+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I was listening to the radio in the car the other day, and the presenter was introducing Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the Eroica. I had known that “hero” to which the composer dedicated the symphony was Napoleon Bonaparte, but what I didn’t know was that shortly afterward Beethoven had revoked the dedication. Lest you think “getting canceled” is a recent phenomenon, this was 1804. While as first consul, Bonaparte was reckoned by Beethoven to be the embodiment of revolutionary and democratic ideals, declaring himself emperor ruined it entirely.
And discomfort with monarchy is far from a modern development. It was a huge concern in antiquity. Modern democratic movements were not creating something entirely new, but trying to recapture an ancient model which had been largely replaced in the middle ages. Of course there were kings in ancient times, but that polity frequently met with suspicion. Remember, the Israelites demanded a king; neither God nor his prophet, Samuel, thought this was a good idea; they relented and “gave the baby his bottle” as it were; and this led to disaster more frequently than to success. Or consider Ancient Rome (if you’re a young man, apparently you already do this on a daily basis, at least according to the internet). While counter-intuitive to us because of how language has evolved, the reason Augustus and those who followed were called “emperors” is because “Imperator” was considered a less lofty and more democratic title than the word “rex” or “king.” An emperor must at least theoretically rely on the Senate for legitimacy. Even “dictator” was a more congenial to the Romans than “king.” A Roman dictator, whenever it was deemed necessary to have one, had a six month term in response to an emergency and was frequently prosecuted afterward if he misbehaved too flagrantly.
A king, though, has ultimate power. He is the unquestioned military commander, a one-man supreme court, and chief priest of his nation’s religious cult all rolled into one. When the crowd gathered before Pilate at Jesus’ trial shout “we have no king but Caesar”, they are saying something more shockingly retrograde than any level-headed Roman citizen or imperial official who wanted to keep his job (Pilate included) would have dared say out loud. What’s more, this is blasphemy. It’s one thing to say that the most powerful imperial force has some right to police a territory; I’m not approving of that, by the way, but that was the nature of ancient geopolitics, the Jews had previously consented to such arrangements, and you can’t really apply the principles of posse comitatus retroactively by two millenia. It’s another thing entirely to say that Roman law is superior to the Law God gave by Moses and the imperial cult is superior to the worship of God in Jerusalem. And this is precisely what “we have no king but Caesar” means.
Now do not hear me as letting Pontius Pilate off the hook here. He was a bad egg to say the least, and frequently when you hear Pilate apologists they are not very well disguised antisemites. Even the wickedest of people can sometimes be forced to do something right, though. When the temple leaders tried to get him to amend the sign on the Cross—“he said he is the king of the Jews”—Pilate was not only keeping the sign accurate, but (whether intentionally or not) commenting on the temple leadership’s egregious blasphemy.
The world may have many emperors and dictators and lords and princes and presidents. But the world only has one king in the ancient, tripartite sense—only one who can perfectly combine the roles of captain and judge and priest and in each role he subverts our expectations. Instead of a diadem, he wears a crown of thorns. Instead of holding a scepter, he is pierced by the soldier’s lance. Instead of sitting on a throne he reigns from a tree.
At his second coming, the royal trappings may be more standard issue. I guess that depends on how much the imagery we see in Revelation is meant to be literal or metaphorical, but that’s a rabbit hole into which we need not delve this morning. In either event, we are called today to consider the historical type rather than the eschatological antitype, and recognize that they are ultimately the same.
So how does Christ see the royal will accomplished? He calls the nations to worship him upon the altar of his own sacrifice. He acts as merciful judge to the thief who repents. He leads a silent army, a surprise attack against the hosts of hell, breaking down its gates and leading the most successful rescue mission of all time.
So, we have two images—Christ as kingly king and Christ as crucified king. To this, let me add one more. It is the image on your bulletin covers. This is the oldest of a genre of icon known as Pantocrator, literally “ruler of all.” It is housed at St. Catherine’s (Greek Orthodox) Monastery, the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery, which sits at the foot of Mount Sinai. I love this image, because it makes one wonder why this is how Christ’s rule, his kingship, is meant to be thus depicted. Christ surrounded in the accouterments of royalty in eternity makes intuitive sense, and I’ve just the bulk of this sermon trying to show how the crucifixion can be viewed as an image of kingship, but this image seems less clear at first blush.
I think, and this is just my own hunch, that while the other two images require what I’ll call our proleptic imaginations (inviting the historical endpoint and the historical hinge-point into our present), this is an image which requires no such “timey wimey stuff.” This is Jesus as he is our king today. First, look at his hands. He gives us his word, symbolized by the Gospel book he holds in his left hand, and he gives us the sacramental ministrations of the church, symbolized in his right hand’s blessing. Thus his majestic Grace is mediated in this in-between time. But there is also the immediate (by which I mean, unmediated) Grace. Look up from the hands now, and consider the face of Jesus. He appraises us with the piercing eye of his divinity and the gentle eye of his humanity. And being both God and man, we may look back at him and behold the perfection which the nature of impassable deity precluded our seeing until he came to dwell with us. And what I see in those eyes is a statement which nobody but God could give: I see you fully, clearly, perfectly and I love you completely. Will you love me with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul?
This is the king who reigns even now, whatever the world, the flesh, and the devil may do to try to convince us otherwise. We have a living king who not only invites us into his court, but desires us to relate to him as a friend and a brother. And when he comes again in all his kingly grace, perhaps he won’t literally be wearing an ermine robe and jeweled crown, carrying an orb and a scepter. Maybe he’ll come to us looking more like the Pantocrator of Sinai, and more than behold us and we him through the medium of wood and wax and pigment, we may embrace as he welcomes us into his eternal kingdom.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.