A Homily for the
Feast of Christ the
King
Pilate therefore said
unto him, “Art
thou a king then?”
Jesus answered, “Thou
sayest that I am a
king.”
—
“Art thou a king,
then?”
Pontius Pilate,
governor of Judaea, the personal representative of Tiberius Claudius
Caesar,
emperor of the Romans and ruler of Europe, North Africa, and the
“Art thou a king,
then?”
What could the
man be thinking? Until a week ago, he
had displayed no political ambition. He
was a wandering preacher, a rabbi, maybe a prophet of sorts. He was an embarrassment to the religious and
social establishment of the province, but hardly a threat, either to
them or to
“Art thou a king,
then?”
This is the
charge they have laid against you, prisoner at the bar.
This is the only charge for which you could
be made to answer in a Roman court. You
may call yourself a prophet, you may call yourself a god; you may call
all the
priests and Pharisees hypocrites; you may expel the money changers from
the
“Art thou a king,
then?”
Don’t tell me
that you have come to bear witness to the truth. What
is
truth, anyway? Don’t you know that I
have power to crucify you and power to set you free?
Why can you not answer a simple
question? Even if you had wanted to
start a revolution, you can see now that you would not have gotten very
far;
your own people are against it, and you were no match for the power of
“Art thou a king,
then?”
He does not
answer. What about you, all you who sit
here? Is this man your
king, then?
It is hard, in
the twenty-first century, even to know what it means to say that a man
is a
king. When we look at those who are
called kings (or queens) nowadays, we see only pale shadows of what
once
was. The kings of
Time was when
being a king meant exercising real power and commanding with real
authority. In ancient times, and even
well into the middle ages, kings made laws, commanded armies, made
life-or-death decisions about people and peoples, controlled vast
quantities of
wealth. Time was when kings were viewed
by their people with awe, with reverence, with fear.
It is quite beyond our experience today,
unless we could imagine someone with the absolute political control of
Kim
Jong-Il, the wealth of Bill Gates, and the celebrity attention of
Britney
Spears.
Time was when
kings were the embodiment of their nations, leading their people in all
great
endeavours. They were simultaneously
military and religious figures, commanding the armies in battle and
presiding
among the priests in the temple.
In Scripture, we
can read about many kings who ruled their people with an iron rod and
caused
empires to fall and rise. We can read
about the Pharaohs of Egypt, about Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, about
Cyrus of
Persia. We can read, too, about the
succession of kings, good, bad, and indifferent, who ruled in
When the Messiah
came, it must have seemed a terrible disappointment to those Jews. He did not bring either military victory or
economic prosperity. If he was a king,
he was not the kind of king they were looking for.
Even his closest disciples, even after he had
been killed and was risen again, asked him:
“Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to
But Jesus did not
come to restore the Davidic monarchy. He
did not come to bring back the golden age of the old kingdom of
Is he a king,
then?
Jesus proclaimed
the coming of a kingdom. His first
recorded words, after his baptism by John in
Where is, then,
this kingdom. Jesus said:
“The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Jesus
said, “The kingdom of heaven is among
you; the kingdom of heaven is within you.”
But he also said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” It is a kind of paradox: the
kingdom is in the world, but it is not of
the world. And yet, it is not a future
kingdom, but a present kingdom. Jesus
does not tell us that we will enter his kingdom when we die. Jesus invites us, commands us, to become
citizens of his kingdom even while we live this
life in this world.
The Jews of the
first century thought that the Messiah would come and lead them to
victory over
the
The problem was
that the human race had been made subject to enemies far worse than
Put to death, then,
the parts of you
that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the
greed
that is idolatry. . . . By these you too
once conducted yourselves, when you lived in that way.
But now you must put them all away: anger,
fury, malice, slander, and obscene language out of your mouths. Stop lying to one another, since you have
taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self,
which
is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator.
The kingdom of
heaven is within us and among us; but although we are citizens of that
kingdom,
we dwell still in the kingdoms of this world, where sin and death still
seem to
hold sway. And yet the time is drawing
nigh,
and the day will soon come when “great voices [will be heard] in
heaven,
saying, The kingdoms of this
world are become the kingdom of
our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.”
And with the
psalmist we shall sing:
Lift up your heads, O
ye gates; and be
ye lift up, ye everlasting doors;
and the King of glory
shall come in.
Who is this King
of glory?
It is the LORD strong
and mighty, even
the LORD mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O
ye gates; and be
ye lift up, ye everlasting doors;
and the King of glory
shall come in.
Who is this King of
glory?
Even the LORD of
hosts, he is the King
of glory.