‘Glory Hallelujah’
Christ the King
5:30 pm Saturday, November 21, 2015
8:30 & 1045 am Sunday, November 22, 2015
The Reverend John H. Brock
Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church
Camp Hill, Pennsylvania
Psalm 93; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37
Grace to you and peace, from God who is, who was, and who is to come. Amen.
This has been just a horrible week. It started off with such awful events in Paris. One
hundred thirty people killed by. . . I can only call them, profaners of religion. They
indiscriminately killed people, innocent people. People who were simply minding their
own business. People who were out for a night on the town. Folks who had stopped to
grab a quick bite to eat. Some of them had gone to a concert. Maybe some of those
killed supported whatever purpose those attackers were trying to make. Maybe some
of those killed would have agreed with the attackers. Probably most of them didn’t
have an opinion much one way or the other. Never the less, they were slaughtered, by
gunfire, by explosives, by . . . stupidity and hatred and violence.
And then, only a few days later and a few thousand miles away or so, there was an
assault on a hotel that has thus far killed twenty people, wounded seventeen others,
and put another mark against a world religion by just a few individuals. All that
carnage, all that death, all in the name of their God.
Those of us who are Christians, those of us who claim Christ as our God, as our King,
might be tempted to point and say “how awful,” yet we need to be careful, for too
many times throughout history, peoples, cities, countries even, have been decimated,
all in the name of Christ.
With this horror, with all this death and destruction and chaos, how can we even begin
to claim, Christ the king?
We Americans struggle with the whole idea of king in the first place. Maybe our
ancestors, those of us with ancestors who come over from Europe, might have been
able to relate better to the concept of a king (or maybe, rebel against the concept).
But that’s not important. What do we mean when we talk about when we say Christ the
king?
First we need to figure out what we mean by “king”? Ruler, probably. Politician,
perhaps. Maybe tyrant, or despot. If you watch any of those historical or fictional shows
popular on TV lately, you may well think of kings as being an insane butcher, or
conniving, scheming mass murderer. If we think positively about a king, it’s probably
along the way most Britains think about their royalty: they’re nice to have around, but
they’re pretty much just for show. Royalty - kings - seem to be ineffectual in any
1|Page
meaningful way. Here in the states we’re far too accustomed to our American
politicians bickering with one another, with all the in-fighting and out-fighting between
political parties to think of any kind of politician doing good, let alone royalty actually
being helpful.
So can we honestly relate to this idea, this concept, of Christ the king? Probably not, not
really. I’m guessing we tend to think of kings, royalty, as being heads of state, one who
is in charge of the military, willing to make difficult decisions; being able to order
soldiers, workers, the population in general, to make sacrifices with money, sacrifices
with goods, or food, or even life. We think of a king - well, *I* think of a king, an ideal
king - as someone who, when they see a wrong, will right it; as someone who will not
tolerate injustice. A king would, I would hope, act to prevent acts of mass violence;
prevent acts of terrorism, or acts of assault, or offense, or hate.
But that didn’t happen in Paris or Mali. Christ didn’t step in and stop the carnage. So
why are we calling Christ king, if these things still happen? To that I have to answer: We
live in an imperfect world. We live in a world where children get cancer; good people
are killed by a drunk driver; bad people win a lottery; people hate other people simply
because they speak with an accent, or worship in a different manner, or wear a
garment that locals perceive as “weird.” We live in a world where a small group of
believers can distort a message in order to cause bloodshed and terror, in the name of
their God.
We also live in a world where we have been given a promise. A promise that we are
not alone. A promise that we are always loved. A promise that we are forgiven, no
matter what we do. A promise that we will be gathered together. And that promise
comes with a command: that we are called to treat other people the way we
ourselves want to be treated. Which is apparently too radical of a concept for this
world.
I want to say, then, that the answer to my question, that question of how we can call
Christ king in this world in which we live, is that we call him “king” when we allow him to
rule our hearts. We call him “king” when we allow him to rule our heads, and our minds,
and our lives. We call Christ King, regardless of atrocities that are committed around us.
We still call him King, because when evil happens, he is walking right there with us, in
the midst of it all.
We call him King because of how we envision him, because of how our scripture say he
is: he will be, and he is, and he ever was, the one
who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us to be a
kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion
forever and ever. (Revelation 1:6)
That Christ is the one who is king.
Amen.
Copyright © 2015, John H. Brock. All rights reserved.
2|Page
www.trinitycamphill.org
3|Page