A Touch Of Incongruity

Pentecost 25B                                                November 21, 2009

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Does it not seem sometimes that incongruity is part of the fabric of human existence? We say one thing, we do another thing. It looks like this, but it is actually that. Law and Gospel. So just think, in one month and two days we will be celebrating Jesus’ birth – it will be Christmas Eve and most of us will be here for one of our services. And here we are on what I call “Christ the King Eve,” because tomorrow is Christ the King Sunday – a festival day in the church. Notice the white paraments? If I were wearing a stole over my shoulders tonight, it would be white, with a touch of gold. So where is the incongruity in this?

We are getting close to celebrating the birth of Jesus, tomorrow is Christ the King Sunday, yet our Gospel tells us of Jesus’ encounter with Pontius Pilate, shortly before his crucifixion. Christ the King? King? Two thousand years ago, even one thousand years ago, in fact, even a few hundred years ago, kings had power. Real power. What a king said, went! Kings were kings for life unless they were assassinated, killed in battle, or deposed somehow. Christ the King? It just does not seem to fit.

But the stage was set when not too long after his birth, Magi came from the East, searching, on a quest, you might say. “Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews?” the wise men asked when they came to Jerusalem in the time of King Herod, searching for the infant Jesus. Now Herod was a king who had power, at least locally. Caught out by angels who warned the wise men to go back another way, he sent his soldiers to the area where he thought Jesus was, with orders to kill all male infants of a certain age. That is power! Misuse of power, yes, but power nonetheless.

Jesus, who stated he came to serve and not be served, who taught his followers to do the same, stands before Pilate. “Are you the King of the Jews?” he is asked, in a question that is reported in all four of our Gospels. “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” is Jesus’ reply. An interesting question, one that I think Jesus might ask us even today. Perhaps this is where some of that incongruity might become apparent. We profess Jesus as Lord, as our King, in effect, whenever we repeat the Apostle’s Creed, because only our Lord, our King, can come again to judge the living and the dead. We profess him as Lord, as King, in other ways as well, every time we worship. But do we profess him as Lord, as King, in our daily lives? I can hear Jesus asking us: “Do you say this on your own, or did others incite you to say it?” In other words, do we say it because we believe it or because we come to church and this is what we say?

Incongruity again. Others have told us about Jesus, that is how we came to be here in the first place – raised in the church, new believers, it doesn’t matter. We have all heard about Jesus in one way or another. But that is not the point here. Let us explore this a little further.

Christ the King, seemingly powerless, but really powerful. Powerful in his obedience to God the Father, powerful in his willingness to lay down his life for us, to die for us, truly a King! Jesus who reigns from the cross, to give you and me this kingdom, bearing his own personal witness and witness through the ministry of his Word. Powerful in his resurrection from the dead, powerful in truth. Truth the messenger and the message because you remember that Jesus tells us he is the “way and the truth and the life.” Truth because he prays to the Father that we be sanctified in the truth, that God’s Word is truth. Truth that is the incarnate Word and the spoken.  

And we belong to the truth because in ancient Israel, the image of the king was that of the shepherd. Jesus said that his sheep hear his voice and his sheep know his voice.

We, like Peter, confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Like Peter, we hear that we are blessed because this confession comes to us not from flesh and blood but it has been revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

We, like Thomas, join in his confession to Jesus: “My Lord and my God,” revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

We, like Martin Luther, confess that we believe that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ our Lord, or come to him, that the Holy Spirit has called us by the Gospel.

There is incongruity all through our lives, but there is no incongruity in the grace of God, expressed to, in, and through us, through faith.

AMEN

See the index of our online sermon collection
Return to the home page of Lutheran Church of the Cross