Christ the not the Prince of Wales

A sermon on Luke 23.33-43 for Christ the King Sunday, preached @EmmanuelBakerSt.

O. M. G. I can’t believe it. It has really happened. At first I didn’t believe it, there were just these rumors floating all over the internet. But then it appeared in the print media, on the pages of the National Enquirer and Star Magazine, and I knew I had to start taking these rumors seriously. And then Harvey Levin reported it on the television news, on TMZ. So, it’s true. I can’t believe it. Prince William, Prince of Wales, is now officially engaged to Kate Middleton. and O.M.G. the ring. Have you heard about the ring? It was actually the engagement ring that Prince Charles gave to Diana. And also, O.M.G., William and whatsherface aren’t yet sure where they are going to get married. Will they choose Westminster Abbey, which is where Diana’s funeral was? Or will they choose Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, which is where the big wedding between Charles and Diana took place? All of these giant cathedrals in London are all soaked in meaning. And just so you know, I went ahead and sent in a letter suggesting that the royal couple could use our facilities, free of charge for the wedding, you know, as part of our innovative marketing and outreach campaign.

Okay…so, yes, Prince Williams of Wales got engaged to Kate Middleton this week. Let the tabloid fueled frenzy and hype begin. But first let me offer my thanks to the prince for synchronizing his proposal with the liturgical calendar and Christ the king Sunday. It is a blessing to preachers everywhere.

This week as we celebrate Christ the King, our festival cannot help but to be painted against the pervasive backdrop of the pending royal nuptials. As this young prince prepares for his wedding, the images from his parents’ wedding, almost thirty years ago, begin to flash through our minds. The regal and extravagant procession, the throngs gathered in the street to catch just one glimpse of the newly married couple, a wedding that lived up to all of its multi-million dollar price tag.

No doubt as we get closer to the actual marriage of Prince William and Kate (one small step towards the coronation of a king), the hype and the excitement will grow. And on that date the throngs will once again crowd into the streets, herded behind steel barricades on sidewalks and storefronts, to participate in this powerful ritual.

Today, our gospel text paints a drastically different picture of what we, as Christians, claim as the coronation of our leader. This backdrop provides a jarring dissonance to the narrative the culture around us provides concerning power and those qualities most central to our common lives. The church’s liturgical calendar and the biblical witness provide many of these opportunities when what we, as the church, say is so radically different from the ideas the culture around us holds so dear. When these places in the tradition find us it is important to listen closely to what God is saying.

Contrasted with the regal and excess of the upcoming royal wedding, Luke gives us his coronation scene. Not at Westminster Abbey or even on the steps of the United States Capital…but at the place called ‘the skull.’ And there Christ, our king, is crucified, put to death surrounded by criminals. It is a picture of a king who is so powerless that he is unable to save himself, much less the scattered few who have gathered to witness his coronation in first person.

Perhaps we would be more comfortable with the regal scene a few chapters earlier in Luke’s gospel. There, like the royal procession of Charles and Diana, throngs gather in the streets and welcome Jesus into Jerusalem. Coats and cloaks are thrown into his path as Jesus rides into the city. The crowds gathered shout, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” Perhaps this is the image we would prefer. We might pray for the day when Christ comes to ascend to a thrown in which he powerfully sets all things right from his seat of power, a day in which all the throngs are forced to acknowledge and revere their rightful king.

But Jesus, it seems, is not the agreeable sort. As Jesus has done throughout the journey to the cross, he throws off all of our expectations draped in our own hopes for glory and prosperity.

The attraction to these power soaked images of Christ are not limited to the feudalistic concept of monarchy. I am reminded of a Woody Guthrie song. In “Christ for President” Woody voices the same hopes as those shouted in the streets of Jerusalem, that;

“Let’s have Christ as our president

let’s have him for our king

Cast your vote for the carpenter

that they call the Nazarene

The only way we can ever beat
These crooked politician men
Is to run the money changers out of the temple
Put the Carpenter in

But with the Carpenter on the seat
Way up in the Capital town
The USA would be on the way
Prosperity Bound!”

As much as I like Woody and as admirable as his vision of Christ as president sounds, Jesus casts off even our most well intentioned expectations of his use of power and glory. Because it turns our Christ is more like an anti-king.

