A Reflection for the Feast of Christ the King All Saints’ Episcopal, Southern
Shores, NC November 20, 2016 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Greatest
Allegiance
Today is the feast of Christ the King, which is the
last Sunday before Advent. What do we mean by “King”? The King is an outward
and visible sign of the spirit of a nation, and therefore he is invested with a
quasi-divine status as God’s representative on earth. Often the King is the
political and military leader of that nation and is invested with symbols of
worth - palaces, regalia, titles, ruffles, and flourishes. Musicians often play
anthems to announce the comings and goings of the King. He is given a place of
honor, which is usually above his subjects, so he can look down on them with
condescension and they will look up to him in awe. To rise up against a King is
considered treason and is fought with the King’s military and political power.
We call ourselves citizens of a republic because we,
in our history, threw off the yoke of King George III, but what we did then was
to elect Presidents to whom we have, over the centuries, invested with the aura
of Kingship. We created semi-monarch figures who live in a palace with lots of regalia.
Instead of “God Save the King”, our musicians play “Hail to the Chief” preceded
by four ruffles and flourishes. That particular song takes its title from a Sir
Walter Scott poem, The Lady of the Lake,
as the hero advances in glory. “Hail” in this context means the awareness that
we are in the presence of a powerful force with an almost divine stature to which
we acknowledge authority over our lives and imaginations. We see “Hail” used in history with “Hail
Caesar” or “Heil Hitler” or “Hail Mary”. We don’t usually consider disagreement
or opposition to the President as treason, but some will plot an overthrow by
ballots at the next election if their lives are not satisfactory. An Oxford
historian, Frank Prochaska, observed “the Loyalists lost in the Revolution but
had their revenge in the republic”. Monarchies blame their Kings for their
misfortunes, and we blame our Presidents. Novelist Jennifer Donnelly reflects,
“Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and
presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread.”
Shakespeare did a great number of plays where the
theme is the nature of being a King.
Some were tyrants and scoundrels, some were good and heroes, but almost
all of them lived with the anxiety of losing what it meant to be a King. In Henry VI part 3, Act 3, scene 1 after
several attempts by others to take Henry’s crown and become King, Henry
disguises himself and goes for a walk. A gamekeeper stops him and, in their
discussion the gamekeeper asks him, if he (Henry) is a King, where is his
crown? Henry replies:
“My Crown is in my
heart, not on my head:
Not deck'd with Diamonds, and Indian stones:
Nor to be seen: my Crown is call'd Content,
A Crown it is, that seldom Kings enjoy.”
Not deck'd with Diamonds, and Indian stones:
Nor to be seen: my Crown is call'd Content,
A Crown it is, that seldom Kings enjoy.”
The Bible spends a lot of time looking at what it
means to be a King and still be faithful to God and pursue justice and mercy.
Jeremiah, in today’s Hebrew Testament reading, reflects on all who were Kings
in the past. He uses the image of a shepherd
for King, and concludes that they were failures in that they were never
satisfied nor content; rather they, in their thirst for power and fear of losing
it, destroyed and scattered the sheep in the pasture. Jeremiah has a vision
which looks forward to a new kind of King who would rule faithfully as God’s
regent on earth.
What the Jesus movement promotes is to see this new
kind of King in Jesus. The Kingdom they envisioned was not plots of land with
borders and political and military strength. Rather they saw Jesus, who was
crowned with a crown of thorns and raised up upon the cross to look over those
who were his subjects - and his enemies - as the outward and visible sign of
God’s Kingdom. The writer to the Colossians lays it out saying the church sees
Jesus as an embodiment of the Christ, the creating and communicating energy of
God, who chose not to announce the presence of God through power and might or
ruffles and flourishes, but through vulnerable love. Over the years they
reflected that, when they had seen this Jesus, they were really seeing through
Jesus into God’s communicating love.
We seem to like Kings and strong rulers, but this
Christ Jesus brings us up short. Today
in the 1st Chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we have the Canticle from the
Song of Zechariah in which Zechariah declares that God is calling his son, who
will later be called John the Baptizer, as the one who will prepare the way and
preach the God of tender compassion. Later in the same Gospel, Luke paints a
verbal picture of the scene of the crucifixion. The disciples have all fled. At
the top of the cross, the official declaration makes fun of the title “King of
the Jews” with the implied threat that this will happen to those who choose to
follow anyone other than the one with the power of the occupying army. At the
foot of the cross, the soldiers mock Jesus as a failed King. One criminal, who
tradition says was named “Gestus”, on an adjacent cross to the left, baits
Jesus as a poseur and pours out bitter scorn that if Jesus is innocent, then it
would have been useless to repent since Jesus seems to have no power. The other
criminal, who tradition says was on the right and was named Dismas, is the only
one who sees with a different vision and becomes the first citizen of the
Kingdom, breaking in as Jesus has been placed on the throne of the cross. This
is the first royal proclamation of the Kingdom of Tender Compassion.
I have a great niece, River, whose mother is my
niece, born in Charlotte and who has a dual citizenship in the United States
and Canada. The child’s father has a
dual citizenship in Great Britain and Canada, so River has a choice as she
grows up as to which country she will claim citizenship. But the reality is
that all of us have choices today on our ultimate citizenship. This is the
tension in which we, as Christians, live. William Henry Seward, who was
Secretary of State under Lincoln, lived in this tension when he was a Senator as
he thundered after the Supreme Court Dred Scott decision, “There is a Higher
Law than the Constitution, there is a greater Judge than the Supreme Court.”
After our recent election, many of the parishioners
in this church were either delighted or flabbergasted in horror over the
results. My idea of a political
statement is a pledge to “Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God”, a
statement that never made it to the ballots.
We are all living in a nation tinged with the “loyalist’s revenge” of
investing semi-divine status on our Presidents. When we as a church celebrate
Christ the King, indeed every time we come together, we are saying that there
is a higher power to which we pledge allegiance. All the lesser powers are
also-rans, and while we invest time, energy, and money in those lesser powers, we
pray for them, not to them. Our ultimate loyalty is elsewhere.
Greatest
Allegiance
Once
again the air is filled with chants,
Declarations
of loyalty to the winners
or
“wait until next time” ‘fore winters
of
future when will get a new chance.
Cries
of such pain issued of accusing
the
almighty for choosing a bad side,
ignores
that our enemies share a ride
with
us. So much now needs excusing.
We
forget that we are all thus related;
children
of the same God formed out
of
same mother earth, on a same route
and
in God’s infinite mercy are fated
to
be judged and loved equally by how
we
treat others not as an it but a thou.
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