What kind of king is this?

The question Luke 23 attempts to answer is “what kind of king is this?” Luke 23.38: “There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’” Instead of a throne Jesus is nailed to a cross. Instead of jewels the crown is thorns. Instead of a throne room Jesus holds court on Golgotha – a dusty hill called The Skull. Instead of royal advisors Jesus has convicted criminals on his left and right. What kind of king is this?

Conventional or normal kings and kingdoms are top down, hierarchical, domination systems. The only way to maintain a top-down domination system is with violence. Violence lies at the heart of kings, kingdoms, empires, and the structure of society. In contrast the kingdom of God is a way of life that gives honour and value to everyone unconditionally. The kingship of Jesus provides a new way to frame power, authority, and structure society. Listen for the end of the sermon that notes the personal and political transformation possible in answering the question “What kind of king is this?”

What kind of king is this? How do you answer the question? It is a personal and a political question. Before you doze off, I suggest that the answers to the question “What kind of king is this?” shapes our future, our humanity and perhaps even our survival. For example, the crusades are a result of believing Christ the King to be imperial, almighty, and judgemental. So, wake-up, stop daydreaming, sit up straight, look at the cross, and with Luke, ask “What kind of king is this?”

In failing to take seriously the question “what kind of king is this?” we default into supporting military and economic policies that are “a necessary evil” for the normalcy of civilisation. If we fail to adequately answer the question “what kind of king is this?” we fail to participate in God’s dream of a new world, we are apolitical and allow our spirit-lives to be bland, ineffective, and untransformed. 

What kind of king is this? Our king is a crucified king. Jesus was sentenced to death on the charge of treason and insurrection and executed by the Romans as a political rebel. Jesus’ passion for God’s dream, for kindness and gentleness, for mercy and justice, set him on a collision course with “business as usual”.

We follow a crucified king. Make no mistake, the crucifixion of Jesus is political. Marcus Borg describes the normalcy of civilisation that takes as self-evident the use of violence to maintain “peace”. In the cross we see the normalcy of civilisation and how it uses death, violence, and destruction as routine modes of operation. It is the repetitive story of history: if they crucify us, we crucify them. Tired of oppression and injustice, a group of middle eastern people attacked America on 9/11/2001. In response, America and her allies returned fire with fire, promising peace. Twenty years on, is the world a safer place? The story of tit-for-tat is as old as history. In the cross we also see our routine responses to violence, pain, oppression, aggression, and injustice in the world. The usual responses to violence, destruction, pain, oppression, and injustice are fight, flight, and freeze. Human evolution has conditioned us to respond to violence and injustice with freeze, fight, and flight. In Jesus a new normal is offered beyond fight and flight.

What kind of king is this? In answering the question “What kind of king is this?” we find our way out of the cycle of continued violence that defines the insanity of our history. What kind of king is this? A king that offers judgement on the violence of the oppressors: ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” While some interpret Jesus’ prayer as an acceptance of the violence he was enduring, I suggest that these words are a pronouncement of judgement on oppression, violence, injustice, and fear. The systems and people that executed our crucified king were normal and even good – the routine normalcy of civilisation. By offering forgiveness, Jesus has indicted the authorities who signed off on his execution; they need forgiveness because of the banality of their evil, an evil that they were not even aware of.

The term “banality of evil” is from Hannah Arendt. In confronting the evil at the heart of Nazi Germany Hannah did not find bad people intent on murdering people and destroying the world. Instead, she found Eichmann an ordinary apolitical bland bureaucrat who was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’ (in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil published 1963). Like those who crucified Christ Eichmann also ‘never realised  what he was doing’.

The answers to “what kind of king is this?” lead us on a journey of political and personal transformation. Our journey is one of political transformation in the sense that it contains glimpses of God’s passions for a certain type of world, a world of justice and mercy. Our journey is one of personal transformation from bland, terrifyingly normal participants in the status quo into disciples of Christ.