Jeremiah 23.1-6; Colossians 1.11-20; Luke 23.33-43

If I asked you to describe the traditional picture of a king, I wonder what you would say.

In assemblies in the three schools in the benefice this week, I asked the children to do just that. They came up with some predictable answers - kings wear crowns, kings are rich, kings live in castles, kings have servants, guards, cooks, cleaners, kings wear cloaks, kings have queens and so on.

In two of the schools, children gave slightly less expected answers, which in both cases made me smile and remember the gifts that children give us when they use their imaginations.

One girl in Barkway came up with the idea that kings wear gold pyjamas. And on a rather wet day, when I went to Reed, a little boy suggested that a king might have a person who was employed as an umbrella-holder.

In all these cases, the things the children suggested were about wealth and power and status. For them, the things that marked out a king were things we could see - material riches, people whose lives were given to meeting the needs of the king, powerful people with authority over others.

The Jewish people were expecting their Messiah to be a king along these lines. Messiah means anointed, and those who were anointed were kings. It was a sign of God’s blessing and election. The Jewish expectation was of a powerful man, a rich man, a man who would bring them freedom from oppression through his strength, a man with status and worth.

Perhaps, then, we shouldn’t be too surprised that when God’s anointed, the Messiah, turned up many people missed who he was. He didn’t look like a king. He didn’t have great wealth. He didn’t have servants but acted himself as a servant. He didn’t lord it over others but mixed with outcasts and sinners. He wasn’t the son of a ruler, but of a poor young girl. He didn’t have courtiers but a band of twelve mismatched disciples, some of whom were hot-headed, some were outcasts, one even became his betrayer. His brothers and sisters weren’t princes and princesses.

Those who believed in Jesus had to adapt their view of what a king should be like. They needed to remember the prophecies, such as the one from Zechariah: “lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey,”
and from Micah:” You, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel.”

There were signs that Jesus was a king, for those who were able to read them. The wise travellers who visited Bethlehem asked for “the child who is born the king of the Jews”. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, people hailed him as their king. On the cross, he was given a crown of thorns and a purple robe, both signs of traditional kingship. And above his head was the plaque with the words Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews.

Even those who mocked him were somehow recognising the truth of his kingship: the soldiers saying “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

Today is known as Christ the King Sunday. It was introduced by Pope Pius XI in an encyclical in December 1925.

In the darkness of the period between the Wars, Pius regretted the rise of atheistic Communism and secularism, which he believed came about as a direct result of people turning away from Christ’s sovereignty, and denying the authority of Christ’s Church.

So he introduced this festival date as a way of drawing people back to acknowledge Christ as king. Originally celebrated on the last Sunday of October, it has now been moved to the last Sunday before Advent, the final Sunday of the Church’s year.

Many of those who recognised Jesus’s kingship were those who lived on the margins - the lepers, the tax-collectors and prostitutes, the sick and mentally disturbed, the thief on the cross.
They were the ones who didn’t get too tied in to the fact that Jesus wasn’t what they expected. They were, essentially, those who recognised that they needed the freedom that Jesus the king could bring them.

Freedom is often held in the hands of those who rule. It is usually those who feel their power is threatened who seek to restrict the freedom of others - we only have to think of situations like that of Aung San Su Ki in Burma to know that this is true.

Søren Kierkegaard, theologian and philosopher, tells a story about a king. Once upon a time, there was a King who fell in love with a milkmaid. He decided to give up his throne and renounce all his wealth and power, so that he could woo her just like any other farm labourer would have done. His closest advisors told him that he was mad. If there was no better-born girl to be his wife, why not just invite her to the palace and order to marry him.
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The king said that if he did that he would never know if his love was returned. She would probably be overawed by the magnificence of his court and would feel obliged to marry him without really loving him. This would not do.

He wanted to win her love and the only way of doing this was to become like her, to get on the same level and court her just as any of the village lads would have done.

Of course the king was taking a big risk, because the milkmaid might not love him, and might reject his advances. But the young King reckoned that it was worth risking everything in order to find a love that was returned freely rather than forced.

It doesn’t take much to see the parallels with the story of Jesus. God sent Jesus to meet us on our level, to be one of us. But the kingship of Jesus only truly gains meaning if we reflect on how it affects us.
Jesus’s kingdom is not a land with fixed boundaries where every person knows who their king is. We are all given the choice as to whether we wish to view him as our king. The two thieves on the cross took different decision. One joined the mocking; the other recognised, when faced with Jesus, that the real power lay not with the authorities who had put them on the cross, but with the king of heaven and earth.

Jesus’s kingship is one that we choose to recognise or not. If we choose to recognise him as king, then our lives cannot remain the same. For the kingdom over which Jesus has rule is a kingdom of peace and gentleness, of compassion and healing, of recognising the worth of others. Jesus is not a king like the rulers about whom Jeremiah was complaining - who scatter their flocks and have driven them away and not cared for them. He is the one about whom God says he will deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness.

We cannot ignore these things, if we are willing to call Jesus our king. As members of his kingdom, we are called to work for justice and righteousness, to ensure that our lives follow that of our king in bringing freedom for people, not in seeking to bind them to our desires.

With Jesus as our king, we should speak out about oppression when we see it, not turn a blind eye to it as the rulers that Jeremiah spoke about did. With Jesus as our king, everything we do should be in tune with his values, his compassion and care.

And our starting-point, if we are to be effective in living out the kingdom values. is our relationship with God. People are usually ineffective when they berate themselves for being selfish or quick-tempered or greedy and vow not to be so again. But through the Holy Spirit, we can grow and develop and become more Christ-like. To do this, we need to take our faith seriously and give it some attention.
Next week is Advent Sunday, when our focus shifts towards watching and waiting for the coming of Christ, both at Christmas and at the end times. Jesus constantly called his followers to keep alert for the time when God’s kingdom would come. That is a call to us too, a call to keep watch for the return of our Saviour, to keep watch for the time when justice and righteousness will have their true place.

Being alert means being in tune with God, taking our faith and our growth in faith seriously. Faith is not a static thing, but something that grows and develops an deepens the more attention we give it. If we never pray or read our Bibles, we will struggle to deepen our faith. Watching and waiting means being aware of what it is we are awaiting and preparing ourselves for its coming.

For Advent reminds us of the past, of all that God has continued to do. Advent reminds us of the future, of the fulfilment of all that God has promised. And Advent, if we take it seriously as more than just a time to write Christmas cards and buy presents, gives us time and space to hear and respond to God’s invitation to live in the light of both.