Who Is This King? Pausing Before Advent to Remember

Christmas Is Just Around the Corner

Christmas is just around the corner. Christmas trees are already up in the shopping centres, and I hope that all your Christmas decorations are already surrounding your houses and churches and that you are getting ready for that Christmas season. I love this time of year. I love collecting Christmas decorations, and I think I have a small obsession with nativity scenes — even though I don't actually believe the nativity scenes as they're presented are an accurate representation of the story of the birth of Jesus. I just can't help myself. I love collecting them.

Next week, the readings for churches around the world that follow the lectionary begin a new cycle, a new lectionary calendar year, starting the Advent season — the season where we prepare for Christmas, where we prepare for the coming of Jesus, the incarnation of our amazing God on earth as a little baby.

A Strange Reading Before Advent

So this week, the Sunday before Advent, we have a kind of strange reading. Why, when we're approaching Christmas and Advent is about to begin, do we have a very Easter reading — Christ on the cross, the story as recorded in the Gospel of Luke of Christ hanging on the cross?

Well, that reading is very specifically chosen for today because today is Christ the King Sunday. Today is about celebrating Christ as King. This story is an opportunity for us to pause before we dive into Advent, before we prepare for the coming of Christ — to pause and remember who it is we are preparing for. And that's Christ. That's Jesus, the one who loves us and saves us. Jesus, who is the source of all creation, the one who was in the beginning and is for all time, the supreme ruler of the whole universe. Christ our King.

A Mocking Sign, A Revealing Truth

Even those who were crucifying Jesus — the soldiers who were gathered around him and those who hung him on that cross — they knew he was king, because they put it on the sign: This is the King of the Jews.

But it's not quite as it seems, is it? These soldiers aren't declaring "This is the King of the Jews" as a way of honouring Jesus as king. Rather, they are mocking him. They're saying to him, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself. Show us your miraculous power and get down off the cross. Surely you can't be king, because you are there on the cross, dying."

Surely a king wouldn't allow himself to die on behalf of his people. Surely the king's life is more important than anybody else's life.

The soldiers are mocking Jesus. They're deriding him. They're making fun of him. They're challenging the very idea that Jesus could be king.

A King Unlike Any Other

Because this king — this king who hangs there, no doubt in absolute agony — isn't concerned for his own wellbeing. He isn't taking himself down off that cross, which he had every power and possibility to do. Rather, the words we hear recorded in the Gospel of Luke, the words that this king speaks, are words of grace and forgiveness — even to the criminal who is being crucified beside him.

Who is this king that entered Jerusalem not with a fanfare on a mighty stallion, but on a donkey? Who is this king that consistently chose to stand up for and to stand with the oppressed, the outcast, the poor — who turned the tables on injustice, who offered kindness, not religious superiority?

Who is this king that rules not with might and power, although he has might and power? Who is this king that rules instead with grace and love, with quiet strength and truth-telling?

Pause and Remember

So as Christmas creeps just around the corner, as we prepare ourselves for Advent next week, may you take this moment today to pause and think about who this Christ is. Who is this Christ that we are preparing for in arrival at Christmas time? Who is this Christ that we worship, love, and adore?

And what qualities of Christ might you be able to remember — not just individually, but as a community, together as a church? How can we remember and celebrate Christ our King, unlike any other king we ever have or ever will know?