Christ the King

See Commentary on (John 18:33-37) in John 18:29-40

Homily 1 - 2006

Today’s second Reading from the Book of Revelation spoke of Christ, saying he loves us, and made us a line of kings, priests to serve his God and Father.

Whenever anyone is baptised, immediately after the actual baptism itself, the priest anoints the candidate with the Oil of Chrism on the forehead – as Christ was himself anointed priest, prophet and king.

Through being literally christened – christ-ed, we have all been made to share in Christ’s priestly, prophetic and kingly role and dignity.

At funerals, before we proceed to the burial, we pause in the church to connect again with the baptism of the deceased persons. We sprinkle the coffin with baptismal water, and then, remembering how their bodies were anointed to emphasise their sharing in Christ’s priestly, prophetic and kingly dignity, we respectfully envelop the coffin in a cloud of burning incense.

I would like to focus briefly on the fact that Christ has made us priests to serve his God and Father. What does it mean that, through our baptism, we all share in the priesthood of Christ?

You know what it doesn’t mean: you aren’t ordained priests. You can’t make the Eucharist happen. Yet, along with the ordained priest, you do offer the Eucharist; you do celebrate Eucharist. We are all celebrants.

Just before the Eucharistic Prayer, the ordained priest says to you: Pray that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father. (It used to be even clearer in the former Latin version: Pray that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable...)

Through our priesthood received at baptism, we are able to consecrate our world. As sharers in the priesthood of Christ, you bring your work, your lives, and, at the Eucharist, you join them with Christ’s gift of his life, and offer them to the Father.

Your work, your day-to-day interactions with people, are acts of worship: they are sacred.

Your kitchen tables, office desks, machinery, black boards (or are they white boards these days?) school desks, steering wheels, whatever, are your altar.

Your interactions with your family, your friends, sporting clubs, clients, students, animals, fields become acts of worship of God.

They are what we bring to these weekly gatherings for Eucharist.

Our baptismal priesthood gives a whole new meaning and value to the activities and interactions that fill our days. Our knowing this becomes a strong added incentive to work, to play, and to interact, respectfully and responsibly.

Living becomes a wonderful privilege where everything echoes into eternity. Nothing need be insignificant. We have our sacred sites: our churches, our altars, our shrines. But really we can make anywhere a sacred space. Or, rather, Christ has enabled us to make everywhere a sacred space.

As the Scripture put it: Jesus Christ loves us. He has made us a line of kings, priests to serve his God and Father. It’s wonderful: Too good to ignore or to take for granted.

Homily 2 - 2012

In the Gospel today, the Feast of the Kingship of Christ, Jesus accepted the title of King, but very explicitly he insisted that there is no fighting in his kingdom, no violence.  We like to consider ourselves disciples of that King.  But we all start off life with a strong propensity to violence; and unfortunately, the world we live in more or less takes it for granted – and that influences us, too.

This past week our TV screens have shown us the Israeli military and terrorist Hamas mindlessly killing each other.  The sad thing is that most of the victims are women and children, non-combatants - what generals and others refer to, heartlessly, as collateral damage.

Back home, our political leaders seem intent to persecute even further people fleeing persecution and hoping to find asylum in a nation that claims to be Christian.

The struggle to love anyone, everyone, seems beyond us.  Some manage it; most of us fail miserably.   So we die, still the unfinished product.

Today, as we gather in this peaceful cemetery, we remember and pray for those buried here.

We have a sound instinct in the Church to pray for those who have died.  We pray for those who are experiencing what we have come to call Purgatory.  Jesus, of course, never spoke explicitly of Purgatory; but some of the things he did say lead us to conclude that it is indeed real, and important, too. 

We usually associate Purgatory with suffering.  Sometimes that suffering has been interpreted as God's punishment for sin.  But our God of infinite and unconditional love does not punish.

The fact is that we die unfinished, imperfect.  We do love, but our love is almost always selective and restricted.  We love some, we ignore some, we even feel hostile about some.  Our love is also not complete, not thorough.  We rarely love with all our heart, mind and strength.  There is still a lot of self-interest, even hostility, in our hearts.  And then, even when at times we do love well, we don't do so consistently.

