Lectionary Commentaries for November 24, 2024
Christ the King (Year B)

Who is truly powerful? Who reigns?¹

John’s trial narrative raises these questions in compelling ways. Although Pilate and the Jewish leaders may appear to be powerful, John presents Jesus as the one who exercises authority.

The charge of kingship is the central question of Jesus’ trial before Pilate. Jesus never answers Pilate’s question, “Are you the king of the Jews?” (John 18:33), in a straightforward way. As in other parts of the Gospel, John communicates some of the most important messages about Jesus’ identity by enacting them in the story instead of stating them outright. Here, John uses the trial and crucifixion to display Jesus’ kingship and the faithlessness of those who reject him.

Jesus refuses to answer Pilate’s charge of kingship directly. He states that his kingdom is “not from here” (John 18:36), which Pilate interprets to be an affirmation that Jesus is a king. Jesus also puts the question aside as something Pilate claims, and instead offers the idea that he is a witness to the truth (18:37).

Although Pilate declares to the waiting Jews, “I find no case against him” (John 18:38), Pilate should not be viewed as an innocent bystander swept along by the will of the Jewish authorities. He goes on to play against Jewish aspirations for political independence as he taunts the Jews with the idea of Jesus’ kingship. Pilate’s mockery of Jesus’ kingship is seen in John 19:1-7, where he has Jesus dressed in a purple robe and crown of thorns (19:2). He is beaten and then displayed to the Jews. The chief priests and police, seeking Jesus’ death, demand Jesus’ crucifixion. Pilate has put them in the position of demanding the death of their own king (19:6).

Pilate maneuvers in Jesus’ trial to appear as the one who crucifies the Jewish king. John recreates this scene of the demand for Jesus’ crucifixion twice. The second time, he underscores that it is the beginning of Passover, the moment when Israel would stop and remember God’s kingship and God’s rule over other powers. Instead, at that same moment, Pilate asks the Jews again, “Shall I crucify your king?” In their reply, “We have no king but the emperor” (John 19:15), John shows that the Jews’ rejection of Jesus leads them to deny God’s kingship and embrace Roman rule.

Part of the irony of John’s presentation of the trial and crucifixion is that Pilate uses his own authority to declare Jesus’ kingship. He places an inscription over the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews” (19:19). The chief priests protest, asking him to clarify that this was only what Jesus claimed. But Pilate refuses their request with a solemn pronouncement: “What I have written, I have written” (19:22).

In this way, John crafts his narrative so that Jesus’ kingship becomes most visible in his crucifixion. It is as if his crucifixion is his enthronement as king, the moment at which the declaration of his kingship is made public. Although all four Gospels record the inscription over the cross (see Matthew 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38), only John adds the extra details about Pilate’s interaction with the chief priests regarding the saying. John crafts the story so that the reader, who has known since John 1:49 that Jesus is “King of Israel,” sees Jesus’ kingship enacted even against the protests of the Jewish leaders.

As the crucifixion makes clear, Jesus’ kingship is “not of this world” (John 18:36). Worldly kings take power from others by winning battles or at least through successful diplomacy. Jesus neither fights nor allows his followers to do so. He does not mount a vigorous defense.

Instead, Jesus offers an alternative to earthly kingship. “I have been born and come into the world for this: to witness to the truth” (John 18:38). Jesus’ testimony to the truth appears embedded within the story of John’s Gospel. In chapter 19, the manner of Jesus’ death testifies to his true identity. Those who can hear or see the message of his crucifixion see a true king.

It is clear that many do not understand Jesus’ kingship, and others reject it outright. Throughout chapters 18-19, Jesus is “handed over” through a chain of command that implicates a number of characters as responsible for his death. Although Judas Iscariot is widely recognized as the one who “betrayed” Jesus (see John 18:2, 5), the Greek word translated “betray” also describes the actions of the Jewish leaders and Pilate. In John 18:36, Jesus uses this word to describe his being “handed over to the Jews.” Pilate also tells Jesus that the Jews “handed you over to me” (18:35). At the end of the trial, however, it is Pilate who “hands Jesus over” to be crucified (see 19:16). Thus the culpability in Jesus’ death does not rest with Judas alone but is shared through this action of betrayal or handing over.

Yet John is not content to present Jesus as the hapless victim of others’ betrayal. On the cross, it is Jesus who “hands over” his spirit (the New Revised Standard Version translates this as “gave up,” John 19:30). Jesus’ purpose, “to witness to the truth” (18:37), is enacted in this moment as well. In the end, it is Jesus, and not Judas, the Jews, or Pilate, who exerts authority over life and death.

John 18:33–37 begins a long scene in which the Gospel writer unfolds the reality of Jesus’ kingship. It is a kingship that can be difficult to see, for it is manifest in crucifixion rather than in political dominance. Today, Jesus’ kingship can be difficult to see for the same reasons. Preachers may want to use John’s story to make visible how, like the Jewish leaders, our allegiances to earthly powers lead us to deny God’s kingship. We may not even be aware that we have done so.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for November 22, 2015.

“In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream …” 

So begins Daniel 7, which marks the transition in the book from court stories that celebrate heroic faithfulness and portray God’s judgment on royal hubris to the apocalyptic half of the book, which represents kings and kingdoms as “great beasts.” In the story world, these empires are envisioned as ruling the known world after Daniel’s time. But by the time the story was composed, all but one of the empires described had risen and fallen, and thus Daniel’s visions of the future were, for the author, prophecy after the fact. 

The Babylonian, Median, and Persian empires had come and gone, and the Greek empire of Alexander had divided into regional factions, including the Seleucid Empire founded by Seleucus I. The author and his intended audience lived in Judea, a region ruled by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV “Epiphanes.” The epithet [theos] epiphanes means [God] manifest, a title that Antiochus had minted on his royal coinage. 

In 168 BCE Antiochus responded to turmoil among the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem with crushing power. He essentially outlawed the Jewish religion, desecrated the Jerusalem temple, and slaughtered those who resisted his imposition of Hellenistic religious symbols, festivals, and practices. 

Daniel portrays the Seleucid Empire as a “terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong” beast with “great iron teeth.” It was “devouring, breaking in pieces, and stamping what was left with its feet” (verse 7). On its head were ten horns, probably representing Seleucid rulers, three of whom were displaced by a little horn. 

There were eyes like human eyes in this horn, and a mouth speaking arrogantly. … He shall speak words against the Most High, shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High, and shall attempt to change the sacred seasons and the law; and they shall be given into his power for a time, two times, and half a time (verses 8, 25).

Antiochus is the arrogant horn who caused three other horns to be plucked up, a reference to the fact that he came to power by usurpation and ruled in a manner that was indeed arrogant, as well as capricious and frequently brutal. The Jews suffered horrifying oppression under him (as described in the books of Maccabees). In 167 BCE, under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus and his family, many of the Jews revolted and successfully drove Antiochus’s forces from Jerusalem. Control of Jerusalem and Judea shifted back and forth in skirmishes for several decades, but the Judeans eventually won a degree of autonomy that persisted into the time of Jesus.

Daniel’s vision of judgment

Daniel 7–12 portrays the downfall of the Seleucid Empire and judgment of Antiochus in a series of vision accounts. Daniel 7 is the most arresting and dramatic of these. In it, the divine court is set up, probably on earth rather than in heaven, and judgment is passed on the four beast-empires. The fourth empire, and specifically Antiochus, is judged and destroyed with fire. 

On Christ the King Sunday, our attention is focused on this judgment scene. We see the Ancient One seated on a central throne with a myriad of servants attending him. Physical descriptions of God are few in the Hebrew Bible, presumably in keeping with the Torah’s prohibition of representing God with mundane images. 

Here, the author describes only God’s garment and hair, although his sitting on a throne implies also a human-like form. The description of God’s throne almost certainly draws on Ezekiel’s vision of “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezekiel 1). God’s throne has wheels and is ablaze with fire. Daniel adds to Ezekiel’s description that a stream of fire flows from the throne. The depiction of God communicates God’s otherness and extreme danger: “Our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). 

Earthly sovereigns, by contrast, are mere beasts that “devour and break in pieces” for a limited time, but the divine fire may devour them in the end. Antiochus is judged, not only for his violence and oppression against God’s people but also for his arrogance (verses 8, 11). Punishment of the arrogance of the kings is a theme in the first half of the book of Daniel, especially in chapters 4 and 5.

Following the judgment of the four empires and destruction of Antiochus, Daniel sees “one like a human being [literally, son of a human] coming with the clouds of heaven.” Christians, following the Gospels, quite naturally interpret this figure as Christ the King, the Messiah who comes on the clouds of heaven to rule the earth forever. Indeed, Jesus frequently refers to himself as “Son of Man,” and in his trial he quotes Daniel 7:13–14, causing the high priest to tear his clothes and declare blasphemy (Matthew 26:64; see also Matthew 16:27; 19:28; 24:30; 25:31). 

Of course, the author had another in mind, possibly an unnamed messianic figure, or the angel Michael, Israel’s defender, or even God’s people collectively. In Daniel 7:18, 22, 25, and 27, the kingdom is given not to an individual but to “the holy ones of the Most High.” In contrast to the beasts who violently assert their power, the one like a human being is presented before God and “given dominion and glory and kingship.” He rules by God’s appointment, not by his own self-assertion and violence.

Christians, especially those hearing this text on Christ the King Sunday, will naturally assume the author foretells God’s appointment of Jesus as the everlasting Messiah. Perhaps we need not choose between original intention and later application. One can hold that the author establishes a prophetic paradigm that has one fulfillment in the author’s time and another, later and ultimate one in Jesus. 

The main point to be made in preaching this text is that God is sovereign over history. Rulers come and go. They rage and destroy and boast arrogantly, even declaring themselves “God Manifest.” But in the end the books will be opened and the truth told. Boasting will come to an end, and all will acknowledge God’s sovereignty. The “one like a human being,” God’s chosen, will then rule forever, served and honored by all people. The oppression and the arrogance of rulers has its day, but in the end God’s Messiah will rule on earth, and every knee shall bow. To him alone are the power and the glory, and he alone deserves our ultimate allegiance.

This week’s passage contains a song of David, curiously introduced with the superscription, “The Last Words of David,” even though his narrative will continue to his death in 2 Kings 2:10. The reference to words is an important signal. From Genesis 1, the speaking of words equates power. David’s own strength is rapidly waning, thus this song is placed here before the end of 2 Samuel.

The superscription is more developed than the familiar descriptor “Psalm of David,” as is frequent in the Psalter. It has autobiographical movement beginning from David’s identification as the “son of Jesse,” invoking his calling as a boy into a fight with Goliath. He is then described as “exalted,” “anointed,” and “favorite.” It appears that the prior wrongdoings in complicity with the Philistines and sexual assault–murder in the Bathsheba episode are ignored or forgotten. Rather, David is described as powerful with divine sanction.

Claim of divine authority (2–3a)

This superscription naturally leads into the bold claim that these words are of divine inspiration as presented in two bicola.¹ The imagery of the first bicolon (verse 2) shows David as a passive agent of God’s direct speech. He is merely a container for the Lord’s spirit and the bearer of divine speech. The second bicolon (verse 3a) makes God the subject, or the nominative force in each line, described as “God of Israel” and “Rock of Israel.” This heightened language brings anticipation for the authority in the ensuing words.

Divine rule is just rule (3b–4)

The next section ascribes divine rule as just. Although the context is for Israel’s kingship, it has a hermeneutical reach that extends to any zones of power. Just rule recognizes appropriate reverence and fear of God. This is not restricted to Iron Age kingdoms, but applies to all spaces of power: homes, churches, classrooms, corporations, neighborhoods, et cetera. All of these spaces can have power and, therefore, abuses of power. But a true divine rule is just at its core. Notably, verse 4 provides three analogies for the impact of power: light, the sun, the rain. All of these benefits equally distribute to all people and not just the elite.

Divine rule grants abundance (5)

The poem moves explicitly to abundance. The abundance is in the form of longevity (“everlasting covenant”) as well as material abundance that “prospers” and even satiates “desire.” Before you develop too much of this idea of prosperity, remember that the song addresses a pre-monetary agrarian society. These economies do not have the capacity to hoard like in a modern-day economy. Prosperity was not massive retirement accounts and fancy homes, but rather enough food to comfortably feed one’s family.

The godless as antithesis of divine rule (6–7)

The poem ends with descriptors of godless characteristics. The godless bring pain like thorns. But unlike the eternal covenant, this pain is only ephemeral. Imagine a dry thorn on fire. It will burn up instantly. In the long game, the everlasting covenant of divine rule overshadows the moments when the godless seem to have control.

Because Israel was a monarchy, many biblical passages naturally revolve around royal themes. But how do we communicate our readings to modern audiences, far removed from meaningful monarchies? Today, royal houses in much of the world are symbolic at best, and subject to popular media scorn at worst. How is this royal song meaningful today? This is a challenging question for preachers.

Furthermore, I am writing this commentary in spring 2024, knowing that this will be released in November 2024, just after the United States general election. As of today, all signs point to a deeply divisive election that will be very competitive. Both presidential candidates have remarkable levels of disapproval, fueled by the drive for social media engagement, which often reifies our own opinions. In addition to the presidency, 34 Senate seats and all House seats will be contested. Whatever the election day outcome, there is sure to be a threat of lawsuits and violence. Now in the spring of 2024, this public anxiety is palpable on all sides of the political spectrum.

In this context, we can draw on the universalism of the human experience that connects 2024 to the end of David’s reign. Fear often accompanies uncertainty. As David’s life came toward an end, people were naturally anxious about royal transitions. They knew that godless leaders could cause pain. But in the longer timeline, God’s sovereignty endures. God’s sovereignty extended far beyond the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon. It will surely extend far beyond the lifetimes of anyone reading this commentary, preaching on this text, or hearing a sermon in this lectionary cycle!

The song does not deny the painful thorns of godless rule, but it does put it in perspective. Such rule, as painful as thorns can be, will not last. In fact, they are a vapor compared to the enduring just rule of God. The people of God did not prosper because of the reigns of the Davidic line. They prospered despite it!

We cannot predict the election results for the presidency, Congress, or local seats (though many people try—look at the commodification of pundit prediction sites). But the song of 2 Samuel 23 does give us a somber reminder of the true place of power and authority in our Lord. I guess we still live under divine rule after all.

Notes

1. “Bicolon: two lines of poetry set in parallelism to each other, referred to as a single unit (plural: bicola.” https://libguides.northcentral.edu/biblicalpoetry#:~:text=Bicolon.

Today’s psalm gives the opportunity to provide some content to the phrase “God is King” or “the LORD is King.”¹

Psalm 93 focuses particularly on God as Creator and Sustainer of the creation. It is a brief psalm with only five verses moving through three stanzas.

The first stanza declares, “The LORD is king!” and then continues to declare the majesty and strength of God that has firmly established the world for eternity. This fits well with Jesus’ declaration in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Indeed, it is God’s kingship that established the world. Pilate was thinking too small when he asked if Jesus was “King of the Jews.” The psalm places the words of Jesus within their greater context, a context Pilate and the powers of the world cannot see.

The second stanza leaves the realm of humans to remind us that there is more to God’s reign than human issues and concerns. The image in the psalm is intense and frightening. Many of us have seen the devastation brought when the “rivers lift up their pounding waves” (verse 3). This was a frightening image to the ancients also. The churning waters were the very definition of chaos. In a world gone crazy, it is comforting to realize that even the chaotic waters obey God.

Again, Pilate did not know what he asked. Read with the enthronement psalms, Pilate’s worldly power as prefect of the Roman Empire seems small indeed in the face of someone the rivers rise up to praise.

God controls even the most chaotic natural forces on the earth. Yet this does not mean God sends natural disasters. Just as with the rest of the universe, the creation runs by a set of natural laws. Weather changes and earthquakes all function by their own set rules.

The problem comes with the growing human population. We no longer are migratory, and we live in places that sometimes receive the negative side of that natural order. These disasters are sometimes simply unexplainable, and in those cases many reasons are provided, yet we remain unable to completely control the chaotic side of the creation. It appears this is one of the limits that is set for humans in the universe.

The final stanza (verse 5) places God’s decrees as part of God’s vast kingdom. God’s commands and holiness are as constant as the natural order. We do not often think of the decrees of God and the maintaining of creation together. Yet here and in several other psalms, this is exactly what is declared. God’s decrees that the sun run its course and that we should care for the least of the world are linked in God’s kingdom, even if we do not notice it. It takes both decrees to make our world run in the ways God intended. It is the foundation of God’s kingdom.

The whole psalm provides us a glimpse of the kingdom that the other three texts today point to in different ways. It is not always visible to us, especially when we focus on only human endeavors. On Christ the King Sunday, it is easy to assign these attributes to Christ as the King and thus ignore our own responsibility. But in order to participate in the kingdom, we too are responsible for our part in it. God’s decrees are the equivalent of Jesus’ teachings, and his focus on those in need of our help today even includes creation itself.

What we now know, that these ancient folks did not know, is that we would eventually gain the power not only to hurt the poor among the people but to also inflict harm on the very creation God set in place. Just like Jesus’ declaration to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world,” we need to be attentive to the kingdom of God that is not always visible to us.

We are called to care for the most critical and weak, and the creation is now on that list. We must remember that the creation has its own relationship with God and praises God in its way. We have no right to harm that relationship. In this psalm humans and creation join together in praise, and we should do everything we can to ensure that this continues to be possible, just as God the Creator and Sustainer of our world intended.

Together the humans as one part of the creation are to join the chorus of shouts that “God is King”; let us celebrate God and God’s great kingdom.

Notes

1. Commentary previously posted on this website for November 22, 2015.

The opening verses of Revelation are perfectly suited to Christ the King Sunday, affirming our conviction that God has indeed given Jesus the name before which all creatures will bow in reverent submission, proclaiming Jesus the “ruler of the kings of the earth” (1:5), and summoning our own allegiance to Jesus above every earthly power or party insofar as we have become the “kingdom” over which he rules on God’s behalf (1:6).

The lectionary quite intentionally, but somewhat unfortunately, eliminates the first half of Revelation 1:4: “John to the seven assemblies in Asia.” While they are perhaps not critical to the proclamation of the message of verses 4b–8 in isolation, they are, hermeneutically speaking, potentially the most important words in the book. A great deal of fruitless speculation and misleading commentary could have been avoided by giving proper weight to the fact that John wrote his book “specially for the benefit of certain people who were living at that time [and, one might add, in the specific context of the Roman province of Asia] and for the purpose of being understood by them.”¹

The God who self-identified as “the one who is” in Exodus 3:14 is here twice identified more fulsomely as “the one who is, the ‘he was,’ and the one who is coming” (verses 4, 8). This is not merely an ontological statement about God’s eternity, as the line in the beloved hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” suggests (“which wert and art and evermore shalt be”). It is, rather, a statement, as John goes on to narrate in the drama that follows, about God’s forthcoming invasion of the “kingdom of this world” (Revelation 11:15), to take its reins for God’s own self and God’s anointed one. God “is coming”—“and he shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). From beginning to end, John calls his audiences to live with this future invasion in view.

It is difficult for readers steeped in the Trinitarian formulas of Christian liturgy to avoid conflating “the seven spirits” (1:4; see also 4:5; 5:6) with the Holy Spirit, whom John does nevertheless refer to in the singular throughout his work. A strong case can be made that John has in mind the seven angels of the presence known from other Jewish texts (for example, Testament of Levi 3:5–6; Tobit 12:15) and who appear again in Revelation 8:2.

The focus of this opening greeting of grace, however, is Jesus Christ. As the “faithful witness,” Jesus provides the pattern of boldness that John would have all his addressees follow in their own witness to one and only one God worthy of worship and obedience. Such witness will always be costly, as it was for Jesus himself, but as “the firstborn from the dead” Jesus also gives assurance that his many sisters and brothers whose witness costs them their lives will emerge victorious on the other side of death. And there are many Christians throughout the Majority World, bearing their costly witness, to whom this promise speaks powerfully and directly.

While Jesus Christ is “the ruler of the kings of the earth,” John does not offer a narrative in which these kings exercise their authority in deference to Christ as their ruler. Rather, he offers one in which they exercise their authority on behalf of the greater cosmic forces at the head of a rebellion against God. It is a world in revolt, a narrative in which the “ruler of the kings of the earth” comes to suppress this revolt and establish a new ordering of human life that does reflect God’s good purposes for human beings in community. If nothing else, John’s voice calls the church to scrutinize political rulers and their agendas more carefully for signs of this rebellion rather than lend facile support and religious legitimation to them and their programs.

Christ the King Sunday in 2024 arrives just as the people of the United States recover from another presidential election season. Some woke up the morning after election day and greeted the results with great relief and hope for the nation; others woke up sure that the nation is on the road to moral collapse. Every Christ-follower, however, already had and continues to have a king.

Christ the King Sunday reminds us, as we look back perhaps with some embarrassment at how we allowed ourselves to be caught up in support for one or another temporary candidate as if the salvation of the nation depended on it (and how we maligned those who promoted the other as if they were enemies of the state), that we are called to serve a very different—but still genuinely political—agenda.

We have been loved and redeemed (and this at significant personal cost; 1:5) in order to throw ourselves fully behind the agenda of God and God’s kingdom (verse 6), to commit ourselves fully to practice what the one whom we call “Lord” instructs—and in doing so, to become living witnesses to a different kind of community that plays by the rules and embodies the values of no particular temporal party, but one that plays by the rules and embodies the values of the God and the Messiah “to whom belong the glory and the power” not merely for the next election cycle, but “into the ages of ages” (verse 6).

Following his opening grace greeting (verses 4-6), one can almost hear John shout out, so as to startle his hearers, “Look! He is coming with the clouds!” (verse 7). Many of us wrestle with the temptation to set aside as unenlightened a tenet of the creeds that the church has embraced and affirmed since the fourth century: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”

As we proclaim that “God is love” (1 John 4:7), we can find ourselves embarrassed by texts that speak of that coming day as a “day of wrath” (Dies irae, dies illa!). Nevertheless, Revelation continues to be read aloud in the church to remind us also of the salutary effects of retaining sufficient fear in regard to that day that we live every day with a view to what will show the honor and awe in which we hold the one who will be our judge—through our obedience to his word and alignment with both his justice and his holiness here.

Notes

1. Arthur Wainwright, Mysterious Apocalypse: Interpreting the Book of Revelation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 138, quoting Johann Jacob Wettstein.