Christ the King - Sunday November 25, 2007

2 Samuel 5:1-3 Ps 122 Col 1:12-20 Luke 23: 35-43

1. We bring the Church’s liturgical year to an end with a flourish. We remember the dearly departed since it is the month of November, we remember all the wonderful gifts ( both successes and crosses) as we celebrate with a flourish the feast of Christ the King. In doing this, we look with hope for a new tomorrow, one of Grace and Dreams and Visions. The feast of Christ the King is not one of triumphalism and going back to the Spirit of the Crusades or the Inquisition. It is a matter of setting things in proper order: Giving to Caesar the things that are Caesars, and to God the things that are God’s.

2. The feast of Christ the King was established by Pius 9^th in 1925. There was a great surge of secularism. We really did not need God, we could manage by ourselves. The feast was established as a statement that no human claim could supplant “the authority of God.” It seems that we have come a full cycle once again. Now the danger has a slightly different twist: with the influx of news faiths and traditions, we have bent over backwards to make people welcome. In doing so, we have watered down Christianity to such an extent that in most cases it has become a matter of Good Social Behaviour, we have succeeded in removing Christ from Christianity.

3. The story of David is introduced here both for the way David was chosen King and for the role David plays as King. We know the story of how Samuel went and anointed David with oil and made him King. David was chosen above all his elder brothers who were physically stronger and they had more leadership qualities. As the cliche goes: God does not chose the Qualified but rather qualifies those who have been chosen.

However, our first reading lays the foundation of yet another story of the choice of David as King. David is chosen both by God and by popular demand of the common man. He is the ancestor of Jesus and this gives Jesus the right to Royalty both by human descent and by choice of the same God who chose David to be King. This God will tell us on more than one occasion: “this is my beloved. Listen to him.”

4. David is also introduced because of his dual role as shepherd. He was a Shepherd by vocation. He was tending his sheep when the Lord called him in 1. Samuel 16. But now he is acclaimed by the common man to be a shepherd to the People of Israel. In his own turn Jesus will claim his title of the Good Shepherd. Jesus will be a shepherd who will care for his flock even paying the price with his own life.

5. Our world today gives importance to brain, brawn and riches. It honours whose who can pile up degrees, like leaves pile up in the Autumn. It will give honour to the person with muscle who can dominate and intimidate even though the brawn may be but a facade or a false front. Finally our society gives homage to those with “thick wallets.” As Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof says: “It won't make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong, when you're rich, they think you really know”

6. This atmosphere was the same in time of St. Paul. Certain Christians considered themselves the Cream of the Crop because they observed dietary laws and kept the Social traditions. They bolstered up their reputations by claims of seeing visions and being visited by angels.

Today we claim superiority by the size of our houses: so many thousand square feet, by our postal codes, by the cars we drive, and the electronic gadgets we own even if we do not need them. You should have seen the expression of wonder when the school children heard I have a cell phone (even though I rarely turn it on. And I do not even know the number !!)

Paul removes the winds from the sails of the Christians in Colossae. He says those things cannot supplant the Power and authority of Jesus Christ. In the letter to the Philippians he will tell us that although Jesus was equal to God, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave and died for us on the cross and rose from the dead. And so the Kingship of Jesus is of a different style from that the world considers important.

7. The Gospel reading on the feast of Christ the King in the Cycles: A and B, paint a picture of Triumph and Glory. This year : C gives us a picture that is quite the opposite. It is a picture of a King who is humiliated and mocked. The Bad thief taunts him as a Messiah, the Scribes and Pharisees call him the “messiah of God, and the King of the Jews.”

A Messiah was supposed to victorious. He was to deliver the People of Israel from their Roman overlords. Jesus was a poor example of a Messiah as he hung nailed and dying on a cross. The cross was the highest symbol of degradation. It was a sign of the lowest dregs of criminal. Ironically, it was in the very mockery that truth was seen, and those who uttered these words of mockery did not even realise that they were prophets and proclaimers of Truth and victory.

The Good Thief on the other hand does not use any titles for Jesus. He simply calls the Saviour by his name: Jesus. This very simplicity highlights the other titles of messiah, Messiah of God, and King of the Jews. It is a simplicity that allows one to stand without fear in the presence of One who is truly great and powerful. For the world Jesus will be a stumbling block, for those who consider themselve s “the inner circle” like those in Colossae it will be Jesus will be a scandal. But for the rest, for you and me, we can describe Jesus as our devotion and familiarity with God will allow us.

STORY: In the morning a shepherd awakes to find that a ewe has given birth to a lamb...and the lamb has died. In another portion of his flock the shepherd finds another ewe that gave birth during the night and the mother died! So, the shepherd has a childless mother on the one hand, and the mother will probably die of a broken heart. On the other hand he has an orphan. All logic tells him to put the orphan with the childless mother. Should work, shouldn't it? It will not work, not at all, as the mother knows the lamb is not hers, and the lamb [itself] is confused and starving.

The old prophets and the old shepherds, saw in this regular event in their flock a perfect image of our relationship to God. We are so alienated from one another that we are dying from starvation and God is dying of a broken heart. But one thing can be done, and only one. If the shepherd [takes] the dead lamb and drains [its] blood, he can then wash the orphan in the blood of the [dead] lamb, and the mother, smelling her own, immediately moves so that the orphan may suckle. In other words, the orphan is brought to table and to life by its adoption through the blood. The early scriptures promised that a messiah would come and be the lamb by which we were brought to an intimate relationship with God ."

Giving Blood

Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at Stanford Hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5‑-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes, I'll do it if it will save Liz." As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away?" Being young, the boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood. JESUS DID.