“If you are the Kings of the Jews, save yourself!” Luke 23:37
This Sunday marks the final Sunday of the liturgical year The following Saturday evening, November 29 this year, without a ball-drop, confetti, or the singing of Auld Lang Syne, begins a new year in the Church’s life of telling and living into the eternal mystery of God’s plan for salvation in the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
May this new year bring you the gifts of faith, hope, and transformation.
At risk of stoking emotionally charged political positions, the Feast of Christ the King could be understood as the original “No Kings” protest by the Church. In the post-World War I era of rising political and social upheaval and the growth of secularism, communism, and fascism, Pope Pius XI established the feast to remind Christians that our deepest allegiance is to Christ–His way of Love; His example of a selfless life of servanthood; His Kingdom of peace and love for ALL human beings.
One might pause as Christ the King Sunday approaches to wonder if the celebration has had the intended effect. Instead of calling us to deeper conversion into a life grounded in and expressive of the Gospel of Jesus, an allegiance to His way–or more consistent with our theme, His RULE of life, does our faith and our church seek to replicate the abuses, the self-service and judgmental power and perceived authority of the world’s worst despotic forces in the name of Jesus?
To use a phrase borrowed from my friend, bishop Rob Wright of Atlanta, Jesus is the victim of a few crimes. Murder is clearly at the top of the list, but more pervasive these days is the crime of identity theft against him that is perpetrated by many who would call themselves the church.
It is a dangerous thing to call Christ a king without understanding that He is no king, not as this world understands that position. The title of king was assigned to Jesus on the cross—it was intended as a cruel mock of one who would not wield power to save himself, to separate himself from the struggles of life and death, to free him from his association with the defeated and society’s outcasts and impure. A king would not die on a cross, a true king would put others to death by the same means.
Jesus is no king. He does not seek subjects like the kings of this world. Rather, Jesus is the absolute reality of the love and will of God for all people. As His beloved, I do not believe we are called to be subjected but converted—transformed by His love into an authentic and participatory experience of His divine reality. Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest, author, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, described the fruits of such a transformation are “a softening of the ego, …genuine empathy, solidarity with others, and a move away from judgmentalism, superiority, and self-interest.”
In other words, to be genuinely converted to Christ is to be done with kings but fully alive in the Kingdom of God.
