JESUS CHRIST, KING OF THE UNIVERSE
Sirach, Chapter 1, Verse 27-30
For the fear of the Lord is wisdom
and discipline; faithfulness and humility are his delight. 28 Do not disobey the fear of the Lord, do not
approach it with duplicity of heart. 29 Do not be a hypocrite before others; over your lips
keep watch. 30 Do not exalt yourself lest you fall and bring
dishonor upon yourself; for then the Lord will reveal your secrets and cast you
down in the midst of the assembly. Because you did not approach the fear
of the Lord, and your heart was full of deceit.
Ben Sira uses the expression “fear of the Lord”
twelve times and the noun “wisdom” seven times to emphasize the connection
between the two ideas. He describes the blessings that come to those who fear
the Lord, i.e., those who practice true religion by loving and serving God and
keeping the Law. Attempting to serve the Lord with duplicity of heart is
hypocrisy and self-exaltation, deserving of public disgrace.[1]
The Ego and the
King[2]
On
the last Sunday of the liturgical year, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the
King. Now see how he takes our nature out of love in His passion; Jesus is
alone; the crowds who sang ‘hosanna!’ as he entered Jerusalem just five days
previously are now shouting, ‘Crucify him!’ He has been accused unjustly.
His mission has all but collapsed. His friends have run away; one of them has
sold him, another says that he does not even know him. And now he stands
before the most powerful person in the land on a falsified charge. This
is a really bad day, and it is about to get worse. He will be flogged, he
will walk the way of the Cross ... what happens next is well known to us
all. It is a day which seems, by our normal standards, to be
characterised by failure and abandonment. This is not our usual idea of
what happens to a king. What we have here are two worlds, two kingdoms
that come face to face as Jesus stands before Pilate. On the one side we have
this earthly ruler representing the most successful empire the world had ever
seen, a man with economic, political and military power; a successful man, with
a reputation. This is someone to be taken seriously. And in Jesus we have God’s
world, the Kingdom of God personified, and a completely different set of values
where we are not subjects or slaves, but we are now friends. We are not equals;
God is the Creator, the maker and author of all, but our relationship with God
has been restored. We have a king who rules over an eternal kingdom which, in
the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer for this feast, is described as:
a
kingdom of truth and life,
a
kingdom of holiness and grace,
a
kingdom of justice, love and peace.
Notice that the Preamble of the constitution attempted to build the Kingdom with the preposition that all men are created equal...and that laws are enacted to secure life (truth and life), liberty (for holiness and grace) and the pursuit of happiness (love and peace).
But
which world do we value? Inevitably as Christians we inhabit both of
these worlds, we move between them. We may spend six days a week living
in one kingdom, but only one matters, and we know which one, but it is often
hard to choose. Pilate represents one kingdom, Jesus represents the
other. In the Nicene Creed there are only two people (apart from Jesus) that
are mentioned by name – Pilate and Mary – and again they show this same
contrast: Pilate is wealthy, powerful, male, successful, secure, safely
married; he has most of the things that many of us desire. Mary on the
other hand, at the Annunciation, is a young woman, pregnant out of wedlock and
therefore suspect, and at risk of exclusion from the Jewish community.
She is one of the anawim, the voiceless, the poor who yearn for good
news. Few of us desire to be like this. We have these two worlds,
two kingdoms. Only one of them is the Kingdom of God; only one of them is
true, eternal and universal. But which do we choose? Which do we hope
for? For which am I ambitious? If we are honest with ourselves,
very often we would rather be Pilate. But it is not about us, it is about
Jesus. He is king, no one else. To talk of kingship or lordship can
evoke images of oppressive or coercive systems, but for Jesus kingship is about
humility and service. This feast is not to flatter a king with a fragile
ego in need of reassurance, but to celebrate in gratitude the love and kindness
of someone who is so committed to us that he will not compromise even in the
face of the most powerful in the land, and who will not baulk even at death
itself. The image of the Shepherd King may not be an especially rich one
for most of us, but it was immensely powerful for the people of Israel, evoking
ideas of care and love. All of this is in contrast to the kingship of
power and domination, the reigns of kings that do not have the best interests
of everyone at heart. This is the king who is lord over life and death
and all there is. There is plenty of ambition in this world; that is not
necessarily a bad thing. But Christians are called to be ambitious for
the Kingdom, not for ourselves; to seek power not in order to dominate, but to
serve. The only throne that this king found was the cross. We are
not to seek thrones of glory on which we can be admired, and if we do get them
then we ought to pray for a very large dose of humility; we are to pray before the
Throne of Glory from which we will receive mercy, love and hope. In a
world where we are so often encouraged to seek power and success, it can be
difficult to accept the truth of this; however, this truth is not a proposition
or an idea, but a person to get to know. ‘Everyone who belongs to the
truth listens to my voice’, says Jesus – and Pilate does not hear him.
One of the reasons the Church says that each Sunday is a Holy Day of Obligation
is because in order to get to know this person, in order to be people of the
truth we have to meet him – in the Word and sacrament – and spend time with
him, listen to his voice: to find out about the Kingdom of God. This is not
easy, and we need the support of each other, the support of the Church.
We, like Jesus, will probably encounter denial or betrayal. Like Judas
and Peter, we may at times betray or deny him; these are risks for us
also. But Christians are future-oriented people, and we are asked to have
a vision of a better world, not just in the next life but in this, and to dream
of a kingdom in which Christ is the king. We are people of hope –people
who, in the future, can be free from our past and the worst we have done: our
spectacular sins – the betrayals, the denials; and our mundane, ordinary and
petty ones. But this hope is fragile and needs to be protected. In
the Mass for the Feast of Christ the King we are asked to bring our worst to
the Lord, to bring our nightmares and our horror. Our nightmare can be
turned into dreams of hope; there is a future, death is not the end, Good
Friday is followed by the resurrection. God will make all things
new. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus show us this. Bring
your best and your worst, your dreams and your nightmares to the altar.
We have a king who can cope with that, a king who can cope with us. Thank
God for that.
The Last Sunday[3]
The
Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, formerly referred to
as "Christ the King," was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as an
antidote to secularism, a way of life which leaves God out of man's thinking
and living and organizes his life as if God did not exist. The feast is intended
to proclaim in a striking and effective manner Christ's royalty over
individuals, families, society, governments, and nations. Today's Mass
establishes the titles for Christ's royalty over men: 1) Christ is God, the
Creator of the universe and hence wields a supreme power over all things;
"All things were created by Him"; 2) Christ is our Redeemer, He
purchased us by His precious Blood, and made us His property and possession; 3)
Christ is Head of the Church, "holding in all things the primacy"; 4)
God bestowed upon Christ the nations of the world as His special possession and
dominion. Today's Mass also describes the qualities of Christ's kingdom. This
kingdom is: 1) supreme, extending not only to all people but also to their
princes and kings; 2) universal, extending to all nations and to all places; 3)
eternal, for "The Lord shall sit a King forever"; 4) spiritual,
Christ's "kingdom is not of this world." — Rt. Rev. Msgr. Rudolph G.
Gandas
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