The Kingship of Christ: Two Kingdoms and One Truth
This sermon was preached for the Feast of Christ the King on Saturday, November 23, 2024.
Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Question of Kingship
Are you the King of the Jews? Never has a question put before Jesus carried with it such fraught baggage as the question that Pontius Pilate asks Jesus on the day of his death. Are you the King of the Jews? If he denies who God has created him to be, he denies that he is, in fact, the one that was prophesied by the ancient prophets. He denies that he is the one who is the incarnation, the enfleshment, the indwelling of the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God. And if he answers yes, he commits a capital crime by declaring himself in a province of the Roman Empire. Such is the fraught nature of this question asked by a man who has the power to have Jesus Christ crucified or the power to release him. Which is exactly why Jesus doesn't answer the question directly.
Pilate asks, "Are you the King of the Jews?" and Jesus answers, "Is this your question, or did somebody else tell you this? Are you wanting to know who I am, or are you just checking up on what other people have said about me?" Pilate, though, is an experienced negotiator, a careful politico, a man who is familiar with callous intrigues and the use of power. He says, "I'm not a Jew, am I? In other words, what is it to me? I don't care. I'm the governor of this province." He continues, "Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?" He says, "Jesus, I am not concerned with you usurping my power, but there are a ton of people who are."
The Two Kingdoms
Jesus answers with a response that echoes through the ages because it flies in the face of all of the wisdom, ancient and modern, when it comes to power and its relationship to religion. Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. My kingdom is not from this world." You see, there are two kingdoms that rule over every single person on earth: a kingdom of the right hand and a kingdom of the left. Martin Luther talked about this, and when he did, he said that there's a left-hand kingdom of God and the right-hand kingdom of God, and that they do different things.
The right-hand kingdom of God is the kingdom of God that we associate with God's proper work: His work in creating new life, in redeeming sinners from death, in proclaiming the gospel into the world. This is the right-hand kingdom of God, the proper work of God in killing and making alive, in teaching the gospel of Jesus. On the other hand is the left-hand kingdom of God, which is what Luther called the alien work of God. Alien, as in the other work, the work that says there is a kingdom of this world and God works through it. In other words, this is secular government, and God uses that to curb evil behavior and create good order.
Jesus is declaring himself king. He says, "My kingdom is the kingdom of the right hand. My kingdom is the kingdom that is not the left-hand of this world. My kingdom is the one which kills and makes alive in my name." He says, "If my kingdom were from this world, if I were the king of the left-hand kingdom of God, if I were king of this secular, this sort of worldly kingdom, then my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." He says, "My kingdom is not the kind of kingdom that can be taken by force. It's not the kind of kingdom that can be imposed from one person onto another. Rather, it is the kind of kingdom that comes into the hearts of those whom Christ has chosen and called."
The Law and the Gospel
Here in the right-hand kingdom of God, in the kingdom of God, which is rooted in the law and the gospel, God gives his word, which convicts us of our sin and drives us to our knees. It shows us that we are sinners. And then at the same time, it shows us that we are so beloved of a God who sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for us. We are killed by this law which convicts us, and we are raised up to new life by the gospel of Jesus.
This is what Pilate is asking about now. When he says, "So you are a king?" Jesus says, "You say that I'm a king. That's the word that your people have for somebody like me. Someone to whom every knee on earth and below the earth and above the earth will bend, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. King's the best word that human beings have for such a thing." But he explains it this way: "For this I was born, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
The Nature of Truth
We live in a society and in a world in which truth is considered relative. Where truth is my truth and it's not necessarily your truth. Where we are constrained by the environment around us so that it's hard for us to even think that something can be true for everybody at all times. It's easy for us to compartmentalize our lives in this society, to drive ourselves into our own little silos of information. You want to know what's true? Well, I'll tell you what's true. But first, I've got to ask you, what kind of TV do you watch? Who do you follow on social media? What do you listen to on the radio? Because we silo ourselves into our little echo chambers and we aren't people who look for capital T truth anymore. We look for truth that makes us feel validated.
And to that, Jesus gives a rebuke. Your truth in that lowercase t sense, in the relative truth of your own personal experience, is nothing compared to the ultimate truth expressed in God through Jesus Christ. It's not a truth which is endorsed by the powers and principalities that work in this world. The world is opposed to the reign of Jesus Christ among us. If we are to say that Jesus Christ is King, if we are really truly to say that Jesus Christ is Lord, that means someone or something else isn't.
