Jesus was not a King in the way we understand kingship, A post-Christendom understanding of the nature of Christ

Some who know me well and because of the context I have grown up in and the story and values I inherited from my impoverished and socially excluded working class grand parents to middle class parents (where I was genetical predetermined to be left than centre in politics), I have always struggled with the core attribution of Jesus to be Christ the King. 

For me Kingship and understandings of governance as divine tyranny have never sat well with the stories of the Judeo-Christian bible.  In fact, the bible particularly in the Hebrew scriptures is pretty clear that there is at least a dis-ease with Kings, even in the gospel narratives.  O I hear you say, “but Jesus is not like some earthly expression of Kingship, he is the cosmic King of a divine Kingdom.”  But when you press what people are imagining when you call God and Jesus as King, I am sorry to say that what is often named for me fails to meet the cosmic peace-driven shalom as voiced with God-driven imagination of the Hebrew and New Testament elements of the bible, what I hear is lots of people bowing in servitude around a God sitting on a throne reflecting our inherited impoverished understanding of God’s Kingdom and of God.  

Jesus never calls himself King, in fact he is pretty tricksteresque about it “this is what you say I am’, but then talks about Kingdom more like as others have stated as more like a Kin-dom, (I am grateful for my friend Jemma Allen who talked of this to me when I was in New Zealand), I know longer call you servants (actually the Greek is much stronger nearing slaves) I now call you friends.  In this way, the Kin-dom of God is not an Empire with colonialist tenancies to sustain a privileged group in power sustaining a form of feudalism where you have a few living in opulence and the rest (as in the class system and that which is perpetuated by our Capitalist Market Society), deeply impoverished and fighting for survival, but instead a reordering of society where there will be no classism, misogyny, homophobia, racism or xenophobia, but instead a kin-dom of brothers and sisters living in a restored reality where evil and all that takes our lives away from us, is extinguished.  This vision is far beyond anything Christ as King imagines, and it excites me to think about this type of Kin-dom.  Scripture reminds us that Jesus was a liberator, that challenged social boundaries about who was in and out – and therefore expressed the values of kin-dom that was counter to all exclusivisms in a radical inclusivity of the new kin-dom, and that Jesus should not have become a mascot for the rich and powerful.  Unfortunately this mistake that helpfully reinforces the needs of Kings was maintained through the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, European Empires, British Empire, and now in the 21st Century where the Western world is facing a post-empire, post-colonialist, post-secular brutalizing capitalist market society, language and metaphors of Jesus as a King are now increasingly antagonistic to the many of the world who reject imperialistic forms of religion and spirituality.

We remember that Jesus was in my view very trickster, because he prophetically challenged the way the world thought of governance at his incarnation and life, and so he challenged the control and dumbing down of faith and relationship with God and the over rationalization of the Hebrew faith which had become very controlling and bordering on idolatrous not respecting God’s autonomy, and so this trickster leader of a movement to establish the ecclesia as a visible expression of the kin-dom led in a way that challenged all structures of society around the cause of love and reconciliation and radical reordering.

I have to say that this imperialistic imagination of God’s nature then was absorbed into the DNA of church, which rather than being the radical new ecclesia (we remember that the original use of the word for church was a Greek word given for a town council of the roman ports that were made up of rich men, where the new Christian ecclesias were radically other that included slaves, non-romans, women, greeks, jews and all who became in-Christ, if only our expressions of church could feel a bit more like this).

So how then with this focus on the Kin-dom, how do we talk and name metaphorically Jesus and his relationship with us?  So here are a few to start us off.

In the context of our post-covid trauma, Jesus as wounded healer is very powerful, as Jesus has suffered wounds in his humanity, as we have been wounded, where God’s love can restore us.

In the context of living in a fast driven dehumanizing market society, Jesus as resilient wisdom or spiritual teacher is also very powerful, then with a focus on formation  to dig deep with the faith, recognizing our inner and outer journeys of faith and the fact we have to learn so much about our humanity to be healthy in our highly stressful,  materialistic and addicted society.

Given the social divisions and injustice in the majority have-nots and the largely invisible minority of the super rich, Jesus as restorative liberator is critical as people seek to challenge all structures of injustice and exclusion, so a Jesus who is radical about challenging all social, economic and ecological injustice.

Given the explorations of eco-spirituality and eco-christianity, Jesus the Co-Creator, Jesus the Gardener has lots of resonances.

Recently I have been increasingly inspired by the 12 step movement and its focus on restorative healing, and the language often here is of a higher power, so I like the connection of Jesus as loving higher power, as the source of all healing and love and guidance. Really resonates with me a lot.

Finally for me, we often overlook how Jesus was a contemplative, often the New Testament talks of him going into the desert or deserted place to pray alone, either just before or just after some important action. This is why those of us who are New Monastics are inspired by Jesus to a life of prayer/contemplation and action. Here Jesus the contemplative or the contemplative teacher, or even contemplative source has real depth.

And there I dry up…. There is a need for more metaphors that open up the nature of Christ to de-and-unchurched people, and I am excited to see and hear new metaphors that are committed to scripture as well as committed to listening and participating in contemporary culture. 

The need for this deeper Christology was identified at a recent gatherings of missioners I attended in Oxford, and I hope that this will catalyze missioners and pioneers to explore new metaphors for the Jesus of the Kin-dom.  We need to build on those from the early Church where the fish sign was a summary for the oppressed church where Jesus was IXOYE, ‘Jesus God’s Son our Saviour’.