Today the Church celebrates the great solemnity of Christ the King. This is a relatively new celebration, being established by Pope Pius XI in the early decades of the 20th century. The reason for this celebration might be understood as a reminder to Christians that they live in a world in which there are rival claims to the authority of God in Christ- other worldly powers insist that they are owed the honor and obedience that should properly only belong to God in Christ. These rivals to Christ might be political powers, or economic interests, or allegiances to ideologies, or even the belief that in all matters of morality and religion, the will of the individual should prevail. For the Christian, all these things are properly positioned under the highest authority, which is not the state, the political party, the economy or my own will, but God in Christ. This is what is meant when Christians declare that Christ is the King. It is a statement of faith that has real world and real life implications. And what we Christians call spirituality is our often times stark confrontation with the demands of Christ’s kingship.
Will we serve Christ as our King or do we pay lip service to his authority? Christ is not a constitutional monarch with whom we have negotiated the terms of his authority. The Church is not a parliament that comes to Christ with a list of demands that he must approve in order to maintain his privileges. To be a Christian is to be someone who accepts the authority of Christ over one’s life and the proper reference point for understanding his authority is that he is our king.
The truth that God has rivals to his authority is one of the great themes that drives the grand narrative of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, from start to finish, from cover to cover.
In fact, the Bible identifies as the reason for the mess we creatures make of the world as the result of humanity’s rejection of the authority of God over our lives. God’s authority wills human flourishing, as his revelation indicates the means by which human flourishing is possible, but in our willfulness and arrogance, we prefer our way to his way and the result is the degradation of human flourishing. The Bible insists that the rejection of God’s authority provokes inescapable consequences. This rejection and these consequences is displayed with brutal realism in the Bible.
This reality is what the Church’s first scripture is about. We heard an excerpt from the Book of Samuel, which a recounting of the people and circumstances that led to the establishment of the monarchy of Israel. This kingdom was established because the Israelites wanted a king to “make them like other nations” (a desire which is telling). Prior to the monarchy God was the king who ruled through the Law by God given to Moses. And so the Israelite desire for a king is a rejection of his kingship. The Lord warns the Israelites through the prophet Samuel that their desire to be ruled by an earthly king will have consequences. And yet the people insist and so God gives the Israelites a king. The Book of Samuel and the subsequent historical and prophetic books of the Bible will reveal the consequences that the Israelites will endure because of their desire for a king.
The New Testament is about how God acts in Christ to rescue his people and with them the whole world from the consequences of the refusal to accept him as the one true and only king.
God does this in an extraordinary way by entering into the human condition himself in Christ and revealing himself as the only king who is worth our allegiance. This is the what the testimony of St. Paul is about in his letter to the Colossians. The apostle testifies that Christ is not merely a teacher of ethics or exemplar of morality or spiritual guru or whatever category cultural elites try to impose on Christ to make him palatable to our preferences and opinions.
Christ is, St. Paul testifies, the visible image of the invisible God- he is God. Not just a god, but the one, true God, who has revealed himself by accepting a human nature and living a real human life. God has done this to rescue us, to save us. To rescue us from what? To save us from what? From ourselves. From our inclination and proclivity to give authority to things that are not God and to let those things rule our lives and our world. These things can be worldly realities like wealth, pleasure, power and honors. We make idols of these things, they become our God and in doing so we subvert their true purpose and make them into forces of destruction. These false gods can also be things like our political ideologies, our economic theories, and even our cultural and ethnic identities. When these things become our ultimate concern, they become our kings and then we need to be rescued from them, we need to be saved from them!
St. Paul insists in this scripture from his letter to the Colossians that we are saved and rescued from false kings, rivals to Christ the King, by the cross. What does this mean?
We look to today’s Gospel for insights.
Christ crucified unmasks the power play of earthly rulers or worldly kings, who mask their cruelty and violence behind a subterfuge false claims and empty promises. They demand our allegiance, often insisting that our submission is to our benefit and will bring with it order and prosperity. And yet, all this is accomplished with the threat of potential violence- defy us and we who give you life will take your life. Notice the diabolical lie in this- worldly powers do not give us life and have no legitimate authority threaten and kill people so as to legitimate their desire for wealth, pleasure, power and honors.
This has been the reasoning for thousands of years for displays of brutalizing power like the cross- cross us and we will put you on a cross. Christ’s claims, his revelation of his divinity and his identity as the true and only king do precisely this- he undermines the claims of worldly powers over us. He subverts their claims to authority. He shows us the nature of their lies. He unmasks that their base of power is not benevolent promises that impart human flourishing, but instead it is the threat of death. They will manipulate us in our fears to get what they want. And if we resist- look at the cross and see what they can do!
In his cross he reveals the true nature of worldly power and how the rulers of this world have legitimated their authority. All this looks like the cross. They would even seek to torture and kill God to serve their purposes. And out of our own fear and lack of love we would let them do that.
That’s the power you serve, the power that will torture and kill the innocent, when you refuse Christ’s authority and his revelation as king.
The criminal hanging in agony with Christ sees this revelation and understands it before it is too late.
The question is will we.
Father Steve Grunow 