A Reflection for Christ the King
Sunday St. George's Episcopal Church, Engelhard, N.C.
November 25,
2018 Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Preacher and Celebrant
Christ the King:
Ultimate Loyalty
To what or whom do we owe
our ultimate loyalty?
In the Gospel lesson for
today, Pilate, the Roman representative of the Empire, sees Jesus as
a threat to the ultimate loyalty to the Empire. “Pilate asked him,
“So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king.
For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify
to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
When I was an infant my
father took an engineering job in a Central American Country, El
Salvador. We retained our US citizenship but we also had to answer to
the laws of El Salvador which had a history of repressive regimes. We
spent almost five years there and I spoke Spanish as much as I did
English. When we moved to a small town in Pennsylvania for me to
enter the 1st grade and my older brother the 2nd
grade. He and I would speak Spanish to each other on the school bus.
That ended when we kept being beaten up by 3rd and 4th
graders who thought we were invaders and didn't really belonged in
this country. Because we wanted to fit in we refused to speak Spanish
anymore. Later, I would flunk Spanish in college. About a dozen years
ago our County Commissioners played with the issue of who belongs
when they were considering that every thing needed to be in English
only. I spoke at a meeting and shared my experience telling them that
I expected bullying from 3rd graders but not from my
elected officials. When I was younger my loyalty was to fit in to the
bigger group, when I got older my loyalty was to be true to myself.
To what or whom do we owe
our ultimate loyalty?
Something special in this
Diocese happened ten days ago; Bishop Skirving and his wife Sandy
officially became United States citizens. I was one of the members of
the Bishop's Search Committee that considered him when he was still a
Canadian working in a church in Michigan on a Green Card. No one on
that committee brought up the fear that he was one of those
foreigners taking away American jobs. What we looked at was the gifts
that he had been given by God to serve as a minister of Christ in
this Diocese in this part of the State of North Carolina in these
United States. No one seriously asked if he was more faithful to his
native country or to the Lordship of his Savior, Jesus Christ.
To what or whom do we owe
our ultimate loyalty?
The Feast of Christ the
King, the last Sunday of the Season After Pentecost, used to be
called the Last Sunday after Trinity when I was baptized in the
Episcopal Church as a newborn in Missouri. The name change came about
as we entered in serious Ecumenical discussions in the 1950's with
other parts of the wider Church and reflected on the history of how
Christianity had been used.
When the Roman Empire
fell, the church was one of the few institutions that could provide
some stability during the Barbarian invasions. The church took over
the rule of several regions of Italy which came to be called the
Papal States. The Papal Sates were ruled officially by the Popes from
756 until the reunification of Italy in 1870 when the Pope lost
ownership of the Papal States and his rule was drastically narrowed
to the Vatican. In that process of losing temporal power to the
forces of Nationalism and increasing secularism the church had to
redefine to whom we have an ultimate allegiance. Pope Pius XI in 1925
dedicated the Feast of Christ the King to say that Christ is the
ultimate King over all Creation. It took about sixty years of
negotiations to orchestrate some sort of settlement between the
Vatican and the Fascist government of Mussolini in 1929.
To what or whom do we owe
our ultimate loyalty?
In the next next decade
the Christians in Germany had to face that question of ultimate
loyalty with the rise of German Nationalism under the Nazis. The
Nazis pushed for a German Church which would remove “foreign”
elements from Christianity like the Old Testament and some of Paul's
Epistles. They wanted to replace the Bible with Mein Kampt and the
Cross with a Swastika. They pushed for what they called a “Positive
Christianity” which would replace the old doctrines of working for
peace, justice and mercy with survival of the fittest, reliance in
warlike strength and power, racial purity and Hitler as the new
Messiah. There was an opposing movement by some for a “Confessing
Church” that in the Barmen Declaration of 1934 declared that Jesus
was the only Fuhrer they would follow. Thousands of clergy and lay
people were jailed and many executed as enemies of the state.
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil,” warned Dietrich
Bonhoeffer. “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
The majority of Germans went to their usual churches on Sundays and
said the creeds but every other day of the week supported the Nazis.
A prayer written for the German Church was:
- Protect, O Lord, with strength of hand,
- Our people and our fatherland!
- Allow upon our leader's course
- To shine your mercy and your grace!
- Awaken in our hearts anew
- Our German bloodline, loyalty, and strength!
