"Three Guys Get Into an Elevator...", November 23, 2025 — Santa Teresa Hills Presbyterian Church

“Three Guys Get Into an Elevator…”

Reign of Christ Sunday

Based on Jer 23:1-6; Luke 23:39-43; Col 1:11-20

David Robertson, STHPC, November 23, 2025

Good morning. Today marks the conclusion of our liturgical year where we celebrate the Reign of Christ, also known as Christ the King Sunday. This reminds us that all things will be one in Christ Jesus in the end. All things, including violence, racism, doubt, hopelessness, and greed will all be healed and loved in Christ.

But what does this King and the Reign of Christ look like? The texts we are studying today present differing views of what the people and prophets of the Old Testament expected, compared to what Jesus showed us through his life, teachings, and death on the cross.

Throughout the history presented in the Old Testament, the people of Israel (the northern tribes) and Judah (the southern tribes) were always looking for a strong ruler, given that they had to defend against other factions and empires. Their prayers to God, like we heard in Psalm 46 and in the verses in Jeremiah, were for God to help them in their earthly struggles, to defend Jerusalem, and in the words of Jeremiah, rule justly and with righteousness. The passages in Jeremiah are especially poignant given the circumstances described from 597BC and up to 586BC with the destruction of Jerusalem and exile of the Jews by the Babylonian empire. Jeremiah is calling for God’s justice against a series of Jewish kings who he considered corrupt and who failed in safeguarding the people. He is prophesying that God will punish them and raise up kings who act as good shepherds, and ultimately as described in verses 5 and 6, raise up “a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and execute justice and righteousness”.

Well that hoped-for earthly success didn’t really happen. Given the subsequent thousands of years of war, despotic rulers and empires, and all the human cruelties that have occurred and continue to occur, it seems Jeremiah’s hoped-for earthly kingdom didn’t come and won’t come anytime soon.

However there is a different reality on the meaning of the “reign of Christ”, both in the Old and New Testaments. Let’s start with verses from Psalm 46. God is described as “our refuge and strength (v1) and “in the midst of the city” (v5). So He is with us regardless of what bad things are happening. In the New Testament, let’s look at Colossians, which is a letter named for its recipients, the Christian community in Colossae, a city on a river in modern-day southwest Turkey. The apostle Paul, or one of his disciples writing under Paul’s name, is encouraging and instructing the community, and refuting what they considered the false beliefs in Jewish mysticism and Gnosticism (which is the “knowing” or secret knowledge that humans could develop on their own about God). The writer praises Christ in verses 15 and 16 as the “image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation”, and “in him all things in heaven and on earth were created”. In verse 17 we have, “he himself is before all things and in him all things hold together”. Besides being from the beginning, he also rules after death, called “the firstborn from the dead” in verse 18 and then in verse 20, “through him God… reconciled himself to all things… by making peace through the blood of his cross”. Here, Christ is described as existing before humans were created and rules over all people, not limited like a regional king. And then paradoxically, Christ’s reign is established not by military power but through death. In verse 13 we have: “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his Beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins”, and earlier in verse 11, “May you be made strong… and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience while joyfully giving thanks”. Quite a different view.

The most agonizing depiction of this reign is in our Gospel reading from Luke 23, as Jesus is crucified along with two criminals. Here is the opposite of what we think of as a king; a man humiliated, suffering injustice, mocked to “save Himself” and ridiculed as “King of the Jews”. None of this is what we value on earth: to be rich, influential, in charge, beautiful, and to buy everything that Costco and Amazon can offer. Yet even though appearing powerless and in the last moments of life, one thief asks him to “remember me when you come into your kingdom” and Jesus replies “Truly I tell you today you will be with me in Paradise”. The so-called “good thief” at a moment of deepest despair, sees God in Jesus, sees a different kind of kingdom, and asks to be part of it. He is not confessing, not asking for salvation, just to be remembered because of Jesus’s goodness, despite his own wickedness. At this moment there was not a shred of evidence this kingdom existed or ever will exist. Perhaps he recognized that salvation exists even if it couldn’t deliver him from suffering and death.

That salvation and forgiveness, is the “reign of Christ” that Christians can receive through our confessional faith. We have faith not because we are strong or right, but because God is strong. We see God’s grace through our faith, not that we earned it or are special, but because Christ showed us how to love, forgive, endure all things, and how to work for that kingdom.

