Sermon 11.23.25 Monarchies and Christ the King

Sermon Begins @ 16:40

11 years ago today was the last time that Christ the King Sunday was on November 23^rd.

How do I know this little bit of trivia? Constantine Slane was born on Christ the King Sunday 11 years ago and today is his birthday.

It took him 38 whole hours to get here. Starting on Friday at noon and arriving just before sunrise on Sunday morning.

He’s named for my father-in-law’s law partner and mentor Constantine Pulos.

His name is also the name of the first great monarch of Christianity, the emperor Constantine, when it wasn’t just taxes, Christ’s kingdom was rendered unto Caesar.

Since that time, Christianity has been an imperial church, accepted by those in power, used by many to gain power and to retain power, claimed as the catalyst for earthly dominion and the spread of power often at the expense of the poor.

For most of early Christianity, Christian people met in houses secretly and declared their loyalty surreptitiously.

It was dangerous to declare a king that rules your heart, in an empire where a physical king demands your fealty.

We see this played out in Jesus’ crucifixion, “this man says that he is a king, but only Caesar is king.”

It is why they place the inscription over his head INRI, Iesous Nazariensis Rex Iudaeorum, Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.

It is part of the irony of the men who are crucified with Christ, which is more pronounced in Matthew and Mark than in Luke, but still holds.

When the disciples are arguing over who is the greatest, we remember that the sons of Zebedee, James and John asked Jesus if they could sit at his right and his left, when he comes into his kingdom.

Jesus tells them that those places are already spoken for.

Jesus knows that his earthly throne is a cross, even if the brothers do not.

To claim a kingship in a world filled with kings is a dangerous thing.

And yet, this is what the early Christians did.

For the past 1700 years since Constantine adopted Christianity as a legal religion and then promoted it to the official religion of Empire,

Christianity has been a royal religion; not just interested in the kingdom come, but in the kingdom here.

We see this influence in our liturgy.

Have you ever noticed that every week is Christ the King Sunday?

We do a royal procession, we lift high a copy of his proclamations, and we read a piece of his story or his instructions, the laws that are supposed to be written on our hearts.

We sing royal songs,

For some of us, when his name is proclaimed or his blessing is pronounced, we bow or we make his sign.

And we eat from the feast of the royal table, which is set up on a dais, so that we know how important it is.

In all of this, we pledge our allegiance to him through our rituals and pray that his kingdom will come and that he will reign forever.

Like I said, every Sunday is Christ the King Sunday.

Many have noted the decline of the church over the past several decades in polls on the religiosity of this nation and across Europe especially.

Church folk often opine the numbers of people who do not make time for church on Sunday.

As if we are simply passive victims of demographic trends.

What is interesting to me is something that I don’t think these demographic data always focus on.

In the wake of the no kings protests last month, and the way the Crown Prince of Saudia Arabia was welcomed into the White House with pomp and circumstance, it occurred to me that this past century has brought about a revolution in the way that most places are governed.

Since the fall of the Romanov dynasty in Russia, the Ottomans in Turkiye, the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the last emperor of China, for the first time in history, there are more democracies on earth than kingdoms.

And, even if you count many of the royal houses that still exist in England, Japan, Sweden and others, those societies are not kingdoms in the way that royal houses dominated the world for most of human history.

Almost all of this change has happened since the French Revolution just over 200 years ago, and most of it happened only 100 years ago.

It is actually as a result of these social upheavals that Pope Pius X instituted the celebration of Christ the King Sunday in the early 20^th century, as an antidote to the secularization and rising atheism of post World War 1 Europe, and a world that was moving toward post-monarchy.

He clearly saw the connection between the monarchies of the world and the power and privilege of the church.

What I am trying to say, in a rather long-winded way, is that the crisis for Christianity did not start in the 1990’s or 2000’s, it has been a slow process going back at least a century or two, which has been masked by eras of rapid growth like the 1940’s and 50’s.

I can’t help but see a connection between the success of the church and the success of monarchy, the decline of the church and the decline of monarchy.

We opine the fact that people don’t understand our rituals all of the time. Part of that I would suggest is that the cultural representations of kingship, which our rituals are based on are things that our culture has gotten out of the practice of seeing.

But, does that mean that they can’t become meaningful again?

Can we only grow our churches, if we accept the new kind of royalty enshrined in concert venues, pastors on planes, and righteous gemstones?

I would suggest that while we wring our hands about traditional versus contemporary worship styles, we’re actually missing the point.

You see, church growth, whether it is the numbers of people in a building, or the growth of spiritual commitment and encounter with the divine has never been about where earthly power resides, but about how we manifest God’s power in our lives.

And, instead of looking at trends of power that make it easier or harder to get adoring crowds of thousands into a church building, what we really need to do is ask the question:

Why do kingdoms fail?

Of course, there can be all kinds of reasons for this and history book writers for centuries have made their livings on trying to figure out what happened and why.

