November 23, 2025 | Christ the King Sunday
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
We all want to have a place where we belong with people who love us for who we are … as we are. Have you had the experience where people consider something about you as being different, odd, or even outside of some kind of norm? This can feel isolating and can make us feel as though we don’t belong.
Many years ago when I was in middle school, I heard a story that has affected me ever since. The story was about a boy who was gay. Being a gay middle school boy in Southeast Texas was not a good combination. This boy was ostracized and bullied. What’s worse is that those who bullied him sometimes used religion to drive home that he was an outsider … that he didn’t belong. One of his bullies escalated his threats and said that he was going to confront the boy during lunch when they were outside.
This kind of news spreads like wildfire in a middle school, so quite a few students gathered outside after lunch. As the bully emerged from the school building and began walking toward him, something happened. Slowly … one by one … other students moved toward the boy and stepped between him and the bully. Eventually, these students formed a line and the line wrapped around him to form a circle of protection. The bully, seeing this display of solidarity turned, and walked away.
Where was Jesus in this story?
How do you think this story relates to our celebration of Christ the King Sunday?
Our typical understanding of kings is that they rule by power, laws, influence, and financial strength. Kings are to be served. Kings are to be obeyed. Kings might even be treated as gods. Kings get what they want … often at the expense of those over whom they rule.
But Jesus shows us the way to an alternative to this kind of kingship … this kind of leadership. Jesus said that there are rulers who exercise power over their people and even act as tyrants, “but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave” (Matt 20:25-26).
We’ve heard Jesus say that he came to serve rather than to be served. Jesus said, “just as you [cared for] one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you [cared for] me” (Matt 25:40). They cared for those who were hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, and in prison.
Jesus’ kingdom – rather than being guided by power, position, and money is guided by love … by compassion … by justice.
Christ the King Sunday was instituted by Pope Pious XI in 1925. In the time after World War I, there was a rise in secularism and in authoritarianism. The pope wanted to make a strong and worldwide declaration that Jesus Christ alone is our authority and our king.
In the 1500s, Martin Luther wrote in his explanation of the Lord‘s Prayer that, when we pray Thy kingdom come and Thy will be done, we are not praying that God’s kingdom would come passively or that God’s will would be done passively. Instead, we pray that we would be active participants in God’s kingdom coming and God‘s will being done. Jesus’ kingdom comes about through us.
This is a different kind of kingdom and a different kind of king. We encounter Jesus Christ as king in the places we least expect to find Him … as a baby laying in a manger; hung on a cross and suffering between two criminals; talking with women as equals; touching, eating with, and being present with the poor, sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes; and forming a protective circle around a middle school boy in a school yard.
While we have laws and structures that order our society, there is a certain brokenness in some of this order. There is a certain brokenness in how people treat one another. If the laws and structures lead to political injustice, economic disparity, relational isolation, marginalization of people for any number of reasons … isn’t there something … broken?
Jesus’ kingdom is not something we have to wait for in some distant time and place after we die. The kingdom is something that begins here and now as we encircle the middle school boy who was being bullied … the poor … the forgotten … the lonely … the immigrant … the seemingly small and insignificant.
In Jesus’ kingdom, we have found a place where we belong … where we are loved for who we are … as we are. And, in Jesus’ kingdom, we assure others that they, too, have found a place where they belong and where they are loved for who they are … as they are.
We are citizens of a kingdom of compassion and a wide welcome.
You are signs of the love of this kind of kingdom.
You and I have the privilege of being the hands, feet, voice, and heart of Jesus Christ our king, whose reign is … now.
In the name of Jesus. Amen!
Epicurious Lutheran 