This is a copy of my talk given at Ayia Kyriaki and Saint Luke’s in the Anglican Church of Paphos on Christ The King Sunday 23 November 2025. The lectionary Bible reading was Luke 23:33-43.  

Prayer

Heavenly Father,
I thank You for Your word.
By the power of Your Holy Spirit,
May You speak to my heart,
And change my life.
In the precious name of Jesus I pray.
Amen.

Christ the King Sunday is a fairly recent addition to the Church calendar. It was first established in 1925 when Pope Pius XI directed all churches to set aside one Sunday to declare that: Jesus Christ is King. It wasn’t embraced by the Anglican Communion until 1970, when it was placed at the Sunday before Advent. Now we couldn’t imagine the Church calendar without it.

Some see Advent as a time for a spiritual shake-up. Thomas Cranmer obviously thought so when he wrote the Collect for today:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It’s one of those great prayers of the Church – though it was replaced by a new collect when Common Worship was introduced and ‘relegated’ to the Post Communion Prayer!

On this final Sunday of the lectionary year, we find ourselves at the foot of the cross. It feels a disorienting place to end the year. Given the pomp and circumstance we typically associate with Christ the King, we might expect to read something glorious from the book of Revelation about Jesus sitting on his throne, decked out in splendid robes and a jewelled crown. Or something majestic from Isaiah: “A son will be given to us, and the government will rest upon his shoulders.” Or Jesus transfigured on the mountain or raising Lazarus from the dead or Jesus emerging from the waters of baptism, heaven thundering in his ears. But no. We find none of these.

While the annual calendar is already urging us toward manger scenes and shepherds and nostalgic images of “baby Jesus,” the church instead directs our eyes toward the cross and places us in the rawest, most brutal moment of human history: Christ humiliated, mocked, and crucified. This is the day we declare Christ is King. This is the text where he looks anything but.

For the past several weeks in Luke’s Gospel, we’ve been thinking about how Jesus is turning the world upside down, or should that be downside up! We’ve been travelling with Jesus as he has made his way to Jerusalem. We’ve seen how Jesus gathered outcasts and sinners and tax collectors. We’ve seen how he denounced every abuse of power.

Last week Jesus told his disciples to get ready for hard times – to persevere and to get ready for persecution to testify about the coming Messiah. The religious and the Roman leaders have him arrested. He’s convicted on trumped up charges and beaten and mocked.

And now we find Jesus on the cross on the hill called Calvary or Golgotha or the Skull. This was a public execution site outside Jerusalem, a place of shame, nakedness, and slow death. Rome designed crucifixion to humiliate and terrify. Yet the One who spoke the universe into being now hangs helpless, crucified with two thieves (Isaiah 53:12) one on his right and one on his left. The people stand and watch.

The religious leaders ridicule him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself.” The soldiers mock him: “Aren’t you the King of the Jews? Save yourself.” Even one of the thieves hanging with him reviles him, saying, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself, and us!” They hang a sign over him that says: “King of the Jews.” And it’s clear – that what they are saying in their sadistic sarcasm is, “This is not what a king looks like.”

But then the second thief speaks. “Stop.  Have you no shame? We’re here because of things we did. This man is suffering all that we are – and he’s done nothing wrong.” And then he turns to Jesus and says, “Jesus. Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus says, “Truly I tell you [actually in the Greek – that “truly I tell you” Is the word Amen] Jesus says, “Amen, I tell you today you will be with me in Paradise.”

No baptism. No restitution. No time left for good works. Just raw, deathbed faith. And Jesus answers with one of the most astonishing sentences ever spoken: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Paradise. Not “someday.” Today. The moment his soul leaves his body, he will be with Jesus.

We say that Jesus enters into the whole of human life with us – that he experienced in his life, all that we experience in ours. That Jesus experienced the full range of human emotions. He shared our hopes; our joys; our sorrows; our hurts; our weaknesses; and our vulnerabilities.  And this always brings me comfort. Jesus, that always brings me comfort. Here Jesus is suffering with us. This moment with Jesus and the thief dying on the cross next to them – as they suffer together and see each other as fully human.

