Lisa Wiens Heinsohn

Jesus’ Way of Love: The Reign of Christ

Homily by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn for the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church

November 23, 2025; Luke 23:33-43

I often mention our Tuesday Noon Eucharist during sermons, because during that service we sit in a circle and always discuss the gospel reading for the coming Sunday. I frequently get inspiration for my sermons from all of you. So when we opened our Bibles this past Tuesday and read the story of Jesus crucified between two criminals, the first comment was, “Why are we reading about Jesus’ crucifixion right now, in the middle of November?” That’s a good question. It’s not lent or Holy Week. The answer is that today is the last Sunday of the liturgical year before Advent begins next week. Next week is the Church’s new year, the four Sundays of Advent before Christmas. And on this last Sunday of the liturgical year, we celebrate a feast called Christ the King, which is quite recent by liturgical standards. It was implemented in 1926 by Pope Pius XI, partly as a response to the rise of secular authoritarianism in Europe.

On this day, as Christians, we acknowledge the sovereignty of Christ which makes every other authority relative and partial. As my friend the Rector at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Sunfish Lake likes to say, “Jesus is Lord, and Herod is not.” But even this doesn’t quite get it right. Is Jesus a King, really? The irony of calling him a king is fully fleshed out in today’s gospel reading. Jesus never called himself a king, but Roman soldiers put an inscription in three languages over his head at the top of the cross upon which he was crucified, which said, “This is the King of the Jews.” The message was crystal clear. Rome was saying, anyone who claims a power greater than ours will be violently and brutally crushed. In essence they were saying, “You want to be a king? This is what will happen to you.” In John’s gospel, when Pontius Pilate directly asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” he answered, “It is you who say that I am a king. I was born for this, I came into the world for this, to bear witness to the truth, and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.” So Jesus did not say he was a king. And even more ironically, the Roman Empire is no more, but we are still here telling this story and still trying to live Jesus’ nonviolent way of love. Christ was never and is not and will never be a King in the sense of having the power to dominate others. But the sovereignty of his way of love is absolute.

A few months ago I went to one of the No Kings rallies. I was wearing black and my clergy collar because to me it was important to take a visible stand as a Christian pastor against Christian nationalism and against authoritarianism. A woman drove past me and pulled over and wanted to talk with me about why I was attending the rally. Ultimately she said, “but Jesus is a King, so how can you go to this rally which denies any king?” And there lies the fundamental confusion human beings have about power, the power that Jesus rejected and would not take on. There is power over, and there is power with. There is the power to dominate and subjugate, and there is the power to love which is always vitally interested in the sovereignty and wellbeing of another. The two powers do not overlap.

Jesus was the prophet and epitome of the long history of the people of Israel out of Egypt, out of slavery and bondage, through failed experiments with having kings and the conquest of Palestine, to the teachings of Jesus which turned everything upside down. Jesus taught us that if we want to be great, we must be the servants of all. He resolutely insisted upon the value of the oppressed and the poor, and said that the first will be last and the last will be first. When he was dying he asked God to forgive those who had killed him and had compassion for the criminal who asked Jesus to remember him. He healed lepers and outcasts and ate dinner with tax collectors and prostitutes and everyone society deemed unacceptable, unclean, or unworthy. He was and is the opposite of the domination system. The so-called kingdom of God is nothing of the sort—it is the commonwealth of goodness where the divine vocation of all beings to serve the common good is made manifest.

Today we are going to baptize two beautiful children, Ben and Hazel. Ben is eight and Hazel is five. Ben and Hazel, what I hope you understand best about Jesus is that he did not force anyone to do anything. He was loving and respectful of everyone. He was not a bully and he would not let anyone bully him. He would not hurt anyone. He knew that everyone was made in the image of God and so he tried to help people show the goodness of who they really were. And even when people made mistakes, he forgave them and didn’t judge them. He just helped them do better.

It is true that he was killed by soldiers of the Roman Empire and he suffered. But you know what’s amazing? Is the Roman Empire still here today? No. But here we are, two thousand years later, still talking about Jesus, still trying to live his way of love, still refusing any system that dominates and exploits. Love is stronger than violence. It is the better way. And all of us together are learning how to follow Jesus’ Way of Love. The main difference between the domination system and the Way of Love is that the domination system always thinks about me first, whereas the Way of Love wants good things for everyone and works for that.  In baptism, you and all of us who are baptized are promising to follow Jesus’ Way of love, to do our best, with God’s help.

Ultimately, Jesus’ Way of Love embodies an integral worldview that rejects any form of domination, whether that is the domination of racism or patriarchy or any of the other isms that plague humanity. Jesus’ Way of Love acknowledges everything has an inner and outer essence. According to Walter Wink, a theologian who deeply studied the authoritarian political systems in Chile and Argentina, everything, even institutions, has a soul, a spiritual reality, whose divine vocation is always for the common good. When we or anyone or any institution does not serve the common good we are not living our divine vocation. But we can be made whole and each of us can live into our unique genius, our original fingerprint, our soul’s purpose that is unrepeatable and deeply needed in this world.  Ben and Hazel, each of you is unique and so special, and you are important. Everyone is different and that is good. God is like an artist who just loves to create new ways for showing the world how to love, how to care for each other and the earth. This St. John’s community is going to help you, and you will help this community, learn how to follow Jesus’ Way of Love together. We can ask questions and even disagree about things and that’s OK because each of us has important wisdom to share.

As we follow the baptismal liturgy together on this feast of the Reign of Christ, I invite each of us to consider how we are embodying Jesus’ Way of Love.  We make five promises: to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and the prayers. We promise to resist evil, and whenever we fall into sin, to repent and return to the Lord. We promise to share the good news of God in Christ in word and action. We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. And we promise to strive for justice and peace for all people, and I would add the earth and all her creatures. This is a simple and clear roadmap of the Christian lifestyle as this church understands it. It can be found in the Book of Common Prayer, the red book in the pews in front of you and online, on pages 304-305. I invite all of us this week, along with Ben and Hazel, to explore these promises and how each of us uniquely relates to and understands them, and how they are informing our lives.

Let the commonwealth of God’s goodness, the true reign of Christ, be made manifest in our lives. Let us forever reject the power of domination that creates kings in this world. Let us learn to embody Jesus’ Way of Love, together. Amen.

10am Service