Purgatory would seem to be the opportunity to extend, to purify and to perfect our capacity to love.  We need to address our self-interest and hostility.  And that means letting-go, moving well beyond the comfort zone, facing our inertia and our fears.  That is a real dying to self.  It is painful; in some ways it is suffering.  But given, with death, a clear sense of the closeness of God, the wonder and the irresistible attractiveness of God, it is a process that we face, and that we willingly and eagerly want to undertake.

We don't grow in love in a vacuum.  We do it by doing it! – by loving.  So Purgatory would seem to be a finishing school - a situation where all those present reach out with ever more total love towards God, towards each other, and, we believe, towards us.  There would be no one abandoned, forgotten or alone in Purgatory.

We pray for them because our prayer is the expression of our love and care.  And all love, even our love [as we know] is encouraging, supportive and enabling.  What we call the Communion of Saints is something wonderful – people reaching out, supporting and empowering each other, on this side of the grave, and on the other side of the grave, as well, whether they are still "on the way" in Purgatory or are already "home and hosed" in Heaven.

As we gather today to celebrate Eucharist here in this charming rural setting, on the Feast of Christ the King, we effectively claim for ourselves and seek to share in the mysterious dynamic of Jesus' death and resurrection.  He died because he would not step back from his conviction that the only way to save this world of ours is to choose resolutely the way of love.   That is what his Kingdom was about.  That was the truth to which he bore witness [as today's Gospel reminded us], what he was born for, what he came into the world for… and to which we, too, witness in this peaceful country cemetery.

 Homily 3 - 2015

Reeling after last week’s attacks on a variety of venues in Paris, the French President, François Hollande, vowed that France would be merciless towards the terrorists. Every day since then, France has bombed Syria. 

World leaders have made much of France’s revolutionary values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, believing their own societies to be built on such basic human values. Whatever about freedom and equality, I do think that fraternity, at the moment, is the poor relation of the three. What seems to be more likely is that States responding to terrorism will tend to respond more punitively and indiscriminately in the Middle East, will nurture suspicion of their own Muslim minorities at home, and will introduce repressive and discriminatory laws in the name of security.

Yet, I am also impressed by a later intervention of the French President. His country has retained its commitment to receive 30,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq who, he stated, “will be welcomed in the next two years”. His reason – “… the people of Syria and Iraq have fled because they are martyred by the same people who attack us today.” Indeed, he is quoted as saying, “Our duty is to carry on our lives.”

I also came across a wonderful comment made by another Frenchman named Antoine Leiris, husband of a woman killed in one of the Paris attacks. Hoping to address terrorists similar to the ones who had killed his wife, he said, “You want me to be afraid, to cast a mistrustful eye on my fellow citizens, to sacrifice my freedom for security.” He went on to describe his personal devastation, but then, speaking of his little son, he said, “Every day he will insult you with his happiness and freedom”. Courageously, he added, “You will not have my hatred.” 

What is our personal knee-jerk reaction to violence? I think that today’s Feast of Christ the King is relevant to our response, today’s Gospel particularly so. Jesus stood before Pilate, the Governor of the province of Judea, and representative of the Roman Emperor. Through the ruthlessness of its invincible military machine, Rome had subjugated most of the known Western World. Responding to the accusation of being King of the Jews, Jesus made clear that, while accepting the title, his Kingdom was “not from this world”.

When interpreting his reply, we are often inclined to think of Jesus’ Kingdom as being “in heaven”, somewhat “airy-fairy”, with little to do with practical issues of life in the here-and-now. And yet, in the Lord’s Prayer, our Christian prayer par excellence, after voicing our over-riding concern that “Thy Kingdom come”, we go on to pray, “Thy will be done on earth”. We add the additional phrase “as it is in heaven” purely by way of illustration. Jesus’ Kingdom has everything to do with life “on earth”. 

