Christ The King

“It’s good to be a king!” says Louis the Fourteenth in the Mel Brooks film “History of the World, Part One,” but the Feast of Christ the King makes many of us uneasy. We have little experience of kings and queens, outside our own Royal family, and for the last two hundred years of British history it’s been the gradual decline and disappearance of royal power and its replacement with that of duly elected House of Commons. Historically, we may know kings and hereditary rulers as tyrants, refusing to yield power, or as buffoons, unable to see that their time had passed. In either case, they were forced from power. Say “king” and you may think of France’s Louis the Fourteenth saying, “I am the state,” or Marie Antoinette dismissing the hungry and their cries for bread with her notoriously callous comment, “Let them eat cake.”

Christ the King may also make us uneasy because of its association with religious imperialism. If Christ is the king, then does his church occupy a privileged position? The Anglican cross followed the British flag throughout the British Empire and enjoyed a privileged status, sometimes sadly reinforced by bullets and bayonets.

So what kind of king is Christ, and how does he exercise his authority?

First, we need to recognize that kingship was central to Christ’s mission. Matthew, Mark, and Luke speak with one voice in telling us that at the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus announced that the “kingdom of God” was drawing near. But Jesus upended and undermined the whole concept of kingship. This world’s kingdoms are about power and prestige; Jesus was about service and humility. The rulers of this world are about coercion and violence; Jesus’ life was characterized by peace and reconciliation. Kings surround themselves with throngs of fawning courtiers; Jesus chose the lowly and rejected as his companions.

Two of the three sayings of Jesus from the cross illustrate the nature of his kingship. One of the powers of kings is to pardon those accused of crimes. The irony of the crucifixion is that Jesus was sentenced to die for claiming to be a king. However, even while being nailed to the cross, Jesus demonstrated that it was his executioners who were in need of pardon and he alone had the power to grant it. “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

In pardoning those who were executing him, Jesus showed us the power of forgiveness. Forgiveness frees not only those who are forgiven; it also frees the forgiver. When we forgive, we release ourselves from the chains of anger and resentment. In forgiving others, we exercise the royal power that Christ delegated to his followers.

The power of forgiveness is also illustrated by the example of Thomas More. During the Reformation, More, who was Henry the Eighth’s Lord Chancellor, would not recognize the king’s authority to rule the church as he ruled the state, so Henry had More tried on charges of treason and bound over for execution. After being sentenced, More addressed the judges at his trial, saying, “I verily trust and shall therefore right heartily pray, that though your lordships have here in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together, to our everlasting salvation.” More knew and demonstrated the power of forgiveness.

Secondly, kings and rulers are usually surrounded by throngs of sycophants. In contrast, Jesus surrounded himself with the poor and marginalized. He crossed social, moral, and religious boundaries by accepting women as disciples. His critics charged that he ate and drank with thieves and prostitutes. And Jesus does the same thing every time we celebrate the Eucharist!

Even on the cross, Jesus continued his habit of associating with the despised and disreputable. Poignantly, the second thief pleaded, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

What persuaded the penitent thief to believe not only that Jesus was a king but would survive the cross and “come into” his kingdom? Had he observed Jesus pardoning his enemies? Or was he able to see that the cross itself was Jesus’ royal throne?

“Remembering” is central to Jewish thought. When the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, Exodus tells us that God “remembered” the covenant he had made with the patriarchs. The kind of remembering that God did in Exodus and that the thief was asking Jesus to do is not the opposite of forgetting; it is the opposite of dismembering. The thief was asking to be made a part of Jesus’ kingdom.

“Lord Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” prayed the penitent thief; but it is our prayer, too. Indeed, it may be the most important prayer that we pray. Like the thief crucified beside Jesus, we pray that we may be a part of the great kingdom he is building in this world and the next. But we must always keep in mind that we make our prayer to Christ the King, whose judgment is ever against those who trust in their own righteousness (and at times that is all of us) but whose arms are always outstretched in love.

Remembrance Sunday

Remembering becomes harder as the years go by. Because of the time that has elapsed of course – though I’m told that those who have lived through a war will never forget – and because those who’ve endured the experience of war become fewer each year. So although we’re told that Armistice Day is enjoying some sort of renaissance, with more of the population pausing at 11o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the whys and wherefores of it all become increasingly opaque.What is it that we are called to remember, particularly those of us whose memories are too short to encompass 1945, let alone 1918?

