Word to the Wise
Sunday, November 25, 2018 - 34th or Last Sunday in Ordinary Time - B: The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King
[Dan 7:13-14; Rev 1:5-8; John 18:33b-37]Jesus answered [Pilate], "My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here." So Pilate said to him, "Then you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." [John]
There is a hymn that I occasionally heard some years ago that has the line, "What are you looking for in Christ, what kind of king?" That question is a good one to ask on this last Sunday of the liturgical year when this feast is celebrated. It was created in 1925 by Pope Pius XI as a way of saying to political powers that they do not have the last word in creation.
The feast is not about royalty of the sort that imagines an earthly or heavenly court with all its pomp and ceremony. It is about the ultimate source of all power in creation. In the same scene with Pilate that is quoted above, Jesus responds to Pilate's assertion about his [Pilate's] power to release or crucify Jesus: "You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above." Very simply, then, this feast is a statement of faith in the ultimate and complete power of God over all creation. The use of human notions of power as expressed in political forms to describe Jesus' power was rejected by Jesus when two of his disciples asked for preferential positions in his kingdom! Their idea of kingdom and kingship was shaped by what they knew of authority in their own time. Jesus told them that the greatest will be the one who serves, not the one who rules.
To acknowledge Jesus as "king" means accepting his example as having a power to save us. Imitating that example brings the kingdom about in our time. All of creation stands in need of that hope and example. The Lord's Prayer says it for us, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." We are called not just to pray for it but to live it. AMEN