A Gravity-Defying Love
The Third Sunday of Advent: Christ the King
November 23, 2025
The Rev. Josh Evans
St. John’s Lutheran Church
Albany, NY
“Something has changed within me.
Something is not the same.
I’m through with playing by the rules
of someone else’s game.”
Happy Wicked weekend
to all who celebrate.
Did I see it immediately on opening day?
Of course.
Am I going back to see it again?
Probably more than once.
I am, to borrow a word from the film itself,
obsessulated.
As soon as the last notes of “Defying Gravity” sound
in Wicked: Part I,
Elphaba – now dubbed the “Wicked Witch of the West” –
takes flight for the next chapter of her journey
in part two, Wicked: For Good, released in theatres just this past Friday –
as the now essentially exiled Elphaba sets out
to confront and expose the Wizard
for the lying, insecure fraud that he is,
having witnessed for herself, first-hand,
the horrors perpetuated by his dangerous regime –
the literal silencing and disappearing of the animals of Oz
and anyone that dares to get in the way –
all in the name of building a newer, greater Oz.
“Too late for second-guessing,
too late to go back to sleep,”
Elphaba sings,
refusing to turn a blind eye
to what she has seen
and cannot unsee.
“I think I’ll try defying gravity” –
upsetting the status quo,
flipping harmful norms upside-down,
transforming the world-as-she-knows-it
into the world-as-it-can-be.
***
It’s no secret that the world-as-we-know-it
is becoming an increasingly scary, hostile place.
On this the 100th anniversary of Christ the King Sunday,
a day set aside by Pope Pius XI in his 1925 encyclical Quas primas
seeking to counter the rise of secularism and nationalism
in the aftermath of World War I
and the growing threats of fascism in Italy and Germany,
we would do well to be reminded
of the historical context and theological significance of this day:
asserting the ultimate authority of Christ above any earthly ruler –
king, president, wizard, or otherwise –
a point underscored by the official Roman Catholic name for this day,
“The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.”
In a new hymn commemorating the centennial
of this comparatively modern feast day,
the Rev. Carolyn Winfrey Gillette offers these words,
connecting Pius’ times to our own,
vividly illuminating the relevance this day still holds:
In nineteen hundred twenty-five,
as hate and violence grew,
O Christ, your churches emphasized:
we follow only you!
As one who gave himself in love,
you showed us all God’s Way:
As one who reigns in heaven above,
you call us to obey.
No earthly king, no race or land,
should think that it is best.
We see your reign and understand
that all, in you, are blest.
Lord, may we welcome strangers here
and humbly help the poor.
The world calls us to pride and fear —
but your love calls us more.
As hate and violence surge again,
remind your church anew
that we’re committed to your reign.
Lord, may we follow you!
***
Follow where?
To a gilded, glorious throne room?
No.
Follow
to the cross –
which is exactly where we find Jesus
in this gospel text for Christ the King this year –
crucified alongside criminals,
one on his right and one on his left,
scoffed by the leaders of the people,
mocked by the soldiers of the empire,
derided even by one of the criminals hanging next to him.
Upending our expectations,
Christ is a king who reigns not from a throne,
but from the cross.
Christ’s kingship is nothing like what we’d expect from a king.
It is not regal or majestic or conquering.
It does not reside in gilded palaces or build grand ballrooms for itself.
It is bloodied and mocked and, by all appearances, defeated –
though, of course, we know the ending,
which only makes the present circumstances
all the more remarkable by contrast.
Christ’s kingship is
a kingship steeped in paradox
and brimming with subversions,
as Susan Briehl’s hymn text,
which we just sang moments ago,
reminds us:
God’s eternal glory becomes frail human flesh
in the person of Jesus.
Power is revealed in weakness,
beauty is revealed in that which is despised,
wisdom is revealed in foolishness,
and life and love are ultimately revealed in dying.
The reign of Christ,
which is full of out of the blue surprises,
offers even more,
spoken in Jesus’ literal dying words –
not words of anger or bitter vengeance
but words of love and tender forgiveness.
This gospel reading,
one commentary asserts,
“focuses on the dying ones and on Jesus, the Dying One,
and it’s not what we expected.
God’s surprise is that Jesus,
with his last bit of effort before death,
focuses on others—sinners!
Bleeding on the cross,
Jesus nonetheless sweeps us into an eternal movement
of forgiveness, gratitude, and love.
This forgiveness is entirely free.
This gratitude accepts all our meager failed attempts.
This love is at once finalized here and carried on forever.” [1]
It really shouldn’t be all that surprising,
for a man who spent his life
reaching to the margins,
mingling with tax collectors and sinners,
extending God’s extravagant love to the lost and the least –
and yet, in the midst of a self-serving empire,
as much then as now,
as much in 1925 as in 2025,
such love is radical.
The love with which Christ loves,
even in the throes of death on the cross,
is surprising.
It upsets the status quo;
it flips harmful norms upside-down;
it transforms the world-as-we-know-it
into the world-as-it-can-be;
it defies gravity itself.
***
Scoffed and mocked her entire life
for being different,
even by her own family,
Elphaba had every right to harbor anger and bitter resentment,
every reason to leave it all behind
when given the chance.
“Why do I love this place
that’s never loved me?
A place that seems to be devolving
and even wanting to?”
Elphaba sings,
in one of two new songs
not in the original stage production
but written especially for Wicked: For Good.
And yet,
with the same resolve that compels her to defy gravity –
and a nod to Dorothy Gale’s famous, heal-tapping words –
Elphaba professes her commitment to resist
and vows to fight to save the place she loves:
“When you feel you can’t fight anymore,
just tell yoursеlf:
There’s no place likе home.
When you feel it’s not worth fighting for,
compel yourself
because there’s no place like home.”
***
There’s something to this love thing.
A kind of out of the blue, surprising love.
A kind of love that plays by its own rules,
taking its example from a first-century itinerant preacher
who himself refused to play by the rules of the empire’s game.
A kind of love that resists
and insists that no empire that there is or was
will get the final word.
A kind of gravity-defying love
that transforms the world-as-we-know-it
into the world-as-it-can-be.
It’s time to try defying gravity –
to love extravagantly,
to proclaim boldly
that the world is about to turn
in the reign of the one
who has come
and is coming
to make all things new.
[1] Kathryn Pocalyko and Linnéa Clark, Out of the Blue: The Basics (Barn Geese Worship, 2025), 27.
