Thought for the Week

 

Sunday 25 November 2007 – Solemnity of Christ the King (Sunday next before Advent)

 

Collect:

Eternal Father,

your Son Jesus Christ ascended to the throne of Heaven

          that He might rule over all things as Lord and King:

keep your Church in the Unity of your Spirit

and in the bond of peace,

and bring the whole created order to worship at his feet;

for He is alive, and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God now and for ever.  Amen.

 

Readings

Jeremiah 23, 1 – 6

 

Psalm 46

 

(Colossians 1, 11 – 20)

 

Luke 23, 33 - 43

 

Today is the Solemnity of Christ the King, the newest bit of the Church’s calendar.  What’s a Solemnity?  It is a feast of the Church, but a very important one, often something to do with the Life of Jesus (as today), or with particular importance for a particular place.  The feast of Saint Patrick, the 17th of March, for example is a Solemnity in Ireland.

 

Christ the King only dates from 1925, when Pope Pius the Eleventh introduced it in his encyclical “Quas Primas”.  Pius XI is one of my favourite Popes.  He was born Achille Ratti.  Ratti spent most of his life as an academic, though he was also a very keen mountaineer, with many important summits to his credit.  It was only in 1918, at the end of the First World War, when he was 61, that he was sent by Pope Benedict the Fifteenth as Apostolic Visitor to Poland, where he was quickly promoted to Nuncio. 

 

It was a difficult time for Poland.  She had only just won her independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and was being threatened by the Soviet Union.  Ratti was a brave man – he could have left Warsaw when the Red Army threatened the city, but he chose to stay, to support the Polish people in their struggle to keep their freedom. 

 

After just three years as Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, he was elected Pope in 1922.  The Atheist Soviet Empire was on the March. Communism and socialism were gaining a hold on the world political stage, and in the hearts and minds of ordinary people, and in particular in the Trade Union Movement.  The League of Nations, grudgingly supported by war-weary states, seemed powerless to do anything.  By 1925, when Pius XI wrote “Quas Primas”, Mussolini had become Dictator of Italy, and Adolf Hitler had published “Mein Kampf”, his blueprint to take over the world. 

 

To many, it seemed as if the slaughter of the First World War was a failure of the Christian Faith, and perhaps it was.  Christianity was on the back foot, and it must have been a real temptation to Pius XI to turn his back on the world, and retreat to the safety of the Vatican.  His predecessors had more-or-less done that since the newborn country of Italy had taken the Vatican states from the Papacy in 1870. 

 

But Pius XI did the exact opposite!  Perhaps the mountaineer triumphed over the academic!  First he restored the annual speech “Urbi et orbis” to the City and to the World from the Vatican Balcony.  This was to be a Papacy with a message for the whole world.  He went on to establish Vatican Radio, and was the first Pope to broadcast on the wireless.  He began the process of talking to the Church of England, and to the Eastern Orthodox Churches, though he was always wary of the Protestant Churches.

 

But from our point of view, today, the most important thing he did was to establish the Solemnity of Christ the King.

 

For Pius XI this was not just a nice idea – it was central to the man and to what he saw the mission of the Church to be about.  It is clear that he cared passionately about the whole concept of Christ the King, and desperately wanted Jesus to be the Lord of every individual, and all states and organisations.  He wanted to stem the tide of secularism that seemed then to be sweeping the world.  Today, to that wave of secularism has been added a new, and growing, confidence in other world religions, and the message of Pius XI is even more relevant now than it was in his own time.

 

So, what do we mean when we say “Christ the King”?  The first person to claim that title for Jesus was Pontius Pilate, who had “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” written above his cross.  Perhaps Pilate meant it both as an awful warning to all who dare challenge the might of Rome, and as put-down of Jewish Messianic hopes.  But of course, we know that this one thing alone, Pilate did get right. 

 

There are two kinds of power; right-hand power and left-hand power.  Right-hand power is direct and compelling, and it relies on force and fear.  “Do this, or the consequences will be very unpleasant indeed.”  That is the kind of power a Governor has to use to put down a revolt, and Pilate knew that all too well.

 

Left-hand power is much more subtle; it is persuasion, not compulsion.  Left-hand power relies on example, and ideas catching on and taking root.  It’s about doing things out of love not fear.  It is about respect, and allowing time for people to change their ways of thinking.  Paradoxically, this is the kind of power a Governor needs to use to bring the people of a province round to thinking in the Empire’s way.  Pilate had very few troops to control the large and troublesome Province of Judea, and he knew this all too well.  He had no choice but to listen to the Sanhedrin, to the Pharisees and Sadducees, or the Province would be soon lost in revolt, turmoil and bloodshed.  The risk was all too real – Judea was destroyed, in 70 AD, less than forty years after Pilate passed the sentence that would keep his name alive for 2,000 years.