Kingdoms are not so much about personal lifestyles, as about life in society and as society. In pointing out the difference between his kingdom and kingdoms “from this world”, Jesus critically explained, “If my kingdom were from this world, my men would have fought to prevent my being surrendered to the Jews”. Indeed, he saw his response of non-violence as witnessing precisely to the essential message of truth that he was sent to preach, “Yes, I am a king… I came into the world for this, to bear witness to the truth”. He translated his basic message, “Love your enemies”, into the nitty-gritty of non-violent action for justice. He proceeded to live out that truth immediately by facing into his death deliberately, even assertively, and certainly non-violently.

He knew we would inevitably struggle to see his truth. That is why he prefaced his whole public life with the injunction, “Repent, and believe the Good News” [“repent”, as we all realize, meaning nothing less than changing radically our whole mindset]. Does the alternative – countering violence with violence – really work? 

Homily 4 - 2018

Immediately after we were baptized, the priest prayed a prayer that reminded us that Jesus was the Christ – metaphorically anointed, as it were, sent by God to fulfil the roles of Priest, Prophet and King [of which Hebrew history provided no shortage of models – some good, some disastrous]. The prayer then focused on us: we had been christened – Christed, re-born, as it were, and re-made like Jesus. As the Father sent Jesus, Jesus now sent us into our world to be priests, prophets and kings, like him. Like him! That takes sustained, prayerful, thinking through.

Today we are celebrating Christ’s kingship. And, if we are consistent, we are celebrating that we, too, are kings like him.

Jesus was wary of the title King. Along with the title Christ, it was too easy to misunderstand. As was made quite clear in today’s Gospel passage, only when it became finally obvious that he would be humiliated and dehumanised, did he accept the title. Yes, he was a King, sent by God with a mission to change the world – a king with a difference. Indeed, through his enemies’ ruthless stripping of his every other power, the power of his personal integrity shone clear for those with eyes to see. By deliberately facing into his murder, Jesus expressed his surprising, even disconcerting, judgment on the world – his unshaken love for it, his irreversible commitment to the dignity of every human person and his universal, unconditional forgiveness of sin. He worked from no other position of power than the power of truth – the truth of the message he preached, and the truth of his personal integrity. Such truth is the only power that can change human hearts for the better.

Jesus was right to be wary of the title of king. The attraction of power, and of the so-called honour it brings, is contagious. An Englishman, Lord [!] Acton, writing in 1870, was only too correct when he wrote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Sadly, over its long history, the Church has not been averse to seeking power and exploiting its opportunities. In our own time, the corrosive effects of power explain much of the awful saga of clergy sexual abuse. The Royal Commission was right in directing the Church to face and to eliminate the destructive culture of clericalism.

Yet, if, and only if, we can keep in mind that Christ reigns as king from the wood of the cross, only if we can learn again truly to “see” the crucifix and to appreciate its meaning, is it safe for us as Church to celebrate Christ as King. Indeed, then, not only is it safe, it is necessary if we are to witness to his way in a world that sees too little truth and integrity.

By defining his kingship as “bearing witness to the truth”, Jesus merged that kingship, in a way, with the unfamiliar role of prophet – of one who speaks truth to power. That was what Jesus had been doing consistently right from the beginning of his mission in Galilee: “The Spirit of God has anointed me .. to bring good news to the poor .. to set the down-trodden free”. It is little wonder that, over the years, the Church has hardly encouraged popular devotion to Christ as prophet– too much truth might have served to highlight its inappropriate exercise of kingship.

Yet, along with genuinely disinterested service, the Church’s proclaiming truth to power may be what today’s world desperately needs – provided we can learn to do so without any sense of superiority. Indeed, if we are to be true to Christ, we can do so only from the place of deliberately chosen, or accepted [if we are realistic?], powerlessness – without threats [warning of consequences, Yes!; threatening punishment, No!], without sanctions of any kind, totally non-violently, without even the withdrawal of our love should we not be heeded. That is the Christ-way.

But all that will take thoughtful soul-searching, prayerful discerning, and real conversion.

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”.