Christ the King Sunday 2021

Daniel 7:9–14
Psalm 93
Revelation 1:4–8
John 18:33–37

The Utah day was sunny, not too warm. I was feeling well and enjoying it. I prayed my rosary as I walked, which I often did in my early twenties. Everything seemed right in the world. As I prayed, “The whole earth is filled with his glory,” my eyes fell on the dead, decomposing bird on the sidewalk in front of me.

The bird had been dead for a while—less a corpse and more a rotting carcass at this point. Ants were busy aiding the decomposition. There was a strange beauty to this scene of death, but this beauty was at the expense of life.

I stopped and wondered, how can we say the whole earth is filled with God’s/Jesus’ glory if there is death, destruction, harm, trauma?

It’s a question I still don’t have an answer to.

The final Sunday of the church year, the Sunday before we begin again with a new Advent of waiting and wondering, is called Christ the King Sunday. It’s a Sunday we celebrate Christ as Lord of all, as king of the cosmos, as the rightful ruler of this world.

But if Christ is king, why do so many things suck?

Why is there abuse, trauma, harm between people between the image barriers of God? Why is there sickness, pandemics, variants to COVID leading to more death? Why is so much so wrong if Jesus is king?

As he spoke to Pilate, Jesus said, “My kingdom is not from this world.” That statement has multitudes of implications, but it brings me little comfort. So, what if Jesus’ kingdom is in heaven, in the spiritual realm, I live here, on earth, walking on the ground with my head in the sky. I can’t escape this world for another.

But there has to be another way. There has to be something better, something we can do here and now to staunch the flow of hatred, evil, injustice, and oppression. There has to be something we can do when misinformation about a virus and a vaccine is literally killing people and keeping our nation in shambles. There has to be something we can do!

But what?

What can I do to stem the tide? What can I do when I can’t seem to even get myself in order? What can I do when I’m powerless in the face of a global threat, in the face of political corruption and lies, in the face of increasing pressure and oppression that I personally feel, in the face of racism and murder of POC in the streets, in the face of environmental calamity? What the hell am I supposed to do to fan into flame the reality that there is another way to live, to be?

All I know how to do is try to let Jesus break-in.

This I know, in the face of school shootings, political corruption, abuse, pandemics, and the rest of the harm that we live in, Jesus is dead set on breaking in. His kingdom isn’t rooted in this world; it’s not from this sphere of death and destruction. It’s not birthed by grabs for power and control.

Jesus is set on breaking all these chains and the systems the bind us. But his ways aren’t to smash with force and violence. His ways aren’t like we think they should be, a swooping superhero with laser eyes scattering enemies. Jesus’ way of breaking in is by offering us death and resurrection – baptism – with him. It’s by going down, emptying ourselves through loving others.

We are the way Jesus breaks into this God-forsaken world that is hidden in God’s heart. By enacting this other way of living, we stand as a prophetic witness and a signpost, testifying that the way things are isn’t how it’s supposed to be and pointing people to the way of love, the way to something better.

Jesus is king, but he’s unlike any king we could imagine. When we follow him, we are following our king into h grave and towards resurrection. But remember, for resurrection to happen, everything must die first. Our savior doesn’t come with angel armies; our savior comes as a baby king, vulnerable, dependent on the breast of a young, poor Jewish girl. And it’s from this baby born to die and live again that we learn the new way, the better way, the way of life.

He is the way, not to power, but to humility. Humility is the way out of this mess.