Christ the King, Year B--What Curious Kind of King is This?
A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark Christ the King, Year B The
Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Priest-in-Charge “My
Kingdom is not from this world…” The Feast of Christ the King is a tricky one.
For people stuffed to the gills with top-down, unilateral power, patriarchy,
and hierarchy, talk of “kings” and “kingdoms” can seem like just another
instance of an outmoded Christianity whose relevance has long since passed. If
we think of Jesus and the Kingdom of God in the same way we think of earthly
kings and kingdoms this is indeed the case. But before we erase all reference
to the Kings and Kingdoms from Holy Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer, we have to ask whether the kind of king we
see enacted in the person of Jesus accords with our common of picture of how
kings behave. If we spend a little time examining kings and kingdoms through
the lens of Jesus’ life, through the lens of self-emptying, sacrificial love,
we discover that the Holy Scripture uses the words “king” …