Christ the King: November 25, 2007.

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Psalm 46

Colossians 1:11-20

Luke 23:33-43

What is the dream you believe in, the future for which you hope? What is the fulfillment of your life, your relationships, the world and its nations? What hope makes your heart ache and holds the power to draw tears? The hopes we hold mold our behavior, shaping our emotions and expectations. But our hopes are too often too small. They are seldom captured by the fulfillment of all life that God faithfully and unfailingly works in Jesus, the Christ.

The readings for Christ the King offer a cosmic vision that extends from before the birth of time into all eternity. It is a vision of divine promises kept and of a world fulfilled by a faithful God. This vision frees our hopes and ignites our imagination in anticipation of God's future, which has already begun to appear. There is no greater hope--or joy--to which we may give ourselves.

In Colossians 1:11-20, an ancient Christian hymn with an exalted Christology celebrates Christ as the face of the eternal wonder of God (v. 15). Christ is the one in whom the fullness of God's fullness dwells (v. 19). The divine energy revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth has existed since before the creation of the world (vv. 15, 17). The power and wisdom at work in Christ is the gracious gravity that holds all that is from centrifugally flying off in every direction (v. 17). All creation bears the mark of having been made in Christ and through Christ. All that is has been made for him, finding in him its fulfillment and purpose (v. 16). God makes peace among all the whirling, disparate, conflicting elements of the universe in and through Christ and the blood of the cross (v. 20).

The Christ hymn echoes with wisdom motifs from Hebrew Scripture. Proverbs describes Wisdom as an agent in the creation of the world (3:19). Wisdom was created first as a partner in the divine work (8:22-31). The author of the Colossians hymn drew from these ideas, applying them to Christ.

The idea of the fullness (pleroma) of God in Col 1:19 is also in Hebrew Scripture (Isa 6:3). Indeed, wisdom is to fill the earth (Wis 1:7). A gnostic heresy, which may have been troubling the Colossian church (2:8, 16-23), held that the pleroma was the whole body of heavenly powers and emanations that flow from God. These thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers (1:16) were considered spiritual beings, supernatural powers, who held control over various parts of creation, including human beings. One needed to gain knowledge of these powers and their spheres of influence to satisfy them, avoid taboos, and align oneself with their workings.

Colossians contradicts such slavishness to forces that would control us. The pleroma is not shared among many beings and divine intermediaries. The fullness of God dwells in Christ alone (1:19). The entire universe, created in, through, and for him, is directed and brought to completion in and by him. His resurrection places him above all the powers that diminish our vision, deflate our hopes, and resist the final reconciliation and peace to which God will bring all things (1:20). Christ is our hope in a world where dozens of powers and forces pretend it is they, not our Lord, who hold the future.

The church, Christ's body, is the locus of God's reconciling work. There, already, we see and know Christ as the Lord and firstborn of the dead (1:18). The church is and reveals the beginning of the completion that God will bring. Christ who is firstborn of creation, firstborn of the dead, is "head of ... the church" and will "have first place in everything" (1:18). There is no larger hope.

In Luke 23:33-43, Jesus is revealed as the true Son of God, Messiah and King, through his faithful suffering in obedience to the divine will. Titles fly around in this pericope. Jesus is mocked by those who sarcastically call him "the Messiah of God, his chosen one" (23:35). The soldiers mock him as he hangs on the cross, derisively calling him "the King of the Jews" (23:37-38). The thief crucified alongside Jesus gets in on the action, calling him "Messiah," perhaps hoping against hope that Jesus is exactly that and will save him (23:39).

Those who ridicule Jesus believe in a theology of the test: If Jesus is Messiah and King, he can save himself from this dire fate. The logic is well attested in the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon: "for if the righteous man is God's child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for according to what he says, he will be protected" (Wis 2:18-20).

The irony is thick. Jesus' enemies do not know what they are doing and saying. In their efforts to scoff at him, they establish the truth of his identity as the faithful Son of God who brings the salvation of God's reign to earth.

Jesus preached that his followers are to forgive their enemies as a sign that they are daughters and sons of the merciful Father. "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.... Be merciful just as your Father is merciful" (6:27-28, 36). By forgiving his enemies even as they deride him and gamble over his clothes (23:34) Jesus demonstrates that he is the son of the all-merciful God.

The rulers who berate him do not see that Jesus is the Messiah not because he comes down from the cross but precisely because he does not. He was not sent to save himself. He cannot save himself and remain faithful to God's will and plan that made it necessary "that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory" (24:26). The "chosen one" is sent to serve and suffer (Isa 42:1; Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27, 30; 8:30-35), fulfilling God's intention to open the kingdom to all who see the faithful God revealed in Jesus' faithful suffering and consequent glorification.

Those who sarcastically throw around messianic titles can neither see nor receive the reign of God in the faithful, innocent, suffering Jesus. The only one who does, the other thief on the cross, does not use a christological title. He simply calls Jesus by name and asks to be remembered in the kingdom (23:40-41). At this, Jesus reveals the Father's holy purpose of granting the kingdom and all its benefits to those who will receive it (23:42-43). God is ever waiting and eager to give us the kingdom that we may dwell with Jesus in time and eternity. Such is God's good pleasure (12:32).

The first lesson, too, speaks of God's divine determined intention to gather God's beloved people under a righteous leader, one unlike the faithless shepherds who scatter and destroy the flock (Jer 23:1-6). The shepherds are Israel's unworthy rulers.

Two central aspects of biblical prophecy are on display in this reading. The Hebrew prophets criticized and energized. They called the covenant people back to faithfulness to God and the justice and mercy God requires. But they also fanned the nation's hopes in times of despair, speaking gently to the heart with words of comfort rooted in God's steadfast love and mercy. They assure the oppressed that God will keep the divine promise of restoration.

Jeremiah looks ahead to the destruction of the nation. The people will be scattered because the shepherds have been careless and faithless (23:1-2). But the vision does not end there. He looks beyond the suffering of exile to a day when God will gather the people and bring them home, setting up a ruler, a righteous branch, who will save the people and enable them to live in peace and safety (23:3-6).

This is God's intention and the nature of God's rule. And God will bring it about. This is the holy and gracious promise we celebrate on Christ the King. Our bodies and souls hunger for the reign of Christ, and our eyes and ears strain to capture the signs of its appearance, even here, even now. DLM