Dr. Howard Thurman writes in his book Jesus and the Disinherited that we can’t fully understand the life and teachings of Jesus if we don’t understand Jesus’ life first and foremost as a life lived for everyone whose back is up against the wall. Thurman points out that Jesus was not a person who had any socio-economic power in his world, and his story is not written for our places of power. Thurman puts it like this:

Jesus was a poor Jewish peasant. He had no power – certainly no power in the world of the Roman Empire. If a Roman soldier had pushed Jesus down into a ditch, he would have been just another poor Jewish peasant in a ditch.

Jesus is King by crawling down into the deepest ditches of our world – into the deepest ditches of our lives – and abiding with us there. And that’s what we have here. Jesus and this thief, suffering together on the cross. Just the two of them – as the world around them scoffs and mocks and reviles and crucifies them.

But as I was writing my talk this week, a question struck me: What if this is all there was? This moment on the cross. What if this is all there was? Would it be enough? Well, I don’t know if it would be enough. But it would be good and kind, and decent, and loving, and tender, and merciful, full of grace and truth.

In a world of suffering, swirling with all manner of evil and violence, where so much around is so very bad, what we have here in this Scripture is this moment of goodness. Two people – one of them the Son of God – suffering in the fullness of their humanity – taking up for each other, seeing each other, and holding each other close in God’s heart. This moment of goodness in the midst of our deepest sorrow, holding its breath and waiting, hoping for resurrection.

It is a glimpse of how Christ is king. Christ the King is turning the world downside up by finding for each of us a place at the table. Christ the King is turning the world downside up by dismantling every power in this world that pushes us down or holds us back. Christ the King is turning the world downside up by giving us voice to testify, and a story to tell, of where we see God’s liberating grace in the world.

And Christ the King is turning the world downside up by leaving the majesty of heaven and entering into the fullness of our lives and by standing with everyone whose back is up against the wall. Christ the King comes to rule us not by force but by forgiveness, not by seizing power but by giving himself away.

In closing, we end the church year at the cross so that next week, when the church dares to whisper that a child is coming, we know what kind of child he is. A King whose power is mercy. A King whose glory is compassion. A King whose throne is a cross and whose promise, today, and always, is paradise. That is the kingdom we proclaim. That is the King we follow.

And that is the hope that meets us at the end, so we can begin again. This story reminds us that there is no one too far gone. If a dying thief can be saved in his final moments, no one here is beyond the reach of God’s mercy. It reminds us that no sin too great. It reminds us that it is never too late to put our trust in Christ the King.

And finally, I can’t wait to speak to the thief one day, to ask him, “How did that work out for you? You’d never been in a Bible study. You’d never got baptized. You didn’t know a thing about church membership. And yet, you made it! How did you make it?” That’s what the angel must have asked at the gates of heaven:

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“Well, ’because I don’t know.”

“Really? This is quite unusual, excuse me while I get my supervisor.”

So, the supervisor angel comes: “We’ve just a few questions for you. First of all, are you clear on the doctrine of justification by faith?”

The thief says, “I’ve never heard of it in my life.”

“And what about sanctification and pre-destination and … let’s just go to the doctrine of Scripture immediately.”

The thief is just staring.

“And what do you know about the 39 Articles of Religion?” The supervisor angel asks (He was an Anglican!!).

No response!

Eventually, in frustration, the supervisor Angels asks: “On what basis are you here?”

And the thief replies: “The man on the middle cross said I could come.”

The man on the middle cross is Christ the King.

COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER The text contained in this sermon (with thanks to Alistair Begg for his ‘Thief on the Cross’ illustration – with a few tweaks from me!) is solely owned by its author, Revd Paul A. Carr. The reproduction, or distribution of this message, or any portion of it, should include the author’s name.