Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. It is our parish festival since, in fact, our congregation is called Christ the King Church. We should perhaps ask the question, “What’s in a name?” “What does it mean to be called “Christ the King Lutheran Church?” What happens when my friends and acquaintances in the neighborhood introduce me as pastor of Christ the Lutheran King Church? I am amazed how our neighbors play with the name of the church as it appears in our logo and on the sign at the corner of Rice and Greenbriar.

The old sign is twenty-five years old. The plywood is rotting and is held to the frame literally by bailing wire! Thank heaven that many members have given designated gifts that are dedicated for the construction of the new sign to be built next month. It will be new, but it will be old.

It will be old because the logo will not change. It is the logo on the sign which captures people’s imagination. They play with it—Christ the Lutheran King Church. We have heard visitors say that the sign drew them to the church because they were curious as to what kind of people would have such a sign. Gail Glass’s husband, Jim, created the logo. I don’t think that he meant for the words “King” and “Lutheran” to be transposed in people’s minds. But they do switch around and, thus, cause a certain activity of mind and thought.

From where does this playfulness in language arise? The answer comes to us from one of the most important aspects of language and cognition. It is the power of metaphor or what Paul Ricoeur refers to as the “rule of metaphor” meaning the “dominion of metaphor.”

Everywhere we turn in our language, we are confronted with metaphor. Some metaphors are so old that we no longer see them as such. For example, the legs of a chair are metaphors. Long before we human beings had chairs and tables, we had two legs. It was natural to refer to the supports of a three-legged stool as “legs.” They are not legs. They do not bend and twist. Nor do they have muscles attached for movement. Still referring to those supports as legs catches a little more about what they do. They are legs, but they’re not!

Douglas R. Hofstadter was the President’s Lecturer at Rice on Tuesday. Professor Hofstadter argues “cognition equals perception.” If that statement is taken seriously, it must lead to the inevitable conclusion that the core mechanism of all human thinking is analogy-making.

Metaphor belongs to analogical imagination. Metaphor is the application of an attribute of something we know to that which we seek to know. Metaphor is not popular among many persons who think that metaphorical thinking is not a very serious form of thinking. It results in the illogical conclusion that something is and is not. Often they want language to simply designate a thing accurately. They want a name for something with no “is and is not” quality. It is as if they want to label something and be finished with it.

Metaphor is a very active tool for exploring the future. And it is just its “is and is not” character that makes it valuable, if not also dangerous for us. Some metaphors are not controversial. For example. God is a rock. Well, God is not a rock, but then again God is a rock says the psalmist. “The Lord is my shepherd.” God is not a shepherd, but then again the Lord is my shepherd.

Many arguments and misunderstandings have resulted from the inability or refusal to understand the metaphorical quality of religious language. Examples of this would include Luther’s great controversy with the Swiss reformer, Zwingli.

Luther understood the words, “This is my body, this is my blood” in a metaphorical way. The bread and wine were not to be understood as alchemically transformed elements, that is, literally the body and blood of Christ in a Roman Catholic way. Nor were they to be understood as labels only referring to the body and blood of Christ as Zwingli taught. For Luther the bread and the wine is and is not the body and blood of Christ. Consequently, Luther remains faithful to the church’s teaching that Jesus is present in his meal, not in the substance of bread and wine, but in the communal eating of bread and wine with the word of promise heard in the prayer at every Lord’s Supper.

Every time we examine the faith, especially in its Biblical sources, we are confronted with metaphorical language which fires the imagination and invites us not only to memorize set language of the past, but opens our hearts and minds to consider the reality that lies before us in the future.

Dear congregation, today we have set before us the assertion and the challenge. Jesus is King. Christ is King. Is this a proposition to which we refer and agree? Is Christ the King just a label that we stick on Jesus? No, it is a metaphor. Jesus is King and is not King.

In the Gospel of John Jesus is arrested because he is perceived as messiah, the anointed one who is to become king over Israel. Neither Jew nor Greek wants this outcome as long as they take the designation as a political challenge to the Jerusalem establishment and to the Roman Empire. That is why the author of the gospel has Jesus appear before both courts, the Sanhedrin and the governor, Pontius Pilate. He is being tried for treason having been falsely accused of being a king or at least a wanna-be king.

Twice Pilate asks Jesus if he is king. Jesus refuses to answer in a matter-of- fact way.

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?" Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?" (John 18:33-35)

Again Pilate interrogates Jesus.

Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. (John 18:37)

The refusal by Jesus to answer the question clearly allows us, the readers, to move into a greater realm to ask the question that scripture places before us. Is Jesus king? Yes and No. Certainly he is not a king such as we have known over the millennia. But he is a king if not a different kind of king according to the writer of Revelation.

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. (Vss. 4b-5)

Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him;
and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.
So it is to be. Amen. (Vs. 7)

In the gospel reading we hear Jesus give the alternative view to his being a king.

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." (John 18:36)

Jesus will not claim to be king, but he does speak of his rule or his reign. It will not be based on the violent struggle of successive earthly kingdoms and empires that leave nothing but death and destruction in their wake. His rule will be one of self-giving and sacrifice.

Is Jesus a Lutheran King? That question won’t be answered today but only in the days to come as we continue to meet around word and sacrament and be sent forth into the world to extend the kingship of Jesus in every nook and cranny of a world, otherwise, bent on power and destruction.

Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." John 18:37b)

Amen.