Tag: coronation

A Strange Coronation

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Biblical Text: Luke 23:27-43

This was the Last Sunday of the Church Year, often called Christ the King Sunday. The sermon elaborates a little more on that source. But the three year cycle of reading in the year of Luke throws an oddity. The Gospel reading is the Via Dolorosa and Crucifixion. Why on Christ the King would we get this? The answer is that this is the coronation walk of the Universal King. The cross is the throne of the King in this world. The posting above the cross – “This is the King of the Jews” – INRI (iesus nazarenus rex iudaeorum in Latin, Pilate’s judgement, Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews) – is the divine irony. It is the sentence that the world gave; it is also the truth.

And on this walk and enthronement the King grants alms and blessings and benedictions. We also see the division, the judgement as it is actually carried out. For it is at the foot of the cross that the judgement takes place. Are we mockers? Or are we beggars?

That’s a bit of the sermon. Give it a listen for the elaboration.

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Christ the King – one rule, not multiple


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Text: Luke 23:27-43

Christ the King is the last Sunday of the church year. This coming Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent or the church’s new year. The emphasis of Christ the King is the pretty simple – the ascended Christ is Lord of All – hidden now, revealed at times, revealed for all times on the last day. The lectionary specified the crucifixion reading from Luke, which is different. The Matthew (Year A) and Mark (Year B) readings are the sheep and the goats and the the lesson of the fig tree. Year C with Luke focuses on the thief on the cross. Do you see the world aligned with the priests, and soldiers and skeptical thief? Or do you see it from the position of the other thief? Is the cross just a scandalous death, or is it a coronation. Is the one on it, The King of the Jews?

If you side with the thief in paradise – it has all kinds of implications. The world today really wants us to separate ourselves into separate little fiefdoms – this is my private life, this is my public life, this is my work life, this is my life life, this is my financial life, and this is my spiritual life. And the world wants us to act differently in each – to act as if they are all disconnected, as if we could isolate things in one life from things in another. That path just leads to broken selves. Harry Potter’s Voldemort is a great example. He divides himself into multiple horcruxes. It allows him to go on living, but he misses the entire point of being human, in fact in that very act he gives up his humanity.

Instead, God made us Body and Spirit. He made us whole and wants us healed and restored. Restored under the one rule of Christ the King – coronated on a cross. If Christ is King over the heights of heaven and the depths of the pit, then there is nothing mundane or secular. Whether that is money or holiday celebrations or the clothes we wear, it has all been redeemed by the divine. And how we use it, how we live, reflects our king. Do we live as if we have split ourselves – barely human? Or do we live as if Jesus, true man also true God is one Christ – King?