Christ the King

 

Today is the Feast of Christ the King, the culmination of the story we begin to tell again next Sunday with Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week and Eastertide, Pentecost and the long count of weeks in Ordinary time. The culmination of history to which the Church points; and of the news the Church proclaims concerning Jesus, that ‘his kingdom shall have no end.’

But if Christ is King, what kind of a king is he? And why is this good news?

We see the answer to these questions in the Gospel reading set for today, Luke 23.33-43. It may seem strange to hear, today, of Jesus’ crucifixion; but the cross is the throne this king choses for himself. More than that, a cross alongside two others.

This we proclaim: that Christ suffered, for our sake, and that his kingdom shall have no end.

This is where we see him: alongside us in the place of our deepest wound, our deepest humiliation, our agonising and protracted public death.

There are two near-universal human emotions at play in our Gospel passage, that reveal this wound: shame, and humiliation.

Shame is the self-belief that we are, inherently, unworthy of love, of connection. Shame is the secret we do not want anyone to know about us, because if you knew, you would agree that I am unworthy. The tragedy is that shame grows in the dark, and is destroyed by the light of empathy, of being seen and accepted.

Humiliation is what we experience when someone else judges us unworthy of love, of connection, and we inherently know that they are wrong, that this is unjust. Humiliation is being told we are too fat, too ugly, too foreign, too gay, to be in our gang. From primary school, if not before, we are flayed by humiliation. And, tragically, humiliation correlates to violence. Studies in the US show that the experience of being humiliated, deeply, repeatedly, is a key part of the backstory of those who perpetrate high school shootings. I don’t know of UK based research, but I would expect to see the same regarding fatal stabbings.

(For more on shame and humiliation and many other emotions, see Brené Brown’s ‘Atlas of the Heart’)

Crucifixion was all about humiliation, as a deterrent. Luke records not only the physical humiliation Jesus is subjected to, but also how the religious leaders and the soldiers join in. Crucifixions were conducted by specialist teams of soldiers. I cannot prove it, of course, but I would wager that these teams were made up of those who had, themselves, been subject to humiliation. Humiliation correlates to violence; and spreads as those who have been made to feel inadequate — unworthy — seek out a victim to shore themselves up.

The first criminal knows humiliation. He turns to the person hanging next to him, and both adds to their humiliation and calls on them to turn the tables: what would humiliate the leaders, the soldiers, more than Jesus getting down from the cross and defeating them? But Jesus refuses to play the game, to perpetuate violence, to deepen the problem.

The other criminal knows shame. He believes that he, and the other criminal, deserve what is happening to them. In this, he is not a reliable witness (in the Bible, we find the testimony of many people, but Jesus alone is the faithful, reliable witness). Certainly his actions may have had consequences, may have deserved punishment; but noone deserves the obscenity of crucifixion.

Nevertheless, this man, who is steeped in shame, is able to do the very thing that is necessary: despite believing that he is unworthy of connection, he reaches out to the person who is right there next to him: ‘Jesus, remember me — make me whole, make me worthy — when you come into your kingdom.’

And Jesus responds, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ Paradise is a tricky word to translate. It seems to mean both ‘in the ground’ — that is, dead — and in heaven — that is, alive. In other words, the promise is that Jesus will be with him — and us — in our protracted dying, and in the life on the other side, where suffering is transformed into glory.

I do not say that lightly, that suffering is transformed into glory. This is a slow, slow process, a life-long (and perhaps beyond) process. And yet it is the way in which Christ the King goes about his reign.

I don’t know your shame story, your humiliation story — but I know you have one. And that is why I believe that Christ the King is good news. Because in these places, we are not alone. This is where he meets us, sees us, re-members us. In the deep blues, the bruised purples, the bloody reds of our lives, drawing these emotions, too, into the spectrum of his light.

Luke 23.33-43

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you 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.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’