34CKing19.    2 Samuel 5:1-3.   Of David the Lord said, “You shall shepherd my people and shall be commander of Israel.”  Following God’s will the elders of Israel anointed David king of Israel.  In his Chosen People God establishes a precedent that God will name a King over his People.

Luke 23:35-43.   As a ridicule, Jesus’ enemies call him king and messiah who cannot save himself, much less others.  As a people who have cut themselves off from God’s salvific work in Jesus, Jesus’ enemies have no idea that, by the very act of offering himself up on the cross, that infinitely loving act redeems us from our sins. Those who revile Jesus are unable to understand that in the very act of Jesus’ suffering and death, he acts as the King who conquers sin and death.  By accepting his sacrificial pain and suffering and death for our redemption, Jesus saves us.  The criminal, hanging on the cross next to Jesus, does understand the sublimity of Jesus’ action, saying “remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  Given every reason not to believe in Jesus as king, yet he believes and accepts Jesus as king. He is the one we traditionally call the Good Thief, the only one in the Scriptures whom Jesus names a saint who will be with him in Paradise.

Colossians 1:12-20.  He is not an earthly king.   In what way then is he king?  As David was shepherd and king, Jesus shepherds us out of the power of darkness, leading us by the infinite power of his light to his kingdom of holiness.  In Jesus’ humanness he makes visible the holiness that is not of this world.  All things were created through him and for him and in him.  God the Father created all things but God the Son brought all things to share in the divine holiness by “making peace by the blood of the cross.  Through his resurrection from the dead he is preeminent in leading all to eternal life.  He holds all things together with him at the center like gravitational force drawing all to live and be by binding us to the divinity of God. He is the head with the church as his body with him having total authority over the church. “All the fullness was pleased to dwell in him,” since he himself shares in the fullness of the Godhead.