The Early Christian Confession
Remember that in the Roman Empire, for the first 300 years of Christianity, Christianity was an illegal religion. And the Romans were generally very religiously tolerant people. The Roman attitude towards religion was this: When they invaded a new area, when they took over a new area, their attitude was, "You can worship whatever you want. I don't care. You can worship the tree gods or the dog god or the chicken god. I don't care who you worship. I just want you to add a couple people or a couple gods to your worship, right? And since you're worshiping three, four, five, a dozen gods, who cares? It's just a few more. We just want you to give an offering once in a while. We want you to give an offering to Caesar. We want you to give an offering to Jupiter, right? The god of Rome. We just want you to include in your worship the worship of our empire, our rule."
Jews got in a lot of trouble with the Romans about this, starting from the Roman invasion about 180 years before Christ. As the Romans came in and took over that area, they started to butt heads with the Jews because the Jews don't believe in multiple gods. They believe you should only worship one god. The very first commandment says, "You shall have no other gods before me." And so there are no other gods in front of the face of our God. There is only one God. And the Romans hated this. They barely tolerated it. How dare you say there's only one God and that our gods are not gods?
Jesus comes along. The Christian movement starts. And the earliest Christian confession is simply three words. Before there's ever an Apostles' Creed, before there's ever the Nicene Creed, before any of these other later constructions come along to help guide our faith, the very first Christian confession of faith is simply this: "Jesus is Lord." And the problem that the Romans had with this confession of faith, as simple as it is, just three words, "Jesus is Lord," is that that means that someone else isn't. Jesus is, and the Greek word there, it actually matters, kurios, right? This is where the word kyrie comes from. When we sing the kyrie, the Lord have mercy in the beginning of the service. In peace let us pray to the Lord, Lord have mercy, right? Kurios, kyrie, that's the same word, right? Lord have mercy. And what we're saying when we say "Jesus is Lord" is we're saying anything else that wants to be Lord is not in first place. To say "Jesus is Lord" is to say "Caesar is not." That's why the early Christians suffered so much. The early Christians suffered so much because it was absolutely unacceptable to Rome to tolerate the presence of monotheists, of people who believed in just one God and said that Jesus, their crucified and risen God, was Lord.
The Truth of Christ's Kingship
This, though, is the truth. That God in Jesus Christ came to live among us. That he endured the things that we endure as human beings. That he underwent the same temptations that you and I were tempted by. That he suffered on a Roman cross. That he died and was put into a tomb. And then, very importantly, key to the whole Christian story, as king of the universe, is vindicated by God and is raised to new life. New and abundant life. Resurrected life. Not just as a demonstration that he has the power to overcome death, but as a down payment on a promise that those who trust Jesus Christ with their life, though they shall die, so too will you live.
And so for the first 300 years of Christianity, it was illegal. And you know what happened? A group of 11 disciples, Judas having been excused himself from that, those first 11 disciples went on at Pentecost to become 3,000 disciples. And then from there, they began preaching the word across the world, proclaiming a simple truth. Yes, there are kingdoms of the left hand that proclaim that they are great and powerful and that they have the power to compel your behavior. But here we are in the kingdom of the right hand where there is one God and king of all of us. And the Lord of lords, Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and our Savior. And that king is the true king. And that king isn't just a king who controls what you do in this life, but he controls your eternity in the next. And that king offers himself, doing what no earthly king would ever do, taking all of his power, his authority, his majesty, and pouring out all of it as an offering, to his subjects, giving of himself for the people who are beneath him, emptying himself and facing the certainty of death for his subjects, for his citizens.
And that powerful message that this king, who deserves all our worship, who deserves all of our adoration, this king who has all of the power of the universe, who is the word God spoke to create reality itself, this king and God died for you so that you might be saved from your sins and united with him. A message like that, when proclaimed by people who live like it's true, transforms the world. And the proof of that, in the first 300 years, was illegal. Christianity went from being a small group of 11 disciples hiding in a room in Jerusalem for fear that they were next to die, to being 50% of the population of the Roman Empire before Christianity was even legalized. Why? Not because the Christians exercised their power and their authority, not because they lorded it over others, but because they followed the example of King Jesus, who, though he had power and authority beyond anything we could possibly imagine, used that as an opportunity to empty himself for the sake of his servants, his slaves, you and me, trusting that God would vindicate him and give him new life.
Trusting in King Jesus
And so we worship King Jesus. Yes, we live also in the kingdom of the left, where we try to do good and not do evil, maintain good order and do things in good time. But here in the kingdom of God, we also acknowledge that every power and principality of the kingdom, of the left-hand kingdom, is subject to Christ. And that Jesus Christ is Lord of everything in our lives. And we subject ourselves to his teaching and his rule. And we are open to new possibilities and hope that we would never have otherwise.
May you trust and believe in this Christ, the King. May you trust in our merciful King to redeem you, to save you, and to guide you. May you remember that in every situation of suffering or loss that you face, that your merciful King has gone before you, and has suffered and endured all that you have and are and more. And having that peace that your merciful leader has given you all of these blessings, may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds strong in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto life everlasting. Amen.
