Today is the last Sunday before Advent, it’s the end of the church year, and it has come to be known in the church calendar as “Christ the King” Sunday. Now it may seem odd to us to refer to Jesus as a King—we’re used to speaking of him as our Savior, as the Son of God, even as our Lord, but the word King seems strange when applied to him, maybe because for many of us it conjures images of castles and swords and princesses—hardly the sort of thing you typically apply to Jesus.
But in fact calling Jesus a King isn’t as strange as it might appear. Here’s what I mean: Take the word Christ. You might not realize it, but Christ is a title, not a name. It means “anointed one.” And in the Bible, if someone is anointed, they have oil put on their head and they’re set apart for a special role. In the Old Testament, people were anointed as prophets, people were anointed to function as priests, and people were anointed to function as kings. Jesus Christ means Jesus the anointed one, and implied in that title is the idea of kingship. Some recent Bible translations even say “King Jesus” instead of “Jesus Christ” to drive home this idea.
The logical question is: If Jesus is a king, what kind of king is he? What kind of kingdom does he rule over? And that brings us right to the heart of the New Testament, and right to the heart of the gospel. So that’s going to be my focus this morning.
As an entryway into this topic, let me tell you a story that has always stuck with me. It was told by the author and theologian Frederick Buechner in one of his wonderful memoirs. Buechner tells of the time that he first began going to church. He was a young man, living in New York City for the first time. On the block where he lived, there was a Presbyterian church that was led by a pastor named George Buttrick. In those days Buttrick had a reputation as one of the most eloquent preachers of his day, but it wasn’t just Buttrick’s eloquence that kept Buechner coming back. It was the fact that Buttrick’s sermons spoke to him on such a deep level.
One Sunday, Buttrick preached a sermon that changed Frederick Buechner’s life. It was in 1953, shortly after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. This particular Sunday, Buttrick was preaching on Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. He was contrasting Elizabeth’s coronation with the coronation of Jesus that happens in the heart of a believer.
Somewhere in the middle of his sermon, Buttrick said this: “Jesus Christ refused the crown that Satan offered him in the wilderness, but he is king nonetheless because again and again he is crowned in the heart of the people who believe in him. And that inward coronation takes place among confession and tears and great laughter.” Confession and tears and great laughter.
For Buechner, it was the phrase “great laughter” that changed his life. Even late in life he still didn’t know why those words affected him so deeply, but he described that sermon as a moment when “the Great Wall of China crumbled and Atlantis rose up out of the sea, and on Madison Avenue at 73rd Street, tears leapt from my eyes as though I had been struck across the face.” It would seem that Frederick Buechner had a conversion of sorts that day, and that day he began to understand something of what it meant for Jesus to be King.
With Buttrick’s words and Buechner’s experience in our mind, I want to go to our Gospel text this morning. The text is from the 23rd chapter of Luke’s Gospel, and it’s a very somber text because it immerses us suddenly in the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion. Usually, we read this on Good Friday, but I think we’re wise to read it today because it shows us very clearly what kind of king Jesus is, and it shows us how we ought to respond to Jesus and his kingdom. With all of that in mind, let’s walk through the text.
As our text opens, Jesus is brought to a hill called “the Skull.” He’s been condemned as a criminal and he’s here to be executed. And so the soldiers perform their ugly duty—they nail his hands and his feet to a wooden cross, and they raise that cross high for all to see.
Jesus isn’t the only one being executed today. There is a criminal on his left and a criminal on his right. Watching this horrific scene is a crowd of people, and a group of soldiers assigned to keep watch until all three are dead. The story largely centers on the responses all these people have to Jesus’ kingship.
But the first word comes from Jesus. As he dies slowly and painfully, he utters these shocking words: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Notice here that no one—and I mean no one—asked to be forgiven. No one even appears to believe they’ve have done anything wrong. But nonetheless Jesus takes the initiative and asks God to not hold their sins against them. And the words are all the more shocking when we’re told that while Jesus says this, people are gambling over the clothes they stole from him.
