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Christ – the King? Luke 23:33-43  I am not all that fond of Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses. The Netherlands has royalty, so I grew up with all of those trappings. The vast majority of the people are crazy about the Queen, who is revered and placed upon the royal pedestal. My father did not care for the Queen, not even a little bit. During the occupation by the Nazis in WW II, as my father told it, the Queen went to Canada where it was safe and comfortable. She would send radio messages to the Dutch people to be courageous and to ‘hang in there’. My father never forgave the Queen for that. Then again, he was not a very forgiving man. Nevertheless, I know I’m influenced by my father’s attitudes regarding royalty. The Bible offers lots of stories about Kings, fewer about Queens, and many of those stories are not especially favorable either. Even the great King David had moral problems, and look what that did to his family. King Solomon, for all his reputed wisdom, collected women by the hundreds and was fond of excessive personal wealth, lavishing himself with palatial dwellings. So, it’s not that difficult to be wary and even weary of Kings and Queens. Admittedly, that’s where I am.  We come to this day in the Christian year that we call “Christ the King” Sunday. I experience mixed feelings in response to the word “King” applied to Jesus Christ, the one mockingly described by Roman soldiers as the “King of the Jews”. There’s your King, on his pedestal in the form of a cross, writhing in pain and bleeding to death. Some King! No palatial estate, no silver or gold, writhing on a cross in the company of two other losers. Criminals, all of them, condemned to die by execution. That’s a King? The soldiers raise seemingly valid issues such as: if he is a King of some sort, why doesn’t he save himself?  If he is the Messiah, then surely he can pull a miracle and just step right down from that cross, totally unharmed?  This is a different king. Throughout his earthly ministry both the disciples and the crowds sought to put Jesus on a pedestal, to make of him an earth-bound King.  In response, Jesus invariably went off on his own, in solitude, and prayed. The desire of the disciples and crowds never really changed, however, and they never quite ‘got it’, never quite understood why Jesus did not want to be their kind of King. So – people turned on him instead, and nailed him to a cross. But then, right there at the very end, one of them got it – that criminal got it, and says: Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. (43) Jesus, the servant king, says back to that criminal: Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise. (43) Some kind of king, right?  Not off in a safe place while the rest of us suffer, but suffering with us, and even more – suffering for us. Some kind of king, right?  - Pastor Piet - Nov.25, 2007, Christ the (servant) king Sunday