Christ the King Sunday is all about the Kingdom of God and the nature of power, which begs the question, “What does it mean to live today, in this time, in the Kingdom of God now even as we wait for a new world to come?”

It is curious that Christ the King is on the last Sunday of the church year. It’s like this day is the exclamation point or the period at the end of our yearlong statement as a church. In this way, today is an important day. It’s saying something. And it is a relatively new feast day added by the Catholic church in 1925 in response to WWI and the massive flexing of power by secular governments and other powers such as growing corporate power, rampant financialization and speculation, war recently past and war already on the horizon by this time, along with the ongoing impoverishment of people. I am speaking of the 1920s, of course, but I could see how you could have gotten confused about which 20s we’re talking about.

So it is in this milieu that the Catholics started this feast day to remind us Christians that Christ is our King, not the world or anyone in it. Yes, we need to live in the world, but we do not need to let the ethos of domination that imbues our culture also imbue us. I wonder if part of this day is meant to be like a closing argument, if we were lawyers, or like the big reveal of the detective in an Agatha Christy novel, when all the details come together to make the picture come into focus.

Of course, that’s a high bar that we may not reach today, given that the picture we want to come into focus is the mystery of God, the mystery of God’s movement in us and through us, and the mystery of Christ’s Kingdom for us. These are all mysteries, because we don’t live our lives in the full expression of this reality. We see glimpses and pops of insight. Yet what we see in these sometimes fleeting and sometimes expansive moments is so real, so compelling, so vital that we believe or at least want to believe in God’s reality more than just the limitations of our sometimes cruel human constructions and culture. So, by our faith and in love for all, we declare ourselves to be citizens of God’s Kingdom. Period. End of church year.

The trouble comes in when we have to keep living our lives beyond the moments of revelation. We live in a world that continues to challenge, tempt, and confuse us. It’s not always clear how to live as a citizen of God’s Kingdom, because God’s ways are counter-cultural and yet we live our lives soaked in our culture. Now, I don’t want to be hater. Our culture has some good points, but it can also be quite brutal and harsh, particularly for folks who are suffering and are on the ropes of life for one reason or another.

To help us become more aware of how we are living as citizens of God’s Kingdom, I thought we’d talk about power. Power dynamics are everywhere we turn. In every relationship, there are power dynamics. Just go get a cup of coffee or go to the grocery store and there’s power dynamics. In our families, workplaces, church, civic life, or simply driving down the street, there are power dynamics.

Because the Bible was written for people who swim in power dynamics (everyone), the Bible is essentially a description of what the people of God do with power, how they manage without power, and how God redeems us regardless of our situations. We have stories of kings and leaders who are corrupted with their power and wealth and all that happens to them. We also have stories of people without money, health, family, freedom, or status who are loved, healed, and redeemed by God. Everywhere we look in the Bible and in our lives, there are power dynamics at play.

In the gospel today, there’s obvious mockery of Jesus as king. The soldiers put a sign over him calling him the “King of the Jews.” What a joke! And what a pathetic people that their king is dying on a cross. This is Rome flexing its power over the people and over Jesus. And the people ask, for good reason, if he’s really God’s Son, why isn’t he doing something about this situation?! Why not use his power? It doesn’t make sense to humans to not exercise power when it is yours to use and you don’t.  

Well, not all power is made equal.

We’re all familiar with power when it’s used to control a situation or people. We generally don’t like it when we’re on the receiving end. We tend to like it when we are the one or in the group that is exercising this sort of power. Another word for this is domination. A person or a group of people have power and another person or group doesn’t have power. That power disparity can be abused to achieve whatever the goals of the powerful are, regardless to the needs and wants of the powerless.

None of us are strangers to this kind of power. But this is not God’s form of power, even if at times it’s the only kind of power us folks can imagine. This is the confusion when the people say at Jesus’ feet, why don’t you save yourself. And yet, God does not use power in this way, dominating a situation for God’s ends.

Thankfully there are other kinds of power and ways to use it. I’m reading a new book by Brene Brown called “Strong Ground; The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit.” In this book, she talks about four kinds of power; power over, power within, power with, and power to.

‘Power over’ we know already. That is domination. ‘Power within’ is our sense of value and power in ourselves while respecting the differences that others bring. Without respecting the other, this could easily turn into power over. ‘Power to’ is when we hand power to others grounded in the belief that all people bring skills and capacities. And ‘power with’ is when we experience power in healthy collaborations that multiplies the power of individuals for the sake of a shared goal.

Of these four ways of expressing power, what God does not do is dominate and express ‘power over.’ Christ in the desert and Christ on the cross, the beginning and the ends of his ministry in his human form, demonstrate this clearly. He uses power in a different way.

Perhaps Brown’s framework of power within, power to, and power with could be helpful for our understanding of God’s power. Certainly, Jesus knows his own sense of power and authority. And I’d say he certainly extends power to us telling us he will be present when two or more are gathered in his name. And he encourages us to respect each other, love each other, and work together to do God’s will, which sounds like using power with others.

It strikes me that if we were to draw a picture of the movement of Jesus’ power, it would be in the form of a cross itself. Power from God, who we imagine is up, flows into us for the sake of our own sense of power within and that we are indeed strong through God’s gift of power to us. And doesn’t the power of Christ flow through us to other people, flowing out horizontally from us and through us to one another? And do not people then share God’s love and power with us in mutual love and care?

Simone Weil, the French philosopher, said, “It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified.” We like that position of being the person above the others, lording our power over others. It’s not so bad when you’re on top or are a part of the group that is on top. There’s nothing like your team winning and that fluffed up feeling that comes along with that win.

On Christ the King Sunday, we are invited to ponder what it all means and what it looks like to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God, a kingdom where power over others is not exercised. It’s not what we do. We may quickly or easily say we don’t operate that way as well, and yet we live in a world dominated by systems that exercise power over people who are less powerful. How are we using our power within, to, and with for the sake of those who are harmed by our systems of domination? How should we?

Jesus had the power to make everything just so, using power over others and life. But that’s not how God operates. Instead, he got close to those who needed care, gave power and agency to others through teaching and preaching and healing and feeding, but also received hospitality and expressions of love from people who had been shunned from that honor. His use of power lifted people up and restored them. So, as citizens of the Kingdom of God, we too are invited to watch the power dynamics around us and in us and find the paths of the Christ-shaped flow of power and love for the sake of the us all.

AMEN

AMEN