Nov. 25, 2007

By Harry T. Cook

Luke 19: 29-38

The general idea on this Sunday next before Advent is to proclaim Jesus Christ as king – and not only “king,” but “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” You can hear the strains of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” even now. In many communions this Sunday is known as “Christ the King Sunday.”

Of course, it was inevitable in the development of Christian thought that its theologians would get around to that idea. Until the time of the American and French revolutions, kings were the closest things to people’s concept of deity. Kings were really powerful. They could say, “Off with their heads,” and off the heads went.

Then there was Louis the Sixteenth and his roommate, Marie Antoinette, who were taken down to the guillotine and shortened a little bit, speaking of heads rolling off. Only a decade before that, George Washington and his army taught King George III a little lesson about the limitations of kings.

Aside from the fact that the several Jesuses we meet in the New Testament gospels do not seem in the least like kingly types, is our gospel reading for today, which depicts Jesus being hailed as the king who came in the Name of Yahweh. Funny thing, though. He made his entrance, at least according to one account, riding on the swaybacked ass.

What kind of clue is that? OK, you can say that the Old Testament prophet Zechariah said at chapter 9 verse 9 it would happen that way. Even so, can’t our king at least have a chariot or sedan chair or a mighty steed upon which to make his entrance? Why an ass?

Guess why. The one around whose teaching we rally was no king, not even a pretender to any throne.

As near as we can figure Jesus was a somewhat lonely figure out there in the rural and urban wilds of First Century Palestine trying as best he could to account for how human beings could live together in some semblance of peace and security – and that was by covenanting to treat one another as they themselves would be treated, by walking how many extra steps it might take, by turning one bruised cheek after another to the hand of the smiter until he gets the point, and by loving the enemy as well as the detractor who may turn out to be a neighbor.

If by chance one called Jesus actually made such an entry into the holy city of Jerusalem as our gospel reading depicts, his fate would have been sealed on the spot. There was only one king in that place in those days. His name was Tiberius. He lived in Rome, and he did not ride around on asses.

So the point is made. Our kind of royalty is not fussy about his means and method of transportation. He is more interested in mocking actual royalty who ride about in chariots and Escalades and have the way cleared of riff-raff before them, royalty who are too important to pay attention, much less to minister to the individual needs of individual people.

Long before her account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, Luke tells stories of how Jesus stopped or was stopped along the way to deal with one thing or another in the lives of actual, ordinary persons. It made the way longer and more complicated, but Jesus is depicted as stopping here, going aside there, responding to yet another individual need or emergency.

That’s our kind of royalty and the only kind of royalty which or whom we could ever recognize, because the religion of the gospel is an egalitarian one. It is no respecter of privilege or precedence. Our King of kings and Lord of lords is one of us, sometimes indistinguishable from any of us. It is said that we are to seek and serve him in all persons. He may be one of them, though we might not know it.

That’s what the Christmas gospel will say: Became human and dwelt among us. We might add “as one of us.”

Our kind of royalty.

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.