Last Pentecost, Christ the King, Year B 2024

When I was a curate, my rector had written prayers of the people for the entire three year lectionary cycle. Therefore, we didn’t use one of the forms in the Book of Common Prayer - which is actually what is being encouraged today in Episcopal seminaries. If you look at the prayers of the people on page 383, there is a list of six things you must offer prayers for, but then it says, “any of the forms which follow may be used” - “may” being the key word which means we can use the forms, but we don’t have to. On the Last Sunday after Pentecost, or Christ the King, during that curacy one year, I was preaching. And I laid in to the whole concept of Christ the King. I talked about how we had a shepherd yet demanded a king and we continue to insist on giving Christ a title he didn't claim for himself. And then we made it to the prayers of the people, written by my boss…where every single petition began with and was addressed to “Christ the King”.

And I stand by what I said. We sometimes focus so much on trying to make God into something we understand that in all of our analogizing, metaphorizing, giving Jesus human titles like “King”, that what we end up doing is making God like us instead of making us like God. But the juxtaposition of and tension between my dunking on the use of Christ the King and his praying to Christ the King is a space that the church is uniquely prepared to occupy. It was almost like we planned the two seemingly conflicting messages with the Nicene Creed between them.

In the psalms, it isn’t difficult to find the statement, “The LORD is King”. LORD is a tricky translation for Yahweh, the personal name for Israel’s god. In the Jewish tradition, Yahweh is not to be spoken aloud, which led us to the use of all caps: LORD. When you see LORD in all caps, what is written in Hebrew is Yahweh. So in Psalm 93, where it states “The LORD is King”, what it actually reads is “Yahweh is King”. The psalmist is naming his God and making a statement about the reigning authority of that God. We hear about other gods, particularly in the Old Testament. Using the personal name of the LORD and stating that the LORD is King is a different assertion in the polytheistic world in which the psalms were written than it is today. The psalmist isn’t just saying “the one God of a monotheistic society is actually the King, having power over all Kings of the earth”. He’s saying “this particular God is not just in charge of the earth, but is in charge of allll of the other nations’ gods as well.” So the “battles” between who we think of as God and those other gods, oftentimes Baal, isn’t describing a battle between God and Baal, but between Yahweh and Baal. God v Baal wouldn’t have made sense during that era because Baal is also a god in their eyes. But over the centuries, when reading scripture aloud, as a sign of respect, Jews wouldn’t say the personal name, Yahweh, but instead replaced it with “adonai”, meaning LORD but in a different way than “adon”, which means Lord in the way you or I might think of a Lord -  who might be a human Lord. That led to English translators making the choice to use the all caps LORD in place of the personal name of God that was not spoken aloud.

All of these practices and word choices put the psalmist in an odd place. Because during the writing of the Psalms Israel has a king. Although many of the psalms are attributed to Israel’s king David, this particular psalm holds a particular place in Israel’s psalmody. It belongs to a group of psalms that have been called “enthronement psalms” because they may have been used on festival occasions when God was declared to be king. “The LORD is king”, or “the LORD has become king”, depending on the translation, is to be understood as a declaration of the LORD’s enduring kingship, or in the enthronement case, as the declaration that at a particular moment in the festival celebration the LORD’s enthronement is formally declared. The psalm assumes that the LORD’s rule as sovereign is from eternity, but it is also possible that at one of the annual festivals, the purpose is to proclaim the LORD’s victory over the forces of chaos and disorder that was celebrated by the people in a ritual and hymnic act of enthronement declaring the LORD’s rule anew.

All of this is easier to understand and process when you, as ancient Israel, have a human king who has been anointed by a prophet, or when you lived in a time when the divine right of kings was the most widely held theology. From here, it’s not a huge jump to get from the king who the LORD has set before you and the LORD himself. But through thousands of years of seeing the untoward behavior of kings has made declaring kingship of anyone more difficult. The behavior of Christendom with those acting in defense of governments which were ostensibly Christian adds to the discomfort of Christ the King.

If we are going to claim Christ as our king, it means Christ is our king and we are Christ's  subjects, not that we get to claim the kingly power for ourselves. We often find ourselves claiming the power of Christ with less and less of the responsibility until we are left with all of the benefits and none of the costs. What we are left with is what theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call “cheap grace”. In his (translated) words, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs (us our) life, and it is grace because it gives (us) the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.”

Christ the King can be a helpful metaphor. It can remind us both of our responsibility in the world and also give us the freedom of not being in control. But we must be careful to not  let the metaphor get away from us. We can’t use “God is in control” as a get out of jail free card. Plus, when you’re really struggling, hearing “God is in control” can feel condescending. Sure, everything will work out at the End, but that doesn’t pay the bills. In a similar vein, people love the Martin Luther King quote that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. And they often forget that King said that in the context of working toward that justice himself. It’s not a “sit back, things will work out”, it’s a “keep working, things will work out”. So instead of merely saying “God is in control”, we are called to live like God is in control. Like we serve Christ the King and fully embrace the responsibility alongside the benefits of his sacrifice. Amen.