A King of All, Even Those Who Do Not Wish To Be Like Him. John 18:33-37

We are preparing for the Sunday of Christ the King, or the Reign of Christ. I cannot help but think that the best way to celebrate the final Sunday in the Christian year is to emphasize, once more, how this king is different from any other king. Ralph Milton, writing in an e-zine for "people with humor" describes the paradox that this Sunday highlights. When we hear the scriptures read, does it ever occur to us what was running through the minds of those who wrote the words of the texts? The writer of John's gospel contrasts the roles of Pilate and Jesus, "But the people who wrote the Bible wouldn’t recognize today’s kings. What good is a king, Pilate would have asked, who owns no land, who can’t raise an army to defend himself, who doesn’t extort taxes, who refuses to force people to do things his way..." It is unlikely that the believers of the first century understood the kingship of Jesus any better than believers of the twenty-first century, which is to say, they didn't get it either. And they could not have imagined the standard of living that the majority of western Christians enjoy today.
We give lip-service to the concept of the kingship of Christ, thinking we understand it so much more than those folks so long ago. And yet, we continue to follow TV preachers who preach in churches that seat thousands, while the preachers themselves travel around on their own private jets. A friend recently wrote to me and mentioned the new sanctuary that his church is building, which will seat eight-hundred people, while cutting available parking space in half. The price tag for this expansion is twenty-million dollars.
Let's be honest, it is not that we don't understand what kind of king Jesus was; we just don't want to emulate that kind of kingship. It calls on us to give up too much and to think and live in a way much closer to the way that he lived. I can think of a few pastors and laypeople in my experience who did their best to live such lives, but they are exceptions. I live comfortably, though not extravagantly, by any means. Yet, I have so much more than a person in a developing nation could ever imagine. I claim to follow a king who had no earthy possessions, but I have not chosen to live my life in the same way. Most Christians are like me. So, in reality, we cannot celebrate the Sunday of Christ the King as if we really understand it. Perhaps the best that we can do is to enter that day with a sense of awe, and a willingness to try once more to see beyond what we want for ourselves so that we might discover how we can take another small step on the way to understanding what it should mean to live under the reign of Christ.