A joint service between Lutheran Theological Seminary Saskatoon and the Southwest Area of the ABT Synod, hosted by Advent Lutheran Church, Calgary.
Christ the King, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Word who was in the beginning and was with God and is God, full of divine power, and what does he do with that power? He could have used that power to cast down the Roman Emperor or to send all the Roman troops to drown in the Mediterranean as he did with the pigs. He could have called down the angels from on high to bring peace and justice in the blink of an eye. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he submitted to death on a cross. He surrendered his divine power and lived fully into his humanity – into the experience of being a vulnerable human who dies.
Now there are many different ways of understanding why he did this, but today I want to look specifically at what Christ’s surrender of divine kingly power means for those of us who yearn to follow him and to be with him. I want us to consider what God wants us to do with the small amounts of power that we humans have access to from time to time, and to remember what God is doing for us in those moments when we have no power at all.
So what we do we see in Christ the King’s use of power? We see service. Particularly, we see service to those who cannot serve him back. Christ uses his power to feed thousands of people who never fed him back. Those people who received the loaves and fishes from him, they didn’t invite him back to their place to host him in return. They didn’t have the means to host a reciprocal feast for him. And so he fed them because they couldn’t feed him.
We see the same in the miracles of healing that Christ performed. He healed people who were of no use to him. They didn’t serve him in return, most of them didn’t even thank him. It’s true that after he healed Peter’s mother-in-law, she served him food, but she was the exception. For the most part, Christ healed those who were beggars, who had nothing of their own, who had no status or wealth to share with him. He used his immense power to serve those who could not serve him – we hear of unrequited love, for Christ it was more like unrequited service.
This is not how we tend to use power. We’ve seen how people with power use it to increase their own power. They use their power to help only those who can help them in return, and they refuse to help those who can’t help them back. Our whole society right now is built on serving those who can contribute the most in return. We call it finding efficiencies, or practicing good business, or getting a good return on investment. We make decisions based on what is good for the bank account, which means doing whatever it takes to make our consumers, or our donors, or our supporters happy. We take people who are rich out for lunch so they will donate more, even though they have no need for a free lunch. We spend time and energy catering to people who are already healthy, even though they don’t need our efforts to stay that way. We give carbon offset credits to multinational corporations so they will continue to invest in our country, even though they make so much money they can afford to reduce their carbon emissions without going bankrupt.
But power, whether that comes in the form of money, or time, or energy, is, for us humans, limited. Which means that we simultaneously find reasons not to spend money or time or effort on those who can’t give back. We tell people who have no income to pull themselves up by their bootstraps rather than putting money into changing social structures, we tell people who are too sick to work to stay home rather than putting money into creating medically safe public spaces, we tell individuals to make green choices rather than putting in the time and energy necessary to make the sweeping changes needed to save the global climate.
Can you imagine if Christ used his divine kingship in that way? Multiplied the loaves and fishes for Pontius Pilate, instead of the poor? Spent his time in King Herod’s palace, instead of with Galilean fishers? Told parables that made Emperor Augustus look good, instead of pointing to widows as models for a godly life? He could have. He probably would have avoided death on a cross if he’d done that.
But that’s not what it means to be a king in God’s kingdom. That’s not what it means to have power in God’s kingdom. That’s not how we are called to use our power – our money, our time, our energy, our status. The Spirit of God calls and empowers us to use our money and our time and our energy and our status the way Christ did – to go out of our way to serve people who can’t give back, to take the extra steps needed to support people who can’t offer support in return, to let go of the bottom line so we can grab hold of those falling off the bottom rung.
And thank God for that. Because in God’s kingdom, which means in all those earthly places where Christ is followed as king, everyone who is hungry is fed, everyone who is sick is restored, and everyone who has been pushed to the bottom is raised up, without expectation of what they can give in return. The church, in those holy moments when we are heeding the call of the Holy Spirit and allowing ourselves to draw on her strength, is that place. This is why we are drawn to church, after all. Because we trust, in those moments when we have no power of our own, that we will be fed, and restored, and raised up without being asked to give anything in return. We trust that God’s grace towards us is being granted because we are not able to give anything in return. And we trust that when we have been filled up with that grace, we will be given the strength and the courage to go out and serve others.
Today’s readings are a preview of this Sunday’s, which is Christ the King Sunday. We might almost think of it as another chance to celebrate Good Friday, when we call Christ’s death on the cross good because it is Good News for us. Christ our King served, and in doing so shows us what God’s power, and ours by extension, is really for––for using in service to others so that all might experience the life that God gives. Thanks be to God. Amen.
