Message from the Minister: Christ the King 20th November 2022

Today, the last Sunday of the Christian year before the start of Advent, we’re celebrating the feast of Christ the King. All the three readings we’ve had have been on that theme – as are the hymns. So what is this festival? Well, it’s actually a pretty recent innovation in church terms: it’s less than a hundred years old. Pope Pius XI instituted it in 1925. He was responding to the political turmoil in Europe after the First World War, with the rise on the one hand of communism and on the other hand, the beginnings of a rampant fascism. This feast is now celebrated on the last Sunday of the liturgical year, as a kind of summary of all that has gone before.

What does the term Christ the King really mean? It makes me think of those medieval depictions of Christ sitting in majesty that you find in medieval mosaics (like the one from Florence in Italy: Christ in Majesty. Mosaic from Florence, about 1300 (Public Domain)) and icons or on Norman sculptures. There’s no doubt that as Christians we believe that Jesus Christ sits on the right hand of God and is the equal of God. But of course our Gospel reading, from Luke’s account of Jesus’s crucifixion, gives a totally different side of Jesus’s kingship, as he hung helpless and dying on a cross, mocked by the bystanders and between two common criminals. This is Jesus as the suffering servant of Isaiah.

What does Jesus mean to us and why does He matter? Surely if God is the creator of everything, why do we need Jesus? What does he add? And where does the Holy Spirit come into this? Well, this isn’t a sermon on the Trinity – that’s for another day – but when I think of the Trinity I think of the three mysterious people in Andrei Rublev’s famous icon, sitting round a table. You really can’t tell which of the three people depicted on that are which member of the Trinity, unless you know the interpretation. (Icon of the Holy Trinity, Andrei Rublev, about 1425 (Public Domain))

If we just believed in God, God the Father, without God the Son and the Holy Spirit, there would really be little to distinguish Christianity from those other monotheistic faiths, Judaism and Islam. It is only Christians who believe that God sent his Son to earth as a human – and a human from a humble family at that - Joseph was a carpenter in Nazareth.

Nor we must forget the Holy Spirit, in some ways the hardest member of the Trinity to pin down or to visualise. Jesus told his disciples that he would send the Holy Spirit to them after his return to heaven and he did indeed come to them on the day of Pentecost in the form of tongues of fire. This isn’t the place for a sermon on the Holy Spirit but I find it easiest to think of the Spirit as God in action.

Our readings today give us three different perspectives on Jesus’s kingship. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah wrote just before the kingdom of Judea was about to fall to the Babylonians and the Jews were to be taken off into exile. He denounces the kings of his own day who failed to provide strong leadership and looks forward to a new king, “a righteous Branch”, who “shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days”, says Jeremiah, “Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety.”

Our second reading is from Paul’s letter to the church at Colossae, a town in Asia Minor, inland from Ephesus. Paul gives thanks that the Christians there have been rescued by God “rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Then Paul quotes an early Christian hymn which describes Jesus is poetic terms:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

This is Christ as King, `the firstborn of all creation’ who is the image of God and who shared with God in the creation. Christ is `before all things, and in him all things hold together’ and He is head of the Church. And then comes what we can say is the very heart of our Christian faith and the one thing that gives us hope of everlasting life. Christ was `the firstborn of the dead’.

As Paul says elsewhere, in his letter to the Corinthians: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” (1 Cor 15:20) and he goes on to say,If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain…. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. … If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor 15: 13-19).

And here we see what it was necessary for Christ to die on the cross: “through [Christ] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things… by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

This wonderful hymn gives a picture of Christ the King, sitting in glory on the right hand of God, judging mankind in the Last Days. But then how does that fit with Luke’s account of Jesus’s crucifixion? (Luke tells us that Pilate had a notice fitted to the cross, saying ‘This is the King of the Jews.’) Isn’t that a funny sort of kingship that ends in a humiliating and painful death, being mocked by all the bystanders and even by one of the fellow criminals being crucified with him (although the second criminal responds differently).

Perhaps the key is in Jesus’s reply when Pilate asked him at his trial: “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus’s reply was: “ ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ “ (Jn 13: 36-7).

Of course Jesus has completely left his disciples and all the Jews of his day completely lost for words by doing amazing deeds of power – healing the sick, turning water into wine, feeding the 5,000, walking on water, even raising people from the dead - all the signs in fact that the Jews had been expecting of their longed-for Messiah, who would lead them to throw off the Roman yoke - but steadfastly refusing to behave like a king. As he said to Pilate, `my kingdom is not of this world’.

No. As Richard Lloyd Morgan, former chaplain of King’s College Cambridge, put it: “Christ the King actually displays many of the attributes of Christ the peasant. He was born in unimaginably downmarket conditions, his early life was humble and his trade was the trade of an artisan. He himself suggests to John the Baptist’s disciples that if they’re looking for someone smart, regal, someone dressed in soft raiment, they’re looking in the wrong place. They should be focussing their search in a King’s palace. His is not that sort of sovereignty, and this, clearly, is no ordinary king. This is a king who says that he was hungry, he was thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned. Here is no sense of military might, of social or economic opulence.”

What’s more, when Jesus returned to his home town of Nazareth, where all the locals recognised him as the carpenter’s son, whose family was still living in the town, Jesus’s words were mocked and he could do no deeds of power there. And we reminded ourselves that Jesus was a fully human being, who experienced human emotions just like us, and who got hungry, thirsty and hot and sweaty just like us. Yet this is the same Jesus who now sits at the right hand of God on high and will come to judge heaven and earth.

This is the same Jesus who died a painful death on the cross, although he was innocent, and who then rose to life again. And because he conquered death, all we who believe in him can also look forward to rising with him on the Last Day. That’s a wonderful prospect.

And how should we respond? We might sing Graham Kendrick’s hymn, Meekness and Majesty. Perhaps sing it as a prayer.

Roger Bland, Lay Minister