On November 11, 1918, World War One finally ended, after four long years. World War One is often called the first modern war. The National Park Service says: “Machine guns, poison gas, rapid-fire artillery, aerial bombardment, tanks, and submarines were all new innovations that brought about horrors never before seen on the battlefield.”
As many as 22 million people were killed, more than any war in recorded history, up to that point. That kind of destruction doesn’t just impact one family or one community – it affects the world. The result was one big existential crisis.
Many people asked: How could God permit this suffering? There was no easy answer.
By 1925, countries long-considered “Christian nations” were allowing new worldviews to take root. In the communist Soviet Union and fascist Italy and Germany, God was no longer part of the equation. God was too abstract and too far away. The people wanted a king.
Or, rather, they wanted a strongman, a no-nonsense politician who could lead people, scarred by modern war, to a modern promised land. This promised land wasn’t concerned with peace, and it wasn’t imagined through a lens of hope. Hope was frivolous in times like these.
Instead, it was all brute force, brute speech, fear of foreigners, scorn of minorities, fences, and locked doors.
In large numbers, the people of Europe decided that liberty and justice for all was an old-fashioned value after all. They had become accustomed to rationing, casualties, and adrenaline coursing through their veins. And the strongmen told them these things were good, and right, and true – signs of their virtuous endurance.
It was within this context that Pope Pious the Eleventh began a new tradition of the church: Christ the King Sunday. Within a few years, many other denominations had taken up the cause, including Episcopalians.
Declaring Christ as King in that particular moment was not random. Pope Pious was making a subversive political statement against the politicians and dictators vying for the world’s thrones.
He was reminding the church that they already had what, and who, they needed, in the person of Jesus Christ. And he was declaring that God still had something to say in these modern times: The Kingdom of God had not died on the battlefield. God had not gone AWOL.
Against the powers and principalities, Christ had not been moved, and would not be moved:
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
that shall never be destroyed.
Christ was and is and will be on his throne.
The world’s rulers might win the day, but they had no power to bring about the kind of promised land their citizens were really looking for, beneath all their fear and despair.
I like doing a deep dive into history, because it reminds me that the trials of our current day are not greater than those of the past. In many generations and many places, the people of God have struggled with existential crises. In hard times, we have wondered where God is. And we have desperately looked for someone to save us.
It is hard to answer the questions of our suffering. The world’s corruption can’t be justified by trite reminders that “God is in control.”
And, I’m sorry to say that I have yet to find a justification for suffering that provides a quick fix.
But what I can say – because it is what our Scriptures say – is that there are spiritual realities bigger and wilder than we can understand, here on the ground. I can say that the Kingdom of God is breaking through the cracks of earthly decay, showing up now in flashes, but ever-growing toward the ambient light of paradise.
I can say that, if the world is actually doomed, it has no business being as beautiful as it is, and people have no reason to be as kind as they often are.
I can also say that, in my darkest moments, when I have asked God “why?” the answer has not always come in words. But in time, hope has, eventually, come.
And isn’t that also worth asking about? How is hope still a possibility in a suffering world? How is hope still alive?
Our scriptures tell us hope is alive because Christ is alive. Even now, he is situated as King on his throne.
But what makes this king so different from the crude and failing rulers of this earth? And where is the evidence of his kingdom in the middle of life’s sorrow?
The answer arrives in the life and person of Jesus…
In his weekly newsletter on the Gospel reading, scholar Andrew McGowan talked about the dialogue between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, the Rome-appointed governor of Judea.
McGowan says:
‘Pilate already knows the answer to the first fateful question, “Are you the King of the Jews?”, at least on his own terms. This question is verbally identical in all four Gospels, which is remarkable. There is no serious possibility, however, that the homeless Galilean itinerant Jesus, is a “king” of any kind, at least in the sense that Pilate would understand that term—or how we would, normally.’
On Christ the King Sunday, the church proclaims that this Jesus, this homeless man, is the only true and wise king. In his humble ministry on earth and in his arrest, trial, and death, he exhibits few signs of kingship:
He isn’t charming, he doesn’t grandstand, and he doesn’t make political alliances. He doesn’t rally his followers to take up arms, surround himself with “yes men,” or bribe Roman representatives to cut him a deal. Any gift he has received he has already given away. He has no possessions and no permanent home.
Neither an effective politician nor social reformer, Jesus provides the one thing no earthly ruler has ever been able to offer without coercion: the Truth, unburdened by moral and mortal decay.
In his humble life, self-sacrificial death, and shocking resurrection, the Son of God reveals himself as the answer to all our questions. The Truth is that worldly power will not save us – only love beyond our reckoning will save us.
And God is Love. And Christ’s kingdom is “not from this world.” And this is why we can have hope.
As McGowan goes on to say:
‘“…the love of God…is the real order of the universe.
To celebrate Jesus’ kingship is not to look away from the world we know, but to see it as it might be, ruled by the true power of love.’
No matter what they tell you, the kings, presidents, bishops, and rulers of this earth will never bring us to the promised land. We are not one election, one war, or one succession away from a resolution to the trials and griefs of this life.
But, as we are reminded throughout our Scriptures, and in our history books, we are not the first generation to confuse brutality with hope. We are not the first people to be duped into believing we needed a strongman.
We want our earthly rulers to take care of us, so we don’t have to work so hard to take care of one another. We want them to fix things for us. And too often, we accept the lie that fixing things means some people will stay broken.
But, when we expect these things, we give them too much power. We cannot afford to make them kings, because we risk making them gods. And these false gods – these earthly rulers – will never be able to bring about the life-altering, darkness-shattering, hope-bringing, joy-giving transformation of the world we long for.
Only Christ can do that. Only the Kingdom of God can do that.
Even in these modern times, in our deepest despair, the light of Christ is breaking through. In defiance of all who would justify cruelty, violence, and dehumanization as means to an end, we proclaim love as our salvation, because Christ is the only true king. Amen.
Leah Wise 