Reign of Christ (C): A Different Kingdom
By: The Rev. Ryan Young
It is jarring to read this scripture for Reign of Christ Sunday—the only characters here proclaiming Jesus as reigning over anything are doing so mockingly. Here we see Jesus humiliated. Here we see the Human One derided. Here we see the Messiah lynched. Hardly a fitting read for a day when we proclaim the universal Lordship of this figure. So then, what does it mean that “Jesus is Lord?” Just what type of “reign” are we talking about here?
At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry on earth he stood in front of the community of faith that had known him since childhood and declared precisely what this reign would look like:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because the Lord has anointed me.
He has sent me to preach good news to the poor,
To proclaim release to the prisoners
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To liberate the oppressed,
And to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
His home congregation, the very people who helped raise him, the ones in whose homes he played as a child, the ones who had watched him grow, the ones who had more cause to love him than any others, heard this and sought to throw him off a cliff.
Liberation of the oppressed is extremely popular in theory and rarely popular in practice because it means that those who benefit from injustice relinquish some of those benefits for the sake of others. And yet, this is precisely the path of salvation that Jesus offers us—in rejecting an unjust system for love of another the privileged also find release from a noxious system and reconciliation with the other. Sadly, we can’t delude ourselves into imagining that hostility toward the liberation of the Gospel was limited to the political and religious elite. It was the mob filled with average working citizens who called for Barabbas’ release and Jesus’ execution. The fear of change often overrides the distaste of the status-quo, even when the status-quo is killing us.
Jesus’ entire ministry was spent announcing and living out a way of being that was an alternative to exclusion, alienation, and violence. He spent his life among the poor, the sick, the enslaved, thieves, criminals, and hypocrites. Jesus traveled the provinces challenging established religious, political, and social structures and the powers that upheld them in the service of liberation and everywhere he went he was met with hostility. As Fr. Richard Rohr points out, Jesus was killed much more for his world-view than his God-view.
We know all of this and yet we find ourselves once again confounded by Christ, the Lord on the lynching cross, because we still hold onto the same belief of the soldiers and the criminal—that those with God’s favor will be spared from suffering and injustice. But that’s not the way God works. Our suffering had to be entered into, our injustice had to be faced. Liberation does not come from afar, reconciliation is not impersonal, and an unjust system cannot be upended from the outside. As his last act on earth Jesus witnesses to his alternative way of being by offering comfort to his fellow condemned and forgiveness to his executioners; both of whom are also victims of the powers of state and religion.
If we are to witness to the reign of Christ in any meaningful way, we must likewise enter into the suffering of others with love and the confidence that God goes with us. Because of the crucified and risen Lord we can proclaim the Kingdom of God which stands as an alternative to the economic, political, and religious systems that depend on division, exclusion, and violence. There will be pushback. There will always be pushback when we promote significant changes to established systems. So don’t be surprised when you upset people—they killed Jesus for it, and I’m not sure we should expect better treatment—but that’s the way of our Lord.
The Rev. Ryan Young currently serves as the Director of Adult Discipleship and Missions at Northbrook United Methodist Church in Roswell, Georgia. He is a graduate of Clemson University and Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. He is looking forward to being commissioned as a Provisional Deacon in the United Methodist Church in June. When he is not engaging in holy mischief, he can be found sampling craft beers with friends at local breweries, reading, or singing Baby Shark with his wife Rachael to the delighted squeals of their toddler Iris.
Modern μετανοια 