Homily for Christ the King 2009

Sting and the band "Police" sang a song with that phrase we heard in our first reading, “I gazed into the visions of the night”. The song has a similar apocalyptic ring to it as the Daniel reading today. Daniel the prophet is describing a vision in his dreams of the sovereignty of God to whom Israel will be presented and before whom Israel's enemies will bow down.

One of the difficult things we have to do is to visit someone in a nursing home you have known for a long time. A person who once was a proud home owner at the height of their career with all their faculties is now confined to one small room with but a few mementos of a long life hung upon the walls. It may have come about simply through the decline as old age set in or because of some illness or dementia. The result is the same. It is sad yet it is not a sadness without hope. It is one with joy in the knowledge that this person is approaching the fulfilment of a life of service to God, family and friends. That this is a person who is loved by God. That is the kingship and priesthood we hear of in the reading from the Apocalypse. Because there God reigns.

It is a similar experience to that of Christ as he made his way to Jerusalem. Then as he suffered his passion and death. We have been reading over the past months from Mark's Gospel as Jesus travelled the long road to Jerusalem and the fulfilment of his life and mission. Here was someone leading an extraordinary life being reduced to someone despised and rejected and killed. Mark has told us a story of Jesus as a very human being struggling as we all do with life.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked Jesus in John's Gospel we read from on this Sunday. John, with the benefit of hindsight, presents Jesus not just as a victim of all that his enemies inflict on him but as someone who is very much in command of his situation. So he does not answer Pilate directly. Of course he is a King, he could easily admit. But not the kind Pilate could imagine. Jesus invites Pilate to make a decision. Is Pilate asking this because he is genuinely wanting to know more or is he just going along with the crowd?

Here Jesus the accused is really in charge. For John, Jesus is King, his throne a cross. This kind of throne Pilate could not understand. His is a rule that depends on the whim of the emperor in Rome and the might of his army.

Yes, Jesus is eternally King of the Universe but not a kingship gained and exercised by ruthless power. The reading from the Apocalypse sees Jesus as the fulfilment of Daniel's prophecy. It grasps the paradoxical notion of kingship well. Jesus is "ruler of the kings of the earth. He loves us and has washed away our sins with his blood." That is no ordinary king. And he has "made us a line of kings, priests to serve his God and Father."

In answering Pilate, Jesus says that his kingdom is not from this world. Jesus did not say that his kingdom is not in this world, but not from this world. Indeed his kingdom is in this world wherever people believe in him and follow his way. It is a kingdom not gained by violence. It comes about by answering a free invitation to love. It is a kingdom that testifies to truth. It does not bring violence or death on someone for the truth, but it is prepared to die for it. If Jesus is king, he will be a suffering king. He will not demand ransom. He will be ransom. He will win, not by spilling the blood of others, but by offering up his own.

This feast of Christ the King was made a universal one for the Church in 1925 to propose an alternative to a growing secularism after the First World War. Mankind was thinking it could save itself. The emergence of Hitler epitomised the idea that a ruler could recreate the world in his own image. There may not be a Hitler today but there are many little tyrants within ourselves and our world still wanting control of the sort Pilate and Hitler held.

For me the image of the old person slowly relinquishing control over their life is a better guide to what Jesus kingdom is all about. We might fear such decline but Advent which begins next week starting a new liturgical year suggests that life is ever new and invites us to begin again following Jesus whoever we are and whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.

Fr Graham