Jesus, King

As I look at you, Jesus, on the cross, with that red cloth as background and surrounded by three red candles, what comes to my mind is your royalty. Funny, but it's true. Before your disfigured body, I am reminded that you are king. Red is the color of royalty. You yourself confirmed to Pilate that You are a king, but your kingdom is not of this world.
At the last supper, after you have washed your disciples' feet, you reminded them that to lead is to serve. If you, the master, have washed their feet, they should wash each other's feet.
You said that your kingdom is not of this world. It really seems so. Perhaps that is why we still cannot grasp it. We easily repeat the expression "to lead is to serve". We can use it as a slogan. We can make a theological-psychological-sociological explanation of it. Yet, very few of us are willing to stake our lives for it.
It is easy to say "to lead is to serve" when it means doing "something" good to others or offering them something. In fact, acts like this give me a certain "high". But afterwards, I'll go back to my own world, with its comforts and securities. Maybe some time again I will go back to "serve" these less fortunate.
But is this really what you mean? That I live with a certain air of superiority? I might be physically close to my "neighbor", yet my heart may be totally distant! I - they, and the distance can never be crossed.
And what if these "less fortunate" refuse my help, misjudge my deeds or totally reject me? Do I still persist in doing good? Do I allow their reactions make me review my actions and admit that grain of self-interest that is present in them?
On the cross, Jesus, yours was a marred and disfigured body, with no outward look to attract people. Totally broken and spent, You must have been quite a sight! But it was precisely then that the centurion exclaimed, "Indeed, this is the son of God!".
It is not by a show of force and grandeur, as the spectators of the crucifixion urged you, that you showed your lordship. Nay, it is in the dignity with which you bore the most cruel treatment, up to the end, that you showed that you are a king.
Yes, it is indeed a kingship that is not of this world.