Homily: King

Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 34 / Sunday: Solemnity of Christ the King

Readings: Daniel 7.13-14 / Psalm 92. 1ab, 1c-5, 5 (R/v 1a) / Revelations 1.5-8 / John 18.33b-37

Sisters and brothers, I wonder how many of us appreciate the Church’s presentation of Jesus as Christ the King today as we end the liturgical year and before we begin Advent and Christmas.

For many of us, today may be another Christ the King mass like every other year. Followed by another Advent, another Christmas, and another year of feasts and celebrations. The same old, same old. 

I’d like to propose that today’s solemnity is offering us something more for our Christian life. And it has everything to do with how Jesus is King.

We associate many images with kingliness. Opulence and riches, power and might are words we associate with kingliness. Kings are distant, unapproachable, high and mighty, surrounded by flatterers and jesters. They wear too much finery. Their lives have too many trappings and trimmings of grandeur and tradition. Rare is a king who lives and acts otherwise.

Our readings today begin with similar imagery of kingliness. The first reading is filled with grand associations of kingship. Daniel envisions an eternal lord who comes from on high to receive dominion, glory, and kingship. All the peoples, nations and languages serve this king. Our psalm sings of regal splendour. Of a lord and king robed in majesty whose throne is great, immovable and mighty, and whose decrees are worthy of trust. Even the words of the Book of Revelation in our second reading, portray an absolute ruler. He is a faithful witness of God’s lordship and power. This king is “the Alpha and the Omega, the One who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” 

But this king is unlike the kings we know. He comes with love – with love for us and with love to liberate us. He stands before the throne of God not because he is powerful like a lion. He stands because of us; he is the meek lamb sacrificed for our salvation. He is indeed the Lamb of God.  This is a strange king to be sure. 

Indeed, this is how the Passion narrative in John’s Gospel portrays Jesus as king. Here, all our expectations of kingliness turned upside down. Jesus is the king-servant who washes his disciples’ feet. Jesus’ action is strangely kingly, not because it is grand but it is noble, both in his quiet vulnerability but, more so, in the utter truth of his being – kingly in his service to others and in his servitude to God. 

And he calls us to go and do likewise: to go and wash another’s feet. To go and serve, not as an army for war but as friends to accompany him on his mission. This king just invites, trusting in nothing else but our heart’s desire to follow him.

In answering Pilate, Jesus says that his kingdom is not of this world. It is a kingdom not forged by warfare. Rather, it testifies to the truth. It will not kill for the truth. Rather, it will die for it. Jesus modelled this truth: he suffered and died. He did not demand ransom for his freedom, nor win it, by spilling the blood of others. He died for the truth to save all and won for us God’s kingdom by offering himself as a sacrifice – as the Lamb of God.

Many of us today, like Christians in centuries past, struggle with Jesus’ kingship and the kingdom he announces. It is too radical to envision, too difficult to comprehend, too challenging to live out. Maybe many of us express our struggles silently within our hearts like this: “Jesus’ way is too holy; I can’t do as he did; I’m never going to be Christian enough.”

But it is equally true that thousands of Christians throughout history recognized in Jesus a kingliness that summoned nothing less than the loyalty of their free human hearts, however little or much it was. Something was unlocked in them when they encountered Jesus and discovered a “lord of life” who came not to dominate humanity but to save and serve it. For them, Jesus was indeed the king of their lives.

The saints teach us how possible this is: they encountered Jesus as king of their lives; they fell in love with him; they stayed with him to the end, as best as they could. Have we discovered Jesus as the king of our lives?

Jesus is the king St Ignatius of Loyola invites every retreatant to follow in the meditation on “The Call of an Earthly King” in the Spiritual Exercises. In this meditation, Ignatius contrasts Jesus to an earthly king who calls all to join him in conquering all the lands of the infidels. And by doing so, they are to share in both the toil and the victories.

For Ignatius, Jesus is the eternal king whose call to all is not to earthly gain but to the glory of God. He calls each and everyone in a unique way to the enterprise of God’s mission. It will involve labour and there will be suffering. But following Jesus will lead to glory. Only those with a greater love for God will not just hear Jesus’ call; they will follow him, not the earthly king.

Here in this meditation, before the meditations on Advent and Christmas in the Spiritual Exercises, Jesus is asking the retreatant and all of us to join him. He wants to be in union with us. He wants us to enter into his life, as he desires to enter ours. He has come to be with us so that we might be with him. 

Jesus as our king only asks us to love him with the simplicity and earnestness of our desire to want to be together with him, no matter what. 

Today, we are reminded that all Jesus desires as the king is for the union of our hearts – his and ours. Yes, union of hearts. Nothing more, nothing less.

Hasn’t this been Jesus’ message to us throughout this past year? Hasn’t it been constant and faithful in the endless times Jesus has been with us and for us in all these different ways and more: in a family member’s love and forgiveness, a friend’s faithful care, a colleague’s unexpected support, a classmates’ enduring companionship, an acquaintance’s total selflessness, and even a stranger’s painful challenge that made us more Christian?

It is therefore good and right for us to acknowledge today how our thanksgiving in such moments speak of this truth: that our hearts will never outgrow that human longing for such a promised friend and ruler in Jesus.

And if we profess this is true, then we must embrace that growing ache to love selflessly, to give everything away for the greater good ofof all, just like Jesus whom we follow.  This is how Jesus' kingship forms us to live in service for all and to live in servitude to God alone.

Today we are not being asked to appreciate the images of lord and king. Rather, we are to celebrate the kingdom of God that Jesus as Christ the King stirs in all our hearts to bring about. In this kingdom, God’s love abounds and God’s truth reigns. Yes, this kingdom is not of this earth, yet Jesus brings this about by his coming as king. 

We are being invited to ponder such a kingdom today before we imagine the mystery of the Incarnation at Christmas. Yes, Christmas is coming. We are looking ahead to it from a distance in time and from our fragile world of broken promises and broken hearts. We behold sin, our own included, before us. And so we yearn for the manifold glimmers of grace breaking through the darkness on that silent, holy night. 

This is why we must ponder Jesus as king today: so that we can look ahead with sure hope. Yes, Jesus will come as king – king of our lives. Indeed, it is good that today’s celebration of Christ the King reminds us that we will always be ready for Advent.

Inspired by a homily by Fr J Benitez

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

photo: from internet: united church of god