Christ the King C

Luke 23: 33-43
Truly I tell you Today you will be with me in paradise. Today.

Today in the gospel Jesus speaks these words to a dying criminal. Today is a funny day for this gospel lesson. Right at the end of the church year, miles away from Easter and the story of the resurrection, today we hear about the crucifixion and today we hear promises of Christ with us. Today.

This is Christ the King Sunday and the criminal in the gospel today seems to be the only one in the whole lesson who really gets the type of king Christ is and the nature of his kingdom. Many people mocked Jesus as he was tried and then executed. One of the primary insults that they had for him was calling him "king" saying that people claimed that he was a king and yet he couldn't even save himself from a painful and humiliating death. He couldn't even get himself down from the cross. Now for the most part Jesus ignored this mocking.

But the criminal who is being executed along with Jesus, as he hangs, dying, sees that even in the midst of death on the cross Christ brings new life and so he asks Jesus to remember him in the kingdom. And Jesus responds, Today you will be with me in paradise, in the kingdom.

For this criminal hanging on a cross, with these words Jesus was surely king and Messiah and throughout his life of preaching and teaching there were other times that he was truly king, a new kind of king but a king.

This is kind of the way with the gospel, Christ is a king but in ways that we might not even notice at first, in unexpected ways because the kingdom is different than one we might picture.

But for a Judean man whose daughter died prematurely and was visited by such power and grace in Jesus that she walked again that same day Jesus was surely king and messiah, one sent by God to free humanity even from death.

For a group of outcasts, tax collectors and sinners, people who had jobs that made others shy away from them and kept them from even entering the temple, with whom Jesus ate and drank, shared fellowship, and love Jesus was surely king and messiah, one sent by God to unite the people and to share the gospel of love.

For a woman who was made by society to float from one man to another in order to find the most basic support for herself, whom Jesus turned to and treated with compassion and dignity Jesus was surely king and messiah sent by God to the oppressed, to the orphan and widow to bring living water and everlasting forgiveness.

This picture of a king, one who stoops down, one who knows the names of the nameless and the faces of the forgotten is not the king that we think of today when we envision power and strength, he is not the king that was thought of in his own day when people envisioned control and leadership bordering on the cruel and certainly with a conquering spirit.

Instead of this the King that we confess is the Prince of Peace and the Bearer of Grace whom we call the King of Glory.

So the last Sunday before Advent we have Christ the King Sunday. For many of us a lot of what we think about kings and kingdoms comes from works of fiction, I think of the greedy prince in the story of Robin Hood or the kindly royalty in Disney movies. Or I think of the monarchs of today, mostly figureheads with limited power. Certainly when I think of a kingdom it is limited to a certain space, part of what a kingdom is, afterall, is a piece of land.

This is disconnected from how we think of the kingdom of God, as a place transcending time and space, a place where the subjects are recipients of the great gifts of love and freedom and where we are served humbly by our Lord and King.

Martin Luther explained the difference in this way. He said: "Christs kingdom...[is] a kingdom of heaven and eternal life; a kingdom of truth and peace; a kingdom of joy, righteousness, safety, salvation, and all good. In this kingdom Christ, the King of glory...rules His Christians in faith through the Gospel and the Holy Spirit, amid sin, death, devil, world, and hell."

This is how we are meant to think of Christ our one and only King, as the king of joy, righteousness, safety and all things good. The kind of king who promises eternal salvation to a dying criminal, the type of king who heals sick children, the type of king who befriends the outcasts, the type of king who brings new life to those who feel their lives are over.

His kingdom calls to us, and pulls us out of ourselves and into the places that look most like Christ's kingdom, to the homes of the lonely and the halls of the lost. We learn from Jesus that his kingdom exists not to conquer but to free, not to tax but to provide. And our call as citizens of this kingdom is to hear the gospel as it speaks of these values, to organize our lives in ways that reflect the kingdom and, above all else through the gifts we have been given, to act, as Christ acts, with the love, grace and mercy that define our unique and everliving kingdom.

To call Christ king is to stand knowing that we are subjects in need of the great gifts that come through the kingdom of the Christ Child and to stand knowing that because our king is great and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in steadfast love for each of us we will receive both the energy to work in the kingdom and the peace of knowing that the kingdom has been given for us through love. Today.

This is Good News, Thanks be to God. Amen