at All Saints Floreat Uniting Church ‘If you are the King of the Jews’, the soldiers mocked, ‘save yourself’… (and) There was also an inscription over Jesus: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’
What is all this talk of kingship? What is the ‘reign of Christ’ we mark today? And, more generally, what is sovereignty, do you think? For whilst not a new question, sovereignty is certainly a powerful one today. In Australia, for example, their never ceded sovereignty is at the heart of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander struggles. How is it best reconciled with our later colonial and post-colonial formulations? We also see the rise of ‘sovereign citizen’ movements, closely linked to anti-vax, conspiracy, and far-right developments. These also challenge conventional assumptions about law and authority. Today’s wars and violence meanwhile outrageously betray hard-won 20th century international standards and cooperation in sovereignty. For those very concepts of human rights, and self-determination, are undermined, as notions of ‘might is right’ are at the fore once more. What then do today’s scriptures have to say in this context? What does Christ’s ‘sovereignty’ mean today, and what difference might this make to our world’s questions of sovereignty? And what might the Gospel’s use of words like ‘king’ and ‘kingdom’ also have for us today? For, if we are to talk about the reign of God, we also have to ask about who is the sovereign, the one who reigns...
What is all this talk of kingship? What is the ‘reign of Christ’ we mark today? And, more generally, what is sovereignty, do you think? For whilst not a new question, sovereignty is certainly a powerful one today. In Australia, for example, their never ceded sovereignty is at the heart of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander struggles. How is it best reconciled with our later colonial and post-colonial formulations? We also see the rise of ‘sovereign citizen’ movements, closely linked to anti-vax, conspiracy, and far-right developments. These also challenge conventional assumptions about law and authority. Today’s wars and violence meanwhile outrageously betray hard-won 20th century international standards and cooperation in sovereignty. For those very concepts of human rights, and self-determination, are undermined, as notions of ‘might is right’ are at the fore once more. What then do today’s scriptures have to say in this context? What does Christ’s ‘sovereignty’ mean today, and what difference might this make to our world’s questions of sovereignty? And what might the Gospel’s use of words like ‘king’ and ‘kingdom’ also have for us today? For, if we are to talk about the reign of God, we also have to ask about who is the sovereign, the one who reigns...
kingly language in Christian Tradition
Now, in terms of the biblical language of kings and kingdoms, I have to admit that I had some lively discussions in my ministry placement at Pitt Street Uniting Church! For Pitt Street, like many Uniting Church spaces, is understandably wary about such masculine terms. And I too believe that changing the inherited balance of gendered language for God is crucial for a healthy spirituality. Yet I think it is not only very difficult but also unhelpful to put the biblical use of ‘king’ and ‘kingdom’ completely aside. For, whilst gender neutral language is indeed valuable, we lose something by too much subtraction. Instead, we need a richer gender expansiveness, with more attentiveness to creative addition, and by ‘flipping the script’, by re-using key inherited terms in a fresh subversive manner. And this, properly understood, is what many key biblical passages do, as instanced by today’s Gospel.
For our Gospel is saying that God can indeed be understood with language terms that human beings use: including kingly terms. After all, kings and kingdoms are such powerful archetypal symbols. However, the Gospel is also saying, watch out! In Christ Jesus, everything is also made new, including our language and our assumptions. So, if God, in Christ, might, in some ways be called a king, Christ is not a king as we know it. Nor is Christ’s reign sovereignty as we know it. Rather, today’s Gospel reading flips our conventional assumptions, by trans-forming all limited human ideas of sovereignty, not least those of kings. For divine sovereignty, the reign of God, is always revealing itself as the trans-forming power of love. If Christ Jesus is therefore in any way a king, or a queen, or a president, or whatever figure we human beings conjure up, Christ is a very subversive sovereign. For that is how love works.
flipping the script on power and ridicule
The soldiers’ words of mockery, and the inscription ‘This is the King of the Jews’ are core to the Gospel’s message of how God, in Christ, flips the script. For these deliberately chosen, and anti-semitic, phrases drip with pitiless ridicule: not only for Jesus, but for everyone associated with Jesus, including their enemies. They are a brutal assertion of power and of utter disdain, not only for Jesus, but for the whole land and people to which Jesus belonged. In that sense, Jesus’ crucifixion was a blatantly naked display of Roman sovereign power, an example showing what it could do to anyone. Like imperial oppressors down the ages, it declares that Resistance is futile. Today, perhaps, we see this in different forms – including perhaps, in the USA, in posts on Trump’s Truth Social - but they are always typically laced with similar disdain, threat, and brutal self-concern. They proclaim that any alternative claims to their own reign can have no hope or validity. Or do they?
