The King Who Is No King

2025-57
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Last Sunday after Pentecost (Christ the King), November 23, 2025

Jeremiah 23:1-6 ; Canticle 16 ; Colossians 1:11-20 ; Luke 23:33-43

What makes a king a king?

If you’re looking in the dictionary, you’ll probably see a king defined as a male ruler of a large territory who rules by dint of heredity and remains in that position for life. That definition says nothing of the job description, though. What does it mean to “rule”? It can mean a lot of different things, of course.

On this final Sunday of the church year—and our final week spotlighting the Gospel of Luke until Year C comes around again—we find ourselves at the foot of the Cross. We are at the opposite end of the year from Good Friday, yet here Jesus is, enduring horrific suffering and being mocked with the title “king.”

Throughout history, many kings have been defeated in battle, and that typically means the end of their rule, if not their very lives. The two tend to go together. I read an editorial this week that contained this gripping sentence: “When the king becomes more expensive to protect than to destroy … the system removes him with the cold efficiency of a butcher slicing into a side of beef.”[1] All kings are dethroned, eventually—by popular uprising, by coup, and/or by death.

Well, we just heard a piece of Luke’s account of Jesus hanging on the cross under an inscription that reads, “The King of the Jews.” Of course, that’s intended to be both ironic and cruel. As this so-called king hangs on the cross, he can hardly be said to be ruling anymore … right?
 

I always find it instructive to compare the four gospel writers’ accounts, especially when I find that all four of them are on the same page about something. And this king business is one of those. In John’s gospel, before he is nailed to the cross, Jesus stands before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. Pilate says, “Your people tell me you’re a king.”

Jesus replies, “My kingdom isn’t the kind you’re thinking of.”

“Oh!” says the governor. “You have a kingdom! So you are a king after all?”

“Sure, if you like,” Jesus replies. “But those are your words, not mine.”

Indeed, they are literally Pilate’s words. While all four gospels note the inscription “The King of the Jews,” only in John’s gospel does Pilate write the words himself. And when the Jewish leaders demand that he edit the words to make them less cruel and ironic, Pilate says, “What I have written, I have written.”

(On a side note, I have often quoted Pilate’s words to myself early on a Sunday morning when I need to leave for church but I’m not fully satisfied with the text of my sermon. “What I have written, I have written!”)

Anyway, in all four gospels, the ones with all the power and privilege in the world feel free to mock Jesus and, by extension, all the Jews in the world: “You thought you had a king? Ha! Look at him now. Does he still look like a king to you? We’ll teach you to challenge our emperor.”

We see that this was especially cruel when we recognize that for the ancient Jews, the issue of the power and validity of kings had long been a sensitive subject. King David was deposed by his own son and had to fight to regain his throne. He succeeded, but that’s a rare case. There are reasons that David came to be known among Jews as synonymous with “righteous ruler.” Yet even he lost the flower of youth and fell from the pinnacle, and though he died warm in his bed, we sense that the kingdom had been ready to move on from David for some time.

Most of the other kings listed in the books of Samuel and Kings were, we are told, incompetent, evil kings who angered God. There are only a few exceptions. It’s like the authors never want us to forget that even allowing Israel to crown a king was God’s concession to a truly difficult chosen people—a chosen people who wrote in great detail about their own shortcomings and failures, time and time again. If they had been a perfect people, they would have recognized that they didn’t need a king. They just needed to trust God.

The last few kings of Judah weren’t great kings, either, but their circumstances were pretty terrible. In their time, the mighty Babylonian invaders laid siege to Jerusalem and began to cart off the elites into exile. The final Jewish king was Zedekiah, who reigned from 597 to 586 B.C.E.

This is also the time in which the Prophet Jeremiah was writing: just before and during the Babylonian exile, which lasted about fifty years. In Babylon, the Jews struggled to retain their ethnic identity and earnestly began to write down their sacred stories for safekeeping. The Bible began to take shape. Jeremiah even had a sly way of making sure they didn’t forget the name of their final king. Notice Jeremiah’s words today:

I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: "The Lord is our righteousness."

King Zedekiah’s name meant “My righteousness is the Lord.” My righteousness. In later times, “the Lord will be our righteousness.” And there will be no more terrible kings, no more lousy shepherds. In the ancient Middle and Near East, the metaphor of the “shepherd” was common royal propaganda. “I’m your shepherd! I take care of you! I’ll send a fully armed batallion to remind you of my love!”[2]

No, says Jeremiah. We’ve had enough bad shepherds. God promises that a descendant of David will once again sit on the throne and will rule as the righteous king—indeed, the legitimate king.

And this is why it’s so important for us to know … what makes a king a king?

One of the criminals hanging next to Jesus on the cross knows exactly how a king could be useful to him right now. “Call your armies! Drive out the Romans! Get us down from here and we might yet survive! If you are a king, save us!”

Kings have the power to save lives … and to take lives. Kings can do all this without any checks or balances. That doesn’t make it right … this is just the kind of power kings have, for as long s they can keep their throne.

But what if a king gave up his throne?

What if, instead of leading the people’s armies out to war, the king went to death on their behalf—defeated by the very forces the people had thought he was supposed to protect them from?

The other criminal gets it. As he hangs on the other side of Jesus, he sees that all this mocking, all this ironic cruelty—this is the actual enemy! Not the soldiers who just drove nails into their wrists and ankles. Not the governor who ordered their executions. Not Caesar Tiberius. No, all of these are just human beings, people like any other. Some have power and abuse it to gain more. Others have no power, and even what little power they have is taken away from them. They are all victims of the forces of evil running rampant on this hill just outside Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon.

They are all sheep without a shepherd. Every last blessed one of them.

"The days are surely coming," God proclaims through the voice of Jeremiah. And then, centuries later …

"Truly I tell you,” says Jesus, gently, lovingly, though he grits his teeth against the agony racking his body … “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

This is the Day the prophets spoke of. And what does The Day look like? A king executed by the state. And in this act of allowing, of relinquishing, of falling back into the abyss, Jesus saves absolutely everyone.

Alongside Jesus, two criminals transition beyond all deserving into utter grace and joy. Nobody deserves crucifixion anyway—nobody. The time of conflict ends on this cross, once and for all. Peace comes, not through strength, but through weakness—a weakness that proves to be the greatest strength. A strength poured out in blood from a broken body.

And all the supernatural forces cry out in shock. They were just going along processing human souls, like they always do, running the cosmic machine of Sheol. But one of those souls has turned out to be all the fullness of God, dwelling in disguise! The one who holds all things together has infiltrated hell, an ironic ransom paid in person by the king who is no king, but far above such human concepts. Indeed, “all things have been created through him and for him.” And the demonic construct of hell cannot handle that, so it simply falls to pieces.

“This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to set us free from the hands of our enemies.” Not our enemies the Romans, the Seleucids, the Greeks, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Canaanites, or the Egyptians! None of those peoples were enemies after all. It turns out we were all in it together, all along.

And now, indeed, we have knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of our sins. The answer was not God’s wrath, but God’s tender compassion coming with the Easter dawn, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

And I could just go on quoting little bits of all the scripture passages we’ve heard and sung today. But there’s nothing more to say. The Christian year is drawing to a close. Next week the story begins again—the story of God’s world, and the story of God’s rescue of this world through a king who is no king. Amen.

  [1] Jack Hopkins, “The GOP Is About to Devour Its Own King,” from https://www.jackhopkinsnow.com/p/the-gop-is-about-to-devour-its-own. Retrieved 19 November 2025.

[2] With apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda.