Jeremiah 23:1-6
Colossians 1:11-20
Luke 23:33-43
On the Feast of Christ the King, we are confronted with two radically different ideas of what a king is. They are both there in today’s Gospel reading.
There is the Kingdom that people can see, in that scene on Calvary, the Kingdom of Caesar, the Roman Empire, by whose authority Jesus and the men with him are being put to death. There are soldiers of that kingdom everywhere, banners with the Roman eagle, public violence used as a tool of social control. Rome is a kingdom of violence and oppression, where might is right.
But there is another Kingdom here, too. It is the Kingdom of God, preached by Jesus, who now hangs on a Roman cross. This is the kingdom of peace, not violence; the kingdom where the oppressed are set free, the excluded brought back in, the untouchable are embraced. Where those who have nothing to offer are promised paradise. The Kingdom of God is founded on love, mercy and grace.
When we say that Christ is King, we don’t just mean that Christ is the ruler instead of earthly authorities like Caesar. We also mean that Christ rules in a completely different way. His kingdom is not founded on violence and fear, but on truth and life, holiness and grace, justice, love and peace.
One person in this scene understands this, and faith opens his heart. We often think of this person as the “good thief”, but the word Luke uses simply means an evildoer. It’s quite non-specific. He could be anyone. He could be one of us. Which is perhaps the point. He, who has nothing to offer, has faith in Jesus, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” And he is promised paradise. The first to enter the Kingdom of Jesus, the first of the countless multitude down the ages who have responded to Him in faith, and who are enlarging his Kingdom from day to day.
And what faith, the gift of God, to say to a dying man, “remember me when you come in to your kingdom”. Those words can only be spoken out of faith in the resurrection. They only make sense if God will raise Jesus from the dead to a new life which he can then share with those who believe in him.
It is because God raised Jesus from the dead, that we know he really is a king. Not in the way of the world, whose kings base their authority on violence and fear. Jesus is King, because he receives his Kingdom of life and peace and justice as a gift from his Father. The God in whom there is no violence or death has vindicated Jesus as King of all creation.
And this enables us to understand not just Jesus, but ourselves. Our story is transformed by his story, our life and death by his life and death and resurrection. The presence of the crucified and risen victim enables us to re-imagine the world. The Kingdom of God is something that God gives to us entirely freely, when we have nothing of our own to bring. Like the dying criminal, we discover that the loss of the life we have lived according to the world’s standards enables us to receive the gift of true life from Jesus, and to enter the Kingdom which is God’s free gift.
This is the meaning of the sacrament of Baptism which we shall celebrate shortly. Just as Jesus passed through the deep waters of death, so in our baptism we too die with Christ, who washes our sins away, and rise with him to new and eternal life. The font is both a tomb and a womb. The tomb of sin and death, and the womb that gives birth to eternal life.
That life is freely offered to all. Like the dying criminal, we too can respond to Jesus in faith. No matter what our life has been up to now. Jesus is the Saviour, bringing forgiveness and new birth, liberating us from the past.
Our true, eternal, life is God’s gift in his Kingdom and therefore will never be taken away. The kingdoms of the world, governed by violence and death, will not triumph. Jesus, their victim, is risen from the dead, and is the true and eternal King. In the Book of Revelation a shout goes up in heaven: “The Kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.”
We began with the contrast between the Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Christ. Something quite remarkable happened when the Roman Empire accepted, or adapted itself to, Christianity.
In the heart of Rome, the imperial city, founded on might and power and clear boundaries of who was included and who was not, there stands a baptistery, built in the fifth Century, where all the people of Rome who were coming to Christ were baptized. Where all the people who came to Christ, Emperors and slaves, citizens and foreigners, sinners and scoundrels, all were made one and made equal in their new life in Christ. An inscription runs around the baptismal pool, proclaiming, in the heart of Rome, that here stands the gateway to another and different Kingdom, one that will never pass away. It says this:
“Here is born in Spirit-soaked fertility a brood predestined to Another City, begotten by God’s blowing and borne upon this torrent by the Church their Virgin Mother. Reborn in these depths, they reach for Heaven’s kingdom, the born but once unrecognizable by felicity.
“This pool is life that floods the world; the wounds of Christ its awesome source. Sinner sink beneath this sacred surf that swallows age and spits up youth. Sinner here scour sin away down to innocence, for they know no enmity who are by one Font, one Spirit, and one Faith made one. Sinner shudder not at sin’s kinds and number: for those born here are holy.”
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