THE KING OF IRONY
Luke 23:32-43
A Sermon by
University Presbyterian Church
Sunday of Christ the King November 25, 2007
Thanksgiving fell early in the calendar this year, and so today, instead of celebrating the First Sunday of Advent, as we so often do on the Sunday following Thanksgiving, we celebrate instead the Sunday of Christ the King. It is, in a sense, the “New Year’s Eve of the church’s calendar,”[1] because it is the last Sunday of the church’s year. So this day, when we are still feeling the repercussions of too much turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce, and perhaps beginning to turn our attention more toward Advent and Christmas, we pause for a moment to think about the Lordship of this One whose name we claim. Through the weeks ahead will once again be talking about the Advent of the one who will reign as King; today we ask ourselves, “what kind of king is Jesus anyway?”
And we answer that question with one of the most ironic and seemingly embarrassing stories we could possibly tell. It is the story of Jesus, the king, executed between two criminals. Think of the irony: the Lord of life, who suffers and dies, and not even in a very heroic fashion. He dies taunted by the crowds, who place a sign to mock his weakness: “This is the King of the Jews.” What kind of god is this? Barbara Brown Taylor says,
[Jesus] was a good man, but he was not such a good god, if being a god means being big and strong and out of reach. He was a suffering god, which no one had ever heard of before. He meant to transform the world by loving it, not by controlling it, and that made his life hell a lot of the time. Compared to the founders of other religions, he had a rough time of it. Buddha died at eighty, surrounded by his followers. Confucius died an old man, too, while he was putting together the ancient writings of the Chinese people. Muhammad died in the arms of his favorite wife while he was the ruler of
Perhaps it would have been more convincing had Jesus simply stepped off the cross to demonstrate the strength of his power. But Jesus chose to demonstrate the power of weakness and love by staying there, dying there… our king of irony. Maybe, as
But if he had been luckier, what would he have had to offer all those others who die too soon – abandoned – who suffer for things they did not do, who are punished for the capital offense of loving too much, without proper respect for the authorities? His hard luck makes him our best company when we run into our own. He knows. He has been there. There is nothing that hurts us that he does not know about.[3]
Like many rulers most kings are, by circumstance, remote from their people. They inhabit the seats of power above the din of marketplaces, removed from the demands that ordinary people face on ordinary days, separated by privilege and place. Jesus was no such king. He lived fully the same life as his people. He was a king who knew his people by name… and by heart… knew their trials and temptations, knew the deep hungers and pains and tragedies that stalked his people. He was, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” (53:3)
And in the end, this kind and passionate king would take upon himself the depth of human suffering. That is a claim we make every time we say together the Apostles’ Creed: “crucified, dead, buried, descended into hell.” Of course, not every congregation recites the creed that way. Some choose to leave out the somewhat enigmatic clause about Jesus’ descent into hell. Pastor and poet Barrie Shepherd remembered one such congregation in a poem he called “Amended Credo,” which he wrote a few weeks after the events of September 11th, 2001:
They miss it out at the island church
I worship in for the summer months.
Standing each week to recite the creed,
then catching me flat-footed,
[I say] “…descended into hell.”
They just press right on for Heaven
without even a backward glance,
while I – incurably Presbyterian –
slip it in anyway, then hurry to catch up.
Never missed it all that much until last month,
the Sunday after the
and we saw hell spread fiery across our screens.
“He descended into hell,” I said out loud,
because that’s precisely where he was
five days before, comforting his children,
cradling them in his arms, his deep-pierced hands,
and bearing them back home with him
to share his place at God’s right hand.[4]
That is how Jesus chooses to exercise his power, in the redemption of human pain and suffering, through his own willingness to become vulnerable and weak. It certainly is not power as the world knows it. We’ve seen power as the world knows it for centuries, and particularly on and after that September 11th. But that was not the kind of power Jesus claimed. In fact, Jesus chose to exercise not so much power, as authority. More than a few times across the years I’ve shared here the theologian Joseph Sittler’s description of the difference between the two in his remembrance of his grandparents:
Authority is a force continuous with the whole nature of the person...possessing it. My grandmother had authority; my grandfather had power. I remember what my grandmother said, because I wanted to do it. I have no remembrance of what my grandfather said, except that I had to do it.[5]
Jesus was a king who chose authority over power, a king who chose to know his people rather than enslave them, a king who would suffer for and with his people. He was not the kind of king the people had expected God to send them. Even the disciples had misunderstood. Two of them on the road had boldly asked Jesus to let them be stationed on his right and on his left when he entered into his glorious reign. Their request stood in ironic relief against the story we read a few moments ago, where on his right and his left two thieves hung on crosses at Jesus' death. Jesus was not the king anyone expected. Not the king anyone wanted.
[So] When Jesus was crucified, Luke tells us, almost everyone present found the situation absurd and laughable. They poked fun at him, they challenged him: “He saved others, let him save himself.” And to make sure that everyone got the joke they even nailed up a sign: “This is the King.”
Jesus was not the king. Or at least not the kind of king they had expected. Who knows what they had expected? Whatever it might have been, Jesus was not it. Not what they wanted. Or hoped for… When people are disappointed, no matter how unrealistic their expectations may be, people can turn angry, even violent. So the same voices that hailed him as king one day howled for his crucifixion later in the same week. The sign they erected was a monument to their frustrated hopes. “This is the King,” was his indictment. His offense, the unforgivable crime of disappointment. Jesus had refused to be who they wanted him to be.... So they crucified him on their expectations and hung up a sign announcing their disillusionment.[6]
I think my colleague
Only the One who will not save himself can truly save us. [What that means] we can not say exactly. We do not fully understand. The mystery overwhelms us. In the cross of Christ we see more than we can grasp. More grasps us in wonder than we have words to speak. What it all means we cannot guess. But we look at the sign over the cross, “This is the King,” and we think, at least, we get the joke. Yes, “This is the King,” whatever that means or might finally mean for us. “This is the King,” that much we can say, that much we can recognize, and with the other condemned criminal we ask only this: Jesus, remember me when you come into Your Kingdom. Jesus, remember me. Remember us. Remember all those who try to wrench some measure of salvation out of this world and fail, but who keep on trying to our own frustration and disillusionment. Remember us who [firmly] believe or half-believe or almost believe or want to believe that what the sign says is true. Remember us, O King, when You come into Your kingdom.[7]
[1]
[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, God in Pain: Teaching Sermons on Suffering,
[3]
[4] J. Barrie Shepherd, poem published on the cover of the Presbyterian Outlook,
[5] Joseph Sittler, Gravity and Grace, as cited in the Christian Century, August 13-20, 1986, p. 717.
[6]
[7] Willson.
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