Christ the King, Year C | Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 46, Colossians 1:11-20, Luke 23:33-43
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
November 20, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from [God’s] glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience…joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has…rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.” – Colossians 1:11-13[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, having been instituted only 98 years ago by Pope Pius XI as a 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 of government-sponsored churches, 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 a world everyone had known for generations. And now, with a century of insight between us and them, it’s easy to recognize the Pope’s action as one of the last gasps of Christendom.
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 devoted to Christ, and Western Culture itself was thoroughly infused with Biblical concepts and mores.[2] 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.
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, eventually displacing the worship of the Greek or Roman or other tribal European gods. In the process, Christianity became fused with formal Roman culture. We 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—and still remain so today within liturgical traditions like ours.
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. Before that time, the people of a particular country 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, but once word came, those gods went out the window, suddenly replaced by the Trinity. But the success of our country, which from its establishment was never technically part of Christendom—and therefore not a “Christian nation”[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 probably sounds more like a lecture than a sermon. But it’s important for us to remember these things. They help us see enduring patterns in our lives and expectations more clearly, and it turns that out 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 as the charitable arm of the State, or Church as a Tool of Empire.
When we try to impose laws demanding so-called “Biblical” standards on the rest of society, that’s a remnant of Christendom—Church legislating through State, or the Church as Empire.
Whenever we want to use Christianity or portions of the Bible as a means of domination or as a mandate of superiority or as the measurement of loyalty or patriotism, we reveal within ourselves not devotion to God but the manipulations of Empire embedded within the way we structure thought itself.
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 newly opened eyes, to Jesus Christ, our Savior and our true King. We look beyond all our expectations of glory and wisdom and influence and strength. We pass over the implements of supremacy and dominance and manipulation and coercion—all the Imperial expectations we have for a king—and adopt, with Christ, the most gentle yet thoroughly life-changing powers that kingship can offer: compassion, mercy, and forgiveness.
We remain faithful to Christ, the Good Shepherd, who “gather[s] the remnant of [his] flock out of all the lands…and…bring[s] them back to their fold, [where] they shall be fruitful and multiply”[5] and “shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing.”[6]
We rely on Christ, who “is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble,”[7] who “makes wars cease to the end of the earth; [who] breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; [who] burns the shields with fire.”[8]
We worship Christ, “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,”[9] “the head of the body, the church;…the beginning, the firstborn from the dead”[10]—Christ, within whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through [whom] God was pleased to reconcile to [themself] all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”[11]
We emulate Christ, who we watch being crucified between two “criminals, one on his right and one on his left”[12]—Christ mocked and beaten and tortured and yet who maintained peace—Christ, who dying beside his fellow prisoner, offers him comfort and hope, saying, “today you will be with me in Paradise.”[13]
We subdue our own pride and redirect the power we do possess, looking not to our personal interests, but to the needs of others. We step away from our craving for authority and walk instead the paths of humility and love. We look beyond our individual ambitions or desires and envision the betterment and flourishing of all. 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.”[14] We gather and set our eyes on the image of Christ, our King, praying that together we
“may…be made strong with all the strength that comes from [God’s] glorious power, and…be prepared to endure everything with patience…joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has…rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] It still is, although fewer people recognize where the references come from.
[3] Most of the Founding Fathers fell within the category of Deists, which in modern terms means they followed cultural norms rooted in Christian traditions but were more or less agnostic when it came to religious matters.
[4] I use “soul” in the sense of the individual or personal self, not a metaphysical construct separate from our physical bodies.
[5] Jeremiah 23:3
[6] Jeremiah 23:4b
[7] Psalm 46:1
[8] Psalm 46:9
[9] Colossians 1:15
[10] Colossians 1:18
[11] Colossians 1:19-20
[12] Luke 23:33
[13] Luke 23:43
[14] Matthew 6:10