Sermon Preached by Rev Coralie McCluskey
at All Saints Datchworth

Sunday morning - 21 November 2004

 

The feast was instituted by Pope Pius XI in an encyclical of 11^th December 1925, when the last Sunday in October was allotted for its observance.  From 1970 it has been kept on the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent. 

 

My dictionary also suggests that it is also kept unofficially in some Anglican churches.

 

So today we come together, a group of Anglicans, some veering towards the Roman Catholic tradition others firmly rooted in the Protestant tradition – we come together because we have one thing in common – Christ the King.

 

And what a King!  Not of course what the people were expecting, they wanted somebody who would deal with the Romans.   Everyone expected a Messiah who would reign in the way that David had, reclaiming the independence of the people through armed force.   A king on a cross is not what anyone had in mind. 

 

But Jesus was a king who was different from the moment he was born. He wasn't born in a royal palace, but in a stable to a relatively poor family.  He  didn't even fit in with his family, for he did things which even they found difficult or embarrassing. At the age of twelve he remained behind in the temple in Jerusalem chatting to the rabbis, while his parents set off on the long journey home, assuming he was with them.

He was regarded as dangerously odd by the religious authorities. Jewish law had always taken into account the needs of the poor, and paid particular attention to widows and orphans. But Jesus took that much further than it had ever been taken before, and preached to poor people that the kingdom of God was for them.

This though was not a kingdom that anybody recognised.  It was not a kingdom of wealth and ceremony, of pageantry, fine clothes and priceless jewels.  Our monarch with the ceremony and pomp that accompanies her is a real draw for tourists.  A Kingdom of Shanty towns, orphanages for children with Aids, refugee camps would not have the same pull.

 

And yet the title king is appropriate and stands for something true and real in Jesus.   It stands for his divinity the Son of God.  And on a human level the title makes sense.  He was the greatest source of goodness, light and hope in a dark world.  His presence could change beyond recognition the lives of those around him.  His attitude towards sinners was one of kindness and persuasion rather than condemnation.

 

There is  a major difference between the great person who makes everyone feel small and the really great person who makes everyone feel great.  In that sense Jesus was indeed a King.

 

We have to distinguish between authority and influence on the one hand and power and control on the other.  Some of the people with greatest moral authority are quite powerless and the most influential have no need to control those they influence.  So it was with Jesus.  Pilate had power over people; Jesus had influence on them.  Jesus mad ehis presence felt simply by the kind of person he was.  There was a quiet authority about everything he said and did.

 

 

But the image of Jesus Christ as king can be as difficult for twenty first century Christians as it was for the Roman soldiers mocking him in our gospel reading this morning or the criminal hanging beside him who kept deriding him and saying, are you not the Messiah, save yourself and us? 

 

We have our expectations of leaders and if our expectations are not met we can remove them or make their lives very difficult.  Look at what is happening in the world, follow the business news and see what happens to those who do not deliver, look at the institution that is the church.

 

But calling Christ king calls us into obedience.  It invites us to surrender our independence so that we might become part of something larger and more extensive.  It challenges us to revise our whole way of thinking, acting and being.  Jesus is king to the extent that we make him, and his way of life, our central value – a value that overrides cultural emphases such as wealth and power.  The kingship of Jesus Christ is not in the remote past, but now; in the substance of human affairs on every level of complexity and risk.  It is a different kind of kingship, a different mode of government  - it is the rule of a saviour king who operates within our lives, and who has the power to change oppressive human structures.

 

This obedience to Christ the king however involves risk.  To call Christ king and to watch him mocked, stripped, beaten, shakes the foundations of our imagination.  And that unsettles anyone, unless they are very holy or very foolish.  If the king bleeds on the cross, what are the subjects meant to do?

 

Let us pray

<>Lord Jesus our redeemer, our king, as you shine the light of God’s love into the dark corners of the world help us in obedience to you to reflect that light in our lives, give us the courage to take the risk.  Amen.