November 26th, 2006
This Sunday is one of those markers that we have in the church calendar. It’s essentially the New Year’s Eve of the liturgical year. Our new church year starts on the first Sunday of Advent – next week – and that makes today the final Sunday of the church year. A marker, the period at the end of the sentence. Maybe next year we’ll get those silly hats and noisemakers and have a big celebration to mark the end of the liturgical year; don’t you think that would be kind of fun? But this year, today, I think this final Sunday of the church calendar offers us an opportunity for some reflection. As I’ve thought about this day and its place in our calendar, I started with the lectionary-given theme we have to work with: this Sunday is called Christ the King. That should come as no surprise to us; it’s easy enough to pick up this theme if you listen to the readings (or sing the hymns). This is a day pointing to the kingship of Christ. The metaphor, obviously, is Christ as king, as our king.
Now this metaphor is not without its difficulties. I find this to be a problematic metaphor on several levels, but the one I want to talk about has to do with the viability of this metaphor of king. Christ is to be our model, whose life and teachings we are to follow was best we can. That works – but does it work as well to think about him as king and us as subjects? Are kings what we want to emulate, as a category? I know this image is biblical, but does it work? Does it make sense for us today, in our context? Does it have the meaning it was originally meant to? I’m not so sure it does. I’ve been thinking about two kings who have had significant influence on us, as Anglican Christians and as Americans. One is King Henry VIII. You may remember from either history or religion class that King Henry had a complicated personal life, and a complicated political life. The bottom line is that, despite being a devout and practicing Roman Catholic, and because he was an enormously political creature, Henry made himself the head of the Church of England and launched our Anglican tradition. For which we can be grateful, it’s true. But it’s equally true that nobody would suggest that Henry as King was especially influenced by the model of kingship that Christ represented.
Neither did the other king I was thinking about for that matter, King George III. You may remember from history class that George was King of England during the Revolutionary War – the one who imposed the hated tax on tea, the one who sent occupying British troops, and the one who ultimately decided that those pesky colonists-turned-revolutionaries weren’t worth the military hassle that it had all turned into. In some sense it was thanks to George III that our country was born. And it was our country’s birth which led to the birth of the Episcopal Church, indebted to yet separate from the Church of England. After the revolutionary war they wanted to make George Washington a king, but he refused – wisely, we’re taught, as our country’s form of democracy was the result.
And George Washington wasn’t the only one who saw the dangers of the system of kings. The people of Israel ask and ask and ask for a king, once they have made it to the promised land and after a series of judges play a similar role. God never thinks this is a good idea – but since the people keep asking, they get their king. To very mixed results, though there are a couple who stand out. David, for one – though he has his problems and gets into quite a bit of trouble in his personal life. Yet historically speaking, it seemed a natural progression to talk about Christ as a king. And the tension of this metaphor is supposed to be that Christ is not a king as much as he is one. Or is that if he is a king, it was in a radically different way than human kings. The idea is that Christ is to rule in our hearts; that rulers as well as those ruled take Jesus as the model for how to live, how to treat one another, and how to rule over – not to be served but to serve.
But I’m not sure calling Christ king is the best way to impress upon us the role he is to play in our lives. I think something is missing with this language. But one can’t deny that it is language that made more sense in the time and place that Jesus uses it. He speaks often of the kingdom of God, one of the key concepts of his life and teaching. The kingdom of God has come near, Jesus says regularly to those around him. So what does this mean? Jesus scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan have pointed out, In its simplest terms, the kingdom of God that Jesus announced and embodied is what life would be like on earth, here and now, if God were king and the rulers of this world were not. Which means, if we follow that line of reasoning, that things would look very different than they do now. As one commentator puts it, “the political, economic, and social subversions would be almost endless—peace-making instead of war mongering, liberation not exploitation, sacrifice rather than subjugation, mercy not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed, humility rather than hubris, embrace rather than exclusion, etc. The ancient Hebrews had a marvelous word for this, shalom, or human well-being.”
But it’s clear that this vision of the kingdom of God has not yet fully come to be. And it’s also worth pointing out that Jesus himself never claimed to be a king of anything. It’s telling that the gospel we hear this morning has to do with the events of Jesus’ last day, the hours just before his crucifixion – his death at the hands of the Roman empire. Jesus is clear that his kingdom is not from this world – that is, it’s not a physical place and it’s not a traditional or political ‘kingdom.’ The kingdom of God is different, and Jesus tells us often in the gospels that it’s something everyone has access to. I think we tend to think of the kingdom of God as a physical, literal place – Disney’s magic kingdom comes to mind. But that’s not what Jesus meant. He didn’t mean heaven, an afterlife, the magic kingdom. He meant something that had meaning to our lives here and now. Maybe thinking of this as the Reign of God works better. When God reigns, when Jesus’ vision comes fully to be, it will be characterized by God’s love, God’s grace, and all people having access to those things. Jesus talks about a way of life which leads us into closer relationship with God – and as we live this way, he promises, we can participate in the reign of God. Now this makes sense. Because if it’s not a physical place we are trying to get to later, but a way of life we can participate in now, that means that the reign of God, the reign of Christ is not an ‘out there’ thing. It’s not a ‘later on’ thing. It means that we have the opportunity to be part of the reign of God right here and right now. And it also means that we have a role in helping bring that reign. Jesus the Christ did his part; there is also a part that is up to us. We can live that shalom that Jesus spoke of, the one that he lived. That seems to me the much more meaningful part of this metaphor, and the part that most needs and deserves our time and reflection.
So the question for each one of us to think about might be, What would the reign of Christ look like, for real? If the reign of Christ had truly come, what would we see in the world around us? If God were king and the rulers of this world were not – if there were shalom, well-being for all people, what would this look like? I think of St. George’s motto: a circle ever-wider and a people ever free. Does your vision of the reign of God include an ever-widening circle? Do we ever think to look at who is in our circle now and from there ask who might be missing, that we need to be inviting into the circle? Because the circle won’t just become wider; we are the ones who have to widen it. Writer and mystic Teresa of Avila, writing in the sixteenth century, said this: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world. Yours are the feet with which Christ is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which Christ is to bless all people now.” That is, if the reign of Christ is to come, we have a part to play in that. It won’t just happen; we have to put hands and feet on the vision that Christ had.
Does your vision include . . . less poverty? Fewer people hungry? An end to the genocide in the Darfur region of the Sudan? An end to the AIDS pandemic? Fill in the blank with your own vision. And then we have to ask ourselves, what am I doing to help bring that change, to help make the reign of Christ come? Because vision may be great, but it’s making that vision reality which is the hard part. That takes the work. But it may just be the most important work that we ever undertake. And as we come to the end of this church year and get ready to begin another one next week with the first Sunday of Advent, maybe our resolution – our promise – should be to think of one thing, one practical thing, that each one of us can do here and now to help make the reign of Christ a reality.
In closing, there’s a poem I found that I want to share with you. You have a copy, and you’re welcome to follow along, or just listen:
KING?
King is your word not mine;
Friend I am, and not very choosey,
pagans and prostitutes,
publicans and sinners,
grace is my kingdom.
King is your word, not mine;
Servant I am, no one beneath me,
feet washer and waiter,
serving the least,
love is my kingdom
King is your word, not mine;
Physician I am, all free of charge,
touching the leper,
expelling the demons,
health is my kingdom.
King is your word, not mine;
A seer I am, seeing God’s word
in mustard seed and yeast,
wildflower and ravens,
truth is my kingdom.
King is your word, not mine;
Tradesman I am, honing my craft,
familiar with wood,
hammer and nails,
grace is my kingdom.
B.D. Prewer