Christ the King Sunday at
Epiphany on November 23, 2008
Matthew 27:27-31 Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole
company of soldiers around him. 28 They stripped him and put a
scarlet robe on him, 29 and then twisted together a crown of thorns
and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of
him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said. 30 They spit
on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. 31
After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on
him. Then they led him away to crucify him.
The paradox of the
crucified King
A paradox is a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but
in reality expresses a possible truth. A paradox doesn’t refer to when your two
doctor friends hang out together. That would be a pair of docs, not a paradox.
There are a lot of paradoxes in the world we live in. Seemingly impossible ideas,
seemingly contradictory items. Statements that seem mutually exclusive. For
example: why do croutons come in airtight packages? Aren’t they just stale bread
to begin with? Or, why, if you ask people why they have deer heads mounted on
their walls, they tell you its because they’re such beautiful animals. I think
my wife is beautiful, but I only have photographs of her on the walls.
Paradoxes.
Or how about this: why do bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of
checks? The hardness of butter is directly proportional to the softness of the
bread. The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the ability to
reach it. If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? If the #2
pencil is so prevelant, why is it still #2?
These are all paradoxes.
But seriously, if you think about it, the Christian faith often seems to be one of
paradox, doesn’t it? Those of us who take the Bible seriously believe in
definite black and white, and we believe in absolute truths. Yet, there are
those truths about God, about the way He does things, that we must admit are
paradoxes.
When we study the Bible closely, we discover that Jesus is a Savior of paradoxes.
Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. (Jn 1:29) He is the
Passover Lamb, without blemish or defect, whose blood protected from death; the
temple sacrifice of atonement to appease God’s wrath; the scapegoat whose sins
were placed on Him never to return. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. As
a sheep before His shearers is silent, so He did not open his mouth. (Is 53:5,7)
Yet Jesus opens his mouth as the Good
Shepherd. (Jn 10) The sheep know His voice and follow Him to quiet waters and
green pastures. (Ps 23:2) Though the sheep have gone astray and turned their own
way (Is 53:6), the Shepherd lays down His life for His sheep. (Jn 10:11) He is
both Lamb and Shepherd. This great paradox is magnified in heavenly glory: “For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd;
he will lead them to springs of living water.” (
He is the King of kings and Lord of
lords (Rev 7:14) who will be exalted among the nations. (Ps 46:10) He is the
blessed only Ruler to whom belongs all praise and glory wisdom and thanks and
honor and power and strength. (Rev 7:12) He is the King of all the earth, seated
on his throne and all people sing His praises. (Ps 47:7-8)
He is also God’s chosen servant. (Mt
12:18) The Lord of lords made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a
servant. The exalted King of glory came to humble himself and became obedient to
death – even death on a cross. (Phil 2:6-9) He did not come to be served, but to
serve and give His life as a ransom for many. (Mt 20:28)
Though He truly was the King of kings,
He was mocked as a king before soldiers, stripped of His clothing, robed in
scarlet, wearing a crown of thorns upon His head. He held a staff in his hand as
soldiers knelt in front of Him. He was hailed as the King of the Jews, so they
spat on Him, struck Him with the staff and then crucified Him.
The Maker of the universe, the King of
Kings and Lord of lords, made flesh and dwelt among us, loved us, died for us,
died at the hands of men He made, died when nails forged from the steel He
created pierced His perfect flesh.
Both Servant and King. A paradox.
Jesus is the Prince of peace in whom
we may dwell in safety. (Is 9:6; Ps 4:8) Peace on earth comes to those upon whom
His favor rests. (Lk 2:14) It is a peace the surpasses all human understanding.
(Phil 4:7) It with this peace that we begin and end our worship.
He is also the swordbearer who stirs
up the nations that conspire against Him and His followers. (Mt 10:34) The kings
of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord.
(Ps 2:1-2) His persecuters will not allow Christians to live in peace. Yet on
the Last Day, “out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to
strike down the nations.” (
Both
Prince of Peace and swordbearer. A paradox.
He is the
reason for Christmas gifts. The greatest gift of heaven and earth. Salvation in
a cradle. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in
Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom
The paradox is that though He is the gift, He is also the cost.
The gift of salvation, grace, God’s love, forgiveness, and heaven may be given
to us as a free gift, but it did not come without great cost. “It was not with
perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed … but with the
precious blood of Christ. (1 Pet 1:18-19)
Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the
He is the
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, who always has been and always will be.
