November 23, 2025
Pentecost 29/ Year C
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex CT
Jeremiah 23:1-6; Canticle 16; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-42
It is an odd thing to observe a Sunday dedicated to a king who vehemently rejected the idea of being made king. After the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 in John, Jesus sees the people coming to try to make him king by force, and he hastened away to the mountain by himself (John 6:15). After his arrest, Jesus says to Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world, and Pilate jumps on that, “So you are a king,” to which Jesus responds, “You say that I am a king” (John 18:37).
So why do we call this last Sunday in the Christian year “Christ the King?”
Because Pope Pius XI had had it up to here back in 1925 with a world dead set on nationalism and authoritarianism, antisemitism and secularism, and declared this Sunday “Christ the King” as a reminder to the faithful around the world that we do not bow down to the State or to dictators, that we are citizens of a kingdom not of this world. It was an age much like the 1st century in the Roman Empire. The one to which Jesus protested, “My kingdom does not belong to this world” (John 18:36). It was an age much like the one we see around us today. So maybe today can come as a reminder that we are citizens of a kingdom that is not of this world.
There is no more potent symbol of the truth of this locating of Christ’s reign than reading an account of the crucifixion, as we just did. Today is the only day in our three-year lectionary cycle that we read the story of the crucifixion outside of Holy Week. The sign above him was not just a mockery of his claim to be king, even if his kingdom was not an earthly one. The Romans put the name and crime of the condemned on the cross for passersby to see, lest they be tempted to misbehave in a similar way. If Jesus were the kind of mighty king that threatened the empire, he certainly would not have kept company among thieves hanging on either side of him on Golgotha. Yet it was one of them, one of the condemned men, who got it. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 22:43). This criminal knew good and well that Jesus was not going to come off the cross and triumph over his executioners. He could see, even in his distress and agony, a better day, perhaps more clearly than anyone else had in Jesus’ time on earth.
Many of my fellow clergy recoil at the idea of kingship. As a human institution, kingship rankles. Why should anyone have some kind of hereditary privilege to rule, or even gain that kind of power by force, when we are all equal in the eyes of God? Kingship invites abuse of power, a trampling of the rights of those on the underside and outside, hoarding of wealth and insulation from the needs of the world outside the bubble of kingship. For many of these colleagues of mine, this day is better called the Reign of Christ which points to that otherworldly kingdom when all of creation is restored to unity with God and our neighbor.
Yet scripture talks of kingship in this way, too. The Prophet Jeremiah points to a different kind of king:
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.” (Jeremiah 23:5-6)
Our canticle, the Song of Zechariah, imagines the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy:
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; *
he has come to his people and set them free.
He has raised up for us a mighty savior, *
born of the house of his servant David. (Luke 1:68-6)
And even the reading from Colossians tells us what that kingdom looks like:
He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. (Colossians 1:13)
We have been transferred from a reign of darkness into a reign of light.
As my friend, John Mennell, said in his sermon on Tuesday night, this world has enough darkness, is oppressed and entrapped by forces arrayed against those who are doing their best just to survive. Those with more than enough lust after even more, leaving little more than crumbs for everyone else.
This is not the Reign of Christ that Jesus promised us. It isn’t his fault that it hasn’t come to pass, it is ours.
Author and minister Frederick Buechner gives as good a description as I have found of how we have missed the mark and, if we aren’t careful, may miss the inbreaking of God’s reign altogether. He wrote
If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to be born both within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.[1]
Next Sunday, we begin a new liturgical year in the Church. Here at St. John’s, I pray that we will dedicate ourselves anew opening our eyes to the world around us, looking for signs of Christ’s presence among us, shining the light of Christ in the world, and inviting others in so that they, too, might know what it is to find “home.”
[1] Frederick Buechner “Quote of the Day” for November 17, 2025, originally from The Clown in the Belfry.