Sermons

Christ is King, and No One Else

That is because today is Christ the King Sunday and the very last Sunday of the
church year! Woooooooo! I would have brought my confetti, but Michele is still finding
sequins from my Halloween costume, so I thought that might be pushing my luck.

This is the equivalent of church New Years Eve! But don’t worry, you don’t need to stay
up ’til midnight. Because next Sunday will be the equivalent of New Year’s Day. Next
week, we will start the four weeks of Advent that will lead us to that much-anticipated
event, Christmas! This change is exciting for many reasons. We start a whole new year of
the lectionary! The church uses a three-year cycle of readings. This week, we say goodbye
to year B, and next week, we start year C! Second, as we start the new year, we’ll change
the color of our vestments to blue for Advent. (Which I’m excited about because green is
really not my color.)

But before we do any of that, we get to celebrate this very special occasion, a Sunday put
aside to recognize Christ as our sovereign. You may have heard it called the Solemnity of
Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, or Reign of Christ Sunday, or the Feast of
Christ the King, but I think of it as anti-fascism Sunday.

Did I get you with that last one? Let me explain. This particular holy day was first
introduced by Pope Pius XI just 99 years ago. Gradually, the celebration was
adopted by other denominations, and while it is not officially mandated in the Episcopal
Church, you can see from our Collect of the day and the readings that we are certainly
leaning in that direction.

Christ the King Sunday was established in 1925, a time between the First and
Second World Wars when nationalistic movements were threatening the globe. In
the encyclical that established the holy day called Quas primas (I read it so you don’t
have to), the pope wrote, “When we pay honor to the princely dignity of Christ, [all
people] will doubtless be reminded that the Church … has a natural and inalienable right to perfect freedom and immunity from the power of the state.” Christianity is a religion that was founded in opposition to the state, not in alliance with it.

The gospel we read today reminds us of that fact. It is an episode of the passion
narrative that leads up to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Pontius Pilate, acting on
behalf of the Roman empire, interrogates Jesus. Is he truly a king? Because if Jesus truly
is a king, that means he’s a threat to the empire, a threat to Pilate. That means all these
people who follow him could also be a threat to the empire. And Jesus responds that his
kingdom is not of this world. In this passage, we are shown how the reign of Christ
transcends our political categories. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a threat to empire. It
means Jesus and his followers, indeed, are a threat to every empire that will ever exist,
including those of our own day.

And the Romans are so convinced that they’ve won when they crucify Jesus that they
write on the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” And if you see a crucifix today,
it will often have the letters across the top “INRI,” which stands for “Iesus Nazarenus
Rex Iudaeorum,” the Latin translation of “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
Today’s passage ends with this quote from Jesus: “You say that I am a king. For this, I
was born, and for this, I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who
belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” The truth will set us free.

The truth is that when we say Christ is king, we are as much saying that no one else is.
We are declaring our allegiance to God, not a celebrity, a CEO, a president, or a
political candidate. When we say Christ is king, we are subjecting ourselves in a very
literal way, becoming subjects to a royal authority that is beyond ourselves. But this king
is unlike any other. To quote Brother James Koester, “Our king reigns from a cross and
rules on his knees. His crown is thorns. His orb and sceptre, a basin, and towel. His law
is love.” That’s a king that I can put my trust in.

And this is a time when the message of Christ the King is extremely relevant, not only
relevant but vital, essential in our public discourse.

That is because, in the last decade, we have seen increasingly nationalistic movements in
our country. The threat I am referring to is the one of Christian nationalism. Christian
nationalism is true to neither Christianity nor American patriotism. It is a conflation of
these two ideologies into one that serves neither. Wrapping the cross in a flag does
nothing but obscure the meaning of both symbols.

Christian nationalism seeks not only to claim primacy for our nation, that the United
States is God’s chosen nation. It also claims that within that country, only certain kinds of people belong: those who are white, cisgender, straight, and share a narrow ideology.

It is a sin that is built on excluding the other: immigrants, non-English speakers, gender
minorities, Black and Indigenous people, the exact people that make up the beloved
community that Jesus calls us to. The sin of Christian nationalism is built on many other
sins, including white supremacy, xenophobia, and patriarchy.

This burgeoning ideology is so great a concern that the Episcopal Church commissioned
a special report about the threat of Christian nationalism from the House of Bishops,
The Crisis of Christian Nationalism. The bishops issued the report in this book,
published in both English and Spanish. They write, “The problem with Christian
nationalism is not with Christian participation in politics, but rather the belief that there
should be Christian primacy in politics and law.”

I think that’s an important point to reiterate because it is imperative that our Christian
ethics do shape how we behave in the public square. If you are advocating for policy
changes because you believe those changes will build the more just, more loving world
that Jesus calls us to, that is not Christian nationalism. That is living out your Christian
faith. The trouble comes when you say, “This is a Christian nation, and only those who
look and sound and believe like me belong here.” And not only that but, “God says only
those who look and sound and believe like me belong here.” That is Christian
nationalism. That doesn’t sound like the world that Jesus calls us to build.
My prayer for us is that we remember whose we are and that, secure in our identity in
Christ, we turn to fight the very real evil in this world.

I want to close with a quote from the House of Bishops report. Christian nationalism
“require[s] a response. It is not adequate only to think the right things, say thoughtfully
worded prayers, or learn more about what troubles our society. Theological reflection
should also lead to theologically based actions.” May it be so.