“Christ the...Humiliated? Lowly? Crucified? King”
Preached Sunday, November 23, 2025
Wow...what a coronation.
Today’s Gospel reading from Luke, the crucifixion, is when Scripture calls Jesus King - King of the Jews, a sign hung above his head as he was killed by the state in a torturous and brutal way - a way of death that was reserved for those who had committed treasonous crimes against Rome. The sign above his head - why? Was it put there by someone who truly recognized who and what Christ was? Was it put there as a warning to other Jews who were thinking of challenging the social and political order? See - this is what we do to the likes of you. Was it meant to degrade and humiliate, threaten or terrify, or to speak truth in the midst of a horrible scene. Either way, it, along with a crown of thorns, was Christ’s coronation. Where Christ was marked as King.
Let’s compare this to an earthly coronation. And I am going to skip King Charles and talk about Queen Elizabeth because of the hit TV show The Crown which followed Queen Elizabeth’s life. Have any of you ever seen this show? I remember watching the re-enactment of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation with awe.
Elizabeth II was crowned as Queen of England in 1953. They recorded the coronation and broadcast it internationally. Royalty gathered and watched. Elizabeth wore a silk velvet cloak. She was handed the royal orb made of gold, jewels, and pearls, then the scepter with diamonds and sapphires, and the royal ring with sapphire, rubies, and fourteen diamonds and then finally the crown - velvet and with a whopping total of 444 stones. She was given dozens of titles and everyone, including her mother and her husband swore allegiance to her and sang God Save The Queen. When the ceremony was over, she left in a golden carriage.
Christ’s crucifixion, his coronation, on the other hand gives us a stark contrast from the opulence and power from the coronation of the former Queen of England. And lest people think I am just bashing the British monarchy here, our political system celebrates the assumption of power - maybe not with some many precious gems but still with the glorification of power, wealth, prosperity, and popularity. We don’t have kings and coronations but we do have inaugurations - the last several of which cost in the 100s of millions of dollars. All of this wealth and cost and ceremony is in stark contrast to what happened to Christ on that hill of Calvary.
Today is Christ the King Sunday. It marks the last Sunday of the church year - next week will be the first Sunday of Advent and the beginning of a new liturgical year.
Today you may think - careful, Pastor! You're getting too controversial here! And that's because calling Christ King is an inherently controversial statement. Whether it was 2000 years ago when Caesar was King; 100 years ago, when this day was added to the liturgical calendar; or today. 100 years ago, Pope Pius XI added this day to the liturgical calendar that has trickled down through the Catholics and all the Protestants to us here today. What was going on 100 years ago? Mussolini had been in charge of Italy for 3 years and Adolf Hitler had just published Mein Kampf. The Roaring 20s were in full swing - marked by extravagant waste and class divides - soon leading to the collapse of the economy that we know as the Great Depression.
Pope Pius XI wanted to remind the world of where our allegiances as Christians should lay - with Christ the King and no other power or even wealth.
And again, 100 years ago wasn't the only world that needed or needs this message. It is always at the core of who Christians are and who Christ is.
And so, it is on this Sunday that we celebrate that Christ is King.
When we call Christ king, that bucks all the world’s expectations and assumptions about kingship and power.
And that, in turn, makes us question our allegiances to powers of this world that do not embody power in the same way as Christ.
These are not easy topics to examine, they are not easy questions to ask ourselves. They are harder yet to enact in our lives as we withdraw our allegiance from where it should not be and focus more on living and serving alongside Jesus as Lord. We will only skim the surface today and yet I want to say: this is the duty of all Christians who would serve Jesus as King: to do the hard work of self-examination and then the harder follow up actions to make sure that our lives - our words and our actions - serve Christ and no other as King.
First, let’s consider what the world expects of Kings - looking at one of the classic examples of Kingship that I grew up with.
The Lion King.
One of the classic earworms from the Disney classic “The Lion King” is “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.” In it Simba sings:
“I'm gonna be a mighty king, so enemies beware!..
