Christ the King, the Sunday next before , 2020: for the congregations of St James' East Malling and Holy Trinity Larkfield

Readings: Ezekiel 34, 11-16 and 20-24 Ephesians 1, 15-end Matthew 25, 31-end

From today’s Collect : ‘Eternal Father, whose Son Jesus Christ ascended to the throne of heaven that he might reign over all things as Lord and King . . . bring the whole created order to worship at his feet’.

Today the church celebrates Christ as King in what is a relatively new festival in the church's calendar, at least as far as the is concerned. The Feast of came into the calendar of the Roman in 1925, but it was only 23 years ago, in 1997, that it found its way into that of the Anglican Church.

Many of our hymns, and perhaps especially the more modern ones from the evangelical wing of the church, have us singing about the kingship of Jesus:

You are the King of Glory, you are the Prince of Peace, you are the Lord of heav'n and earth . . . (Hymns Old and New 570)

Majesty, worship his majesty . . . Majesty, kingdom, authority, flow from his throne . . . magnify, come glorify Christ Jesus the King . . . (HO&N 327)

Rather older is Bishop George Bell's popular hymn 'Christ is the King! O friends, rejoice; brothers and sisters, with one voice let the world know He is your choice. Alleluia!'

And many of St James' congregation, who remember the visit of Michael Saward a few years ago at one of our summer lectures (particularly memorable as he generously gave each one of the congregation a copy of a book containing 75 of his hymns, a book called 'Christ Triumphant') will also have sung many times the hymn which goes by the book's title:

Christ triumphant, ever reigning, Saviour, Master, King! Lord of heaven, our lives sustaining, hear us as we sing. Yours the glory and the crown, the high renown, the eternal name.

Of that hymn Michael wrote: 'Ironically, it is rarely used in the USA as some feminists object to Christ's self-description as 'Son of Man' and others reject the 'royal language' of the 'kingdom of God'. Since the latter is one of the most foundational doctrines of the New Testament it is hard to see what is gained by omitting a hymn which combines virtually all the great themes and titles relating to the person and teaching of Jesus.' But you'll have to read through the hymn yourself to discover that (HO&N 81).

And although it's not in our hymn book at East Malling, one which I often heard when accompanying the Bishop of Tonbridge to some of the evangelical churches in the diocese comes to mind:

Jesus, we enthrone you We proclaim you are king Standing here, in the midst of all We raise you with our praise . . .

Of course, some of our more traditional hymns, great hymns of praise and adoration, also help us to proclaim Christ as Lord and King: Rejoice, the Lord is King, Your Lord and King adore. His kingdom cannot fail, He rules o’er earth and heaven.

One of my personal favourites is the hymn in which we are invited to Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne . . . And hail him as thy matchless King through all eternity. Crown him the Lord of years, the Potentate of time, Creator of the rolling spheres, ineffably sublime. Glassed in a sea of light, where everlasting waves Reflect his throne, the Infinite who lives - and loves - and saves.

What opportunities the church’s music gives us for proclaiming Christ as King.

To celebrate Christ as King is, of course, nothing new. It was in the 4th century that the 'Te Deum', one of the Church’s greatest hymns of praise, was composed; it found its way into the , and is said or sung at Morning Prayer – Matins – and because both Matins and have largely lost the place that they once held in Sunday worship, it is therefore, sadly, seldom heard these days in the church's worship. One section of it, of course, jumps out as we reflect on Christ as King:

‘Thou art the King of glory, O Christ, Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father’ - and that, of course, is what we proclaim as we celebrate the kingship of Christ. But those words are followed by these: ‘When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb . . . .’ and we have moved from the picture of Christ in the heavenly places to the infant in a manger, for which the season of Advent begins to prepare us next week, for this Festival of Christ the King is always held on the Sunday before Advent. Perhaps it's no coincidence, therefore, that a Sunday commemorating Christ the King should, in our calendar of the Church’s year, immediately precede the Advent season. And just as the Creed ignores any reference to the ministry of Christ (we move, after all, from ‘born of the Virgin Mary’ to ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’), so the Te Deum ignores it as well, and moves on from the Cross and the Resurrection to the Ascension and the picture of Christ in glory –

'When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Thou sittest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father. We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge'. On the last two Sundays, and on this, as I mentioned last week, we're being prepared to get ready for Advent, as Advent itself gets us ready for , and there, in that small section of the Te Deum, we are given the Advent theme: 'we believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge'. What a mix of themes and seasons - Advent, Christmas, the Passion, Resurrection, and the Ascension, all tied up in those few lines; the earthly life of Jesus sandwiched in the middle of Christ in the heavenly places – Christ, there from eternity and there for all eternity.

