Proper 29A – Christ the King – George Yandell
Christ the King – an odd title for a peasant Galilean prophet, a sage. Messiah, yes, but king? Jesus pushed against the kings of his day because he saw they were corrupt, were extorting punishing taxes from the poor. Those kings had even turned the priests of the temple into pawns for working the program to oppress God’s people. So Christ as King must mean something more and different from worldly kings.
Today’s collect invites us to entertain the future God intends for humanity: to restore all things in Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We pray that we all may be brought together under his most gracious rule. It marks the end of the Church year. Next Sunday is Advent Sunday. It begins the brief season when we prepare for the observance of Jesus’s birth. Today culminates and yet prepares us for what’s coming.
The observance of Christ the King Sunday is a recent addition to the church calendar in western Christendom as Ted noted in his sermon last Sunday. It was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925, when the world had been ravaged by the First World War. Pope Pius envisioned a dominion ruled by a King of Peace who came to reconcile all things, who came not to be served, but to serve. [This paragraph adapted from an article by Libby Howe in “Christian Century”, Nov. 4 2020.] The Episcopal Church began to observe it with the “new” 1976 prayer book. These events took place in 1925:
- Benito Mussolini dissolved the Italian parliament and became a dictator.
- US president Calvin Coolidge proposed phasing out the inheritance tax.
- In Munich, Aldolf Hitler resurrected his political party and published Mein Kampf.
- Teacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in TN.
- As many as 40,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan paraded in Washington, DC. The Klan had 5 million members, making it the largest fraternal organization in the US.
- Immigration to the US from Italy dropped by nearly 90% and from Britain it dropped by 53%.
- The Spanish flu pandemic had ended just 7 years prior.
Given those events, their context seems to have demanded the Pope’s innovation. But seeing the world then and now almost a century later, it didn’t work as he had hoped.
The work of Jesus the Christ has been called “sanctifying life, time and space.” Begun in his ministry of ushering in the domain of God, continuing into his death and resurrection, the cosmic Christ reveals the nature of the invisible God. Everything was created and redeemed through him. He reigns supreme over all creation, and is also head of the Church, its origin, its source of power, its purpose. [This adapted from “Synthesis, a Weekly Resource for Preaching”, November 2004 issue.]
Matthew’s gospel calls humanity to ‘decenter’ ourselves in the interest of meeting those in need with relief, compassion, comfort and dignity. Augustine and Martin Luther preached discipleship as renouncing sin. Sin was defined by them as ‘to be turned or curved inward on oneself.’ [ibid] Becoming centered on others in the outer world is the major thrust of our ministry in Jesus’ name. Centering on others renounces sin.
It’s significant to note in the gospel lesson that the sheep and the goats are clueless. It surprised them to know that when they encountered the hungry, the thirsty, naked, stranger, sick and imprisoned, they in fact had encountered Jesus.
Jesus taught his friends to pray to God “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” God’s kingdom is not a place, but a condition. Kingship might be a better word- “thy kingship come.” Insofar as all the odd ways we do God’s will are at best half-baked and half-hearted, the kingship of God is still a long way off. As Frederick Buechner puts it, the kingdom of God is “a hell of a long way off, to be more precise and theological.” [Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Harper and Row, 1973, p.50] We proclaim that the kingship of Jesus fulfills God’s dream for the world.
Everything Jesus taught was a new creation. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, he will sit on the throne of his glory, and all the nations will be gathered before him.” What does Jesus mean? The “glory” is the envelope of brilliant light that surrounds the deity in Hebrew scripture. In Hebrew, the glory is God’s ‘ka-vode’. Jesus intends that all the people will be bathed in the light of God’s presence. That all will be created anew as one people.
The glory of God surrounds us and encompasses us when we turn ourselves as a people toward loving and serving those in distress. People reconciling with their enemies and those who’ve been cast off. This is the vision for the end of the age Jesus saw.
As one curves outward, decenters oneself and practices self-sacrifice, the reward is encountering Jesus. Matthew promises that it’s inevitable. This is the gospel of Immanuel, God with us. He is not an abstract, distant king as the title today suggests. Jesus is the ultimate, living presence within our daily places, in our circles of contacts. Giving to God through the Church in our pledges moves us to be self-sacrificing in all aspects of our lives.
Jesus is maybe at his best in describing kingship itself – the king made official at last and all the world observes his coronation. It’s like finding a million dollars in a field, Jesus says, or a jewel worth a king’s ransom. It’s like finding something you hated to lose and thought you’d never find again- an old keepsake, a stray sheep, a missing child. When the kingdom and its king really come, it’s as if the thing you lost and thought you’d never find again is you, your own true self. [ibid, adapted]