Jesus does not allow this triumphant entrance into Jerusalem to stand as the seminal scene characterizing his kingship over all the world and all people. Just as Christ has done over and over again, Jesus transforms our understanding of how kingship and the kingdom, the community in which we live, will be shaped. As we move towards Advent, we hear the paradoxical and jarring news that Christ the king is a helpless newborn, come into the world amongst the stink of a manure filled cattle stall. Later at his baptism, the messiah, the king is an itinerant preacher, wondering aimlessly through the desert. Christ the king only dons the purple robe of royalty in preparation for his own execution. And even in life after death, Christ ascends to heaven and our leader is marked by his absence from the community of which Jesus rules.

Rather than ascending to a throne of glory, God powerfully reveals our ruler who proclaims power in powerlessness. Christ is revealed as a king who does not sit on a throne, a king whose dominion comes not through domination, but only through the paradoxical power of total self-giving love. Luke proclaims the good news of a God and a king and a ruler who rules by pouring out his whole self on behalf of his people, whose authority comes only through absolute servant hood.

While I understand that growing up many young girls have make believe dreams of being queens and princesses. As a young boy I never dreamed of being a king or a prince. But the place where I most felt like royalty was at the local barber shop. With each visit I climbed up into the throne-like barber’s chair for my haircut. From there I ruled, for fifteen minutes or so, until my haircut was over. But the position in the barber shop that always seemed most regal to me was the shoe shine chair. It was lifted up even higher than the barber’s chair. There well-dressed business men climbed up into their high thrones with their soon to be shiny shoes placed upon the mounts where an elderly black man bent down and went to work on their shoes.

No doubt given Jesus’ aversion with seats of power and glory-like thrones, I have trouble believing we would find Jesus sitting in either of these barber shop thrones. Also, in all the photographs we have of Jesus he has long hair and odds are Jesus had a beard. [editorial note: it turns out we don’t have any photographs of the historical Jesus.] So, I’m guessing Jesus didn’t have much technical use for a barber. And Jesus probably walked around barefoot or with sandals. So, it seems unlikely that Jesus sat in the shoe shine seat.

I still think Christ can be found around the thrones of the barber shop. But it is most likely that Jesus, in the barber shop, would be the one on his hands and knees like the shoe shine man. Jesus would be the one in the shop working, serving, and shining the shoes of all who made their way into the shop.

Christ, as our king, would not be the one with well shined shoes. Rather Christ’s dominion is marked by his hands, stained by shoe polish, stained from kneeling and serving at the feet of all the people of the earth. And even now, we know our king among us by hands, stained, soiled, and calloused from the God’s reign of service among us. This is the image of Christ as our ruler; a king who rules not from a throne, but from a cross of limitless self-giving love. It is a king who rules from their knees, washing the feet and the shoes of the disciples and us. Christ washes us in God’s love, preparing us and our feet to go out in the world and live in this community of faith active in love.

As we wrestle with figuring out what Christ’s kingdom might look like among us, I am struck by the words of a TMZ correspondent. TMZ is a tabloid-like television news program and as they were discussing the engagement of Prince William and Kate one of their commentators remarked that, “I used to dream so hard that I would marry Prince William.” While not eloquent, her words are poignant. As Kate Middleton becomes a Princess the dreams of all the young girls who hoped for a fairy tale like ascent to royalty and fame will be dashed. And while not all of us dream of being princesses, no doubt we all have our innermost hopes and dreams for our own brand of glory. Here in the States, we work hard to indoctrinate our children in this dreaming, telling everyone that if they work hard enough anyone can be president.

The reality we must face with such notions of kingship and power is that only a few can actually be president or king. The vast majority of us will be the ones stuck behind the gray metal barricades on the sidewalks, partitioned off from the halls of power.

The good news this morning is that rather than giving us a king, God gives us a kingdom. God gives us a community of self-giving love in which we actually get to live. God brings the power of the cross to us where we are and lays it on our feet. God removes the grey, steel barricades that hold us back and brings the power of the crown to us. So that we live not as subjects with some particularly just and peaceful potentate, rather we live in the power of God’s kingdom here and now. And we live as members of a community where all live with both shiny shoes and stained hands, as part of the emerging community on our streets, in our homes, at work, and in our churches where all have both clean feet and dirty hands. AMEN.