Besides the normal answers that focus on big events or ineffectual leaders,

I would suggest that one reason that kingdoms fail, or any society or institution for that matter is not simply because of surface level optics or single bad decisions;

But because they fail to renew themselves in a process of continual redevelopment.

Instead of saying, “it has always been this way,” or “we like things the way they are,” institutions like kingdoms or churches that engage in times of renewal and reformation thrive.

Places that find ways to search for and welcome new life into their community,  to orient new people into the life, and give their people a way to grow and transform, that build on momentum, and lift up the gifts of new leaders while remaining grounded in the roots of wise elders, places that are 100% authentic to what they say they believe,

These are places that will thrive despite demographic shifts, because they know who they are and they regularly ask themselves who they need to become.

I made the case earlier that the decline of Christendom coincided with the decline of monarchy worldwide, and maybe that’s true.

But if we take a fierce moral inventory of our own decline as individual churches, we may find that there are ways that we haven’t attended to transformation as a continual need for health.

The Good News is that we have been doing that and we are now beginning to get more tools to continue our growth both spiritually and in numbers.

Did you know that over the past two years our church has grown at a steady rate of 10%?

That’s not random.

That is because we have reengaged with our neighborhood, we have become again a church on a mission, we have loved each other and been open to new things,

In other words, we are transforming ourselves in Christ and it is being noticed.

We believe in a God of transformation, whose kingdom is everlasting but not static.

At the beginning of creation, God didn’t just sit in the void and say, “well this is how it’s always been, I’m pretty comfortable, let’s stay this way.”

God said, “let there be light and transformed all things so that something new could happen.” Or as the Apostle Paul puts it, “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

When the kingdoms of the earth and the laws of humans became static, God didn’t just leave us to our own devices,

God sent Jesus to proclaim a new kingdom that was better and more humane than peace through violence.

Instead of capital punishment for our offenses, Jesus proclaimed, “forgive them for they know not what they do,” showing that the true power of kings is not their violence, but their mercy.

As the psalm reminds us that our king to come will “give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.”

Whereas the kingdom, the empire of Rome sought to hold onto power through its violence and power, the True king of Heaven gave up his power so that we might be transformed in our hearts to live a better way.

As the great hymn writer F. Bland Tucker penned it so eloquently, “All praise to thee, for thou, O King Divine, didst yield the glory that of right was thine, that in our darkened hearts thy Grace might shine.”

And so, Jesus proclaims that even though we constantly fall short of His glory, he will not judge us harshly, but forgive us ultimately.

All of this shows us that our God is a God of transformation and that we as the people of God’s kingdom ought also to be about transformation.

Places do not fail because of bad decisions, or demographic trends, those are just a symptom.

Places that fail do so because they are complacent and fail to renew themselves continually to face the challenges of their time.

Over the next couple of weeks, as we turn ourselves toward Christmas, we will enter the season of Advent, a time to prepare for the coming transformation of the world toward JOY.

Beginning today and in the season to come, we will engage in our stewardship campaign.

Yes, this will be about pledging money to the church so that we can continue to pay bills,

But this year, it is also about how we will commit to the life of transformation through congregational development.

How are we developing ourselves, renewing and transforming, so that Jesus’ mission for this neighborhood and for our people thrives instead of remaining static?

Over the next four weeks, we will learn the life-cycle model of church development, we will talk about our new church building plan with the architects of our project, and we will make our individual plans for how to support the church financially and spiritually in this season of renewal.

I know that we can all become fearful in seasons of change, but if we believe in a God of transformations, of life that comes in spite of death, of sins that can be forgiven, and wrongs that can be made right,

We have no reason to fear.

We have every reason to ask ourselves, where can the greatest transformation take place.

Is it our job to continue to be the church of the elite, or can the greatest transformation take place by inviting kids to get off the street?

By repairing the breach and restoring streets to live in?

I think we fear that goodness in this country is gone as we rally against a new kind of monarchy and new kings and renewed fealty to power despite or maybe even on account of its brutality.

But, I see every day that there are people of goodwill who want to band together to bring positivity to the world; to belong to a kingdom not of this world, but made of inhabitants of this world.

We are such a place, we are part of the kingdom of Christ.

We are a people of transformation, who believe that all people are capable of change, even ourselves.

It’s not just that we need people to keep this place going, the world needs the kingdom that we proclaim, the safety for souls that we provide.

So let’s continue to proclaim Christ as King of our lives and enthrone him on our hearts, bow to him in our prayers, make his sign over our bodies, process in royal circumstance,

But also look to our own redevelopment as a sign that he empowers those who continually seek his face.

As the letter to the Romans says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

St. Andrew’s, I invite you into a new world, not a world that is guaranteed by monarchies, but a world that needs you to be the kingdom of God and to set a place at the table for a people in deep despair,

But also a people capable of hope and beauty.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord.

His reign is coming.

Will we be prepared?