 

We all know that Jesus said, “My Kingdom is not of this world”, but does that mean that his Kingdom is just about left-hand power?  One of the Temptations, as recorded by Luke, was to use Right-hand power.  Generally, Jesus chose not to.  Certainly, he avoided any hint of Messianic rule.  He could easily have lead a successful revolt against Roman Rule, but he refused to, despite the longings of his disciples.  Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter drew his sword to try and stop Jesus being arrested.

 

However, occasionally, Jesus did use right-hand power.  He did drive out the Moneychangers in the Temple.  He did have some very direct and hard things to say, to the Pharisees in particular, “You white-washed tombs!  Clean on the outside and full of corruption inside!”  He did rebuke the storm, and it became calm at once. 

 

Just as Jesus found it necessary, so for us, sometimes, right-hand power is necessary.  During Pius XI’s pontificate, if we, the allies, had opposed Hitler re-militarising the Rhineland, most commentators agree that Hitler’s government would have fallen, and the Second World War would probably never have happened.  It only needs good people to stand aside and do nothing for evil to triumph.

 

In a way, left-hand and right-hand power are like the two contrasting aspects of God Himself.  We say that He is both Transcendent and Immanent. 

 

Transcendent means that God is holy; He is utterly “other” than us.  He is:

 

·         Infinite –         

the concepts of distance and space cannot be applied to Him.

·         Eternal –

He is outside time itself.

·         Self-existent –     

He does not depend on anything, or anyone else.

 

Immanent means that God is present, intimately involved in every part of his creation, including us.  He is:

 

·         The Creator –

He began everything, and he sustains it all in being.

·         Personal –

He is the living God, with whom we can have a relationship.

·         Loving –

Jesus taught us this most important insight.

 

Right-hand power has to do with the Transcendent aspects of God, while left-hand power has to do with the Immanent aspects.  The transcendent God is all-powerful and all-seeing, and he is so utterly different from us, that we cannot begin to imagine how different He is.  The Immanent God is all-loving and all-understanding, and He is closer to you than your own breathing, and loves you more than any other person ever could.

 

It is all a question of balance.  We have to love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind, yet we must never forget that He is God, and it is He that has made us, and not we ourselves.  Though He is your nearest and best friend, remember that God is an infinity of orders of magnitude greater than you, and you and He can never be equals.  Besides, He is not just a friend, He’s also the Boss, and He has a job for you!  Many Christians before you, gave their lives in his service, and He just might need you to do the same.

 

Equally, it’s no good trying to keep God safely shut up in a holy box, marked “Sunday” or “Church”.  The whole world is His, however inconvenient that may be to the Church, and every corner of your life is His, however inconvenient that may be to you!   Yes, it’s a shame when the world gets there first, but sometimes, the Church needs to listen to the world.  Just as Christ’s Kingship is for the whole world, so the Holy Spirit is already at work in the world, often with those who do not yet acknowledge even his existence, let alone his reign.  There must be dialogue between the Church and the world, and it’s never going to be just a one-way transmission.

 

There’s one more point to make about the Kingship of Christ, and that is that we are his subjects.  This King/subject relationship does not just imply benefits and rights for us, but also duties and service:

 

  • In the first place, you don’t just attend Church to make you feel good about yourself – you are there to be affirmed as God’s precious child, of course.  But you are also there to be challenged by the Gospel, and to renew your vision. 
  • In the second place, you don’t just go to church when you feel like it – it is part of your duty, as one of Christ the King’s subjects.  If you go to Church when you don’t feel like it, you will get at least as much out of the experience as you would if you had felt like going. 
  • In the third place, under Christ the King, the Church and you have a mission.  The Church exists for those who are not its members.  In this Chaplaincy, our mission is to:  know and worship God, serve Him and one another, and build His Church.  The building of his Church means caring for those who are not yet its members, and the communal life of the Chaplaincy should inspire you, and give you opportunities to do just that.

 

We, then, must engage with the world, as Pius XI did, and take seriously the Kingship of Christ.  May God bless you this week, and always, as you live out your life as a subject of Christ the King.  Amen.

 

Fr. Charles Howard: Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude

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