That, of course, is what St John portrays in the prelude to his gospel which we will hear in exactly five weeks’ time on Christmas morning – ‘In the beginning was the Word’ (and by the Word he means Jesus) ‘and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made'. There was Christ with the Father before creation.

St Paul also has it in his letter to Colossians as he writes about what the NIV Bible subtitles 'The supremacy of Christ' – ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together’ (Col. 1, 15-17). Then there is a world awaiting His coming (and for that we begin to prepare next Sunday); then He comes to show us what God is like; and then He returns at the Ascension to the heavenly places ‘that He might rule over all things as Lord and King’, as today's Collect reminds us.

And so we celebrate today, as a prelude to all that, Christ the King.

But not only in writing to the Christian community in Colosse but also to that in Ephesus, as this morning's reading reminded us, Paul reminds his readers of the power of God 'which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet . . . (Eph. 1, 20-22).

Psalm 93 sums it up for us : ‘Ever since the world began your throne has been established; you are from everlasting’. And Psalm 24 could almost serve as the text for today: ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be lifted up you everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in. Who is the king of glory ? The Lord of hosts, he is the king of glory’.

The earliest of the Christian creeds was perhaps a little phrase which occurs almost a hundred times in the New Testament, ‘Jesus is Lord’. That was how Christians in the early days preached Christ crucified and risen. In the western church we often portray the suffering Christ upon the cross – many of our crucifixes have that image on them – but in the eastern church Jesus on the cross is invariably depicted as triumphant: ‘The universal Lord is he Who reigns and triumphs from the tree’ as one of our hymns has it.

And there is the great paradox in our proclamation of Christ as King, for never once in the gospels, except in response to Pilate's questioning, is there a record of Jesus claiming to be a king. There is a great deal about the kingdom, and Jesus told many parables about it - the kingdom is like treasure hidden in a field, like seed which is sown and which grows secretly and slowly, like mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, like a lamp giving light to the whole house, and - the shortest of all the parables - like yeast: "What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough". There is a delightful poem by R S Thomas (1913-2000), the Welsh poet and priest, called 'The Bright Field', in which he writes about the pearl of great price, the parable in Matthew's gospel (13, 45-46) referring to the kingdom:

I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had treasure in it. I realise now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to a miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

Plenty about the kingdom, then, but nothing about Himself as King. The nearest He comes to it is in that conversation with Pilate: Pilate summoned Jesus and asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" "Is that your own idea?" Jesus asked, "or did others talk to you about me? My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place". "You are a king then!", said Pilate. Jesus answered "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth" (John 18, 33-37 - NIV version).

And yet, this king whom we proclaim today is unlike any other. He is not our idea of a king, and the clue to that comes in one of our great Ascension hymns - The head that once was crowned with thorns Is crowned with glory now. Ours is not a king who has come into his kingdom with great acclamation; his throne is a Cross. His crown is one of thorns. He comes to his kingdom through suffering.

W H Vanstone, born in 1923 and brought up in a working-class background, was ordained in 1950, and because of his intellect various Oxbridge colleges were eager for his services in teaching, but he was committed to parish and parochial ministry. Following his ordination he served for 28 years in the two Lancashire parishes of Halliwell and Kirkholt until a heart attack persuaded him to accept a residentiary Canonry at Chester Cathedral. Even so, he insisted on living in a small cottage rather than the Canon's large residence. He wrote a number of books, but the one I have in mind from which to quote is 'Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense', the title of which came from a poem with which he ended the book which has been described as 'a vision of the suffering God disclosed in Jesus Christ'. The poem, sung now as a hymn, begins

Morning glory, starlit sky, soaring music, scholar's truth, flight of swallows, autumn leaves, memory's treasure, grace of youth . . .

. . . and the last verse is this:

Thou art God, no monarch thou, throned in easy state to reign; thou art God, whose arms of love aching, spent, the world sustain.

That is the King, Christ the King, whom we proclaim today, the God who comes to his throne through suffering.

But our proclamation of Christ the King has to be not only in our singing and in our speaking, but in our lives. We live in a world of scepticism and doubt, and as two Christian communities in East Malling and Larkfield we are there to bear witness to the claims of the gospel, and to Christ risen, ascended, glorified. We have to live out our following of Christ the King in whatever way is appropriate to each one of us.

Hence today’s Collect:

Eternal Father, whose Son Jesus Christ ascended to the throne of heaven that he might rule over all things as Lord and King: keep the Church (and that's you and me!) in the unity of the Spirit and in the bond of peace, and bring the whole created order to worship at his feet; who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

All hail the power of Jesus' name! let angels prostrate fall; bring forth the royal diadem and crown Him, crown Him, crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.