Proper 29 -- II Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132; Revelation 1:4-8; John
18:33-37
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, November 25, 2012.
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, November 25, 2012.
“CHRIST: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS”
(Homily text:
Revelation 1: 4 – 8 and John 18: 33 - 37)
This Sunday marks the end of the
Church Year. All through our year-long
journey toward this day, we have been aiming at a close examination of just who
Jesus Christ is. And along the way, we
have recounted His marvelous teachings.
We have remembered His miracles.
We have noticed His influence on the people who heard Him preach and
teach.
All these things are part of Jesus
Christ’s earthly ministry. They affirm
the reality that Jesus Christ came among us as one of us, fully human.
It was Jesus Christ’s humanity that
Pontius Pilate could understand. To
Pilate, religious arguments about Jesus’ identity were so much Jewish
nonsense…his Gentile mind simply was unaccustomed to the background of
theological thinking that would allow him to understand some of what Jesus said
in response to Pilate’s questionings.
But what Pilate could understand was the claim that Jesus Christ was a king…here,
political realities emerge as Pilate says to the Lord, “So, you are a
king?” Jesus’ response points away from
a temporal understanding of His kingship….the Lord says in response to Pilate,
“My kingdom is not of this world.” Some
other kingdom and some other sort of kingship is in view here….it is a cosmic
view of the divine Christ.
The Lord’s miracles, His ability to
multiply the loaves and the fishes, His ability to conquer disease, even death,
His ability to control the forces of nature by stilling the raging waters of
the sea, all of these point to another reality:
That Jesus the Christ is God, come among us, incarnate in human flesh.
Here we have the image of the cosmic Christ, He who existed from
before all time, from the beginning. In
theological terms, we say that He is “co-eternal with the Father.” The Nicene Creed affirms this reality in
these terms: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus
Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten[1] of
the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten,
not made, of one being with the Father….”
It is in this sense that we come to
the Sunday known as “Christ the King.”
We catch a glimpse of the glory and the power of the cosmic Christ in our reading from the
Book of Revelation this morning: “John
to the seven churches that are in Asia….and from Jesus Christ the faithful
witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.”
“Ruler of the kings of the earth,”
we hear today. The cosmic Christ will,
one day, return, “Coming with the clouds,” as our reading from Revelation puts
it today.
So here, we have both aspects of
Jesus Christ’s kingship: His humanity,
and His divinity.
He is the eternal one, the eternal
Word of God, present with us fully in our human condition, fully immersed in
our humanity, even to the point of death, death on a cross. (See Philippians 2: 5 – 11 for an excellent description
of the descent of Christ from heaven to earth, and his ascension back to the
Father.)
But what does all this mean to us,
21st century Americans? I ask
the question because we have difficulty relating to monarchs in general, given
our democratic polity in the United States of America.
We are fascinated by royalty, but
wouldn’t want such a system to govern us.
We love the British royal family, and our newscasts are filled with
accounts of the activities of Queen Elizabeth II (whose 60 years on the throne
were celebrated earlier this year). And,
on occasion, we also remember that other countries still have kings and queens
(several European countries, e.g.).
But these days, a monarch who isn’t
of the constitutional variety is hard
to find. Let’s return to the British
system for an explanation of the modern conception of royalty….For all the pomp
and circumstance which surrounds the British royal family, the truth is that it
is Parliament which governs the country.
The royal family serves as a symbol of the state, and it fulfills various
ceremonial and symbolic functions, but has little power beyond that of
persuasion to alter or to chart the course of the governance of the
nation. (I believe my assessment of the
situation is correct, but stand ready for any Englishman to correct these
perceptions.)
However, things were not always
thus…in earlier times, the monarch was of the absolute variety, governing by what was called divine right. The system
regarded the monarch as the divinely-authorized head of state. What he or she said by way of decisions was
pretty much the law of the land…there was little need for debate, or for
challenge.
We’ve lost sight of this sense of
kingship, and it seems to have affected our understandings of just who Jesus
Christ is, He who is King of Kings and Lord of lords.
You see, we Americans – who’ve just
been through an election cycle – often tend to think that we can elect our head of state. And if we don’t actually subscribe to that
notion where kings and queens are concerned, we at least think that an elected
body can actually govern things. And since we have some sway with such an
elected body through the power of our vote, then it doesn’t really matter what
the king or queen says or does, because we still have a voice in the matter.
You may be asking, “What does this
attitude have to do with Jesus Christ, who is King of kings and Lord of lords?”
Simply this: We relegate Jesus Christ to the position of
someone we have elected to be the
head of our lives. And – we theorize –
because we elected Him, we can un-elect Him, too. Or – if we don’t actually subscribe to that
view – then we think that we can alter His authority over our lives by
appealing to some other belief or entity which can ignore or modify Christ’s
authority. Sometimes, the intermediate body we appeal to is actually the Church
itself. We believe that the body of
Christ, constituted of freely associating members, becomes the authority.
But in God’s system of governance,
the Church derives its authority solely from God the Father and God the Son,
under the guidance of God the Holy Spirit.
Anytime the authority of these three – seen most clearly in the pages of
Holy Scripture – is violated by the Church, then the Church has lost its
standing.
It is easy to concentrate on Jesus
Christ’s earthly ministry, and to hold ever in mind His kindnesses of love,
shown to the down-and-out of His day, to the sinners and the outcasts. It is easy, therefore, to begin to believe
that Jesus is our friend, and only our friend.
Alas, I believe, personally, that the use of a lectionary over the past
35 years or so that concentrates on the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark and
Luke have shaped our expectations in this area.
These three gospel accounts, all of which share a synoptic[2]
outlook, focus in on Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry, and they concentrate on
His humanity (though none of them ignores His divinity).
But we need a jolt to rumple our
comfortable notions of just who Jesus Christ is. John’s gospel account provides that needed
jolt. (I rejoice whenever we have a
gospel reading appointed from the Fourth Gospel, for I know we are going to get
a much-needed dose of what theologians call “High Christology”, that focus on
the nature and the person of Jesus Christ which emphasizes His divinity.)
For Christ is King. He is God with us, Immanuel. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. He who is from the beginning, co-eternal with
God the Father, is King by divine right.
His Word rises in authority above all others. His claims on our life assume first place.
It is this holy One, Jesus Christ
the King, whom we love, serve and adore.
AMEN.
[1] The use of the word begotten in the Creed is best defined as “flowing or proceeding
from” the Father. Elsewhere in the
Bible, the word is used to denote a person’s fathering a child. That isn’t the sense of the word as it is
used in the Creed.
[2] Synoptic
is a word which comes to us from the Greek, and which means “similar
view”. It is a term which is applied to
the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are known as the Synoptic
Gospels.