As God who cannot be born or die, He began His life as a human at His
incarnation and ended His life at His crucifixion. A mysterious paradox. “Beyond
all question, the mystery of godliness is great.”(1 Tim 3:16)
He has promised to always be with us, to be at our side. “Never will I leave
you, never will I forsake you.” (Heb 3:5) He comes to us in worship, in the
Word, in the cleansing waters of Holy Baptism and in the body and blood of His
Holy Supper. He has set up His kingdom in our hearts. Yet He is also seated in
power at the right hand of God the Father almighty. He is preparing a room for
us in heaven.
Jesus preaches a way of salvation that is narrow. It is a small gate to heaven
and only a few find it. (Mt 7:13-14) Yet He has a love that reaches wide and
includes a great multitude that no one can count from every nation, tribe,
people and language. (Rev 7:9)
He is the Christchild of whom the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest!”
Yet He is also the One the Galilean king tried to murder as a child. He is the
One who cast out demons and the One cast out by religious leaders. He is the One
who fought the devil in the wilderness, yet would not fight against His enemies
on
He is the Eternal One who existed before the beginning, before time itself, yet
stepped into a world of time governed by calendars and timepieces. The One who
is omnipresent, who exists in all places at one and the same time, who allowed
Himself to be confined to a single place in the person of Jesus. The omnipotent,
almighty, all-powerful One, who became a helpless baby. The omniscient,
all-seeing, all-knowing One, the fountain of all wisdom and knowledge, who as a
child increased in wisdom and knowledge.
In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form (
These are the mysterious, unbelievable, unmistakable, unbreakable truths of this
paradox of faith. Fully God and fully man. The Lord of glory veiled in human
flesh. The Lord of life came to the world for the express purpose of dying. The
Holy One who cannot look upon sin, came into this barren wasteland of sin. The Creator
of the universe who breathed life into His creation and then gave Himself over
to death for that same creation.
The object of angelic worship, hungered,
thirsted, sweated, wearied, wept and slept. He wandered in the world His hand
had made. The object of His Father’s delight who was forsaken by His heavenly
Father.
The great mystery of this paradox may be … why did He do all this for us – the
ones who despised Him, rejected Him, betrayed Him, denied Him, and crucified
Him?
We ourselves are a paradox. Born to die. Alive to sin. Created by God, yet
conceived in sin. Loved by God, but rebellious toward Him. Adored by Jesus but
we fail to adore Him back. Sanctified by the Holy Spirit but slaves to Satan.
Created for heaven, yet destined for hell. Baptized as God’s children, but who
often choose to live as Satan’s spawn.
Yet Jesus has changed sinners into saints. He washed those filthy with sins and
made them white with the blood of the Lamb. He has closed the gates of hell to
us and opened gates of
The world calls us to be strong, to be self-sufficient, to succeed, and to be
upwardly mobile. God calls us to surrender, to be dependent on Him, to be
concerned about our neighbor, to treat others with kindness, humility and
honest. The world demands we be wary of strangers, hate our enemies and fight
back when we are hurt. God calls us to have compassion on the stranger, love our
enemy, and turn the other cheek.
It sounds ludicrous to our world, but we give to God and He provides. We hand
God guilt, sin and shame and He returns love, grace and forgiveness. It is when
we are at our weakest that God provides us with greatest strength. We have
homes, families and careers, yet we are strangers here, heaven is our home. We
are pilgrims heading to the Promised Land. We are living the very paradox of the
Christian faith.
It may seem like a paradox that quicksand takes you down slowly and boxing rings
are really square. The guinea pig is neither from
The great and mysterious paradox of faith doesn’t make any sense to us either.
Yet we believe that the Servant King was humbled for victory; the Shepherd Lamb
was sacrificed to lead; the fullness of the Deity lives in human flesh; and
though the way of salvation is narrow, we are included in a great multitude that
no one can count.
The man of sorrows who was despised and rejected by men (Is 53:3) caused the
blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to leap, the mute to speak, and the
dead to live again. He is the One who walked where angels trod and when we look
at Jesus we behold the face of God.
Worthy is our earthly Jesus! Worthy is our cosmic Christ! Worthy His defeat and
victory! Worthy His peace and strife! He is both our death and our life. Amen.