If Jesus is a King, then what does He reign over? This question is something that seems to stump a lot of people when I ask it. After searching around, a lot of times people come up with “well, He rules over everything.” This is a great answer and fits in very well with Paul says in Colossians — but wait a sec, we also pray that God’s Kingdom would come, right? Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done…. So, that doesn’t sound like it has been established all over if we are asking for it to come. If you’re up on your catechism, you know that Luther explains that as “we pray in this petition that it “may come to us also.” Hmn. 

So while Jesus is King over everything, His reign has yet to be fully realized in our world. We don’t need to look far to see that reality. Sinful rebellion is the mark of Jesus’ Lordship of the earth. We even criticize Jesus’ Lordship in that way. We say stuff like, “oh, well, if Jesus is truly King over the world, why is there war? why is there cancer? why do mosquitoes bite me?” When we say that stuff, we look at God and question His Lordship over the earth — God, if you own this thing, why don’t you bring some law and order to it?

That, of course, is a dangerous thing to say. We realize that eventually when we imagine God saying, “Oh, rebel? You want me to bring some ‘law and order’ to your sins?” And yet, perhaps on our most noble days, there is a part of us that says “yes, Lord, I do.” On those noble days, we aren’t yearning for the punishment our sins deserve, but rather, we are yearning for our sins to be removed from us. In those moments, we see ourselves as the victims and hostages to sin that we are – victims and hostages that have developed Stockholm syndrome for our captors of sin, death, and the devil – but victims and hostages nonetheless.

It is in that moment that we want Jesus to be King. We do not only want Him to pardon us, which we know that we need, but we also want Him (perhaps secretly, perhaps subconsciously) to extract from us an oath of loyalty to Him. We want to say, “Lord, make me say that You are my King and that I….am your subject.” It seems traitorous to say those words, maybe because we’re Americans, but probably more so because we are sinners. 

You see, the place where Jesus is King, the place where His Kingdom dwells, is in our hearts and minds and bodies and souls. His Kingdom comes in us as He forgives our sins and sends us on HIs missions, where He is Lord and we have submitted oaths of fealty. And yes, we know that He is King over all, and we look forward to the day when that Kingship is realized over all the world in the Resurrection.

This weekend we begin five weeks of exploring this reality with a new sermon series, “King and Kingdom,” where we talk about our King and the Kingdom that He is setting up in our hearts and minds, our bodies and souls. See you this Sunday!