Feast of Christ the King

Sermon preached by the Revd Canon Richard Ames-Lewis

I am of the generation of Church of England people for whom the Feast of Christ the King still comes as bit of a surprise. For two thirds of my life, it didn’t exist in the church calendar. The Book of Common Prayer has no mention of it. Instead, there this Sunday is soberly described as the Sunday next before Advent. In our household when I was growing up it was commonly known as Stir-up Sunday from the exhortative words of the collect, “Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruits of good works, may by you be plenteously rewarded.” It was the cue for stirring up the Christmas pudding. I’m pleased to say in our modern liturgy the Stir-up collect has not been lost. We shall hear it later on as our post-communion prayer, so Christmas pudding stirrers have not been let off the hook. 

Back in those days, if we had heard of the Feast of Christ the King at all, it was rumoured to be a Roman Catholic practice, and therefore to be regarded with the greatest suspicion. Fortunately the Church of England’s modern liturgical developments, which culminated 20 years ago in the publication of Common Worship, drew much on the best things about Roman Catholic liturgy. The calendar was reshaped to incorporate the Kingdom season, and the feast of Christ the King placed as the climax of the season and of the whole liturgical year.

But where did it come from? This is not a feast like Christmas or Easter, Ascension or Pentecost, commemorating events in the life of Christ or the birth of the Church.

There is no King-making event which we can celebrate. Thinking of Christ as our King is also quite problematic. Jesus always resisted being given the title. After he had fed the 5000 in the wilderness, the people came to take hold of him to make him king, and we read that he withdrew and went up the mountain by himself. At the end, the trappings of kingship were made to look ridiculous both as he entered Jerusalem on a donkey and at his Passion as the soldiers mocked him with a purple robe and a crown of thorns. So dressing Jesus Christ in the robes of royalty seems a bit out of place.

Nor does this feast have a very long tradition. It was actually instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius X1, and the purpose of doing so was political. Pius X1 and his advisors were aware that one after-effect of the First World War was the increase in secularism and the decline of faith. In that period it was not just secularism but the worship of the false gods of fascism through all the misery of poverty, unemployment and hyper-inflation. 

So instituting this feast aimed to raise the profile of Christ and, as it were, to endow him with kingly title and surround him with royal triumph suitable to attract the faithful back to the church. Whether it has been successful in this must be for others to judge. At any rate, Pius XI’s idea that it should be celebrated on the last Sunday of October was never popular. As recently as 1969 another pope, Paul VI, moved it permanently to the final Sunday of the Church’s Year to give it added emphasis. And there it remains, now for a wider Christian community to celebrate.

I suppose we might wonder, in this present time of crisis, what kind of Christian festival we might create today to raise our confidence and our hope in God. Christ the Healer perhaps. Christ the Reconciler, certainly. What about Christ the Scientist?

So much for the somewhat dubious history of this feast. What about its theological meaning?  

Well, placing Christ our King at the culmination and completion of the Church’s year has a double meaning. At one level it suggests that the Kingship of Christ holds sway over the whole year. There is no time or place where his kingdom is absent or his authority over our lives lacking. At another level it suggests that the crowning of Christ as King is itself a culmination and a completion, and even a triumph. 

But further than this, what might his kingship mean? To try to answer this, I would like to look at the description of two kings in two separate gospels.

The first king is found in St Matthew’s gospel chapter 25. We heard it today’s gospel reading. Here the Son of Man is king. On the Day of Judgement he sits on his throne of glory and judges people by separating them as a shepherd separates sheep from goats, righteous on one side and damned on the other. Your place among the righteous is assured if you have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, if you have welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick and visited the prisoner.

By the way, two of these righteous virtues, “welcoming the stranger” and “clothing the naked”, have particular meaning to St Bene’t’s people since they are depicted in the glass of our East window.

By contrast, you are among the damned if you fail to do any of these things. The king in this description is a king of absolute judgement, a frightening king, a king of division, from whom there is neither mercy nor forgiveness.

This description of Christ the King on the Day of Judgement, as given us by St Matthew, became a popular theme of church wall paintings in the late mediaeval period, partly in consequence of the Black Death. Doom paintings, as they became known, faced west above the chancel arch, dominating the congregation. They provided ample opportunity for teaching about the heavenly prospect of the righteous and the hellish fate of the damned. Over the arch, the king sits on his throne passing judgement. At his right hand, angels lead the righteous down to the elysian fields of paradise; at his left, devils lead the damned down to the fires of hell. These were whitewashed over in the 16th century, largely forgotten, and have only been recovered in recent times. In one church, the recent restoration of the Doom painting has been so spectacular that the congregation now find it uncomfortable to sit on the right side of the church, facing hell, and greatly prefer to sit on the left side of the church, facing paradise. Wouldn’t you?

The other king I would like to look at is different. We find him described in St John’s gospel, and this is St John’s description of Jesus himself as he goes to the cross. St John’s understanding of Jesus, the Word made flesh, is that he is God of glory from the beginning of time, and goes to the cross in fulfillment of his calling and destiny. So in John’s description of the passion, there is a pervading calm, no taunts of bystanders, no darkness at noon, no cry of dereliction. He carries his own cross, and at Golgotha he mounts it as though ascending his throne. Pilate places an inscription above his head “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”, and John even describes an argument about this between Pilate and the chief priests; “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews’, but ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate replies “What I have written I have written.” Then as Jesus dies, he cries out “It is accomplished”. At that moment of completion, Jesus the king is glorified.

This is no king of judgement. This is a king of love. This is a king who suffers and dies, carrying all our sins and all our sorrows with him, and in so doing brings glory into the world.

In the church of St Nicholas Dereham, Norfolk, where I once was rector, there is no Doom painting. But there is a screen separating the chancel from the rest of the church. It is not an ancient screen; in fact it was put up in the 1920s. It carries a crucifix, but not of the kind showing Jesus in agony. It is the style of crucifix known as Christus Rex, Christ the King, and is a rendering of St John’s meditation on the passion. Here on the cross the figure of Jesus Christ stands erect, his hands and his feet clearly showing the marks of the nails. His appearance is calm and his eyes look straight ahead with a gentle gaze. He is robed in Eucharistic vestments and wears a golden crown. He commands the nave with continuous reassurance of his loving and everlasting rule.

The kingliness of our Christ is founded not on judgement to be exercised on a single terrifying Day, but on love poured out continuously on a sorrowing world as we yearn for forgiveness, a new start and light at the end of the tunnel.