Ultimately, Jesus’ death lays bare all human self-glorification and thereby every superficial and presumptuous notion of the reign of God. God’s realm can happen only where human beings collide with their own limits, where they do not know how to go on, where they hand themselves over and give space to God alone, so that God can act. Only there, in the zone of constant dying and rising, the reign of God begins.
-Gerhard Lohfink
Perhaps we all come to the notion of “Christ the King” with a bit of a disadvantage over earlier ages. After all, the whole idea of royalty in our culture is colored either by the Romantic heroes found in stories like the Lord of the Rings or the legends of King Arthur, or by the jet-set antics of the British royal family. In this last group, the notion of a King usually comes down to someone with too much money, too few brains, and no real job. Perhaps we admire Charles or Harry or William as fantasy figures—along the lines of movie stars or the children of a billionaires—but they are hardly our model of the Savior of humanity. Somehow, I cannot imagine Christ the King playing polo with the rich and famous, or having his picture taken for Town and Country or TMZ.
In both of these visions—the Romantic and the modern—we have lost the sense that earlier ages had of monarchy and divine right: lost the notion that one can be a true and proper King or Queen, called to rule not because of votes counted, but because rule is one’s mission and identity. And given this lost sensibility, our temptation can be to turn the gospel notion of the reign of God and the kingship of Christ into a kind of Romance, or to dismiss it all together as a meaningless anachronism, held over from the Medieval Church, which sought to flatter the Emperor by remaking the image of Christ into his image. Like kneeling to kiss a bishop’s ring or the red shoes worn by the Pope (shoes symbolic of the Emperor), the idea of Christ the King seems sadly out of date in a Church rocked by scandal and a world misshapen by poverty and the abuse of power. And whether one follows the Romantic path or the modern one, on the last Sunday of the year, this feast seems disconnected from real life, a toothless last bite for the liturgical calendar.
But merely to dismiss or, worse yet, to romanticize this feast means rejecting or distorting a central image in the history of Christianity—an image that predates Constantine and unites Jesus to his own Jewish identity and history. For Jesus proclaims the reign of God—already present in the prophets—both by his words and by his deeds. He uses this promise of the kingdom as a means to locate himself among the People of God, and then takes that promise and opens it up, fulfilling it in both time and space. For whereas the ancient prophecies had spoken of the reign of God as “somewhere” and “someday,” Jesus declares that the reign of God is here—in him and through him—and now—already unfolding in the midst of the people. What has yet to be done, i.e., yet to be fulfilled, is not God’s action, but the response of the People of God. This is a radical and revolutionary teaching, for what Jesus is saying is that, in his presence in the midst of God’s people, the kingdom has already come, though its fullness requires our response, and is slowed only by the People’s continuing rejection.
Hardly a Romantic hero, then, and certainly no jet setter, Jesus comes into the world in poverty, yet still as God’s anointed, whose very Incarnation is the fulfillment of the ancient promises that God will dwell among the People. Following John the Baptist, Jesus’ preaching goes further, asking not just for the repentance that prepares for the Kingdom, but also proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is here, now, “in your midst,” waiting only to be acknowledged. The King is not hidden, like Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings, but is preaching and healing, teaching and walking among the very People who are the locus of the reign of God. As with Abraham, who becomes a great nation, Jesus comes as one person, inviting others to choose and affirm, and so become the real and existing People of God—a true nation, not a metaphor, who manifest the Spirit of God.
Whereas Romantic or modern notions of kingship are all about the power of the individual or the individual’s prestige, for Jesus, kingship emerges from the way in which he himself manifests this reign of God, to which all are called. Kingship is not about his power, but about his service as proclaimer and gatherer of the People of God. It is not about his demand that the people defend him, but about his willingness to lay down his life, even for those who abandon and betray him. Thus, Jesus takes our distorted notions of kingship and turns them on their head. This is the prophetic (and one might say, ironic) quality of this feast: that the Kingship of Christ comes forth not in Jesus’ power to wrest dominion from his enemies, but in the humility by which the People of God come to affirm their own submission—in imitation of Jesus—to the grace of God’s reign. It has already begun because Jesus has surrendered himself fully to God, and it is coming to be insofar as all the People of God are on the way to such surrender.
When Jesus stands before Pilate, in judgement of his life, it appears to the world that Pilate has the power of the king; yet, this is Jesus’ Hour of Glory, when all that he is—his reason for coming into the world—comes to its fruition. No Romantic hero, Jesus does not reveal himself as king—in the style of Arthur or Aragorn—but pushes off the title, saying to Pilate, “You say I am a king.” For it is not kingship, as the world knows it—i.e., as self-centered control—that makes Jesus a king; rather, it is his mission, as one who gathers the People of God around the truth: “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” Thus, the feast of Christ the King, in the irony of the Cross, becomes the pinnacle of the whole salvation story—for Jesus holds onto nothing and so becomes ruler of everything. He surrenders himself to death, and so gives all people life. He lays down his life for those who would destroy him, and so frees those who would destroy him from the fear and fetters that had held them bound. He is our king, because he has become our savior and friend.
Fr. John Whitney, S.J.
Photo: Station of the Cross IX in St. Ignatius Church by Pietro Rudolfi of Rome, 1914, restored in 2006. His Third Fall “He shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities.” Is. 53:11