Sunday, November 23, 2025
Luke 23:33-43
On Friday, I saw a post on social media that caught my attention. It was an “up close shot of (the giant balloon of) Snoopy through an Upper West Side window in New York City during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in 1988.
The picture shows the front half of the iconic Peanuts character’s profile just creeping into the frame of a huge window with multiple panes which have been folded open and there are two children sitting on the large window sill. These children must have been watching the parade from that spot.
But what caught my attention was that when the picture was taken, the children were facing the camera. They have their backs to this Snoopy spectacle. They seem completely disinterested in this giant toy floating in the air animated within reach of their young imaginations.
And that was nearly forty years ago.
I was left wondering about the likelihood that these children had already seen it all. They’d seen so many giant balloons that they’d become overstimulated or bored by the parade. I wondered further if this level of disinterest in a world full of overstimulation is where we just live these days. Does anyone put down their screen long enough to even watch the Macy’s parade anymore?
Today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. Next Sunday we will begin the new Church year with the season of Advent. We speak a bit tongue and cheek each year around Thanksgiving and the beginning of the spectacle of Christmas shopping to remind each other that the beginning of Advent is the beginning of the Christian year. It seems funny to us that our New Years is just before the secular overstimulation of the holidays which end with the celebration of a New Year. By New Years day we will box it all up and put it away.
But the Church New Year’s celebration celebrates a beginning.
All that said, it seems odd for us to stop at this particular time and think about the crucifixion. Why a Good Friday scripture?
Well, here on this last day of the church year, this part of the Jesus story is the end of the story. So his earthly time of teaching and ministry is ending. Then next week, starting with the new church year, we will begin afresh to think about the birth of Jesus and new beginnings.
This reading intentionally placed at the end of the church year is reminiscent of the end times. And it fits with Christ the King Sunday because we should always remember that Christ is the King of Kings, for all eternity.
Are we yawning yet? Does the spectacle of Jesus bore us? Have we seen it all before?
I’ve been pondering what it means for us to follow Jesus as our King. And, this may sound strange but, I find myself thinking about super heroes and watching Avenger movies.
Our culture seems to have become accustomed to violence. In my reflection on this, I find myself wanting to escape into the fantasy world where Superman and Batman and the Avengers always save the day.
Umberto Eco, who was a 20th century, Italian philosopher, wrote an interesting essay in 1971 in which he chased down “The Myth of Superman” - also the title of this famous essay. When we studied this in seminary, I remember thinking that we humans create all sorts of fictional super heroes and we do this because super heroes seem somehow more accessible to us than the reality of - well, God.
The character of Superman, from the DC comics of the early 20th century, was different than the Superman of the mid-80s and after. I’m sure you’ve noticed, even if you don’t keep up with comics, that Superman and Batman, and all these fantasy superheroes started getting darker around that time.
But the Superman Eco wrote about was sort of like a god. He could fly, he had super strength and he would never kill a person or animal. He also was very much human-like, for a creature from another planet. Superman had human type problems. Just think of the strange love triangle between him, Lois Lane and his alter ego, Clark Kent. So, theologians in the 70s picked up on the possibility that Christians and non-Christians alike were comparing Jesus with Superman and concluding a lot of similarities. Jesus had evolved into a super hero.
We can relate to Superman because his problems are similar to ours. And we can fantasize within the stories about Superman of either somehow becoming like him and gaining his super strength or becoming filled with hope that he will show up whenever trouble comes along.
It is the case with most of our comic book, super heroes. They all have problems, they struggle with what is true, what is good, who they are, who they should be. Human stuff. So we relate.
But Jesus is nothing like any of that. Yes, Jesus is fully human and also fully divine. The early church councils got really caught up on that. And this theology of Christology comes directly from St. Luke whom we are studying this morning.
And yes, Jesus has super natural powers. We know this from all the stories of miracles and healings in the scriptures. But Jesus is nothing like Superman or Batman or the Avengers.
If Jesus is King, though, we end up with expectations of him to be, well, king-like. And we want our king to be strong, powerful and direct. Kings are rich and powerful. Kings get stuff done, like winning wars and conquering lands, which as you know includes killing.
But Jesus is not that kind of king, is he?
What kind of king do we follow then?
According to Luke, Jesus is King. More than the other Gospelers, Luke uses lots of titles for Jesus to establish this. Jesus is “the messiah,” he is “the son of man” and “the son of God” interchangeably.
Earlier in Luke (4:43), Jesus told the crowds who were following him that he was sent to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. Jesus stood in the synagogue and read from the scroll of the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free . . .
Maybe Jesus was merely claiming his place among the prophets by reading this proclamation. But for Luke, the kingdom of God which Jesus proclaims was a world where those on the bottom of society (in his day) would find liberation from the systems and structures that bind them. Those who were captive, like these two criminals with whom he was crucified, would be released. And Luke is the only gospel writer who mentions these two thieves who were crucified on either side of Jesus. This is clearly symbolic of the kind of king we follow. He is a king who lays down his life for his followers, his friends, and he emphasizes and models his commandment to forgive and love each other in his final breaths.
Not the kind of king we usually think of when we think of kings.
So, as followers of this Christ, we should seek to embody the kingdom that Christ proclaimed. This includes forgiving and advocating for those who are caught up in the worldly web of injustice. Not a power hungry kind of king indeed.
Worldly kings take power from others by winning battles. Jesus neither fights nor allows his followers to do so. He is the King of Kings because is the King of Peace.
Jesus offers an alternative to earthly kingship. He says in today’s gospel lesson, from the cross, “"Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And then he pardons the repentant thief. And then he concours death.
He sounds like a super hero after all. His super power is the power of love and forgiveness and salvation.
We long for a superhero to come in and fix everything in one fell swoop. But that is not the way of our king. Jesus asks us instead to live together, as a community, working on relationships, loving and forgiving each other in non-violent ways of love, turning the other cheek, resting in assurances that to some seem foolish.
If we can learn to follow God in this way we can enter more deeply into loving relationships with God and with each other. And then the work of caring for the poor becomes more clear.
Jesus quietly follows The Way of Love and gives all that he has to his cause - the cause of bringing the Kingdom of God into the world. There is no need for super heroes in the Kingdom of God. There’s just us simple, loving, giving, fallible, human followers of Jesus, who is the Way, the Way of love.
Thanksgiving week is a wonderful time to enjoy the abundance of our lives. It is also a wonderful time when all the many agencies who care for the poor outdo themselves feeding people in the name of Jesus. It is a time to honor and remember the hungry. It is also a time to honor and remember the lonely. The sick. The weak. And those who mourn. That’s what Jesus would do.
While it seems clear on this Christ the King Sunday that Jesus is a different sort of king, perhaps we often err in the opposite direction and Jesus sometimes seems like a giant image of god to which we have grown complacent. We turn from the view of him like those children bored with the giant Snoopy. Perhaps we should be careful to not take his awesomeness for granted in this way.
And so, as we face these challenging times and this particular holiday season, I encourage you to ponder anew those who are hungry while we feast, those who are lonely while we gather, those who are despairing while we ring out joy. And do this because we follow the king of kings, the King of Peace. As we sit down with families and friends this week and feast, remember what the king of kings really represents - not super heroes, not violence, not war, not division, not even giant Snoopys - but truth and love.
And most of all, forgiveness.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly
1 captured by legendary photographer Elliot Erwitt, https://www.instagram.com/p/DRQc36DEsyA/, accessed 11/21/25.