Sermon Archive

Just when visions of roast turkey are arising happily in our heads and “holiday displays” are popping up startlingly in our stores—that’s right; only 33 shopping days remain!—just when the secular world is prompting us toward cheery thoughts and the jolly tales we associate with Thanksgiving and Christmas, just now we find the Christian lectionary directing our attention back to the Lenten season and its account of Jesus’s tortured execution on a cross. How “out of sync” these lessons somehow seem!

But there’s method to the lectionary’s “madness.” Over the past 51 Sundays, we have again relived the full cycle of Jesus’s promised coming, birth, baptism, ministry, death, resurrection, and ongoing presence in the life of the church, as recounted by Luke and John. And on this 52nd and final Sunday of the liturgical year, the one that’s called Reign of Christ Sunday, we are asked to proclaim clearly and climactically what role it is that the crucified and risen Christ plays in our lives. We are asked to proclaim that it is Christ who rules our lives, Christ who sets the standards for our everyday living.

So we are asked to join in proclaiming, with our First Lesson, from the Letter to the Colossians, that Jesus Christ, the beloved Son of God, bore our flesh, bore the cross, and bore our sins. Through a love for God and neighbor so humble as that, Jesus conquered death and established his reign, in which everyone can be reconciled to God, everyone can experience God’s justice, everyone can find peace.

But God forbid that our celebration of Christ’s sovereign reign should give rise in us to smug contentment rather than to humble servanthood. God forbid that we should be tempted in the name of Christ to lord it over others rather than to give ourselves over to the service of their well-being. God forbid that any such arrogance should accompany our profession of Christ’s sovereignty.

So lest anything like that happen, today’s Second Lesson, from the Gospel of Luke, reminds us of where it was that the sovereign reign of Christ was first published. The words “This is the King of the Jews” (Luke 23:38)—those words were first publicly proclaimed, heavy with purposeful irony, in the inscription that stood mounted above Jesus’s thorn-crowned head throughout his torturous execution at the hands of the superpower of his day, the Roman Empire. And this inscription proclaimed so much more truth than we can ever comprehend.

It was at this scene of crucifixion that Jesus called out on behalf of those putting him to death—indeed on behalf of all humankind—called out “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” (Luke 23:34) And in response to that plea from the cross by Jesus, God did forgive them then and does forgive us now.

And it was also at this scene of crucifixion that, of all people, one of the bandits being put to death recognized the truth of Jesus’s sovereignty and discerned that Jesus would in fact be assuming his reign not by coming down from the cross and saving himself, but by dying on the cross in fulfillment of his love for humankind. “Jesus,” this man called out, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus replied, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42–43)

Thanks be to God that on the day of Jesus’s crucifixion, through his intercession for us from the cross, we were delivered from the dominion of sin and death.

Thanks be to God that, through the graciousness Jesus showed to the penitent thief on that day of crucifixion, we, too, in our penitence have the certainty of being welcomed into the domain of love where the risen Christ reigns.

Now, where deity is concerned, humankind is constantly tempted to presume that God’s principal attribute is power. Consequently, humankind is constantly tempted to believe that followers of God should seek to govern God’s world through power, through supremacy and might. And of course it is the citizens and government of a superpower like the United States—in other words, it is exactly people like us—who are most continually and strongly tempted to act as instruments of God’s power.

But it is precisely Jesus’s death on a cross that teaches us that God’s principal way of relating to humankind is love and not power. It is precisely today’s gospel lesson that reminds us ever so poignantly that Christ’s reign is one of compassion, not one of brute force, that Christ’s reign is one of humility, not one of prideful assertion. Yes, Christ reigns as one who chose to submit to crucifixion—who chose to bring peace by absorbing violence rather than by retaliating with armed might. Christ reigns as one who chose to die in solidarity with the victims of power structures everywhere rather than to live in league with such power structures. So Scripture reminds us that the way in which we followers are to govern the world, the way in which we are to spread Christ’s reign on earth, the way in which we are to bring about increased peace is by taking up our own crosses and becoming instruments not of power but of Christ’s grace, of Christ’s love. (cf. Luke 9:23). This is the way we’ll best be able to spread the peace of Christ around our storm-tossed world.

Perhaps you know the ancient Christian legend called Quo Vadis? Maybe you know it, if from nowhere else, through its presence as a subplot in the 1951 Hollywood movie of that name starring Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr, with Peter Ustinov as the Roman emperor Nero and Finlay Currie as the apostle Peter. It’s one of the movies from my youth that I can remember vividly, and it’s now available in both VHS and DVD formats!

The year is 64 A.D. Nero is persecuting Christians and has falsely accused them of setting the fire that now envelops half the city of Rome. The apostle Peter has been teaching the way of Christ in that city, but is now fleeing the flames, traveling as fast as he can away from Rome down the Appian Way. Suddenly, he catches a vision of the risen Christ coming up that same road in the opposite direction, toward Rome. Peter calls out to this figure in Latin, “Quo vadis, Domine?” “Where are you going, Lord?” And Christ responds, “Into Rome, to be crucified again.” The implication is clear. Followers of Christ are not to flee from embodying the way of Christ in the city but are to remain steadfast in engaging the world through love, whatever its consequences. So Peter reverses his course and follows his sovereign back into the burning city, there to continue his witness of love, which witness, according to tradition, leads to Peter’s own death by crucifixion, upside-down. You see, the redemption of humankind and the bringing to earth of the offer of love and peace is something so important and so good that God considers it worth dying for.

And so it comes about that we contemporary followers of Christ are gathered here on Reign of Christ Sunday not to offer hero-worship to a glorious conqueror and commander-in-chief but to offer obedience to the crucified Son of God, to a sovereign who obeyed God’s commandment to love even unto his death on a cross.

To be obedient to the crucified Son of God is to be attentive to the suffering that exists in the world, and to identify with it, whatever the risks may be. To be obedient to the crucified Son of God is to work on behalf of a justice that embraces the poor and the oppressed; is to work on behalf of a peace that’s built on reconciliation and transformed hearts; is to work on behalf of a healing for our planet that restores the beauty and integrity of creation.

Last Good Friday, and then again this morning, we sang the hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” Its words date back to the year 1707, nearly 300 years ago, and were written by Isaac Watts, the person who’s known as “the father of English hymnody.” So brilliant a poet and literary critic as Matthew Arnold considered this hymn “the finest in the English language,” and on his deathbed Arnold struggled to sing its words through.

I ask you to listen once again to this much beloved text, which bespeaks so eloquently the themes of Reign of Christ Sunday. And I ask you to take special note of the last two lines. Listen!

When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of glory died,
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
save in the death of Christ, my God;
all the vain things that charm me most
I sacrifice them to His blood.
See, from His head, His hands, His feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

Thanks be to God that it is this “love so amazing, so divine” that crowns the cross of Christ and demands the allegiance of our souls, our lives, our all.

Let us pray: