There’s a fundamental flaw in calling Jesus the king. But it isn’t just our perception of kings. It’s how it changes our relationship to Jesus.
Proper 29B | 2 Samuel 23:1-7, Psalm 132:1-13 (14-19), John 18:33-37
I’ve heard the argument for an American king. It goes something like this.
Our president has two jobs: being the ceremonial head of state and the actual, do the work head of state. The benefit of the monarchy, they argue, is that you get more than a figurehead. You get a happy, True American who could unite the country when times get tough. Therefore, they could keep the spotlight off the less telegenic bureaucrat skilled at actually running the state.
It’s a compelling argument, particularly around election season. You know, the time when the one most skilled at running for president is actually given the task of being president. A thing with a whole different skill set. Ironically, being a monarch is much closer to the skill set of running for the office.
It’s just that God doesn’t like kings.
Over and over, God rejected the human call for kings.
It was humanity’s begging that finally wore down the deity. And almost as soon as God relented, the regret flooded in.
Saul went bonkers, of course. Falling to the vanity and fear that befalls most of the powerful: paranoia.
Then came David.
God’s beloved.
But the funny thing about David is that all the things God loved about him would have made him a great king. But King David wasn’t anything like the David God fell in love with.
That David was young and small; the least likely candidate. He wasn’t strong and powerful—he was loyal and patient. His brothers were the athletes; he was the artist. A musician, actually.
While his older brothers all went to war, he was tending sheep. He wasn’t the hero, but the dirty one left behind.
He had heart and vision and commitment. And when he took on Goliath, he didn’t overpower his foe, he thought outside the box.
This David, though, the king we’re reading about today is all about power. His words reveal the stereotypical kingly obsessions: strong, rock, fear. His message, about how much God loves him and despises his enemies, is all about his having more power. God will destroy them because David wants God to.
In the psalm, he’s certain about building a home for God, even though God refuses one.
The King, David doesn’t just assume God loves him. He assumes he can wield the power of God upon the world.
Different Visions of King David
The funny thing about Scripture is that it embeds within it the contradictory voices we might prefer just kept quiet.
The story of King David in 2 Samuel is a fascinating look at how the Hebrew people struggled with their monarchy. Half of the time, it speaks to how much God loves David and just how great the ol’ guy is. The rest of the time, it shows how much God regrets giving humanity anybody to be a king.
It shows David succeeding and looking like God’s chosen.
Then immediately after, it shows David’s corruption and utter failure to embody the love of God.
I used to think the two visions were not only frustrating but an opportunity to take sides. One of them must be true. And yet that wasn’t why the Hebrew people used both stories in their scripture. But because both depictions of David were true at the same time.
God does really love David! And it’s easy to see why if you’ve paid attention. God loves an underdog story. The forgotten and overlooked. God loves the little guy and the outcast; the artist and the lover. That David got a promise from God. I’ll love you forever.
The David who became king did good by Israel, for sure. But he wasn’t at all like that younger David. He was conniving and selfish. He was a rapist and a collector of women. There was his military strategy, but no more art, music, inspiring new creations. That David was what every human king becomes.
God could love David and not the king. Because it isn’t all or nothing here. God’s love isn’t conditional.
God can hate the king. And God can honor a promise to the young man. Even when he gets old.
The Devil’s Crown
As for Jesus, the notion of becoming the king is something he perpetually avoids. He flat out refuses to play along. Even in his famous exchange with Pilate, he refuses the mantle of king. Not only is this not his true kingdom, God doesn’t work like that.
So why do we keep playing the role of Pilate, the disciples, or the crowds? All these people miss the point!
Every time we try to place a crown on Jesus’s head, we mimic the crowds in Mark who attempt to do the same. It’s a crown Jesus keeps rejecting.
And we run up against the entire arc of the Hebrew Scriptures, which vilify the kings of the earth.
The images are so plain and direct, it takes willpower to resist them and ignorance to defy them. It imposes upon the Christ the mantle of the devil and upon the triune God, the tyrant’s crown.
Of course, we rarely see it that way. We think we’re glorifying God and praising the divine name. We think we’re doing the right thing.
But not in the eyes of God.
Because the very symbols of greatness are demonic and our willing submission the signs of our own distrust.
So when we sing of our King Jesus, lifting high the cross in honor, we are mocking his very teachings. We foist Jesus upon the cross in mocking purple robes and the crown we place upon his head is made of thorns.
We don’t do this willingly or intentionally, of course. These acts of devotion and honor are meant to display our trust.
But our trust is following Jesus to the cross, not victory; it’s humility, not power; it’s bringing hope, not certainty. The Christ who came to us through human flesh, raised in total vulnerability, gave his whole life to a message of radical transformation and love, and died an insurrectionist’s death at the hands of empire isn’t a savior building a new, divine empire.
He teaches us to reject empire. Not control it.
The Kingdom of God is an anti-kingdom.
The Kingdom of God isn’t a kingdom at all. Nothing about it looks like a monarchy. Even with the divine king at the top: a power structure hierarchically displaying the kind of power God constantly rejects in humanity: is entirely absent from Jesus’s examples.
A mustard seed.
Or a lost coin.
The father running out to meet his estranged son.
There can be no kings in God’s kingdom.
Not even Jesus.
No room.
Kings claim power, control, demand. Kings amass and devastate. They destroy their enemies and maintain control.
Pinning that crown upon Jesus is to force upon him the absolute opposite image of the Christ. Christ the King is the Anti-Christ.
Our addiction to power and the will to supremacy would have us destroy the Kingdom Come and anoint the devil to rule it.
There’s no room here for kings. Not even the kind Pope Pius XI had in mind. I don’t even think there’s room for a kingdom to be honest.
That’s why I kin-dom.
We are the divine family, a people continuing to serve and love the hell out of this world. Because every time we put God at the center of everything, we will only ever see the need to love each other, serve each other.
And we’ll only ever see how related we all are. One, giant divine family, called to love one another. And in the center and the edges, and all the space in-between is a decentralized God making that love possible.
If we’ve paid attention to Jesus at all, then I dare say, this is the only way to see the Christ. By their reflection in us all.