This is the closing Sunday of the Christian year, and
celebrates Christ as King. The lectionary readings from the Old Testament offer
a choice – to focus on David, the greatest of all Israel’s kings, or on a more
general image of kingship. The former might seem a rather better choice,
because the image of ‘king’ does not have much resonance in the modern world
where ‘democracy’ is the prevailing political ideal. In this respect, the United States can be
thought to have led the way. It was founded on the outright rejection of
royalty, and an affirmation of the equality of rich and poor. Since the focus
on David brings to the fore the theme that Jesus is ‘of David’s line’,
something that is emphasized at Christmas, we seem on more obviously religious
or theological ground with that.
But in fact, the difference is merely one of emphasis. It is
David’s kingship that matters. His status in first century Judaism was like George
Washington’s is in American political culture – uniquely important, and in no
way diminished, in either case, by any human failings. In the time of Christ Israel’s
hopes, by and large, were still pinned on the thought that a new David would
arise, and return the Jewish nation to its rightful place as a ‘light to
lighten the Gentiles’. As history turned out, it was not to be. What Christians
believe is that, against this background, God acted to reveal a quite different
kind of kingship – ‘not of this world’ – as Jesus expressly says in the Gospel
passage for this Sunday, a ‘kingship’ ultimately revealed in a ‘crown of
thorns’. The fundamental message runs counter to the hopes people pin on all
political programs, and not just those of old fashioned royalists.
So, to celebrate the Feast of Christ the King properly, we
must be sure to avoid all hints of triumphalism, any implied suggestion that
‘our man’ won out in the end. Rather, in a spirit of wondering humility we must
find a way of accepting that, as Isaiah says, God’s ways are not our ways, His
thoughts are not our thoughts, and yet, it is His ways that will and should
prevail. The incarnation of God in Jesus makes it possible for us to do that,
and celebrating Christ as King is our acknowledgment of this fundamental truth.
God inviting Christ to sit on the Throne at his right hand by Pieter Grebber (1653) and
King of Kings (Greek icon c.1600) - from the Jean and Alexander Heard Library
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