This is the third article in a special three-part Advent series on how Jesus is our prophet, priest, and king.
As a child in the 1980s, I was catechized by the educational animated TV series Schoolhouse Rock! The series taught me about a "conjunction's function," the hero that is the number Zero, and perhaps my favorite lesson (as a budding historian): the story of the American Revolution told with the song "No More Kings."
Americans take an entire calendar day each year to remind ourselves of our proclamation of "No More Kings." Yet, as we are reminded each Advent, as Christians, this is the season of the coming of the Messiah, our once and future King.
How does a Christian, especially one who has been unshackled from a monarchy, understand "King" Jesus? As the host of the Christian History Almanac, I am no stranger to the stories of Kings throughout church history. Very few of these stories make me long for the halcyon days of monarchy because under the veneer of glamour and power is often the story of double-crossing, questionable family relationships, and human fallibility that resembles Game of Thrones more than Camelot.
Our confessional allegiances can blind us to the underhanded actions of those portrayed as heroic by history. For every "Bloody" Mary, we have a "Good Queen Bess," her sister—the "Virgin Queen" Elizabeth, who was just as ruthless and bloody as her sister.
And none of this should surprise us! We can rely on Lord Acton's standby, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," but we should remember that he finishes that quote with, "Great men are almost always bad men." Those of us with a healthy doctrine of original sin shouldn't be surprised.
But things would be different with the people of God, or would they be? While Yahweh was described as "reigning" over his people, his people wanted something or someone more tangible. In 1 Samuel 8, we read of the Israelites crying out to the prophet Samuel.
Samuel is distressed that the people are rejecting him, but Yahweh tells him, "It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king" (1 Sam. 8:7).
Yahweh goes on to tell the Israelites that the kings they are asking for will terrorize and hold their power over them like tyrants. Yet they cried, "No, we want a king over us. Then we will be like the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."
Yet the biblical record of Kings is anything but successful. Saul went mad, and David used his power for fleshly gain. King Solomon succumbed to the worship of Molech, and later, the kings of Judah, Ahaz, and Manasseh would one-up the child sacrifice required of Molech by sacrificing their sons to appease Yahweh. In short, "biblical kingship" was a complete failure.
The kings of Israel and any monarch who lorded power over their subjects would become a parody of the coming king. Similarly, the people of Jesus' day couldn't grasp what he meant that his kingdom and reign would not look anything like the kingdom and reigns of this world.
Ours is not the King who sacrifices others for his own gain, but rather the one who became a sacrifice on our behalf.
Surely, he was a political leader! He would rebel against the oppressive Romans and set up his throne in Jerusalem to reign. But when he failed to follow the political agenda set out by some, he was rejected. Given an opportunity to free him one last time, just as in the book of Samuel, the people clamored for Barrabas, instead of Jesus, to be released to them.
King Jesus was not the king they expected.
Kings rode into battle on a warhorse, not on a lowly donkey.
Kings had their feet washed; they didn't bow so low or insist that others do the same in imitation of them.
The reign of King Jesus inverted the monarchies of the Ancient Near East and continues to do so to all worldly kingdoms ever since. This King would not ask for a sacrifice but would become the sacrifice himself.
In Philippians 2, Paul explains this dynamic by borrowing from what seems to be an early Christian proclamation that Jesus, the King of kings:
"Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!" (Phil. 2:6-9)
This is the good news of the Incarnation: God with us, the true and coming King.
The kingdom of God is "upside down," a parody of the kingdoms of this world. Unlike the kingdoms of this world, the way up is down. The way to life is death. Ours is not the King who sacrifices others for his own gain, but rather the one who became a sacrifice on our behalf. And so, we say at Advent, "Long live the King!" and welcome Christ's kingdom both lowly in a manger and coming into full glory at the end of the age.
