are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Two words come to mind. The first is the word awareness. Though both of these criminals knew they would die on the cross, only one of them was aware of the King whose majesty graced their pathetic circumstances. No matter what awful or wonderful situations we may find ourselves in, deserved or undeserved, beautiful or ugly, hopeful or despairing, Christ the King is in our midst. Not until we come to an awareness of who we are and who he is can we possibly find mercy for our lives and hope for our future. We have to be aware of our need of God, admit our inability to fix ourselves or our situations, acknowledge God’s great love and mercy and his infinite ability to help and heal, to forgive and renew. It is our awareness, much like that of the criminal hanging on the cross with Jesus, of who we are and who God is that places us in the position to hear those life giving words from Jesus. Awareness.
The other word is hope, which we are going to be focusing on in detail next week. Fro today we just want to notice that though both thieves knew they would die that day, only one was aware enough to look beyond the stench of death to the hope of God’s future. Only one man had the courage to request, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” In that moment where murder and hope met, Jesus aid, “today you will be with me in paradise. Today, you will come to an awareness of the mercy and grace you cannot imagine and can never deserve. Today, you will find life beyond death and love beyond hatred. Christ our King brings hope in the midst of our despairing situations.
As we honor Christ the King on this day, I invite you to learn again with me that the only power God offers that changes lives and alters history is the power of forgiving love. No matter how insensitively another has treated you, or how cruelly you have treated yourself, see from this splintered throne the King who gives life in the midst of death and hope in the face of despair, and be thankful. As you journey through life’s difficulties and joys, live with an awareness that no matter what happens to you or to others, you can live with hope because of Christ our King, and as we live in hope, we are living in Christ’s kingdom.
As we enter this season of Advent, we are going to be offering a sermon series centered around this life-giving King of Glory, who came to us as a baby in a manger and
