The Rev. Austin K. Rios
20 November 2022: Christ the King
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Canticle 16
Colossians 1:11-20
Luke 23:33-43
Those of you who form the solid core of this community, and even some who only sojourn with us for a brief season, may have noticed me using an uncommon pronunciation during the Eucharistic Prayer.
While as an American, I am used to being lectured about how we pronounce and spell words incorrectly by my British friends, I can assure you that this variance of pronunciation is intentional.
In the sections of the prayer where we elevate bread and wine and recall Jesus’ words to his disciples at the Last Supper, Jesus’ final instruction to them and us is, “Do this for the remembrance of me.”
Memory is a powerful thing, and the act of remembering something from the past in order to make it alive in the present is certainly a key feature of what we are doing each Sunday.
And yet, astute listeners will have noticed that I say the word remembrance with a break in between the re- and the -membrance in order to signify another important aspect of what is happening to us and to the entire cosmos each time we celebrate Eucharist together.
When these precious, ordinary gifts of bread and wine are blessed, broken, and shared—simple and profound collaborations between God’s grace, nature’s bounty, and human stewardship and labor—the entire Body of Christ, unbound by time and place, or life and death, is reconnected and made alive once more.
We are re-membered, “re-ligare-d” and re-attached (which is the root of the word religion) to the mystical fellowship of God’s people, and simultaneously re-membered to one another.
So that we will know and feel that our individual gifts are part of the larger Body that even death cannot destroy, and so that we are fed and empowered to LIVE as a united body in this age who work together to keep loving and transforming the world according to Christ’s example.
You may have thought I just didn’t know how to say the word remember correctly!
But I assure you, the very heart of my faith, vocation, and life can be located in that simple, but powerful word!
Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year, and a day set aside to reflect on how Christ’s kingship differs from the many competing reigns in our world.
Paul extols the unique place Christ occupies in his letter to the Colossians—going to great rhetorical lengths to communicate that Christ is the genesis, nexus, reason and salvation of all creation.
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.[1]”
That vision of Christ, as true and as powerful and as steeped in the resurrection as it is, seems a far cry from the image of the beaten and dying Jesus on the cross in our Gospel.
We are transported to a scene that exposes all the cracks in our attempts to self-govern without God’s grace.
Roman soldiers, pawns in a domination system that disproportionately crushes the poor and the weak while letting the well-funded and well-connected avoid justice, mock the seemingly impotent “King of the Jews” as his blood and breath seep away.
Religious leaders, so fearful of losing the place of power their holy-ish posturing has won for them, rile the crowd against the Nazarene in order to quash the threat of his inbreaking kingdom for good.
The Pilates and the Herods, kings of that age, sign death warrants from afar, and have cushioned themselves from the violence and inhumanity of their actions with soft robes and the distance that disproportionate wealth can provide.
And then there are the criminals and the crowd—part frothing mob and part sober reflection—that continuum upon which all our souls slide.
The first criminal’s plea, “Save yourself and us” would have made sense from a worldly perspective.
If Jesus really was a king, and had the kind of powerful connections that would accompany worldly kingship, then he would have had the ability to avoid the cross altogether.
Who could blame the suffering criminal for wanting to ride on the King of the Jews’ coattails and escape certain death on the cross?
But it is the words of the second criminal that grip us and guide us today—we who know that there will be no escaping the cross and all it means, only passing through it to something greater.
“Jesus remember me when you come into YOUR kingdom.”
Even through the blood, sweat, tears and thorns, Jesus assures the reflective criminal that today he will be with him in paradise.
As one on this side of the veil that separates life and death, I can only have faith that Jesus indeed gathered that introspective criminal into the company of the saints in light.
But perhaps the more radical notion is that The King of King and Lord of Lords, who for love’s sake exposed the sinful divisions of our world and went to the cross because he was unwilling to sacrifice the truth for a quick pardon, doesn’t only re-member the second criminal.
The All in All, the Alpha and the Omega, the head of the church and author of our salvation re-members us all.
Christ re-members the dutiful soldiers, the mocking priests, the roaring crowd, the derisive criminals, and even the detached autarchs of the world—showing us to be interrelated members of the same body, regardless of the gravity and weight of our sins.
If we allow ourselves to believe and behave as if we are so connected, then our experience of the reign of God in our lifetimes will increase and we will be empowered together to keep loving and coaxing a hesitant world toward the transformation that Christ the King has shown us.
Once you know the power and grace of being re-membered by, in, and through Christ, then you know what it truly means to live.
And once you participate in the life that cannot end, and see how living and working with and for others helps extend that life and gospel in the world, then the only proper response is to give generously so the message and mission will reach others.
As we begin our Live & Give campaign today, as we acclaim the Reign of Christ above all else, and as together we keep pursuing this stronger and more connected community we call church, I pray that we all will know the fullness of what it means to be re-membered.
To see the broken pieces of our lives made whole in the Savior, to know the communion we share as food for the world, and to become a people who love and connect with others so deeply and radically that the reign of Christ the King will keep transforming us all.