This app is not the nickel-and-dime game people used to play in the bleachers at Wrigley where guys {and it was almost always guys} would bet usually a dime and as much as a quarter on any given pitch. “Bet you a nickel that the next pitch will be a fastball outside.” “Bet you a quarter that the batter gets a hit.” “Bet you a dime that the runner will try to steal second.”
“Online Prediction Markets” will allow you to not only bet on the outcomes of sporting events but everything from whether egg prices will go up or down next month, to the number of hurricanes that will strike the United States, to how many times a politician will use a certain word in a speech, and even to who Taylor Swift will chose to be her maid of honor. Only the stakes are much higher then they were in the bleachers or even at Arlington Park.
One guy reported that he had lost $6,000 on a trade but he smilingly reported that another day he made $11,000. When pressed he said that, on average he makes about $3,000 a week. Enough to allow him to stay at home and quit his day job.
Some might say that any of us who has ever bought a stock, invested in a 401k or even purchased green bananas are in “Prediction Markets.” We buy in the hopes that our stocks will go up, our 401k will increase, and that our bananas will ripen just in time for us to eat them. Looking at the sky and deciding to bring an umbrella is playing the prediction game.
But I am willing to bet, yes bet, that nobody, absolutely nobody on that grey day at Calvary would have, could have, predicted that one of the guys hanging on the cross would have had a day named after him called Christ the King or that his reign would last through the centuries.
Jesus is not the kind of king they, nor anybody else, then or now, would be looking for.
While we would like our leaders to be strong, we also hope that our rulers would be compassionate, reasonable, well- mannered, and well behaved. We don’t want our kings to be like the imperious monarch in Rogers and Hammerstein’s The King and I who at one point tells Anna, “When I ‘sit’ you shall sit and when I ‘kneel’ you shall kneel.”
If you have spent the better part of your evenings this week watching Ken Burns’ The American Revolution on PBS you know that what began as just a cause for equal and just treatment from the crown became one giant No Kings Rally. Kings rule by force, by power, by might, by an iron fist, and eventually “in the course of human events” they face rebellions.
Jesus was a different kind of king who faced a different kind of rebellion. The people who rebelled against Jesus wanted a different kind of king. They wanted someone who would overthrow the yoke of Roman Rule. They wanted someone who would throw off the occupiers and restore their old way of life.
In some ways our music today is at odds with the message. All our hymns are grand, triumphant, but our gospel finds the one of whom we sing helpless and hanging on a cross.
Saint Luke makes certain that we don’t miss what happens when human power shows its darker side. Jesus was killed by people who knew exactly what they wanted, knew exactly what Jesus should do and, when he didn’t do it, a whole host of people, powerful people, and what we would call the rank-and-file conspired to do away with him.
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”1 he said from the cross. But, if you would have asked them, they would have told you that they knew exactly what they were doing.
The political leaders killed him because he was a threat to their reign and rule. The people killed him because he wasn’t what they wanted him to be – a leader who rode into town on a white horse and overthrew the powers of oppression.
On Palm Sunday the multitudes shouted “Hosanna!” “Save Us Now!” but it turns out that while they may have wanted to be saved, they didn’t want to be saved the way Jesus was saving them. They knew what they wanted and, in the end, they determined that Jesus just wasn’t it.
As Father Robert Farar Capon once wrote:
We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: He claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It's not that we weren't looking for the Messiah; it's just that he wasn't what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He wouldn't do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.2
So, this king on a cross business comes as a complete surprise to them and to us. We know what we know and we know what we want.
The problem can be summed up in one of my personal life commandments. It’s a little long to be embroider on a throw pillow or to be framed in needlepoint above the couch but it is good thing to remember. “The height of hubris is not knowing that we do not know.”
So it is that the people in their know-it-all hubris bet against Jesus. If they had an “on-line prediction market,” in their know-it-all hubris, they sure wouldn’t have bet that the carpenter turned rabbi who was hanging before them on a cross would change anything let alone the world.
But there is a Christ the King Sunday because of him. As Reza Aslan, an Iranian American scholar points out in his book about Jesus called Zealot, “among all the other failed messiahs who came before and after him, Jesus alone is still called messiah.”3
He gained that title by not doing what others were expecting him to do. While crowd stood by watching “the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.’”4
As one scholar, Patrick Oden, of Fuller Theological Seminary wrote:
He may be a loser in the game, but he does not dispute the rules or structures. The only way for Jesus to prove himself in light of the established systems, the only way, is to save himself from the crucifixion. Everyone seems to agree – except Jesus and, we find out, the other criminal dying beside him.5
One of the criminals joins with the crowd in mocking and disgust:
“Some Messiah you are! Save yourself! Save us!” But the other one made him shut up: “Have you no fear of God? You’re getting the same as him. We deserve this, but not him—he did nothing to deserve this.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom.” {And Jesus} He said, “Don’t worry, I will.”6
That promise is given to us and to all. “If we live with the true knowledge of the kind of King Jesus Christ is, then perhaps we will know what salvation is and is not.”7
Following Jesus we realize that our best bet is to steward our lives as faithfully as we can aligning everything we do with what we believe about Jesus.
This is easier said than done, but we make great strides in our faith if we can, together and individually, grow in our awareness of to what and to whom we give our power. To whom do we give the power to tell us who we are? Who has the power to tell us whether or not we are valuable or successful? Who or what has the power to shape our moods and our minds, influence our decisions, tell us whether we are safe or unsafe, and help us discern what is important and what is not?8
The not-so-well-hidden secret is that ever and always Jesus is with us, accompanying us, offering forgiveness on our behalf even when we are broken and bruised or have broken and bruised others.
The not so-well-hidden secret is that in his final moments, with arms outstretched on the cross, Jesus exhibits capacities fit only for the King of Kings whose reign and rule extends for all times.
That is something we can predict with certainty. That is something we can bet our lives on.
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1. St. Luke 23:34. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]
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