Christ the King
Christ the King
Last Sunday before Advent
24th November 2024
“The Jews said to Pilate, do not write, ‘the King of the Jews, but this man said I am king of the Jews” Pilate said “What I have written, I have written”. What a supreme and Divine irony, that Pilate, has just washed his hands of the matter, stubbornly refusing responsibility for convicting Jesus for the Jews, because its beyond his remit as a mere provincial Governor for the Romans. Yet we see his secret curiosity in questioning Jesus about His Kingdom; he is aware that, according to Josephus the Roman historian, the rumours of Jesus’ being ‘the son of God’ is behind his collusion with his wife in wanting ‘nothing to do with this man’; eagerly leaning towards having him released just in case it should happen to be true and affect his chance of eternity! So it is selfishness which speaks the Truth behind the inscription he has ordered above the cross … In John’s narrative, he is permitted in the purpose of God to speak with human authority, in an integrity actually unknown to him, three times; ‘behold the man’ (in Greek meaning, see the complete human being), I find no fault in this man ….. and what I have written, I have written. I am reminded by Pilate, of the history of God ‘using’ very different people, with no loyalty to Him to be part of his purposes… in these momentous times ‘across the pond’, let us all pray that the same is true in our own time ….
A characteristic of Jewish dialogue, is to make a sharp point as when Jesus says to Pilate, ‘You are not a Jew are you?’ (the most insulting thing he could have said to a Roman occupier) and when Pilate asks him the question ‘Are you a King? replies, ‘You say that I am a king, for this I was born into the world’ …..somehow keeping Pilate within the conversation, while keeping his own enigmatic style, revealing Pilate’s own responsibility for the statement.
From one perspective, it’s no wonder that Kingship is one of Jesus’ titles, with his familiar teaching of the Kingdom of God, and we could refresh our memories of what ideas gather round this title for us as ordinary, (believing) human beings; there are two sides to kingship; how the monarch comes by his or her reign, and what people’s response is to it ….. whether you are a Henry V inheriting the throne, but earning in life the love and loyalty and support of his subjects by going to war for England; it can be like Queen Elizabeth who, from her 20’s, grew into majesty by her integrity, complete sense of duty, faith and staying power …. who will forget the image of her receiving Liz Truss two days before her death; she was a Servant Queen, and we can see similarly, in the manner and perspective the King has on his own reign -with its challenges of faith and illness.
Thinking back to the anointing of OT kings, there was that secret and sacred moment of Charles’ anointing with oil, divested of grand robes in a simple cotton shirt, signifying his reflection of the divine King he serves; not forgetting the beheading of the first King Charles, precisely because the Divine Right was being rejected for good. Both in Russia, so long used to (almost) divine rulers in the Tsars, one of the reasons for Putin’s long ‘reign’ and dare I say it, in the pomp and circumstance across the pond, we see the human desire to have someone in whom they put their hopes and trust at the helm. A deeply human longing which somehow the British have held onto, despite our secular age …Does this tendency unwittingly reveal the deepest human longing for the Divine rule?
So what of our readings this morning for this Feast of the Kingship of Jesus, now the Christ? The evocative apocalyptic of Daniel has the image of ‘one like a Son of Man’ who would rescue them from this world; (a familiar title used by Jesus of himself); OT apocalyptic writing sprang from a vision of another, better life, in the belief that this world was irredeemable and so needed a God-like figure to rescue it; these words are in the context of the Exile to Babylon, the ‘end of their world’ as the Exiles saw it, within tolerable human suffering after the life they had believed given by God in coming to the Promised Land.
OT prophecy on the other hand, was the word of God through the prophet, to bring hope of something better ‘in this world’, hence the specific visions particularly of Isaiah, of a radically different Messiah, in the Suffering Servant. This prophecy later lost in the Israelites desire for a warring leader in the human pattern which characterised their previous wars between Israel and Judah ….
In John’s Apocalypse, however, John is obeying the Lord’s commission to show what is going to happen in the New World, the New Creation, not a different one, but the trans-formation of all that we know. Jesus’ death in pain and rejection (remember Isaiah) had made this possible; hence the Jews rejection of Jesus claim to Kingship, because they understood it as a complete failure of their Messianic hopes; and Jesus proving this in God’s ‘revealing the Resurrection by rising to New Life’ , as we hear in the Eucharistic prayer.
So we see the developing tradition in writers like Daniel, during exile, which included pictures of ultimate majesty and reign, borne out of human desire for a king; which culminated after the resurrection of Jesus in similar language in Revelation, but now in the ‘voice of victory, to the one and only Sovereign, the Lamb who was slain, to whom be all honour and glory, majesty and dominion, for ever and ever, Amen.’ I was very tempted to play the unforgettable Handel chorus before the Amen in The Messiah, ‘and He shall reign for ever and ever’ repeated and repeated before the drawn out Amen, in its true meaning of “So Be It”.
And in the Gospel, we see ‘the Man’ (this complete human being) who defies both the apocalyptic vengeful vision (because the world is held to be irredeemable and must be replaced) and the prophesied Messiah whose people can only imagine in the context of war and violence; both contradicted by Jesus from the moment he comes into Jerusalem on a donkey! I was ordained 30 years ago, in view of a medieval fresco portraying Jesus on the Cross with an asses head; from the world’s-eye view, what a Fool he was! The supreme antithesis of the world’s perspective. In the words of Karl Rahner, the Jesuit theologian, for John the ‘world’ is what is ultimately dying, it is all sin, anguish and judgment, which we see so poignantly in the Land of the Holy One. The Truth of Jesus however, as the writer John understood and envisioned it, is in the ‘God so loved the world’; ‘in this particular way, God loved the world’ as David Ford once preached here. This is what makes Jesus King of the world, and making Hope still possible for us all.
Through John, the Spirit reveals that Jesus’ willingness to bear what reverses the worldly vision, by dying the death that He does, ex-presses and defines for us, his Kingship; the Absolute Truth of His way of living, which when we follow in whatever way, makes us his loved and loving subjects ….. which, in this topsy-turvy secular and isolationist world, we are only able to follow, recollecting in prayer, his ever-present Spirit and the continuing gift of the Eucharist so that we can, despite all the appearances to the contrary, not least in the oh so fallible Church, witness to His inherently eternal life while we are here.
A short prayer of Karl Rahner as part of his sermon on Christ the King for us all:
High King of Heaven, disperse the darkness of our hearts and allow your Truth, which is humility, faithfulness, hoping against hope, blessed Truth, to be in us, so that, crowned and lifted up on the cross, your power may triumph by drawing everything to You, - even our poor hearts.
“ What I have written, I have written”. Amen
