On the last day of our church year we step back and take a look at things from the widest perspective possible: The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. We consider Jesus to be not just a king, unlikely though that seemed to Pilate and pretty much anyone around (Luke 23:35-43). He was not just a king in this world, recognized by his people as their leader, as David had been (2 Samuel 5:1-3). Jesus isn’t just the king of the whole world. This Feast declares that he is king of all creation, of the whole universe.
Most of the kings of Israel were not great leaders. They were weak or more interested in their own wellbeing than that of their people. Even David had his good points and his bad ones. Why then would the people of Jesus’ time be so keen on the idea of getting a king back. I suspect a strong motivation could be that, although he might suffer the limitations of many of their previous kings, he would at least be their king. They would be in control of their own affairs again, and out from under the control of the Romans.
The desire to be in control of our own affairs is not an unreasonable one. However even at the personal level that control is limited by all the circumstances around us. The complexity of those constraints grows as the group seeking control of its own affairs grows in size. In human history that desire for control has fueled countless wars, particularly in circumstances when kings, or any other leaders, are looking to increase the size of the group under their control or feel threatened by others.
Against this background why would Jesus want to be a king? His answer was pretty clear that he didn’t, in that sense of following the pattern of human kings. He wasn’t interested in control. He was totally focused on service – to the point of death, as Paul notes so often. So why then would we want to claim him as a king, as our king?
In making that claim we are recognizing, as we should, that Jesus is indeed in control, in control of of everything – the whole universe. But his control is very different from the control that human kings have fought over. His kingdom is a kingdom of peace. Not a kingdom that happens to be at peace, due to fortunate circumstances or clever diplomacy. His kingdom doesn’t need to fight for control, he has that power by right from the beginning of creation, a creation which belongs to him. “For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth”, as Paul notes (Colossians 1:12-20).
So if we feel a need to fight for something we must avoid the temptation of imagining that we are fighting for Jesus or his kingdom. We might be fighting for some other kingdom, we might be fighting to protect ourselves or our families. Sometimes such battles are unavoidable. But they have nothing to do with the kingdom that Jesus rules over. The kingship of Jesus reminds us that power and control look very different when seen through God’s eyes. Paul tells us the Father “delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son”. In that kingdom Jesus is “making peace by the blood of his cross”. Our king is a crucified king. That’s the way he brings peace.