Christus Rex
There seems to be a ruckus on X (formerly “Twitter”) over whether or not it is socially acceptable to say, “Christ is King.” And of course, it isn’t socially acceptable. We live in “negative world.” When we lived in “positive world,” it was socially acceptable. The offense taken by those who do not confess Jesus as King is nothing new. But it has heated up in recent years, with increasing charges of antisemitism leveled at mainstream Christianity. In 2018, a coalition of Jewish groups have recently proposed that publishers of the New Testament (as well as some writings by St. Ambrose and Martin Luther) be required to put warning labels on them. And today, even some who claim to be Christians are proposing either to eliminate the reading of the Passion entirely, to edit it strategically, or simply to remove certain words from the biblical text.
The timing of this tempest in the Twitterverse is interesting, as all of this seemed to have blown up on Palm Sunday, when Christians all around the world hear the account of our Lord’s royal welcome into Jerusalem proclaimed in their churches: our Lord riding a donkey into David’s Royal City (just as did His ancestor King Solomon upon making his own claim to the Davidic throne), as well as the reading of His passion account that includes: Pilate asking Him, “Are You the King of the Jews (Matt 27:11), the mockery of Jesus as King with the taunt, “Hail, King of the Jews!” (Matt 27:29), the official charge of Jesus placed on His cross: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews” (Matt 27:37), and the mockery of Jesus on the cross by the chief priests, scribes, and elders: “He is the King of Israel; let Him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in Him.” (Matt 27:42).
It is impossible to attend church on Palm Sunday and not be overwhelmed by the “Christ the King” motif from Scripture.
Indeed, the crucified King Jesus is reviled by both Jewish and Gentile unbelievers, as St. Paul reminds us: “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block [skandalon] to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23). Many of our crucifixes bear the letters INRI, Latin for “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum,” that is “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” In the early 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church created a feast day called Christ the King - which suspiciously seemed to fall very near Reformation Day. Since Vatican II, it has been moved to November. There seems to be an inevitable legal and social showdown coming as to whether or not saying “Christ is King” constitutes hate speech.
Today’s assigned hymn in the Treasury of Daily Prayer is “Shepherd of Tender Youth” (LSB 864), a text attributed to St. Clement of Alexandria (c. 170-220). Clement’s hymn’s first and last stanza include references to the Kingship of Jesus, namely: “Christ our triumphant king, we come Your name to sing” and “Unite to swell the song to Christ our king.” Our confession of Jesus as King is always likely to cause unbelievers offense, as is our Christian faith in general, as a woman on X recently opined:
“‘Christ is King’ is a personal statement. If you believe Christ is king, then Christ is your king. The issue is that the statement often comes with ‘every knee will bow.’ That’s when it becomes antisemitic, and how it’s connected to Christian supremacy.”
Of course, Luehmann’s reference to “every knee will bow” is a direct quote from Phil 2:10-11. It is not an option for a Christian to disbelieve this. Thus, according to her definition of antisemitism, all Christians who believe the Bible fall into that category, as well as “Christian Supremacy” - which certainly sounds like something that could get you arrested in some jurisdictions, even in some places in North America.
Although Clement of Alexandria wrote polemics against both Jews and Pagans - as well as Gnostics - it doesn’t seem that he was considered antisemitic until recently. By way of example, a group called Lion and Lamb Ministries (Dispensationalists who believe in the Rapture and the Millennium), published an article by David R. Reagan called “The Evil of Replacement Theology” in which Clement was accused of antisemitism for saying that “Israel ‘denied the Lord’ and thus ‘forfeited the place of the true Israel.’
To a certain swath of Protestants, the modern secular, largely Atheist State of Israel has standing as God’s Chosen People, somehow overlooking that Israel is one of the most progressive pro-homosexual countries in the world, as the Israeli government is quick to boast about. Moreover, Israel made abortions easier to get in direct response to the “sad” 2022 decision by the US Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade. Such church bodies hold forth that the State of Israel enjoys special divine favor. And in their theory of Eschatology, they believe that Jesus is physically unable to return until the temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem. They confess a theology that believes that faith in Christ is not necessary for the salvation of those ethnically descended from Jacob, which they identify as the State of Israel.
The bottom line is that it is impossible for Christians not to confess that Christ is King, as well as the even more socially-uncomfortable statement that Jesus is the King of the Jews. Indeed, we believe that Jesus is God, and thus He is the King of the Universe.
And this is why St. Clement is not alone among our hymnwriters. More than 120 of our LSB hymns confess Jesus Christ as King, namely: 331, 332, 335, 338, 339, 340, 343, 344, 348, 350, 352, 355, 357, 358, 359, 361, 366, 367, 368, 370, 371, 374, 377, 379, 380, 384, 385, 387, 394, 395, 397, 399, 401, 402, 403, 409, 422, 428, 430, 439, 442, 443, 444, 455, 457, 460, 461, 466, 469, 470, 471, 475, 477, 484, 487, 494, 495, 506, 511, 512, 524, 525, 527, 528, 531, 532, 533, 537, 550, 552, 554, 557, 572, 573, 574, 583, 593, 621, 624, 629, 630, 633, 660, 662, 668, 669, 675, 677, 709, 724, 751, 779, 783, 784, 790, 792, 793, 798, 804, 810, 811, 813, 815, 821, 828, 829, 832, 837, 838, 842, 856, 864, 878, 883, 903, 905, 920, 939, 940, 941, 942, 946, 948, 966, as well as 969 and 971 in the electronic version of the hymnal.
Christ is King!