The Gospel’s subversive power lies in offering a very different understanding of sovereign power. For the worldly powerful are typically obsessed with titles and possessions, propping up their pretensions with royal associations and gilded palaces. These, they assume, are signs of winners, and the just rewards of victors. Yet, in Gospel understanding, they are only passing signs, and clear indications of missing the plot. For all human titles and possessions are mere symbols at best, and, if indulged in, reflect their claimants’ fragility. This is why the world’s powerful inevitably ridicule what threatens them, as they know their sovereignty is always on shaky foundations. Instead, our Gospel story points us to the ultimate sovereignty of love, with Jesus as its true expression. For love does not need titles or possessions. Love does not need to dominate, ridicule, and crucify, others. Love is always found in solidarity, not so much with those who think of themselves as winners, but with the losers, even with the most marginalised and oppressed, even unto death. Yes, the Gospel is saying, the powerful can wreak tremendous pain and havoc. Ultimately however, love will be victorious. For God, in Christ, is always with the suffering: indeed, among the crucified. This however is not the end, but the beginning, and the means of transformation.
the sovereignty of love
Jesus was labelled as a king because the Romans recognised Jesus had astonishing power to change lives and circumstances. This however is not, like Roman power, a power over others but a power with others, and a power offered to others: the power of love. As a result, our Gospel is telling us, the crucifixion is but a hollow victory. Jesus could be killed but the power of love simply shone brighter. Therefore, take heart, even in the face of modern-day crucifying of love, and truth, and justice. Tyrants and empires, will all, sooner or later, fall. Love however will rise again and will ultimately prevail. True greatness involves goodness.
Our worldly issues of sovereignty are often deeply troubling, with differing views on how, precisely, law and human authority is best worked out. However, three questions arise from today’s Gospel which we can always ask about any form of human authority. For these, not titles or possessions, are the reign of Christ’s true concerns, reflecting the sovereignty of love, the sovereignty of God. Take a look at Jesus in the Gospel story. For this paints the picture. What Jesus says and does helps us see how to live out the sovereignty of love ourselves. It models the reign of God for us and points us to the questions to ask about any kind of human power and politics.
relationship
Firstly, even in crucifixion and certain death, we see Jesus concerned for others: continuing to share in care and solidarity, including for the criminals crucified alongside them. For the reign of Christ is always about growing relationships. And so the first question is ‘what relationships of care and solidarity’ do particular forms of human sovereignty nurture? How well do they care for others, especially the marginalised? How well do they build solidarity among us, and with the wider creation we share?
mercy
The second question, taking arising from our Gospel story, is ‘what kind of mercy?’ do particular forms of human sovereignty foster? Seeking reconciliation, and offering ways to peace, are at the heart of Jesus’ life to the last. Perhaps, like the unrepentant criminal on the cross, they may not be received by everyone. However, this is at the heart of the reign of Christ and the sovereignty of love which we are called to share.
justice
And the third question, is ‘what kind of justice?’ do particular forms of human sovereignty offer – whether they use title like kings, or queens, or presidents, or premiers, or popes, or bishops, or moderators, or anything else? For the death of Jesus in today’s Gospel story is not separate from the life of Jesus but one with it. The inequities and cruelties of human power are exposed and challenged. Hope and liberation are offered to the poor and outcast, even to those who have hurt others. For the power of love persists, even when everything else falls away. For the Love of God is never conquered: whatever names we are called, whatever is done to us and to others, whatever is destroyed. So how to sum up the reign of Christ, the kingdom of God, and its flipping of the scripts of the powerful? A great Welsh poet-priest, R.S.Thomas, perhaps put it as well as anyone:
It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.
Amen.
by Josephine Inkpin, for Floreat Uniting Church, Sunday 23 November 2025
Now, in terms of the biblical language of kings and kingdoms, I have to admit that I had some lively discussions in my ministry placement at Pitt Street Uniting Church! For Pitt Street, like many Uniting Church spaces, is understandably wary about such masculine terms. And I too believe that changing the inherited balance of gendered language for God is crucial for a healthy spirituality. Yet I think it is not only very difficult but also unhelpful to put the biblical use of ‘king’ and ‘kingdom’ completely aside. For, whilst gender neutral language is indeed valuable, we lose something by too much subtraction. Instead, we need a richer gender expansiveness, with more attentiveness to creative addition, and by ‘flipping the script’, by re-using key inherited terms in a fresh subversive manner. And this, properly understood, is what many key biblical passages do, as instanced by today’s Gospel.
