Christ the King Column

This Sunday is Christ the King, and it marks the end of the church year. I get annoyed at Christmas bumping up against Thanksgiving in the cultural calendar, but here we have the end of a year a month before Dec. 31.

This is a relatively new church doliday. Its origin is with Pope Pius  in 1925. Mussolini's fascism was already on the rise. The Roman church found its secular position weak and unrespected. He wanted to remind Christians that Christ is Lord of our hearts and minds and souls no matter who is the temporal, secular power.

Of course, my Reformed tradition sees the messianic work of Jesus as going through the three anointed figures in Scripture: priest, prophet, and king. Just a few years later, the Barmen Declaration  demanded not only dignity for the church but reminded Christians of the dangerous alliance of church and state.

I always have a bit of trouble with this day as an American, as I have an immediate pre-rational objection to the very word and notion of a king.

So as the church years end, we look to a cosmic Christ on this day. We look at Christ as Lord of the cosmos.

Not long ago,I heard on the radio about a NASA staffer of long service. Lately he has the sad task of answering mail from folks concerned that the book of Revelation indicates that a mysterious planet was to hit us  at the end of September, no October, no November. As a Christian, i am embarrassed by the attempt to make the Bible of recipe book for the end of the ages. Even so, I have some sympathy for it. While the older long-established churches have kept quiet about the end time texts at this time of year, other folks have been pounded  with a nice chart that describes the end of the age. The chart of Darby in the 19th century foresaw a series of calamities. That means that calamities as to be welcomed as a sign of God’s impending action. When people feel powerless, they look for a divine hand, a powerful hand, to carry them to a new and better world.

Instead Jesus Christ show us this: Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 110: “There are no miracles on the road of his passion. On the cross he dies in forsakenness by God and man. Or is this the greatest of all the miracles, the all-embracing healing? ‘He bore our sicknesses and took upon himself our pains … and through his wounds we are healed’ (Isa. 53:4, 5). This was how the gospels saw it. So Jesus heals not only through ‘power’ and ‘authority’ but also through his suffering and helplessness.” As Luther would say, we find divine authority  hidden under its expected opposite.

The eminent theologian Brian Gerrish speaks instead of Christ the queen and king maker. Following the hoe that Israel would become a “kingdom of priests” he asserts that under Christ’s reign we have the equality of all, as in Paul’s great words in Gal. 3:37-8.

At the same time, this day is a salutary reminder of the expectations God has of political leaders. Most of all, they are to promote justice. There is a public political word: justice. If we are to be a world of justice, all of us are being handed the responsibility to help make this a more just place, a place fit for human beings.

In the end, Christ is the Lord of life, the King of creation. Again, Moltmann points us to a God whose vision is a celebration of life, into an anxious waiting for annihilation.