But that’s not the image of Jesus I want to focus on this morning. For Anglicans like me who are hooked on church years and seasons, today’s the last Sunday before Advent, which begins next week, and it’s kept as ‘Christ the King’ Sunday. So today’s image is Jesus the King. I wonder: if we were to take a vote on the most popular image of Jesus, or title for him, how high would ‘King’ be in the charts? Maybe not quite as high as Shepherd or Companion or Friend.
But King as a title for Jesus has good Biblical provenance; it’s there at the heart of the Gospels. I’m about to sing the part of Artaban, the Fourth Wise Man, in a choir piece for Christmas called ‘The Fourth Wise Man’, based on a story written by an American called Henry Van Dyke. Artaban, left behind when the other three wise men set out to find the new king whose birth was signalled in the stars, spends his whole life searching for the king. How and where he finds him, or is found by him, we’ll come back to later. Artaban may not be Biblical, but the other wise men are: Matthew’s Gospel begins with the birth of a king. Later it would be as a King that Jesus was dragged before Pilate, as a King that he was sent to death, with a crown of thorns placed on his head as soldiers knelt to offer mock obeisance. This man says he is King of the Jews, that’s what Pilate was told; and Jesus never denied the charge.
What does the word king mean to you? Someone at the top of their game, someone with authority, someone who can’t be beaten. Maybe Elvis as the King of Rock and Roll. Or those born into royalty, like William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, Louis XIV of France, or Ivan the Terrible, or Peter the Great, Czars of Russia. These are people with immense power that they were ready to wield. These are people who could command and expect to be obeyed. People who could demand of others that they should die for the state or indeed for the throne. People who could throw their weight around big time. Of course, that includes the kings in our Bibles, like David or Solomon.
Pontius Pilate represented a kingdom of this sort, an empire, even, and an emperor who was almost godlike in his power. So when Jesus was presented to him as someone claiming to be a king, Pilate had to take it seriously. But Jesus told him: “My kingdom is not of this world.” The images of kingship the world provides us with don’t help us understand the kingship of Jesus.
Or indeed, the kingdom he came to proclaim. But here’s a poem I came across the other day, which might help:
It is easy to trace a kingdom
marked by a flag, a border, held by force of arms.
It is easy to tell who has the power
in the kingdoms of this world.
It is not so easy to see this kingdom,
for here there are no borders,
no flags, no force of arms, no powers.
There is only the realm of God, the truth of God, the word,
bounded by you and me, by us, and by the Lord.
So this is a kingdom different from the kingdoms of the world, defined not by pomp but by humility, not by acreage of land but by service and care. But within this kingdom the king himself still commands and seeks our obedience.
And maybe that’s a problem for us. If we think of Jesus as a king we have to admit that Kings give commands, and their subjects are supposed to obey those commands, to be loyal and true, and ready to serve without question. In ancient feudal societies the subjects of a king really belonged to him, just as the image of the king on a coin meant that that coin belonged to him, even if it happened to be in your pocket. That’s not such an easy or welcome image in this day and age. It might be asking too much of us. Humbler images of Jesus are nicer, so we don’t have to think too hard about his authority over us, so we don’t have to face that big question: Am I prepared to let someone other than myself be Lord of my life? Am I prepared to let this man be?
Jesus the Good Shepherd, or the Brother, Friend, Teacher, Healer, Companion, Saviour: these are all good and valid images of Jesus, and all of them convey some measure of his love and grace and gentleness. And yet perhaps are they all a bit too user-friendly and unchallenging? - an image of Jesus as our best friend, but not quite Jesus the unique and only Son of God. Celebrating Christ the King today is maybe quite important: we need to make sure we have in the Jesus mix (if you like) the authority of the King, the authority of the Holy One sent by God to rule his people.
Jesus is not an in your face King; he restores rather than limits our freedom. But he has authority. He told his disciples that if they loved him, they would listen to his voice and keep his commandments. As we live out our Christian faith, love is there centre stage, but obedience, the disciplined keeping of our Lord’s commands, is also vital to how we need to be. Jesus the King has real power and authority, he is more than worthy of our respect and obedience and service. But his is never the cruel and demanding power of a despot or tyrant - it’s the power of compelling love, love that draws us to find at the cross his throne, and there transforms us to bear fruits of sacrificial love in our lives, as we see his sacrifice, and his law is written on our hearts.
In the fanciful tale of the Fourth Wise Man, Artaban’s journey takes him to the cross, but he’s too late to use the last of his precious jewels to redeem Jesus and save him from his faith. All the other jewels he bought to present to the new king have been given to help or save or redeem people in need. As his own life ebbs away in what seems to him like abject failure, he is suddenly aware of Jesus speaking to him, and assuring him that in each person in need Artaban had met with his Lord, and in each act of kindness he had served the king. Echoes, of course, of the parable in Matthew’s Gospel of the sheep and the goats.
Faithful obedience can be tough; in the story, it was for Artaban. As it was in the true stories of those we remember as saints or heroes of the faith within Christian history. But they too met Jesus in the faces of the poor, the sick, the needy, those other folk rejected. If we love someone, and are dedicated to them, there’ll be times when we find ourselves doing things we don’t want and wouldn’t choose to do. When we make wedding vows in church we promise a commitment that is ‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.’ We offer love to another person - in effect we give ourselves to them - but we also express our trust that they will do the same in return.
Kings on earth may be tyrants: demanding loyalty but giving nothing in return, except the threat of punishment. Jesus is not that kind of king. We serve him because his love meets our love - no, more than that, we serve him because his love precedes our love. He died for us while we still rejected him; and when we do turn to him and strive to live according to his will he meets our every effort with a fresh outpouring of grace. And it’s then that, as Jesus says over and over again in the gospels, the Kingdom of God is not far from us. So blessed be the name of Jesus, Shepherd, Friend, Brother, faithful Lord and Saviour, and great and wondrous King, now and for evermore. Amen.
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