The American pastor and theologian Frederick Buechner described this new Kingdom as follows: “The Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing, and is crying out to be born both within ourselves and within the world… [it] is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength.”

So how do we live following these teachings? It’s as simple, and as almost impossible, as Christ’s second commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It means practicing what Jesus did: honoring God in all you do by being righteous, just, and compassionate. Caring for everyone – your family, friends, and those who no one cares about. As it says in Matthew 25:13-15, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, take care of the sick, visit those in prison. It means that we don’t just dis-engage from earthly hierarchies and idols that pretend to rule us. We are called to transform those earthly powers so that they emulate the grace, mercy, and compassion we experience in the kingdom of God.

To go back to my sermon title, three guys get into an elevator. It is 7AM in Biloxi Mississippi at a Hampton Inn, and the free hot breakfast is waiting. I’m visiting Mississippi to claim it as state #49 in my state bucket list. Two other men get on the elevator with me and according to their caps, are there for the Biloxi “Cruisin’ the Coast” car show. We exchange the usual hellos and what we’re doing. The younger man is interested that I’m driving to Vicksburg and the miliary park and civil war memorials and museums. The older man asks where are you from? Now, both my wife and some of my friends said “Don’t tell them you’re from California”. So of course what do I say? “I’m from California”. The older one made a face and says “Oh and you must really like that democrat governor of yours”. This is when Governor Newsom went national in opposing and mocking you-know-who and you-know-that. So I’m thinking, okay here it goes. How do I respond? The younger man seemed embarrassed about it and quickly asked where I was staying in Vicksburg and what I was going to see and started suggesting restaurants and places to see. He made me wait in the lobby while he texted someone to find about a wonderful restaurant I had to try. In the meantime, I responded to the older man something like “the great part about California is we have such a variety of people that come together even with many different beliefs.” Well, it’s kinda true. Whether I was conscious of trying to dis-engage us from earthly politics and focus on better things, or I just wanted to get to the free hot breakfast, I’m not sure. But it was the younger man, whether he knew it or not, who was trying to live a little bit of Matthew 25 by welcoming a stranger and making sure I’d find a place to stay and eat that night.

There were certainly grim reminders of human and natural disasters on that trip. The preserved bloody battlefield of Vicksburg. A museum in Biloxi remembering Hurricane Katrina in 2005 which killed over a thousand people and left 400,000 homeless. The Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, completed only in 2017, presented a horrifying picture of slavery and racism through to the 1950s and 60s, as the civil rights movement gradually overcame the worst of abuses and injustices.

Adam Hamilton, in his book “Christianity’s Family Tree”, reflects on the Sovereignty of God in this way: “I do not believe God brought about Hurricane Katrina to teach, to punish, or to pursue God’s purposes. The question is not why God brought Hurricane Katrina to bear on the Gulf Coast, but … what response… our King wishes us to make… God calls us to show compassion, to reach out as his hands and voice, and to serve him by serving those in need.”

And the Civil Rights Museum ultimately portrays the success of human beings in acting out God’s kingdom by overcoming human cruelty.

Just in the last year I know many of us have faced life-threatening and life-altering hardships and tragedies that made it almost impossible to believe God is with us. We are in much the same position as the early believers in the Colossae community around 65 BC, struggling what to believe and how to best follow Christ, in a violent and uncertain world. The message we all received was that hope in Christ is positive. We have a God who is with us in hard times, a God who can make good come out of evil, and who ultimately will make all things new including us. And because the reign of Christ is about peace, we engage in peacemaking. Because Christ is righteousness, we live righteous lives. Because Christ is our justice and mercy, we work for justice for all people and for the earth, and to show mercy. Whether you’re out taking a walk, working on a mission project, caring for someone sick or at the end of life, even in an elevator in Biloxi at 7 in the morning, the reign of Christ can be there. Ask Christ what to do, and then do it. Amen.

References:

1. Call To Worship liturgy, PCUSA

2. Feasting on the Word, Year C, commentary and liturgy Long, Kimberly Bracken.

3. Feasting on the Word Worship Companion: Liturgies for Year C, Volume 2: Trinity Sunday through Reign of Christ (pp. 275-283). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

4. The Christian Century magazine, Nov. 2025, commentary by Richard A. Kaufmann