Fr. Kyle’s Sermon for the Feast of Christ the King

About twenty years ago or so, a megachurch pastor in the United States got it into his head that the Church needed to be more culturally relevant and seeker sensitive—two dangerous ideas. He observed that the language that we use in the Church is not always language that means the same thing to those who are on the outside as it does to those who are on the inside of the Church. There is a disconnect between the Church talks and the way that the world does. And he observed that many terms that possessed a wider and deeper range of meanings to the first generations of Christians have lost those meanings over time.

One word that this megachurch pastor singled out for particular scrutiny was the word pastor. It is a Latin word and it originally meant shepherd. For millennia, Christians have used the word for those who have a special responsibility in the Church to care for Christians. But over time, the word has lost many of the cultural resonances that it originally possessed. Now, when we hear the word, we don’t think about how Jesus told St. Peter—and thereby also the successors to the Apostles—to “feed my lambs.” We don’t think about the many and various ways that the leaders in the Church are supposed to relate to their people as a shepherd or how the people are supposed to relate to the leaders as sheep. Instead, we usually just think of the term as a professional title. The resonances of the word have been flattened.

Another wrinkle in all of this is the fact that, as the megachurch pastor pointed out, in the United States in the early twenty-first century, we live in what might be described as a post-agricultural society. Although there are still farmers and ranchers, the overwhelming majority of people do not have first- or even second-hand experience with livestock. Meat is what we get from the grocery store. Farm animals are what we read about in children’s books. Most of us do not have experience with caring for or raising animals, slaughtering or butchering them—much less with the ancient practices of shepherding.

So far, so good. The megachurch pastor was on to something. But the remedy that he recommended was that we should abandon the word pastor entirely and use a different term—one that is more culturally relevant and meaningful to people’s everyday experiences. And the term that he suggested we use is CEO. The pastor is the CEO of the Church. And Jesus is not the Good Shepherd, but the Great CEO.

The solution to this breakdown in shared language and experience is not to abandon the terms given to us by the Scriptures and by the Church. The solution is to teach people about sheep and to teach people about shepherds. The responsibility that we have is to receive what the Scriptures give to us and to hand it down faithfully.

On this Feast of Christ the King, we should pay attention to the fact that, like the word pastor, the word king is one that we do not have much everyday experience with. Kings are things we read about in children’s books—at best. But our relationship with it is even more complicated. It has been 250 years since a king ruled over the land that we call home. We do not believe in kingship. We do not like kings. There is a reason that a recent political protest movement took the name the “no kings movement.” There is a deep well of anti-monarchical sentiment at the bottom of the American political culture.

Perhaps we should abandon the word. The idea that Christ is King may be offensive to our friends and neighbors. Perhaps we could substitute another term—president or governor or something else? Maybe CEO?

But we do not have the freedom to do that. The Scriptures teach us that Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And the Church affirms this in her prayers and in her worship. The Feast that we celebrate today was instituted in the Churches of Western World in the years after World War I when the old royal institutions and monarchical forms of government were in already decline or already abandoned. In other words, the Feast of Christ the King was not instituted to remind people about something that they already knew. One message of this Feast is that the human institutions of monarchy may fail and they may decline, but the kingdom of Jesus Christ will persist forever—his kingdom will have no end.

In our moment when we have lost sight of the true meaning of kingship and we have so little experience living under the temporal reality of kingdoms, we need to turn to the Scriptures in order to have our imaginations shaped by the true character of Jesus’s royal office. We need to see what the Scriptures say about the meaning of Our Lord’s kingship.

And so, this morning we will give attention to three facets of his royal office—three characteristics or three ways in which he manifests himself as king. The first is in creation and his ordering of the world. The second is in redemption and his humble sacrifice of himself for the life of the world. And the third is in his governorship over history.

