Christ the King '12 Jn18:33-7

Christ the King 11/25 John 18:33-7
The dust has settled after our major election. So Christ the King Sunday, a political acclamation closes our liturgical year. As a democracy, We have trouble with the word kingdom, so we do well with the word, regime or realm, or even politics or zone, or maybe God’s way in the world.Even so, it conjures up the specter of power, and that troubles me. far too often, it seems that we transfer political power as coercive, as a command over others. Jesus does not seem to engage in power in that way. instead, Jesus seems to relinquish power over others. Instead Jesus seeks to share power and demonstrate how people can discover power within their own lives and spirit.

I taught political science and still enjoy government and politics  from the sidelines, but I resent and resist partisan politics intruding in worship. Christian ethics do  engage political decisions.I am personally quite strict on separation of church and state, but I rather suspect folks complain about the intrusion of politics into church only when their prejudices and preferences are challenged..My daughter had a good discussion with an old friend, who like her labors under the cloud of being the child of a pastor. Her friend looks at prayer almost soley as a power ploy, to get what he wants, as soon as possible, but typcially of his generation, he want sit yesterday if truth be told. When I look at all of the trouble around, I get annoyed with the very idea of Christ the King Sunday. I grant that it anticipates a time of God’s way finally being established. I accept it as a wonderful image of the future that draws us toward it like a magnet. Still it seems so distant, as I detect but traces of it as it seems to be  in danger of being submerged in a sea of troubles.

I had the privilege of seeing the movie Lincoln last week.It cap[tures some of what I am struggling with. You won’t believe  the effrontery of his advisors. You will see clearly the conflicting expectations and the tightrope he constantly walks.You will see the constant tension between the exigencies of the future and the limits of the possible within the present moments.

I am playing with the idea of a Venn diagram on church and state. Church and state do touch, even intersect, but much of their concerns are different in kind and degree. One circle is formed when Jesus tells Pilate my kingdom is not of this world. I am loath to make too much of a preposition, but here goes. Jesus says of, because he means the source of his kingdom is not here on earth. At the same time, that kingdom does intersect with the earthly political world.The church reflects political decisions in its structure and its decisions. Perhaps nowhere does this get exposed than in the areas the church does not take up or address..That is not a safe place to be. pilate and Herod represent the earthly kingdom. i have long admired David Bowie’s performance as Pontius Pilate where he speaks in a conspiratorial whisper, a sort of ultimate bureaucrat.

I like James Madison’s view that politics can corrupt a religion, but religion can corrupt the work of government as well. I think that the colloquy with Pilate points out the danger of assuming that our particular, partisan political choices are exactly equivalent to the way of God in our world. In the end, power over others by force is a fragile thing. In our lifetime so many dictators have fallen, and even the Soviet Union flew apart.If anything Christ the King tell us of the immense power of divine love and human love to shape a world of our dreams, one day, one fine day.