The King of Israel
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
April 22, 2011—Good Friday
Matthew 27:32-44
As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; then they sat down there and kept watch over him. Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”
Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son.’” The bandits who were crucified with him also taunted him in the same way.
I, like most Americans, have an aversion to monarchies. (Excepting of course all the interest over the British monarchy and Prince William’s wedding—everyone’s interested in that.) We’re not people who really resonate with the language of kingship. When we talk about kings, it’s not something that comes naturally to us. We don’t understand the experience. In fact, we bristle a little bit at it. It’s gotten to the point where we’ve become uncomfortable, even theologically speaking, to talk about the “Kingdom” of God. It sounds so Old World, doesn’t it? It sounds so medieval, so European. It seems like a relic of some bygone era to speak of a king and of God’s kingdom. One congregation I know so bristles at this word that they’ve replaced it with a word of their own: kin-dom, dropping the ‘g’ altogether.
We’re not really comfortable with images of kings. They seem autocratic and arbitrary. They seem like exactly the opposite of the thing we expect to find in God’s reign: freedom, equality, justice, and peace. Kings aren’t generally associated with that.
I bring this up because at the heart of the Good Friday story, at the heart of the crucifixion, is the fact that the charge against Jesus reads: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews”. It is at the heart of how it was that Jesus managed to get on the radar of the Roman authorities. How it was that he managed to anger the Temple leadership. How it was that the people who stood at the foot of the cross mocked, derided, and scorned him. ”Hey, King of the Jews! Come down from that cross if you are who you say you are. Save yourself!” The irony, the sarcasm, with which that title “King of the Jews” is hung is palpable in that scene.
What kind of king is this anyway? He wears a crown of thorns upon his head. A robe fashioned from Roman blankets to serve as a vehicle for mocking him and taunting him. ”You’re no king, you’re a crucified criminal, deserving a criminal’s death on a cross.”
We stop and ask: what kind of king is this? We have all this talk about God’s kingdom. All this talk about the reign of God in language that we’re unfamiliar with, language that makes us somewhat uncomfortable. And then when we see the king, it’s some Galilean carpenter on a cross. Humiliated and rejected. I’m not sure about you, but is anyone else going to sign up with that kingdom? Anyone who thinks that that kingdom is the one that’s about the change the world?
At the heart of the gospel, from the very beginning, lies an inversion of the world. The Gospel has always been about standing things on their heads. Jesus often preaches that those who wish to be great must humble themselves–not the usual understanding of greatness. Those who would be first, must be last–and slave of all. With that is the idea that “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”.
Perhaps some of our confusion here, then, is that we understand “kingdom” based on the kingdoms we have known. Based on the kings we have known. We equate kingdoms, especially here in America, with George III, “Taxation without Representation” and all that. Or perhaps with Napoleon or Louis XVI or the Kaiser or the Tsar. Or any of the thousands of other despots who exalted themselves at the expense of others. And here on the cross we see someone who is at the lowest state, dying the death of a slave. If you were a Roman citizen, you’d have gotten at least a nice respectful beheading; you wouldn’t be nailed to a tree to die over the next several hours or days.
When we behold this Christ on the cross, what does it mean to read the title “The King of the Jews” and not to do so ironically? What does that say for us? What it says is that the kingdom we await is not defined by our language. The kingdom we await is not defined by the shortcomings of human monarchy. The kingdom we await is not determined by anything that we would establish. Power is freely yielded. Status is inverted. And love is at the heart.
When we see human societies, we see them built around the idea that power is wielded for some end. We compel others to do what we believe is right or just. And we so rarely get that right. All of our systems of justice are rarely built on God’s definition of justice.
And so we look upon the cross, and we see one who comes to us not by force, one who comes to us not demanding servitude, but, as he himself said, “not to be served but to serve” and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Good Friday is a day on which we pause to reflect upon the mystery of God. We Christians proclaim Jesus as the Son of God, not out of a biological lineage, not even really out of the Trinitarian theology we later developed, but out of a sense that when we gaze upon Jesus Christ we see something of God. We see in this man hanging on that cross, something of God’s heart is revealed to us. We see God on that cross and all we need to know about God’s kingdom is there on that cross. What it means is that the king is not high and lofty and removed from our suffering; it means the king is in the midst of our suffering. The king is with the people–not the way that Peter the Great used to dress like a peasant and slum with the people for a while and then go back to the palace–but taking upon the very brokenness that afflicts us. The hatred that we wield against one another, the rejection, the scorn, the bitterness. All of that, this king takes upon himself willingly. Even to death upon a cross.
What does that say about the kingdom that we would represent to the world? We Christians so often get that wrong, too. We so often model our understanding of God’s kingdom based on all the human kingdoms of the world. We compel people to believe what we think they should believe. We mock, we deride, we use power against one another. We seek status within our community. We seek all the privileges of a human world and we forget who our king is.
But our king hangs upon a cross, showing us humility. Showing us a self-sacrificial love that transforms the world itself. Showing us a grace that we can only barely begin to imagine. And demonstrating with us a solidarity that is transformative. A solidarity that speaks to us in our situation. Whatever those crosses are that we bear—whether it is some secret pain, some loss, some guilt over our misdoing, a broken relationship that we have with a friend—whatever those crosses are that we bear, we see in Jesus a king who is with us in the midst of it. Jesus does not look down from on high, like some autocrat, pointing a finger in judgment. He looks to the side, from the cross next to ours and sees in us a beloved child of God.
We are moderns here in this place. We’re not comfortable with the language of kings and kingdoms, princes and principalities. But when we look upon the cross of Christ, we can without any irony, any reservation, look upon the one crucified and say, “Behold, the King!”
Click to hear the United Methodist-Protestant Community singing Were You There at our Good Friday Service.