We ought to be begin where all things begin, in Genesis. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (1:1) Out of nothing, God creates everything by the Word. It is in and through Jesus Christ that all things come into existence. “All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:1-3). As St. Paul tells the Colossians, which is our Epistle reading for today, “All things were created by him, and for him” (1:15-17). The work of creation that God does in and through Jesus Christ is the work of calling new things into existence and of ordering and directing all things. We see in the creation account a pattern of separating (light from darkness, heavens from earth, land from sea) and filling with the living things. In Evening Prayer lately, we have been reading Ecclesiastes and we have been receiving the kingly wisdom of Solomon. He tells us about his experiences living his life to the full, seeking as much as he can to find satisfaction and pleasure in the things of his life. And he describes his work of planting gardens and making vineyards and ordering his estate. This is kingly work—this is the sort of royal work that God was doing in creation. As the psalmist says, “The Lord is king…he hath made the round world so sure that it cannot be moved…thy throne is established of old” (93:1-2). And as the Venite puts it, “For the LORD is a great God; and a great King above all gods. In his hand are all the corners of the earth; and the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it; and his hands prepared the dry land.”

Two things can be drawn from this. One is that we are already subject to the kingship of Christ and his rule and reign simply by existing. In fact, all things are. The second is that we participate in the Christ’s rule and reign over creation in particular when follow him and his patterns of caring for and stewarding creation; when we use and order creation in ways that fulfill and express their true meaning and purpose; and when we receive the things that he has given us with thanksgiving.

Second, Jesus exercises his kingship not only in creation but also in his redemption of creation. We see in Genesis a series of descending steps that humanity takes in the fall, in the murder of Abel, and in the tower of babel: each one of them moves further away from the things of God. Sin enters the world and, with it, corruption. But what does God do? He does not turn away from the world and abandon it. As the Church Fathers argue, it would not have been fitting for God to let the world that he created fall entirely into corruption and decay. This is the world that he made. It belongs to him. And he takes a kingly responsibility for it because, as the Wisdom of Solomon puts it, he “lovest all things that are, and abhorrest nothing” which he has made (11:24). He desires restoration. He wills that all men should be saved.

In the gospels, Jesus is the king who has returned to his realm to reclaim it. He does this not through force of arms and military might but by emptying himself and taking on the nature of a servant and by humbling himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. And it is by this act of humiliation that Jesus secures his kingdom and establishes his throne. To the kings of this earth, it didn’t appear that way at all. As St. Paul puts it, if the kings of this earth had known what they were doing, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. The Roman soldiers mocked him, putting a crown of thorns on his head, purple on his body, and a reed in his hand. They hailed him as King of the Jews. They thought this was all a mockery. But they were actually investing him with the symbols of his kingship—because as St. John’s gospel so wonderfully shows us, it is at the cross that Jesus is exalted.

And so, we are called to follow him in his kingly way by taking up our own crosses and following him. The pattern that Jesus establishes is obedience and suffering first, restoration and fulfillment second.

Finally, Jesus exercises his kingship as the governor or the lord of history. He providentially orders all things that happen in this life. Nothing happens in this world without his knowledge and his ordering of things. This is what the Ascension of Jesus Christ reveals: he takes his seat at the right hand of God the Father, where he rules and reigns over a kingdom that will have no end. He upholds all things by the “word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). He is “seated far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion” (Ephesians 1:20). Which is to say simply what Our Lord says at the end of the Gospel according to St. Matthew: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (28:18).

We are invited to follow King Jesus in his ordering of creation and history by doing what he asks of us. This will look different in each case. Many of us have very different responsibilities and roles as mothers, fathers, students, children, citizens, neighbors, and in our various professions. In each case, the call is the same: to love God and to love our neighbor. Which is to say, that we strive to make every act, every project or task to be done, an offering to God. We bring the work that we have to do under the authority of Jesus by doing what he expects of us.

We are citizens of heaven. In this world, as St. Peter says, we are strangers and aliens. We have no abiding city here because we belong to a kingdom that is not of this world. And we look ahead with faith to the New Jerusalem, the city whose builder and architect is God, into which all the nations of the earth will one day stream. We look forward with faith and patience to the day when “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.”