Dear Friends,
This past year, we farewelled the Queen and welcomed the new King. Despite our diverse views on monarchies, I daresay most of us became engaged with the traditional pomp and ceremony associated with this experience, and the Coronation of Charles is yet to come.
Formal titles honour the person and their office but they can also create a barrier that obscures the identity and the humanity of the person. ‘God language’ challenges us too - the titles we use and the qualities we attribute to God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Love, Compassion, Vine, Good Shepherd, Light of the World, and so on. Each title opens up something of the mystery of God but human words also highlight the limitations of our understanding of the divine.
In these days of monarchies and republics, we may feel challenged by the title with which we honour the Lord this Sunday – Christ the King. It helps to step beyond our popular ideas about earthly monarchs and to approach this feast against the broad background of our Faith – how Jesus has ‘defined’ for all time our humanness in the most excellent way. Becoming one with us, he chose to manifest his own uniqueness as both human and divine and to define our dignity and true potential as the ‘Body of Christ’.
This great feast focuses on the Reign of God, which is both ‘in our midst but not yet’. Jesus let himself be seen as he was. On the cross he openly showed his agony, frustration, confusion and tiredness as he proved his love for us – certainly not the picture of the well-attired, in-control, confident leader to which we are accustomed.
Jesus lived out of a style of power in marked contrast to what we see around us. His power was honest, open, merciful and compassionate. He did not dominate other people, put them down, or keep them in bondage, nor did he live in a palace or draw a prohibitive, executive salary. An unusual Saviour, he related most easily to sinners, the poor and the suffering and reacted quickly to the slightest phoniness in his followers.
As Christians, we are continually called to renew our awareness of the Kingdom, the Reign of God, which is about removing boundaries, good news for the poor, justice for the downtrodden and rejected, forgiveness from the heart. Jesus felt an urgency for the Kingdom which is about God’s activity, sovereignty and authority in our lives. We have been loved first, in the most extravagant way.
‘Kingdom’ is something that God is doing, not something we ‘build’ – no matter how much we like the hymn! God makes the Kingdom present and, as Church, we help ‘bring forth the fruits’ of the Kingdom, welcome it and witness to it. Let’s remember too that we cannot equate the Kingdom and the Church - if we sometimes find the Church a bit hard to love, that doesn’t mean we should give up on the Kingdom, or the Church either! The grace of God extends throughout the world and touches all people.
In the end the same question applies to everyone, both Christian and non-Christian, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, thirsty, a stranger…?’ And the clear answer is, ‘As long as you did it to one of these, the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me!’ Fr Dave