Luke 23:33-43; Colossians 1:11-20
November 22, 1998
James R. Gorman
Item: A young man was beaten up on the Toronto subway one Sunday evening on his way home from a prayer meeting. Surrounded by eight teenagers, the man was kicked, shoved to the ground, and had his nose broken. The gang wanted to know what was in his bag. When he said "My Bible", they attacked him. In an interview with a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reporter, the young man said he forgave his attackers and hoped that they would some day meet. The young man would co-operate with police, but he said that we would not press charges himself. "But you want to see them brought to justice and punished to the full extent of the law, don't you?" said the reporter. "Yes." said the young man, "I do."
"But you won't press charges?"
"No."
Strange logic.
I have often said, if only to myself, that you have no power to forgive someone who does not themselves seek forgiveness. And I still believe that that is true. But I also think that there still is wisdom in forgiving the unforgivable, if only for one's own spiritual health. Sins remembered and given harbor in the human heart have ways of rotting the soul from the inside out. The only cure for that rotting process is to forgive, even before forgiveness is asked. So, the words from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
No one had asked for forgiveness. In fact, they continue to cast lots to divide up his clothing. The people stood by watching and the leaders scoffed. The soldiers continued to mock. Jesus preempts the request for forgiveness by forgiving.
Strange logic. "The logic of the cross," Paul would call it "which is foolishness to the wise, but to those who are being saved, it is the power and wisdom of God." (I Cor. 1:18)
The remembering of past sins and the unwillingness to forgive them is just as responsible for the state of wars and rumors of wars as is the inability to confess sins in the first place. The harboring of hatred and the permanent remembering of past sins, for whatever good reason, is like a time bomb set for some unknown hour.
The logic of that young man with his Bible on the darkened streets of Toronto, is the logic of the cross which has never made much sense to us who think in terms of revenge. Therefore we have found ourselves locked in a hopeless world of cyclical reasoning as regards anything like a pure and lasting peace. The logic of forgiveness is nice for Sunday mornings, but is irrelevant for the rest of the week, and it is especially irrelevant as regards relationships between world powers.
I have a confession to make. I love revenge movies. You know the ones in which the bad guys are really bad guys who do not have one once of goodness in them. They hate puppies and little children. And they are cocky. They're sure that they are going to win. And the heroes never play by the rules. They are always cops who have been kicked off the force for one reason or another. Or at least they are always in trouble with their superiors. They never play by the rules, because the rules of a civilized society always allows bad guys to win some of the time. "You didn't give them their Miranda rights, so these bad guys have to go free even though we all know that they did it." What?
These movies are always so satisfying to the darker places of my heart. But this is not a good thing I'm telling you about myself. And it certainly ain't what anyone would call Christian.
This last Sunday in the season of Pentecost has always been called "Christ the King Sunday" and yet that nomenclature has always been filled with ambiguity. Do we mean by that, that Christ is King over our personal lives alone? Or do we mean that he is powerful in the real realm of kings and presidents and prime ministers? Is Christ, in other words, sovereign over the whole earth, or just over our personal lives?
A second ambiguity, and a much more powerful one to my mind, is the ambiguity of considering such a person as Jesus of Nazareth as kingly in any real respect. He is not certainly, royal material.
Though he surely seemed to be able to hold a crowd with his speech, what he had to say is hardly the stuff one expects kings to say. You know the drill, "Love your enemies, pray for those who despise you" that sort of thing. He was a humble man who tried not to call attention himself. Kings and presidents and prime ministers are in the business of calling attention to themselves. They don't last long if they don't do it.
So Jesus is not kingly material, or presidential material and that makes Christ the King Sunday an unusual exercise at best.
And yet, it has been the project of the Christian Church all these years to call Christ king with the full knowledge of all the irony that is contained in that. He consorted with the poor and the sinners and the outcast. He was born poor and died poor. He was crucified as a common criminal.
Kings and queens and presidents that we know consort with the rich and powerful and influential. If they were born poor, they certainly don't remain that way. They head off on junkets to foreign countries and get paid millions of dollars for two-days work. That's what we expect kings and presidents to do.
And the last thing we expect kings and presidents to do is speak eloquently and convincingly of peace. At least not in my generation have their been leaders who have lasted who have spoken eloquently or convincingly of peace.
I am often amazed that we continue in our modern day, to proclaim that Christ is King. And yet there is enough evidence that that proclaimation by the church over all these centuries has made an important contribution to what is currently happening in Eastern Europe.
Christians witnessing to the fact that the prince of peace is their King and no other, have had enormous and largely unsung effects in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and elsewhere. Christians continue to witness in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and throughout Central and South America. They continue to witness in the central cities of our own country on behalf of those who have no voice, the homeless, the poor, the lonely.
Christians continue to witness for this King of Kings and prince of peace in Northern Ireland, where our own religious tradition seems to be the cause of much of the troubles there.
I am always and everywhere amazed that there will always be a cadre of Christians who witness for Christ's kingship will take them into every aspect of this human community and from time to time make a difference in the history of nations in which too much is made of hatred and revenge and the settling of age-old, bone-deep scores.
Most of the time, what we do as Christians seem historically irrelevant. Just now in Eastern Europe at least, the figure of Christ looms large as peace seems to be breaking out in this coldest and darkest season of the year.
A perfect and fitting way to begin the season of advent, as we await the coming of the Prince of Peace. And despite all the strange and contradictory images of King and Cross, we do, indeed worship this King above all Kings, this Lord above all Lords.