The Politics of Jesus as King

'Jesus is King' is a political statement of such social consequence that it costs us everything we have were we to believe it. Just as Martin Luther King triggered a political movement by initiating a political process built on the sermon on the mount (i.e. turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, avenging not, advocating for the least etc), so Jesus initiates in his kingdom a social ethic which changes our economics, our social order, so that those of us who are 'lords' in our society become 'slaves' in his.
As evangelicals, we feel uncomfortable with that and as a result resort to 'Jesus is Lord' to avoid the obvious political ramifications of Jesus as King.
'Jesus is King' is a threat to anyone in charge. Jesus is not merely a king we crown in our hearts, he is the king which in every age and by every politic is deemed a threat. His kingdom is threatening because it represents a new form of politics; the cross being the process (in him and in his followers) by which his kingdom comes.

The conspiring of both the priests and the politicians in Jesus' execution didn't happen because they disagreed with his theology. It didn't happen because they refused to believe in him 'in their hearts'.
It happened because riding on a donkey is no way for kings or high priests to behave. It happened because in God's kingdom, there was no special place for them, no privilege distinguishing them from the others, no authority by which they'd be heard or revered anymore than anyone else. In short, they crucified him because in the kingdom Jesus was advancing, they're no longer in charge. They're as poor as everyone else!
They killed Jesus to snuff out the possibility of his kingdom. They killed him to prevent the possibility of his being replicated in others. They killed him because in his world, they had everything to lose and nothing to gain other than in their minds, some nebulous form of 'common possession and brotherhood'.
It’s not just that Jesus is saying to us as individuals ‘crown me or kill me’, he’s saying to us as a community ‘accept God’s kingdom or reject it’.

I honestly think that were Jesus were to re-live his life story in our time, that we'd be among the first to reject him. Why? Because so little of what he'd be about are the things that we define as 'Christian'.
At one point you say: and yet we don't find him yelling, shaking his fist, threatening or shaming people. Really? How about that nasty episode where he turned the tables on the moneychangers? Or the time he called the religious 'children of the devil', or the time he said to the religious authorities that their converts were 2 times the children of hell they were? Or the time he cursed the fig tree, or the time he lamented over Jerusalem, or the time he looked on anger at the church leaders who took exception to his healing someone on the sabbath? Sometimes in our quest to make Jesus acceptable, we sterilize him. We can't. He offended his followers in his time and he would equally offend us.

The one thing I got about Jesus before I became a Christian is that he is different than anything I had ever heard in church. In church Jesus is a chaplain. In the world he's a revolutionary. In church he's pastoral, non-offensive. In the world he's a stand-alone, whose politics and economic policies are so radical, they rarely take shape in the world, least of all in the institution we call the church.

You make mention of Jesus claim to being 'I AM' as 'obnoxiously exclusivist' to the world. Frankly, I believe most of us Christians would say the same about 'Jesus is King'. We're okay with that as long as it's only a religious confession.
But we'd fight it as fiercely as would any Pharisee the moment we make a social, political or economic confession. Among the people we know, how many would be willing to put Jesus in charge of their chequebook? I am hard pressed to name 2 people and I'm not one of them!
Where you and I most differ is your statement: And now Jesus comes to our hearts. One at a time - because this isn't a gang decision. It is. Pentecost didn't happen to just one person. It happened to a gang of people who were committed 'to wait'. Martin Luther King didn't start a movement by waiting 'one by one' for people to change, but by convincing a 'gang' of people that to turn the other cheek when they were being fire-hosed and clubbed and imprisoned and falsely accused would only work 'if they were all committed to doing so.'
Jesus didn't preach the sermon on the mount one on one, nor did he do an altar call once he was done, he laid out God's politics and his economics and his social policy and his defense policy and said 'do this'. The expectation was communal because it can only be done communally. Jesus is King only means something if it involves a kingdom, which by definition means a 'gang', people committed to being 'the new creation', a new politic etc...
Sorry to rant on like this - but unless we understand and articulate the mission of God as political, fundamentally connected to how we 'behave as a gang', Jesus is no more to us than a personal Dr. Phil.