I'm gonna be the main event, like no king was before.
I'm brushing up on looking down.
I'm working on my roar!...
…No one saying ‘do this,’
no one saying ‘be there,’
no one saying ‘stop that,’
No one saying ‘see here.’
Free to run around all day,
Free to do it all my way!”
What Simba sings about being King is in line with our kings, royalty or not, today - a King is someone powerful who can insight fear in their enemies. A King is someone who is in the center - the center of attention, of authority, of everything. A King is someone who looks down on everyone else, seated high on their throne.
We have lots of “kings” in our world today even if they don’t wear a crown. These “Kings” are people who think they are untouchable, who look down on others, who use their power and fear and violence to get their way - from churches, to the streets, to government and beyond - there are kings wherever there is power to be grabbed.
Which brings us back to today and this day in the Christian year that we call “Christ the King Sunday” - what does Christ’s life and death teach us about what it means for Christ to be King?
You know, many wanted Christ to be the kind of king we were just talking about - a king who used violence to grab power. A king who overturned the current seat of power and then assumed the throne himself, a king who would loftily rule…In our world today, 2,000 some years later - it’s so so so tempting to be a revisionist of history and Scripture and to paint Jesus as the King that they wished he would have been. The kind of King we wish Jesus would be. You know, the kind of King who thinks just like us. The Kind of King who is lofty and uses power to extort instead of help. We can easily make Jesus into that kind of king - like many “kings” we have in our world today - but let us not forget that Jesus was put to death by those in power - some “cleaning their hands of situation” but still dirty as it goes today, too…But Jesus is not that kind of King. If Jesus wanted to be that kind of King he could have been. He had followers. He could have told them to take up the sword and fight for him, he could have shamed his enemies, he could have staged a government coup, he could have ruled with an iron fist so that all would be forced to worship him...but Jesus did not choose to be this kind of king. Instead he went willingly to the cross, where he was mocked and humiliated, sided with a criminal on the cross, and then killed.
I want to say that again: …but Jesus did not choose to be this kind of king. Instead he went willingly to the cross, where he was mocked and humiliated, sided with a criminal on the cross, and then killed.
And then...3 days later, Jesus rose from the dead, definitively and defiantly showing us that there is another way to be King. And that way sides with the lowly, the outcast, and the shamed. That way is a path of humility and lowering oneself to be a servant, to wash the feet of others. That is a way of praying for your enemies instead of overpowering them. That is the way of love over hate. Life over death.
In Christ’s death and resurrection, everything we know about power, everything we know about kingship, everything we thought we knew about God - is flipped on its head.
For Christ is King and his realm is The Kingdom of God.
And remember what Scripture tells us about the Kingdom of God:
The kingdom of God looks like a wasteful son being greeted by a loving father, running to him with open arms. The Kingdom of God looks like a shepherd searching for that one lost sheep. The Kingdom of God looks like a weed that overpowers everything else in the garden and provides shelter for the birds. The Kingdom of God looks like a rich man’s feast opened up to the uninvited, the poor and the lame. This is not a Kingdom that any Kings of our world would want to reign over.
For in our world we have kingdoms of power, greed, and violence. Kingdoms would condemn Christ the King to the cross.
The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of forgiveness, empathy, humility, service, and love. Jesus reigns over this Kingdom and invites us to be citizens of it - to remove our allegiances from the Kingdoms of this world and serve Christ as our only and true Lord.
So my challenge to you as we close out one liturgical year and begin another one, as we enter the seasons of Advent and Christmas and implore Christ to come, come into our world once again...my challenge to you is to ask yourself this: If Christ were to come again into our world, into our lives, in the here and now, soon - would Christ find your allegiances to only be to him and the Kingdom of God and not any kings or powers of this world? Are we looking for power ourselves? Or someone to follow and claim as our King...but who is not leading us in the ways of Christ, of love, forgiveness, and humility? Instead, turn your heart to ponder upon what it means for Christ to be King and for Jesus to be Lord in your life and in our world.
Amen.
