A sermon for Christ the King
The day I became administrator in charge of a Cathedral, I took a walk around its spacious interior, greeted the staff, and in the course of my perambulation asked one of the vergers to move a large bank of candles outside a chapel over to the left of the entrance. Half an hour later, I asked him to move it back to where it had originally stood. Well why did you make me move it in the first place? he asked. Because I can, was my reply.
Power, the saying goes, corrupts. And we keep a wary eye on those with power. The news channels and newspapers have been full of news about Prince Andrew, characterising him, not without more than a little schadenfreude, as someone of entitlement and privilege who has received his come-uppance. Prince Andrew, said a piece in the Times yesterday, has taught us not to be deferential any more.
On this feast of Christ the King, we are entitled to ask what it means for one person to rule over another. Despite all the tracts and books that continue to be written about this subject, for our democratic cast of mind the basic idea remains that the ruler does so by the consent of those he or she governs. The vast powers granted to a ruler are exercised as the result of a social contract with the people. The late politician Tony Benn posed as the last of his famous five questions to those in power: How can we get rid of you?
This makes the Feast of Christ the King a tricky one to think about. Kings, in our modern world, are complicated institutions. They are either like our own Royal Family – a celebrity figure-head, decorous but powerless – or else like the Kings from history, tyrannical Henry VIIIs or Neros forcing their will upon a cowed populace. In other words, they are either incidental to democracy or directly opposed to it. So when we call Christ a King, is it merely honorific, affirming that Christ has the biggest, most glittery crown? Or is it an endurance thing, whereby we say that, regardless of what we get up to, Christ will in the end overwhelm us?
Neither of these is quite wrong; yet they are not quite right, either. For sure, when we call Christ ‘a King’ it emphasises his glory, yes, but that is probably one aspect of Jesus we didn’t need emphasising. As we heard St Paul say in the second reading: whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. Whatever happens, he is in control, yes. But we would expect that; that’s one of the reasons we are at Mass today.
But St Paul also helps us think more deeply about what the Kingship of Jesus means. We have been transferred to his kingdom, (he says) in order that all things may be reconciled through him, making peace by the blood of his cross. Christ is king not, primarily, in terms of glory, but of transformation. He is King in order to be at the heart of our experience, to change us into members of his Father’s Kingdom. That thought is given dramatic resonance in the Gospel today when Jesus is recognised as King not in state and pomp, but hanging on the Cross, humiliated and naked, close to his death. Even here, at the lowest depth of human experience, Christ the King transforms the situation: it becomes a gateway, and coming into, his kingdom. We become subjects of this king not by falling flat on our faces before him, but rather walking with him, as him, holding his hand, into the extremes of the human situation. That’s why, in the first reading, the tribes of Israel recognise David as their king – David is one of them, he has walked with them, through their battles, their suffering. Recognising that, as we heard St Paul say, in Christ all things hold together in unity – we can say the same. There is no experience, no pain, no loss that is alien to him, where his presence, his transformative power, is not felt.
Here it is I think we can begin to grasp what it means to acclaim Jesus as King of Creation. In the normal course of events, a king or queen exercises authority in a way that comes from above, imposed upon the nation and its subjects. Jesus’ royal authority comes from within, comes from the potential of all creation to be transformed into his Kingdom. When we say, in the Lord’s prayer, Thy Kingdom Come, we are not saying May we hurry up and die so that we can go to heaven. The whole point is that God’s kingdom is not apart from or after this world, something that only begins when this one finished. God’s kingdom is surrounding – or better, under – this world, ready to break in, to transfigure the mundane in heavenly glory. To recognise Jesus as King of Creation is to see this glory welling up, breaking in; the great grace given the good thief on the cross was to see this even in his death agony.
Jesus’ reign, as St Paul reminds us, is in order that all things can be reconciled, everything in heaven and on earth. That, indeed, is the point of his death on the cross. Even death, annihilation, suffering, are transformed into the passage to a royal kingdom. The big think to grasp about Jesus’ reign, and his kingdom, is that it is not a replacement for this world, but a transformation of it. Not a denial, but a remodelling of it. When King William killed King Harald at the Battle of Hastings, he started everything anew, sought to erase all trace of what had gone before. But when Jesus becomes king, what is familiar is made glorious. It is a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem – heaven is not somewhere else, it is here, among us. After all, don’t we believe that we shall be in heaven, transformed? My body, slightly overweight, balding, with a bad cold. Yes, this body – not something else. This world, not somewhere else. Made glorious.
The kingdom is all around us. It breaks through and we experience it, we anticipate it, we start to make it happen here and now. Look with the eyes of faith in Jesus Christ, and you can see that transformation, that kingdom, bursting through everywhere. Most notably in the Holy Eucharist we are about to celebrate, but in a thousand other ways too – in the community gathered, in frost on leaves, in the smile of a weary labourer, in the satisfaction of a well-written essay, in the joy of a good evening in the College bar. All these draw down the kingdom, speak to us of the transformation of the world. Anticipate the glory of heaven today. You just need eyes to see it. The good thief had them.
To hail Christ as King is to believe in his power to unite all things in him, to transform our world, and our very lives, into a glory. As members of his kingdom, we are let into the secret – that this world can be transformed by his glory today. Just go out, use your imagination, and see if you can’t see it!
Fr Mark
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