Christ the King

Read Luke 23:32-38

My fiftieth year had come and gone
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded coffee shop,
An open book, and an empty cup
On the marble table top.

While on the shop and street I gazed
My body for a moment blazed,
And twenty minutes, more or less,
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed, and could bless.

- Yeats

Have you ever had a moment of brightness like the one Yeats describes where you felt surrounded by peace and beauty? They are infrequent, precious moments. Perhaps it’s been a while… perhaps you long for another…

Jesus had a moment of Light on the mountain of his transfiguration. Just as for anyone who isn’t a movie character, Jesus’ moment was followed by descent to the mundane; work to be done. His moment was not a climax but an anti-climax. The climax of his story – the crescendo of his life – is his enthronement: his crucifixion.

Luke’s ironic portrayal of Christ is honoured in the lectionary by using this reading for Christ the King Sunday – the last Sunday of the year. Pilate, the ostensible but illegitimate ruler of Israel, presides over the treason trial of the legitimate King but cannot make the charge stick, giving way eventually to political expediency in order to get rid of the sticky problem Jesus presents.

Leonard Sweet points out the most acute irony: it is Pilate who preaches the first sermon of Christianity. He writes the notice displayed above Jesus’ crucified head: “The King of the Jews”. It is a sign that hangs in every sacred Christian space for thousands of years to come.

Christianity however has had an ambivalent relationship with that irony ever since. Many times Christians have tried to soften it or tailor it to their own expediency. In so doing the irony takes yet another twist as Christ the King is dethroned in a coup of the Christian heart!

I want to look at the challenge that the Christ the King presents to us as disciples as well as the coterminous temptation we sometimes choose to hear in each challenge.

Firstly, Christ is King of our lives. We speak of the goal of spiritual maturity as Christ enthroned in our hearts; ordering our lives’ priorities according to the values of the Kingdom. This relationship is one of forgiveness for personal sin and the redemption of our estranged relationship with God. In our story today we hear these themes as the criminal crucified with Christ asks to be with Jesus in paradise and Jesus grants him this grace.

The temptation here is to leave Jesus as the centre of our personal lives, restricting Jesus reign to personal morality and the “vertical” relationship between individuals and God.

Secondly, Christ is King of heaven. This is an idea we readily assent to for we affirm that Jesus is God. The transfiguration confirms this. In our story Pilate is unable to find a charge worth prosecuting against Jesus. Here was a man that was like any other of a long list of messiahs all claiming to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven. None of them was a threat to the might of Rome. The Essenes were like that; they believed in a messiah who would one day come and usher in the end of the world so they hived off on their own to the dessert to await his coming. The Romans couldn’t have cared less.

The temptation here is like that which the Essenes succumbed to: regarding this world as insignificant compared to the coming Kingdom. This world becomes so insignificant that one eventually doesn’t do anything about changing it.

So we need to be reminded of the third realm of the Christ the King: Christ is King of this earth, here and now. Christ is more than King of our hearts, limited to the personal. Christ is more than King of an idealised world to come. Christ is King right now of this planet, despite evidence to the contrary.

Robert Bly, in his book Iron John, deals with similar themes in his exploration of masculinity in mythology and fairy tales. All three realms are important for developing a healthy imaginative spirituality: the sacred King, the inner King and the earthly King.

The sacred King is the idealisation of power decisively exercised for good – a force larger than us that demands and deserves our allegiance; the experience of transcendence that lifts us up to a glowing perspective beyond the limitations of our circumstances.

The earthly King is represented variously in the political heroes of our own time. For some generations this King is absent as no heroes are available. Given the succession battle in the ANC, one wonders what future generations of South African’s will have as role models of the earthly King…

Surely for Christians, the model of the earthly King is always available for here is one who encapsulates in person and imagination both the sacred and the earthly King in one person: Christ the King.

The inner King is our innate human desire, so alive and present when we are born yet diminished and stunted in adults. Babies are very clear about there own desires – they feel them acutely and express them immediately without inhibition. But the stunted and broken Kings of the adults in their world consume a much larger and more powerful space. Through deliberate and circumstantial neglect adults can frustrate the infant King which has no protection. Eventually the baby learns to ignore or suppress the King inside. But the King cannot be killed and comes back eventually in some distorted form or rallies a cry for help later in life.

It seems to me that the first step in the spiritual journey must be to take that infant King seriously. The season of the infant King’s birth is upon us; a time to reflect on the King within. Bly encourages people to start with small steps, small desires to simply listen to them, let them be without judgement.

When we are able to run our tongue over the rough and sharp edges of the teeth of our hunger we begin a journey that not only can heal us of our own juvenile wounds but also deepens our empathy for others and makes us less prone to judge others.

The birth of the infant / inner King invites us on a journey through which we may reach transcendence, a moment of light. The infant and sacred King contained in the person of Jesus calls us to relate our human desires and our most sacred values to the enrichment and betterment of this earth.