Christ the King, Year B | John 18:33-37
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
November 24, 2024
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“My kingdom is not from this world.” – John 18:36[1]
Today, the final Sunday of our Church Calendar year, is the Feast of Christ the King. This is one of the Church’s newest formal celebrations, which Pope Pius XI instituted only 99 years ago as his response to increasing secularization and growing nationalism throughout Europe between the World Wars. As more and more countries followed the United States and divested themselves not only of government-sponsored churches but of monarchies themselves, many religious leaders feared that faith traditions—or at least Christianity—would become a thing of the past. And it was a reasonable fear: once people stopped being forced to pay taxes for the clergy to live large or were no longer required to attend services, they fled church buildings in droves—much like the stereotype of the modern teenager. The sun was setting on the only world anyone had known for generation upon generation. And now, with nearly a century of insight between us and them, it’s easy to recognize the Pope’s action as one of Christendom’s last gasps.
You don’t hear much about “Christendom” today. It isn’t something we reference in conversation or hear about on the news, so most of us don’t even necessarily understand what the term means. Those familiar with the idea likely think of Christendom as the 1,600 or so years when “Christianity” flourished in the West. Vast swaths of the population were presumably devoted to Christ, and Western Culture itself was thoroughly infused with supposed Biblical concepts and mores. Although highly romanticized, aspects of that were true: Christendom did indeed often appear in that guise. But that isn’t technically what the word refers to.
Christendom wasn’t simply a historical era but the broad adoption of Christianity as the state-sanctioned religion—the union of Church and State—or as I would term it, Church as Empire, Empire being the formally legislated or culturally demanded authorization of oppression—even overt violence—which attempts to ensure both physical and mental conformity throughout a populace. Empire is what gives the powerful power and maintains them in that power. When New Testament authors use terminology regarding “the world,” they’re referring to what I’m calling Empire.
The seeds for this were sown all the way back in 313 CE, when Constantine’s Edict of Milan legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, ending centuries of sporadic (and generally localized) persecution of the Early Church. Although one of several recognized religious systems of the time, Christianity soon became not simply an acceptable form of religion but the official form of religion, forcing people to abandon their worship of traditional Greek or Roman or other tribal European gods. In the process, Christianity became fused with formal Roman culture.
We in liturgical churches still see evidence of that hybridization today, most easily in our expectations around vestments. As clergy became more powerful politically and stepped into high governmental positions, the clothing associated with those ranks eventually became the expected dress for various positions within the Church hierarchy—think stoles and chasubles and bishop’s hats.
Apart from England’s eventual tolerance of various Christian movements in the centuries following the Reformation, this conflation of Church and State was the Western norm until the signing of the United States Bill of Rights.[2] Before that time, the people of a particular country or government were expected to follow the religion of their ruler. Much like the reports of household conversion in the Book of Acts, once the king chose to convert to Christianity, the entire populace became “Christian.” You may have been worshiping Pan or Brigid or Odin the day before, but once word came, those gods went out the window, suddenly replaced by the monotheistic Trinity. But the success of our country, which at its founding became the first Western nation officially outside the formal sway of Christendom,[3] paved the way for the end of a European way of life that had endured for thousands of years.
That’s a lot of history and might sound more like a lecture than a sermon. But it’s important for us to pay attention to—to remember—these things. If we ignore or forget them, we miss enduring patterns in our lives and culture, such as the fact that many of us still worship Christ as King under the illusions of Christendom:
When the Church speaks and we presume society ought to listen, that’s a remnant of Christendom—Church as a mouthpiece for State, or Church as the Voice of Empire.
When the State offloads its historic responsibility to provide for its most vulnerable people to “faith based organizations,” that’s a remnant of Christendom—Church expected to be the charitable arm of the State, or Church as a Branch of Empire.
When we try to impose laws demanding so-called “biblical” standards on other portions of society, that’s also a remnant of Christendom—Church legislating through State, or the Church as Empire.
The truth is, whenever we see or participate in using Christianity or portions of the Bible as a means of domination or as a benchmark of superiority or as a measurement of patriotism, we reveal within ourselves not devotion to God but the manipulations of Empire embedded even within how we’ve been taught to think.
So what do we do with that? How can we overcome this impulse of Empire hidden within each of our souls?[4]
We look, with new awareness, to Jesus Christ, our Savior and the Prince of Peace—the one who is our true King. We look beyond all our expectations of glory and wisdom and influence and strength. We pass by our many implements of dominance and manipulation and coercion—all the Imperial expectations we have for a king—and adopt, with Christ and as his body itself, the most gentle yet thoroughly life-changing powers that kingship can offer: compassion, mercy, and forgiveness.
We remain faithful to Christ, who “who rules over people justly, ruling”—that is, examining his own actions—“in the fear of God.”[5]
We rely on Christ, “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead….who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a” new kind of “kingdom, priests serving his God and Father.”[6]
We worship Christ, whose “kingdom is not from this world”—whose reign is decidedly and objectively unlike the Empire within which we’ve all been formed.
We subdue our own pride and redirect the power we do possess, looking not to our personal interests, but to the needs and concerns of others. We step away from our craving for authority and instead walk in love and humility. We look beyond our individual ambitions or desires and envision the betterment and flourishing of all. We avoid the paths of exclusionary thoughts and practices, choosing instead to embrace and truly welcome all God’s children—those we already know and those we’ve never yet envisioned. We reject the lures and deceits of Empire and instead turn our hearts and hands to realize the Reign of God “on earth as it is in Heaven.”[7] We gather and set our eyes on the image of Christ, come together at the table to bond as Christ, and go forth to live, not as people shaped and held by our present Empire, but as genuine citizens enculturated in the kingdom that is Love and Mercy and Peace.
“My kingdom”—Christ’s present, actual reign—“is not from”—or like—“this world.”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Even within most American Colonies.
[3] That also makes it the first non-Christian Western nation the world had seen for centuries.
[4] The soul being not some ephemeral, non-physical aspect of the self but the self itself—the unique combination of body and breath (aka: “spirit”) that makes each individual distinct from those around them.
[5] I Samuel 23:3
[6] Revelation 1:5-6
[7] Matthew 6:10