For our Gospel is saying that God can indeed be understood with language terms that human beings use: including kingly terms. After all, kings and kingdoms are such powerful archetypal symbols. However, the Gospel is also saying, watch out! In Christ Jesus, everything is also made new, including our language and our assumptions. So, if God, in Christ, might, in some ways be called a king, Christ is not a king as we know it. Nor is Christ’s reign sovereignty as we know it. Rather, today’s Gospel reading flips our conventional assumptions, by trans-forming all limited human ideas of sovereignty, not least those of kings. For divine sovereignty, the reign of God, is always revealing itself as the trans-forming power of love. If Christ Jesus is therefore in any way a king, or a queen, or a president, or whatever figure we human beings conjure up, Christ is a very subversive sovereign. For that is how love works.
flipping the script on power and ridicule
The soldiers’ words of mockery, and the inscription ‘This is the King of the Jews’ are core to the Gospel’s message of how God, in Christ, flips the script. For these deliberately chosen, and anti-semitic, phrases drip with pitiless ridicule: not only for Jesus, but for everyone associated with Jesus, including their enemies. They are a brutal assertion of power and of utter disdain, not only for Jesus, but for the whole land and people to which Jesus belonged. In that sense, Jesus’ crucifixion was a blatantly naked display of Roman sovereign power, an example showing what it could do to anyone. Like imperial oppressors down the ages, it declares that Resistance is futile. Today, perhaps, we see this in different forms – including perhaps, in the USA, in posts on Trump’s Truth Social - but they are always typically laced with similar disdain, threat, and brutal self-concern. They proclaim that any alternative claims to their own reign can have no hope or validity. Or do they?
The Gospel’s subversive power lies in offering a very different understanding of sovereign power. For the worldly powerful are typically obsessed with titles and possessions, propping up their pretensions with royal associations and gilded palaces. These, they assume, are signs of winners, and the just rewards of victors. Yet, in Gospel understanding, they are only passing signs, and clear indications of missing the plot. For all human titles and possessions are mere symbols at best, and, if indulged in, reflect their claimants’ fragility. This is why the world’s powerful inevitably ridicule what threatens them, as they know their sovereignty is always on shaky foundations. Instead, our Gospel story points us to the ultimate sovereignty of love, with Jesus as its true expression. For love does not need titles or possessions. Love does not need to dominate, ridicule, and crucify, others. Love is always found in solidarity, not so much with those who think of themselves as winners, but with the losers, even with the most marginalised and oppressed, even unto death. Yes, the Gospel is saying, the powerful can wreak tremendous pain and havoc. Ultimately however, love will be victorious. For God, in Christ, is always with the suffering: indeed, among the crucified. This however is not the end, but the beginning, and the means of transformation.
the sovereignty of love
Jesus was labelled as a king because the Romans recognised Jesus had astonishing power to change lives and circumstances. This however is not, like Roman power, a power over others but a power with others, and a power offered to others: the power of love. As a result, our Gospel is telling us, the crucifixion is but a hollow victory. Jesus could be killed but the power of love simply shone brighter. Therefore, take heart, even in the face of modern-day crucifying of love, and truth, and justice. Tyrants and empires, will all, sooner or later, fall. Love however will rise again and will ultimately prevail. True greatness involves goodness.
Our worldly issues of sovereignty are often deeply troubling, with differing views on how, precisely, law and human authority is best worked out. However, three questions arise from today’s Gospel which we can always ask about any form of human authority. For these, not titles or possessions, are the reign of Christ’s true concerns, reflecting the sovereignty of love, the sovereignty of God. Take a look at Jesus in the Gospel story. For this paints the picture. What Jesus says and does helps us see how to live out the sovereignty of love ourselves. It models the reign of God for us and points us to the questions to ask about any kind of human power and politics.
relationship
Firstly, even in crucifixion and certain death, we see Jesus concerned for others: continuing to share in care and solidarity, including for the criminals crucified alongside them. For the reign of Christ is always about growing relationships. And so the first question is ‘what relationships of care and solidarity’ do particular forms of human sovereignty nurture? How well do they care for others, especially the marginalised? How well do they build solidarity among us, and with the wider creation we share?
mercy
The second question, taking arising from our Gospel story, is ‘what kind of mercy?’ do particular forms of human sovereignty foster? Seeking reconciliation, and offering ways to peace, are at the heart of Jesus’ life to the last. Perhaps, like the unrepentant criminal on the cross, they may not be received by everyone. However, this is at the heart of the reign of Christ and the sovereignty of love which we are called to share.
justice
And the third question, is ‘what kind of justice?’ do particular forms of human sovereignty offer – whether they use title like kings, or queens, or presidents, or premiers, or popes, or bishops, or moderators, or anything else? For the death of Jesus in today’s Gospel story is not separate from the life of Jesus but one with it. The inequities and cruelties of human power are exposed and challenged. Hope and liberation are offered to the poor and outcast, even to those who have hurt others. For the power of love persists, even when everything else falls away. For the Love of God is never conquered: whatever names we are called, whatever is done to us and to others, whatever is destroyed. So how to sum up the reign of Christ, the kingdom of God, and its flipping of the scripts of the powerful? A great Welsh poet-priest, R.S.Thomas, perhaps put it as well as anyone:
It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.
Amen.
by Josephine Inkpin, for Floreat Uniting Church, Sunday 23 November 2025
RSS Feed