What we are called to look at on this Remembrance Sunday is war and its meaning, and the achievement of those who gave up their lives. And as we do so, we’re called too to dream dreams and paint pictures, which draw out of us new and creative ways of living and working together as fellow creatures of our heavenly Father.As Christians, we all believe, I’m sure, that war is an evil, because it falls short of God’s loving purpose for his world. We live and work for the coming of God’s kingdom, longing for that day foreseen by the prophet Isaiah, when “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; [when] nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Yes, war is an evil, always, but sometimes, we argue, or most of us do, war is a necessary evil, used to restrain or resist a greater evil. It is on these grounds that the Church has since the time of St Augustine espoused the concept of the Just War, provided always that the cause is righteous, the means controlled, and the outcome predictable – within reason. Yes, when those conditions are fulfilled, the Church continues to recognise the possibility of war, though always reluctantly.

Human beings are sinful beings – we know that not just from the text books but from our own experience – and precisely for this reason justice will only ever be achieved in our world by a certain degree of coercion on the one hand, and by resistance to coercion and tyranny on the other.

So as today we remember, as today we reflect on war, on its horrors, and on the oppression and tyranny that war seeks to redress, we recognise that it is only because God is truly our strength and salvation, that we would ever dare embark on such an enterprise. It is only because we seek to bring about the rule of almighty God, to uphold the values of his Kingdom, as revealed to us in his son, Jesus Christ, that we are ever willing to take up the sword against our neighbour, against a brother or sister human being, for one of the tragedies of war is that those who engage in combat are all children of the same creator God.

And then we remember those who’ve died. Young, many of them. And a long way from their loved ones. Frightened, much of the time. Courageous, often. Finding their strength in their comrades. Heroic, sometimes. And exactly the same can be said of those who were left at home, holding the baby, keeping the country running, keeping hope alive, in spite of all the hardships and horrors. It’s the stuff of sacrifice and of tragedy, individual, corporate, national; which we pray, and believe, in the end is all for the greater good. But let us never forget the price that was paid by so many, not just for us, but for the well-being of God’s world.

As those who believe in God and pray for the coming of his Kingdom, somehow, as we pause to remember, so we must struggle to fit the pieces together. God’s fatherly care. Our responsibilities to our neighbour. The evils that God’s children inflict on one another. The sacrifices our grandparents and parents, family and friends, made on our behalf. They’re the tangled threads on the back of the tapestry.

But today, Remembrance Sunday, is the time when we turn the canvas over; to see a picture of the world as God would have it be; a picture so attractive, so enticing, so enthralling, that we, like our fathers before us, decide to take risks, and make sacrifices, can do no other, in order to realise that picture impressed on the face of God’s world.

Bereavement Service 2007

Among the opening sentences of most christian funeral services, are the words of Jesus: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

On the face of it, a strange thing to say – strange words. But, our mourning is not futile. It is not meaningless. It is not a wild cry of despair in the dark. It is Jesus himself who gives significance to all our sorrows. “I will not leave you bereft,” said Jesus, “because I live, you too will live.”

We mourn for those whom we love – our mourning is a sign of our love. We are privileged to have had that which is most precious in human life; and our mourning signifies our privilege. Grief is the price we pay for human love. Those who have never loved will never grieve. Their hearts can never be broken. They are the most deprived people on earth. They have missed that which makes life worthwhile. “How blessed are those who mourn.” This is why our experience at this time is “bittersweet”. Our sorrow in parting reflects our joy in being together.

This is a “bittersweet” occasion. We are thankful for the person we honour, but sore at our loss. The one reflects the other. But we do not mourn as those who are without hope; for the many waters of death cannot quench love. Love is stronger than death. Love abides for ever. All partings are painful. When Jesus was preparing his disciples for the time when he would be taken away from them, he said that he was going to prepare a place for them. “And if I go,” he said, “I shall come again to take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also.”

So we pray today that all who have walked beside us through life, whom we love but see no longer, whose presence we miss, whose memory we treasure; who have been taken from us by death, have been taken by our Lord to be with him where death is no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow. And, we pray for one another “I will not leave you bereft,” said Jesus, “because I live, you too will live.”

Come to the assistance of our loved ones, All you Saints of God! Meet them, you Angels of the Lord.
Receive their souls, and present them to the Most High.
May Christ who called them, receive them; and may the Angels lead them into the bosom of Abraham.

Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,
And let light perpetual shine upon them.

May the souls of the faithfully departed through the mercy of God rest in peace,
And rise in Glory. Amen.