Sunday before Advent “Christ the King”
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Readings: Daniel 7: 9-10 and 13-14; John 18: 33-37
Today the Church celebrates ‘Christ the King’. The Collect for today reminds us that Jesus ‘ascended to the throne of heaven that he might rule over all things as Lord and King.’ As so often in talking about our faith and religion, we have to employ symbolic language to describe that which is really indescribable. There are many references to thrones and crowns in today’s hymns. But this picture language isn’t restricted to the hymn book or the New Testament. We heard from the Book of Daniel earlier – full of symbolic language that is quite strange and perhaps unnerving to modern ears, such as the idea of a stream of fire issuing and flowing out from the presence of the Ancient One.
The first readers of Daniel were Jews living under the rule of the Greek Antiochus IV in the second century before Jesus. His rule was arbitrary and brutal. Life could be dangerous. But all was not lost: the Ancient One was still on his throne, and in his courtroom justice was still done. Before him stood one in human form who was to be given delegated authority over the world. Christian readers see here the figure of Christ – the one given glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him. So this text from Daniel was to encourage readers that the tyranny of evil would be overthrown. We still wait for that time today.
The dialogue between Jesus and Pilate reveals the very different origins of the kingdoms about which they each spoke. Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world.” This was something that Pilate couldn’t understand. His life was all about stamping Roman imperial rule on Palestine, and anyone who said they were a King, as Jesus did, could only be threatening the establishment.
In the Remembrance Sunday service two weeks ago, we sung that famous hymn by Sir Cecil Spring-Rice – ‘I vow to thee, my country.’ Some of its words seem appropriate indeed to today’s festival: “And there’s another country / I’ve heard of, long ago / Most dear to them that love her / Most great to them that know. We may not count her armies / we may not see her King. / Her fortress is a faithful heart / Her pride is suffering. And hour by hour and silently / her shining bounds increase / And all her ways are gentleness / and all her paths are peace.”
The point to remember about Christ the King is that if he is the King, then we are the subjects, if he truly reigns in our hearts. The Church has placed this feast of Christ the King as the culmination of the Christian Year, and just before Advent, and it comes at the end of what is sometimes known as the ‘Kingdom’ season, when we think of the saints, death, and the world that is to come. Tom Wright, prolific writer of bible commentaries, warns us not to think of Christ’s kingdom as something just to look forward to in the life after this. He says, “The idea that ‘the kingdom of God’ denotes either a purely future reality, or the reality which the saints presently enjoy in heaven is way off the mark, distorting the bible’s kingdom-language.”
And, he goes on, when Jesus says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world”, he isn’t talking about its location but about its character. Christ’s kingdom isn’t the sort that advances by violence. It will come on earth as in heaven, because it is about truth. Jesus says that he has come to testify to the truth, and if you remember Pilate responds with that famous question, ‘What is truth?’ People have often considered that a very cynical question, but many people would like to know the answer. What is the truth that keeps the world spinning? What is the truth that explains our existence?
It doesn’t seem as if there was much of a meeting of minds between Jesus and Pilate. Pilate, surrounded by pomp and the manifestations of power, yet insecure; and Jesus – calm, quiet, who really bore no resemblance to the dangerous terrorist some would claim him to be.
“So you are a king?” Pilate asks, really not sure how to handle this man who has just told him that his kingdom is not of this world, because if it was, then his followers would be fighting for him. What was it about Jesus as King that Pilate could or would not see? Judith Dimond sums it up well: “Contemplate what kind of king Jesus was: King of truth, not of land. King of community, not of troops. King with no parliament, but a people. King without a crown, but full of wisdom. King without a realm, but full of healing. A king whose only power was love.”
The writer John Pridmore relates that the Anglican Diocese of Christ the King in South Africa, which was only formed in 1990 just at the end of the apartheid era, was so named as ‘Christ the King’ as a defiant assertion of Christ’s kingship in the face of all that contradicted Jesus’ ‘just and gentle’ rule. The new bishop chose to be inaugurated at Sharpeville, the site of a hideous massacre of over a hundred black people by the South African police ten years before. So we affirm Christ’s kingship in defiance of all that denies it, as Christians have done faithfully ever since the first Good Friday.
One writer identifies three eras over which Jesus is king. Jesus is king of Alpha-time: before time was. He is King of the present – Christian time (Anno Domini), and He is King of Omega-time – after-time.
We get very caught-up in the present: of course we do, because this is where God has placed us, and the life we have been given. And the present is sometimes horrible. But we are promised a glorious hereafter, which Jesus has already won for us. He was always there – the Alpha and Omega – the beginning and the end; the indestructible Word of God, bringing all things into life. He is with us now – ‘His Spirit is with us’ we recite weekly at the Eucharist; and he will be, in that glorious ‘otherness’ of which we shall one day be part.
And how are we to serve him? You often hear it said – probably from me – that Christianity is counter-cultural; that many of the things it stands for run against current conventions. Ironically, we shall see quite a lot of that in the coming five weeks as we run-up to the great Christian festival of the birth of Jesus. Today, of course, is ‘Stir-Up’ Sunday. As society prepares for the extravagance of Christmas, we need to recall how far this all is from the baby at Bethlehem and the Jesus pierced on the cross.
Jesus lived in a counter-cultural way that Pilate just couldn’t understand. His was a human life given to God over thirty years – a life of humility, service and love. He appeared to have no power in human terms, but drew thousands to him and changed lives. He pointed out that his followers were hardly acting like revolutionaries – far from it. Jesus gave Pilate an opportunity to ask more about his kingship, but Pilate didn’t really care. He was content to accept spoon-fed information because he was afraid of thinking for himself, and finding out who and what Jesus was. And so he is remembered every time Christians recite the Creed as the one who caused Jesus to suffer.
Maybe we have to ask the same question about Jesus that Pilate did. ‘Are you the king?’ ‘Are you my King?’ And if you are, what difference is that going to make to my life, my life-style, my choices, my behaviour, my concern for others, my general outlook on life, and my search for the truth?