When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. The people stood by, watching Jesus on the cross; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews."
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
One of my favorite philosophers is Homer…Simpson. He is so wise. One of my favorite of Homer’s teachings occurred during a time when he inexplicably found himself floating down a river in a cherry picker as his daughter Lisa looked on helplessly from the shore. Homer clasped his hands in his hour of need and looked up to heaven and said, “I’m not normally a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman!”
Homer wanted a hero to swoop down and save the day; and who could blame him? Superheroes are the ideal versions of ourselves, the ones who are always there to rescue us from the muck that we get ourselves into. In the early fall my parish held a class called Supergods, where we talked about how characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, are modern-day mythological heroes, divine-like beings who do the kind of saving that, frankly, we might sometimes wish God would do. How often have we, like Homer, clasped our hands and prayed for someone to save us from our time of trial, maybe even swooping down from the sky with a cape flapping in the wind? Is this our image of the Divine?
It should come as no surprise to us even now that folks in Jesus’ own time thought of him as something like this kind of hero, one who would rescue everybody and fix their problems. Plenty of people still do. Jesus, after all, was the promised Messiah, the King of Israel, the one who would overthrow the tyranny of Rome and replace it with a new version of the old Kingdom that his ancestor David had reigned over; and like King David, he would be a conquering hero, super even. That was the hope, anyway.
They wanted a king. Some still do. This past Sunday was the Feast of Christ the King, a day that was created in 1925 to remind faithful followers of Jesus, during the rise of European fascism, that Jesus alone must reign in their hearts and minds, and not the State or its would-be kings and dictators. Pope Pius XI, who established Christ the King Sunday, called it a day of joy, which is why I wore white vestments. So where do we find Jesus our sovereign on this joyful, feast of the Church? At the place called the Skull.
It's here that the King of Glory reigns. Instead of a throne, there is a cross. Instead of crown of jewels we have one of thorns. Instead of subjects praising and adoring Jesus we have soldiers and religious leaders and passers-by mocking and deriding him. This isn’t an image of kingship, of majesty, and power. It’s a joke, a mockery of the very concept, and the only one who seems in on it, who even begins to understand, is a criminal who is hanging there with Jesus.
This exchange between Jesus and the other two men being crucified only appears in Luke’s version of the story, and it’s quite telling. The original Greek word used to describe the criminals is kakourgos, literally meaning, ‘workers of evil.’ These were not robbers or thugs, these were seditionists, insurrectionists, militants who had carried out plots against the tyranny of the empire. Not exactly a royal court for Christ the King. Still, in this moment we see the qualities that mark his kingdom. He pleads to God, “Father, forgive them!” on behalf of those mocking him and putting him to death. The first criminal joins in the derision, hearing Jesus’ words of forgiveness and paying them no mind, as he is only interested in what Jesus can do for him now. The second, however, hears Jesus’ words, and he seeks a place in such a kingdom, where the defining characteristic is pardon, not punishment, where even condemned criminals can be redeemed: “Jesus,” he begs, “remember me.” And Jesus’ offers grace in his reply to this man, whom the Church will remember by the name of Dismas, telling him that he will be with Jesus in Paradise. Forgiveness for his executioners and grace for criminal – the qualities of Christ’s kingdom.
This is a complete flipping of every idea that the world has ever had about kingship, sovereignty, and power. But that’s the point. Of the Jesus story and of this feast day. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, which we’ve been reading all year, Jesus has been telling us, in his own words spoken through parables what his kingdom – what he called the Kingdom of Heaven – looks like: a wasteful, prodigal child returning to a father’s loving arms; a hated outsider, a foreigner, serving as the model of neighborly behavior; a shepherd foolishly going off to find one lost sheep; a rich man’s feast open to the poor and marginalized. A day called Christ the King may seem to invite a Gospel reading like Matthew, chapter 24, with images of Jesus coming with the angels, riding on the clouds and shining like the sun at the trumpet call, but instead we get Jesus being crucified, labeled among the enemies of the state, because the kingship of Jesus is summed up right here at the cross: that if Jesus is king, no one else, not even Caesar, can be.
In his excellent book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Dr. James Cone writes that the Gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair. The Christian Gospel, he goes on to say, is an immanent reality, a powerful liberating presence among the poor right now in their midst. The Gospel is found wherever poor people struggle. This is the lesson of the cross. It’s not a superhero saving the day; it’s a Savior who suffers in solidarity.
Jesus reigns from the cross, from that place of suffering. Jesus reigns in hospice houses, homeless shelters, and prison cells. Lately, Jesus has been reigning in the Home Depot parking lots around the Triangle of North Carolina, and at the detention center in Alamance County that’s been used to house those illegally detained. Border Patrol and ICE agents rolled into North Carolina like thuggish Roman soldiers, hellbent on intimidating people into submission. In the same way that they crucified the Prince of Peace in a public space so that onlookers could see “This is what happens when you defy the emperor!” they arrest innocent men, women, and children in an attempt to bully our immigrant neighbors – namely those who are people of color, let’s be honest – into giving up and going “back where they came from.” Stay here and defy our would-be emperor, and you’ll get the same treatment, they say.
Many were met with good old fashioned North Carolina resistance and have fled like the cowards they are. Others remain in cities all over the country, but what they don’t know is that they have already lot. Because the one we follow, the one so many of our immigrant neighbors follow, the one we love, the one we call our king, our sovereign, our Lord, our Savior, and our friend, is not a superhuman hero that will come fix all of our problems if we say the right prayer to him; he reigns from the cross. He who knows suffering is found in the very places where his people suffer, and in that solidarity he will transform their despair into hope, just as he transformed that ugly Friday afternoon into a gloriously beautiful Sunday morning.
If we want to see our king reigning in his glory here and now, all we need to do is go to the cross, go to the places where suffering is so real, so present, and just be there, in solidarity with the suffering poor, especially our immigrant neighbors right now, and we will see his kingdom in real time, a kingdom, that we affirm in our Nicene Creed, will have no end. As the Greek scholar Preston Epps once wrote: the kingdom of humanity says assert yourself, the kingdom of Christ says humble yourself; the kingdom of humanity says retaliate, the kingdom of Christ says forgive; the kingdom of humanity says get and accumulate, the kingdom of Christ says give and share. So which kingdom will we claim?