- And so allow us, strong and pure,
- To be your German youth.
To what or whom do we owe our ultimate loyalty?
We, in the United States
of America, had to redefine that same allegiance when the United
States became a Republic. In North Carolina much of the property of
the Church of England, which had been the Established Church,
supported by taxes imposed by the British Kings, had been confiscated
by the State. The North Carolina Constitution of 1776 disestablished
the Anglican church. The Episcopal Church was formed out of the ruins
of the old Church of England in America and struggled over the issue
that we should allow a 4th of July Commemoration to show
loyalty to the state. The North Carolina State Constitution, in
direct violation of the 1st Amendment of the US
Constitution, allowed only Protestants to hold public office until
1837 when until 1870 expanded that to any Christian man. Yet with
all this insistence on Christians in power, did it create any
agreement for what greater ultimate allegiance of Christ meant?
William Seward who was
Senator from New York and a faithful Presbyterian, speaking against
slavery, which was part of our Constitution, in 1850 warned us that
there is a “Higher law than the Constitution.” Whereas Episcopal
Bishop Leonidas Polk of Louisiana, born in Raleigh, thought that his
allegiance to the “Southern Way of Life” which included slavery
called upon him to become a General for the Confederate Army. N. C.
Hughes writes: “Polk accepted the appointment as major general,
considering it "a call of Providence." Passionately
committed to the Confederacy, he felt that it was his duty to enlist
in times when "constitutional liberty seems to have fled."
One example of his piety was when one of his fellow Generals,
Cheatham, yelled encouragement to his troops yelling “Charge 'em
boys! Give 'em Hell boys!” Bishop Polk yelled ; “Charge 'em boys!
Give 'em what General Cheatham says!” Polk was killed in battle
during the defense of Atlanta. The union General Sherman wrote in a
dispatch: "we killed Bishop Polk yesterday and have made good
progress today"
To what or whom do we owe
our ultimate loyalty?
We are a deeply divided
country and have been most of our history. We spend a lot of our time
yelling at people who disagree with us. Some of that yelling is to
identify our own side as true Christians and the other side as
outside of Christ's love.
One of my favorite scenes
from a movie called The
Longest Day, about the D-Day Invasion is when an Allied
General after giving an order for prayers for clear skies, looking at
all the fog could ground the planes giving air cover for the invasion
complains; “Sometimes I wonder which side God is on? The next scene
in German General Blumentritt, unable to get instructions from
Hitler, complains: “This is history. We are living an historical
moment. We are going to lose the war because our glorious Führer has
taken a sleeping pill and is not to be awakened. Sometimes I wonder
which side God is on.”
Governments do pass unjust
laws and pervert justice and many voters can be made to believe lies
to vote for many things that have nothing to do with God's will.
Winston Churchill used to say that “The best argument against
democracy is a five minute conversation with an average voter.”
Jesus, when he is
answering Pilate, does not get into the argument on who is right. He
did not come to do political squabbles but to speak the truth. The
truth, not opinion. Jesus says that anyone who belongs to the Truth
listens to him. Our problem is that we just don't listen.Too often we
baptize our own preferences with what we assume is God's approval. We
do not listen because we are too busy yelling about how right we are
and congratulating ourselves for God being on our side. At this point
of my life, my understanding of truth is that, (1) I am not the
center of the universe but I am made in God's image, (2) I am loved
and blessed by God and (3) the space between me and my neighbor whom
I am to love is Holy Space where God dwells. (4) God is the Alpha and
the Omega, the beginning and the end. Before I was born I lived in
the River of God's love where I continue to swim in this life,
sometimes against the current, and after I am dead I will be still be
immersed in the sea of God's love.
What is the Higher Law?
That higher law is summed up by the Prophet Micah: “What does the
LORD require of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly
with your God.”
To what or whom do we owe
our ultimate loyalty?
Christ the King:
Ultimate Loyalty
Each day I awaken again to
listen
to a night dream. I
struggle to hear
what the Divine whispered
in my ear
so that today's action
I'll Christen.
Today, I swear, it will be
Your Day,
full of justice, love and
mercy done,
my living as if following
God's Son,
“Thy Will Be Done” as
I did pray.
But a tyranny of first
person singular
trips me up again on all
those wants
in the shadows of “Thy
will” haunts
turning the Holy Wine into
a vinegar.
The day now ends, falling
short again,
yet bound as liege to a
gracious reign.
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