ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
Sermon preached by the Vicar on the Feast of Christ the King.
Sunday 25th November, 2007
Readings: Jeremiah 23.1-6; Psalm 46; Colossians 1.11-20; Luke 23.33-43
On Monday, the Queen and Prince Philip went to church, to Westminster Abbey where they had been married, to give thanks for 60 years of their marriage. They were surrounded by the Royal Family and a congregation of the great and good. The choir sang an anthem commissioned for the occasion. The Archbishop of Canterbury preached a sermon on marriage as a public sign and blessed the royal couple.
Today, we have come to church to celebrate a very different royal occasion: the Feast of Christ the King. We too have come to beautiful place of worship, sanctified by the prayers of generations. We too will hear music of transcendent beauty. Yet the gospel we have just heard presents a picture of kingship far removed from that happy scene in the Abbey.
We see Jesus, not in Jerusalem's national shrine, the magnificent temple built by Herod, but at the Place of the Skull, outside the city wall. He is not surrounded by the great and good but flanked by two thieves. Instead of admiration and affection, thanksgiving and worship; there is cruelty and humility, mockery and derision.
Crucifixion was the last act of a ritual of degradation; the deliberate stripping of dignity and status. The placard on Jesus' cross calls him "The King of the Jews" but it is part cruel joke at his expense and part warning to any with ideas of challenging the power of imperial Rome.
Jesus is mocked from three quarters:
This threefold mockery echoes the threefold temptation of Jesus in the wilderness; that temptation to use his divine power to advance his cause or to save himself. That power is still him in and the temptation remains.
Earlier, Jesus had told to his disciples that "those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it" (Luke 9.24) That was true, above all, for him, So now, on the cross, he remains true to his vision and calling. God is still the one he speaks to as "Father". Lobe of his enemies is still his way. So now, he prays: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."
Who does he mean? Is it the soldiers who crucify him? The contrast between Jesus and his executioners could hardly be more extreme. He prays for them. They cast lots for his clothing, in a mockery of royal ceremonial, offer him sour wine.
The possibility of forgiveness lies at the heart of Luke's Gospel. If we read on in his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, we see that possibility extended not only to these rough soldiers - only obeying orders and lightening the grimness of their task with gallows humour - but also to the religious leaders who had plotted his death. Even they had not know what they were doing.
Jesus had spent his ministry in the company of outcasts, as a matter of deliberate choice, so that he might demonstrate the love of God to all humankind. His life ends with him in the same outcast company. During his ministry, it was often the outsiders who had recognised him for who he really was, while the religious leaders had failed to do so, Now, at the last, it is another such outsider, the penitent thief, who does so!
When his partner in crime joins in the mockery, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!", he rebukes him: "Do you not fear God, since your are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong."
He recognises Jesus' innocence, but more than that, he grasps his divine status. He sees that Jesus is what the placard on the cross says he is; what the mocking voices say he cannot be: "The King of the Jews". Jesus is God's anointed and chosen one. And so, he pleads to Jesus for the divine and royal prerogative of mercy to the condemned: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom". Jesus replies, not just with a promise for the future, but with the assurance of present bliss: "Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise". "Paradise", the Persian word for a garden or park such as a king would have; adopted in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures for the Garden of Eden. By the time of Jesus, it had come to mean the place of rest and peace for the righteous dead.
Jesus had come to share the life of the outcast so that they might come to share his.
In later years, the writer of the Letter to the Colossians, probably a disciple of St. Paul rather than the apostle himself, writes to Christians in a culture where God and gods were seen as remote and inaccessible; where the lives of humans were controlled by hostile cosmic powers which need to be manipulated and placated. He writes to them in the words of an early Christian hymn, taken perhaps from the liturgy of Baptism, to assure then that is not the way Christians see God. In one of the highest and richest statements about Jesus in the New Testament, he speaks of him active for us both as creator and redeemer.
"He is the image of invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations, rulers or powers - all things have been created through him and for him....in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross."
In Jesus on the cross, we see God actively and truly present with us to bring about reconciliation; to draw us into that relationship with God for which we have been created. There are no cosmic powers, no "things visible or invisible", as we will say in theCreed, which are not his creatures and so subject to his rule.
Jesus on the cross has enabled us to "share in the inheritance of the saints in light". Through him,. God "has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."
We have come to church this morning as members of "the body, the church" of which Christ is the head. We come Sunday by Sunday, even day by day, as those who, with the penitent thief, have by faith recognised who and what Jesus is and so, joyfully give thanks in our Eucharist.
As we celebrate that Eucharist, we both remember and proclaim what Jesus did, and we worship him as our present Lord and King. In this holy meal he gives us a foretaste and pledge of his promise: "Today, you will be with me in paradise."
Luke's Gospel and the Letter to the Colossians are among the most universalist in the New Testament; they speak of salvation won and forgiveness offered to all. And yet, there is a choice, and that choice us ours to make.
We are represented there at the Place of the Skull by the two criminals. Do we say, as penitents must, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."? Do we join in the mockery or simply remain silent?
The choice is ours to make and, just as for the Colossian Christians, it is ours to persevere is. So we come to church, Sunday by Sunday, that we may be "made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power" and "be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father."