And so the crowd of people speaks first. With a sneer they say: “He saved others, let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”
And then the soldiers say something similar as they mock him and offer him vinegar to drink: “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”
And at this point in the narrative, we’re told that there is a written notice above Jesus’ broken body. The notice says: “This is the King of the Jews.” No doubt, the notice was meant to mock Jesus, but whoever put it there didn’t realize how true it was.
And so one of the criminals beside Jesus joins in with the crowd and the soldiers. He says: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
Let’s stop here for a minute. Notice that the comments from the crowd, the soldiers, and the criminal are much the same: If Jesus was really King, he would unleash his power and defeat his enemies. How would he do that? Through retaliation, through violence, through might, through vengeance.
Why do they all assume this? Because that is what kings do. They assert their power and they defeat their enemies. If you can’t do something as basic as that, it makes no sense for people to call you a king. You see, the world they live in is a world in which the most powerful person wins and the weakest person loses. Those are the rules of their kingdom.
But the other criminal has a very different view of Jesus. Where the others see only failure and defeat, he sees something else. He starts by scolding the other criminal, saying, “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
And then he turns to Jesus and says something truly remarkable: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Did you catch that? The second criminal is asking to be a part of Jesus’ kingdom, which means he recognizes something that others can’t see; he recognizes that a true king is dying on a cross beside him. He recognizes that the written notice above Jesus—this is the King of the Jews—is an accurate statement of who he is.
And then our text ends with Jesus, minutes from death, saying to the second criminal: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
We have a story about two very different reactions to Jesus’ kingship. The crowd, soldiers, and criminals look at Jesus and see only pathetic failure and crushing defeat. And we can certainly understand that judgment—after all, there are few things more shameful and wretched as a public execution.
But the second criminal—and he alone—sees a King. And so my question is: How was he able to recognize this about Jesus? What did he see that others didn’t?
I think the second criminal saw something beautiful within this horrific scene: He saw a man who loved his torturers more than his own life. He saw a man suffering the worst but forgiving unconditionally. He saw a king, but a king unlike any he’d ever seen before. He saw a king who ruled a kingdom of unconditional love. And I think he probably realized that no kingdom on earth could topple that. It was a kingdom rooted and sustained by the powerful love of God.
At that moment this criminal crowned Jesus in his heart (to use the words of George Buttrick). He surrendered his will to Jesus the King, and he recognized that here was life. I’m sure it was as if the scales fell from his eyes, and he realized that this dying man had the life-giving power of God.
And so because he saw the truth about King Jesus, he receives a personal invitation to everlasting life. And he gets this invitation not because he deserves it, but simply because he wants it. He gets Jesus not because he deserves Jesus, but because he wants Jesus. See, the truth of the gospel is that anyone who wants eternal life will get it, anyone who wants forgiveness will get forgiveness, anyone who wants God will get God. One of my favorite writers puts it this way: “God will let anyone into heaven who can stand it.” In other words, if you have no interest in the kingdom now, you certainly won’t have any interest in the kingdom come.
Think for a moment about the crowd, the soldiers, and the first criminal. It’s clear that they don’t want a God whose shows his power in weakness. They don’t want a God who would rather love enemies than destroy them. They want something else, a different God, a different king, a different kingdom. There are people today who feel this way too.
God will try to convince them otherwise, but if they insist on crowning someone other than Jesus as king, God will allow them to make that decision. C.S. Lewis put this best: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ … No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find.”
My call to you this morning is to take a second look at Jesus. It doesn’t matter how frequent your church attendance is, or how religious you consider yourself, or how good or bad a Christian you think you are. Just ask yourself: Is this a King who I think I can serve? Is this the kind of kingdom I can get on board with? God really, truly gives us that choice, and he will honor the decision we make. If we want Jesus, we will get Jesus; if we don’t, we won’t.
But if we say yes to King Jesus—if we crown him in our hearts, in confession, tears, and—yes, even in great laughter—we will discover the life we’ve always wanted. We were created to be in relationship to God, and Jesus knows how to get us there. It really is that simple.
Crown him King and trust him. He will not fail you.
