So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He will take your sons to war, some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.  He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. 15 He will tax you etc.   and still Israel insists.  Most nations today do not have kings.  When Jesus said to Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world He warned us the kingdom of this world will do violence the the kingdom of God and its followers.  It’s about power and who holds it.  We love power.  We act vicariously whenever we can.  We become little presidents, little abbots, little judges of the court anywhere to exercise power over others because the truth is we are weak inside and have no self esteem.  Jesus said to his disciples that it will not be so with them.  The one who has power serves the needy and the weak.          The earliest kerygma or message of christianity to the outside world was that Jesus is Lord.  He was the Kyrios.  But for the relgious leaders of Jesus’ time, the scribes, pharisees, scripture scholars… the definitive proof that Jesus was not the Messiah was his crucifixion and death by the hands of Jewish authorities in collaboration with foreign power.  How could people have possbily begun to declare a crucified man Messiah and Lord.  He has no power at all.   The only finally satisfactory answer is the one provided by the New Testament:  Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead.  The christian community could have borrowed images from the Old Testament like Jesus taken up to heaven like Elijah or Enoch, or that he was fondly remembered by his followers as were the Maccabean martyrs or his soul left the body to heaven as Plato would say.  Scholars say that a non-bodily resurrection was never used by a Jew.  For the jews it meant a new vibrant bodily existence that will happen at the end of time.  But the uniqueness of Jesus’s resurrection is that this event happened to a single person or body if you wish, before the end time, in their own time.   It was an anticipation of victory over death, of a future beyond the present and future of worldly time.   Jesus appearances to his disciples confirmed the belief of Jews on the resurrection at the end time, but among the christians the resurrection was a present reality, the future came to them.   He had become the Lord of Time.  Wherein does the power of the resurrection lie in the lives of Jesus’ follower, who is Jesus the Lord.  It is found in the interim time between now and the end.  Christians knew that they cannot go on believing only when Jesus appears in bodily form, albeit glorified.  They have lives to live.  Besides if it would be the case it would be a watered down Resurrection.   The Spirit is Lord; and it is in the spirit that Jesus as Lord dwells in the hearts of all.   There is a human vocation to live in this world.  To witness to the power of the resurrection.  There is something all the kings of the world fear  – death;  they themselves will end.  How enraged they were when Christians would persevere in their belief that the crucified Christ was their Lord.   They were insulted that they did not fear death.  The tyrants and persecutors where in the presence of this power and they tried to overcome this power by cajoling, by ruse, by threats, torture and finally death.  For us christians of today, the power of the resurrection lies in our courage to face and take up our crosses in life.  Life is never without a cross and that is why Jesus himself mounted the cross to encourage us not be afraid of the cross.  If you want to see the resurrection you must climb to and stay at your cross.   Let the power of God reach out to you as sons and daughters of God, who when seeing Jesus His Son  suffer and die,  poured out his love on Him and sat him on his right hand.  You and I have become sons and daughters in Him and when the Father sees us in our own cross, lovingly trusting like his son, we too will He sit on His right and left.  Jesus is King, the crucified King who conquered suffering and death which no power on earth could overcome.   This is the enemy that no king, emperor, tyrant, potentate, dictators ever conquered.  And this is why Jesus is King.  He overcame the only true enemy of human beings.  Death.  And made death the door to his eternal kingdom.