Christ the King - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2021

The kingship of Christ can be a highly ambiguous title, particularly when we let it become an image for the Church. Our spontaneous reaction so often is to associate kingship with power.

Jesus was highly critical of human kingship. He was at pains to warn his disciples against it, even though they regularly showed interest in who was the greatest, who were for us and who against us, “us/them” thinking, and so on. Remember his words, “You know that the rulers of the pagan nations lord it over [people], and their great men make their authority felt. This is not to happen among you. No; anyone who wants to be great among you must be your servant …, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.

It is fascinating to reflect on today’s Gospel passage. Pilate was cross-examining Jesus: “…your own people and the chief priests have handed you over to me… Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus replied, “Mine is not a kingdom of this world … my kingdom is not of this kind”. “So you are a king then?” said Pilate… Jesus answered, “Yes, I am a king. I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth.”

We are talking about kingship in ‘inverted commas’ — Jesus’ definition radically subverts what we identify with kingship — nothing to do with having power, everything to do with witnessing to truth.

However, witnessing to truth is highly relevant to how we live together in society. According to Jesus, the basic truth about ourselves is that we have a precious dignity, simply because we are being created by God and, perhaps even more significantly, being loved by God — everyone, now: “God so loved the world that he sent his Son”. That is what makes us persons. Jesus came into the world to bear witness to this basic truth. And as a consequence of the personal dignity of every person, Jesus insisted that we recognise, respect, and freely exercise our rights and, equally, that we dutifully recognise and grant the same rights to everyone else.

Democracy is an effective mechanism, enabling us to live together fruitfully and in peace, even if not always in agreement, and even when rights conflict. But, to guide it successfully, democracy needs to be based on commonly accepted values, ideals, principles and rules. And these are learnt from life in community — from civil society’s voluntary institutions like sports clubs, trade unions, libraries, schools and universities, and very much from faith groups. For these institutions to operate well, they need freedom — freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and a free press, all operating in mutual respect — which we are not good at.

This is where we disciples of Jesus come in. The truth that Jesus came into the world to bear witness to and to teach is what he relies on us to witness to deliberately and actively in our time and in our neck of the woods.

This is what we are celebrating today: Jesus’ version of “kingship in inverted commas”.