Christ the King/Reign of God Sunday Fr. Rick, homilist

If you were on Jeopardy and the category of “Greatest Kings of” was presented, and of the options you could choose, you chose Israel, what would your answer be? Remember it has to be in the form of a question. I would guess your response would be “Who is David?” The greatest of the ancient kings of Israel who comes to mind is often David, the Shepherd King. Near the end of the second book of the prophet Samuel, we read words attributed to him, in the last years of his life, likely after an end-of-life review, a prayerful reflection on his reign. David continues to praise God, whom he greatly loves. In the biblical story, David helped form a strong nation, in spite of the opposition some had of even having a king, even before David. Before Saul became the first king of Israel, many were unsure if having a king would be a good thing. A king would tax the people, and take their young men as his soldiers. The king would have to have courtiers, people serving in the king’s court. Did they really want this? Some did; others didn’t. But the desire to be like neighboring peoples around them won out. King Saul eventually went mad. After his death, his son Ishbaal became king, just as David became king. A civil war resulted. Ishbaal was killed by his courtiers, ending the war and making David the uncontested king of all Israel. David conquered the city of Jerusalem, establishing it as capital of a united Israel. He defeated the Philistines, annexed the coastal region, and became the overlord of many smaller kingdoms bordering Israel. Not bad for a man who used to shepherd sheep and compose psalms! But he had his weaknesses too: adultery with a married woman, resulting in her pregnancy, and trying to cover it up, until his last recourse was to have her husband murdered. Severe family dissension and political revolts marred the vision he tried to establish. Now, near death, he praises God for seeing him through even the most devastating times of his life – some of them his fault, some not. Yet David would always remain the most admired King of Israel, coupled with a belief that would develop that the Davidic dynasty would be unending. One from David’s line would be the representation through whom God’s blessings would flow to Israel, and from Israel to all nations. The Christian movement would interpret this to be Jesus and through him to all people. Today, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, one celebrated for less than 100 years. It began within the Roman Catholic Church in 1925 on the last Sunday of October. A speculation is that this day was chosen because, in the Protestant and Reformed Churches, Reformation Sunday was celebrated the last Sunday of October. How better to outdo Reformers than Christ the King? This may, of course, be ecclesiastical urban legend. In the Roman Catholic Church, the celebration was changed in 1969 to the last Sunday of the liturgical year. With the liturgical renewal in the Anglican, Lutheran, and other Reformed and Protestant Churches, observance of this feast on the last Sunday of Advent was added to those churches. In each of them, Christ the King Sunday or Reign of God Sunday as some call it ends the church’s year. What does it mean? According to fifth-century Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril, “Christ has dominion over all creatures … by essence and by nature.” This certainly resonates with the language in the letter to the Colossian community. “For in him [Christ], all things in heaven and earth were created.” The emphasis on the uniqueness of Christ is expressed as “He himself is before all things; and in him all things hold together.” Spiritual director and author Fr. Richard Rohr wrote “The Universal Christ” looking at the meaning and power of such declarations about Christ. In Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, we encounter a similar hymn to Christ. Some New Testament scholars see in this, an attempt to distance the Christian community from a perspective that denied the experience of God being encountered through Christ, and of Jesus being the enfleshment of the Christ. “For in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” His work for God? “God was pleased through him to reconcile to God’s own being all things.” The peace, generated through Christ, comes by the ultimate sacrifice one can give to another – one’s own life. It is not a sacrifice to appease an angry God; it is a sacrifice of showing how strong is God’s love for all humankind and Jesus’ willingness to show this. Christ the King gave himself entirely to reconcile humankind to God. Often, I have said I enjoy the cinema. Recently, I saw a Disney movie “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.” While, I admit, a kid’s movie, it had a strong message about transformation. Without giving too much away in case you plan to see it, a scene in the picture made me shudder. A cunning queen tells her future daughter-in-law the secret of being a powerful monarch: To be a powerful queen, one must teach one’s people fear, and to use that fear against one’s enemies. Within the biblical story of David, he strengthened his countrymen through his leadership. In his last words, he praised his God. Although he sinned, he sought forgiveness and received it. David was, after all, called the man after God’s own heart. He became a symbol of commitment to God and to his people. Jesus, as Christ the King, was not the head of the nation of Israel. He was not the understanding of a Davidic representative many had imagined. He was not the “Let’s conquer Rome” messiah for which many hoped. He did not instill fear in the hearts and minds of his followers to control them. In the 17th chapter of Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells his listeners, “For in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” In Luke’s 19th chapter, we read, “Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” The reign of God is among us. We are to be children of the reign of God. As such children, Matthew’s Jesus tells us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Cosmologist and astrophysicist of blessed memory Carl Sagan, stated that “We are one species, star stuff harboring star light.” The author of the Letter to the Colossians tells us that in Christ all things in heaven and earth were created. By virtue of the birth God gave to the universe, we are children of God. By virtue of choosing to extend ourselves for the good of others, to love, to strive for peace and justice for all people, to respect the dignity of all others, even those who do not act with integrity as we affirm all are loved by God; we not only grow as children of the reign of God but with God’s help grow the reign of God. And to remind us how to do that, we have Jesus Christ, humankind’s ongoing Shepherd King. Amen.