Luke 23:33-43
Christ the King Sunday
Police in Portland declared a riot after demonstrators were seen attacking drivers and committing acts of vandalism. A swastika was carved into the metal of a towel dispenser in a bathroom at the College of William and Mary. Police in Ann Arbor were investigating reports that a man approached a Muslim student and threatened to set her on fire with a lighter.
Are you weary? I am. My reserves are exhausted from the multitude of reports of hateful behavior. I cannot imagine how those who are marginalized feel. I was born into privilege, and so I am not the target of the anger and the hate.
God has told me to love my neighbor. That’s been a struggle recently, but I am trying to understand the underlying causes of destructive behaviors and the perpetrators’ various perspectives. My heart is breaking. Murray Bowen, who developed a theory of relationships and behavior, posited that societal stress will negatively impact people’s functioning.[1] How are you functioning lately?
I think Krista Tippett is a modern-day prophet. Her book, Becoming Wise, was published early in 2016, before harsh words became every day public speech covered by the media. In it, she writes:
…we are struggling, collectively, with division of race and income and class that are not new but are freshly anguishing. Here’s what is new: a surfacing of grief. It’s not a universal reckoning, but it’s a widespread awareness that the healing stories we’ve told ourselves collectively are far less than complete. There’s a bewilderment in the American air—both frustrating and refreshing for its lack of answers. We don’t know where to begin to change our relationship with the strangers who are our neighbors—to address the ways in which our well-being may be oblivious to theirs or harming theirs. We don’t know how to reach out or what to say if we did. But we don’t want to live this way.[2]
This past Wednesday, my long-time friend posted the following on FaceBook:
You may have noticed (or not) that I have refrained from making political posts on this site. I like seeing pictures of my friends’ kids growing up. I have desperately been trying to just scroll through and filter the bitterness between.
That changed today. For the first time in 15 years in this country, someone said to my husband (an American citizen, doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, primary caretaker of our 4 year- old mixed race son, supporter of my own ambitious career as a woman surgeon, who incidentally happens to have been born in Ecuador), “Go back to where you came from.”
No. This has to stop. NOW….
I am shaking with rage. I am overwhelmed by grief....[3]
Today is Christ the King Sunday. Today is the day I want Christ to be king! I want Jesus to act like a king! I want Jesus to smite those people who are filled with hate and evil. Not really; if I actually wanted to God to smite people then I would be the one full of hate, and so I would be asking God to smite me. J And then I remember Jesus’ words as Luke reported them, “’But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also…’” [Luke 6:27-29a].
But I do want him to exert his power and maybe throw in some retributive justice. Instead of retribution, today, on Christ the King Sunday, what we get is Jesus, at a place called the Skull, nailed to a cross, his broken body hanging between two thieves.
Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing!” Forgive who? The chief priests? Pilate, Herod, Judas? The ones who yell “Go back where you came from” and the ones who carve out swastikas? Jesus insisted that the worst people have done would not define him. He saw both the horror and the holiness in people and forgave them anyway.
On the cross, this man who gave his life to healing those who were suffering now suffered himself, too. The people stood and watched as the life drained out of Jesus’ body. “He saved others! Let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, the chosen one,” they scoffed. Yes, Jesus, why do you not save yourself? The soldiers mocked him, “If you are king of the Jews, save yourself.” Yes, Jesus there is still time! And one of the criminals hanging beside him, scorned him, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” Yes, Jesus, save us!
But Jesus just hung there, vulnerable and silent. He hung there with two criminals. He hung there with those who others have forgotten, with the vulnerable, and the unlovable. With deep humility, he surrendered. Jesus died because he refused to participate in a system of winners and losers, or a culture of “we” and “them.” He did not buy into measuring worth based on accomplishments or skin color. Jesus refused to participate in the marginalization of people. His justice was restorative, not retributive.
Jesus knew that it was love that would change us. As Martin Luther King said, “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” We gather in Christ’s name, and something of Jesus’ love and truth breaks through. Christ the King show us that the kingdom of God comes in the form of relationship through forgiveness and healing. We help bring in God’s kingdom every time we show kindness and compassion, and when we advocate for those who society would throw away.
In the moment of Jesus’ surrender to death, in that absolutely hopeless moment, God’s salvation came to us. “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” Through his death and resurrection, that’s just what Jesus did.
~ Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin
[1] Murray Bowen developed “Bowen Family Systems Theory.” In addition to Bowen’s writings, you can learn more about this theory from the works of both Edwin Friedman and Roberta Gilbert.
[2] Tippett, Krista. Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. New York: Penguin Press, 2016. 108.
[3] Used with the author’s permission.