Power & Service

Sunday 20th November 2005
Year A, Christ the King (The Sunday next before Advent)
Holy Trinity, Hurstpierpoint
Holy Eucharist
Ezekiel 34:11-12;
Matthew 25:31-46

I could just about stand the idea of Nat "King" Cole but when Elvis Presley was crowned "King" I knew that the regal currency had been devalued forever. Then, almost inevitably, came Jack Benny with his "King for a day"; and, now, a footballer can be king for a minute between scoring a goal and being sent off. And in only a slightly different context, the word "King" now just means big, as in Berger King, or king-sized cigarettes, beds; or scallops.

To the modern sensibility, kings are pretty marginal; and, as for Mediaeval kings, they were cruel tyrants who spent most of their time murdering people, foreign or domestic, strangers or even their own children. If you want a reasonably good idea of the reality of Mediaeval kingship, forget Shakespeare's Tudor propaganda about chivalry and glory, and look at Saddam Hussein or Tito. Kings bought peace and quiet for the majority by inflicting terrible punishment on what were feared to be troublesome minorities. Life, to quote the 17th Century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, was nasty, brutish and short; and it was also cheap. People did not live long enough for life to be particularly valued. Everyone, even the rich, were at the mercy of external forces, natural disasters, plagues and famines. Subjects almost always feared rather than loved their kings but their need outweighed their fear.

In the history of our monarchy, Mediaeval brutality gave way to Tudor centralism and then, slowly constitutional monarchy was born. Kingship as an idea has changed so much over time, so what are we to make of the idea of Christ the King? I think there are two ideas about kingship which we need to think about today; power and service.

The first is pretty obvious; a king is king by virtue of the power he wields. Without power he is an empty shell; there is nothing more pathetic than exiled kings, the like of which still float around the spas and casinos of Europe, throwbacks from the 19th Century. We can laugh at Counts that don't count but kings that don't reign are a sad sight.

Even the use of the word king to describe boxers and singers conveys the idea that they are dominant in their field, that they have more power to hit or sing than their rivals. And even in our own age of materialism, hedonism and individualism there is part of us that still hankers after kingship, not so much for the pomp and deference of earlier generations but for what we call "firm leadership". We want powerful people to make hard decisions for us for two very understandable reasons: first, this saves us the bother; and, secondly, it gives us something to grumble about.

What, then, can we say about the power of King Jesus? Ezekiel, in one of his most lyrical and more lucid moments, evokes that now familiar but still wonderfully effective image of the Shepherd caring for his sheep; and Matthew, in describing the awesome power of God's judgment, emphasises that the only thing that will count is service. This is what we would expect from the earthly life of Jesus. The power of King Jesus lies in service. The two attributes of kingship, power and service, are fused in Jesus, as they should be in us. Just as He gave Himself totally for us as a human being, just as he suffered and died for us, just as He left himself to us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, so His power in heaven is not to impose upon us but to continue His service. Jesus told us that He is our only way to the Father; at the end of the Creed we will address our prayers to the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit; and so, as king, Jesus is our true servant; as Graham Kendrick puts it in one of his better efforts, He is the Servant King.

The problem with this idea of the servant king is that it sounds all rather neat and clever. We hear Peter's protest that he is unworthy to have his feet washed by Jesus and within hours Peter is unworthy; we see Jesus washing the feet of his Disciples just before his feet tread the hill of Calvary; we see Him with the water and towel hours before the lance draws water from his naked body. In other words, if we are not careful, the very richness of St. John's Gospel can take us away from the central reality of Jesus as servant. Instead of thinking of this as real we think of it as symbolic. But it is not. Jesus as a human being, as an incarnate being, does not symbolise God's commitment to us, Jesus embodies that commitment; a commitment he lived out in his Passion and death on earth and which He continues to live after the Resurrection as our means to addressing God.

Without Jesus we would have been left with the abstraction of God which set the Jews such a monumentally difficult task. They had to stay faithful to God even when He was little more than an idea in their head. Occasionally they knew Him through His interventions in their history but most of the time they struggled; they understood in the very marrow of their being the stupidity of worshipping bits of wood and metal but so often they were just worn out with the effort of the abstract.

We have no such excuse for worshipping bits of wood and metal, silicon and glass, lycra and linen. We live in the post Resurrection age; but what sort of subjects are we of King Jesus, for without subjects what is a king?

Well, as you have gathered from my little list of materials, I suspect we are not ideal subjects and that, even with the earthly example of Jesus before us, we still stray into materialism; but, as it is, there is plenty of that cheap sort of condemnation to go round; it's quite bad enough knowing we're not ideal without others rubbing it in.

Today, the Feast of Christ the King is, above all, not a time for introspection and guilt trips, but a day for celebration. We have a king of eternal power who puts it all at our disposal; we have a king who serves His people every second of every human life; we have a king who reigns in Heaven forever; and we have a king who wants us to share in His kingdom, not just in Heaven but now, on earth. King Jesus wants us to join Him now, to be caught up in the eternal love between Him and His Father.

Our response, then, should be joyful worship. Now that is a bit daunting! If I announced that we were all about to go into a spell of introspection and penitence we would all know where we were; and we can happily plunge into that from next Sunday when Advent begins. There is a time for penitence, there is a time for sorrow, there is a time for cleansing; but today, I am sorry to say, is a time of joy.

Our purpose on earth is to worship God; that is why He made us; that is why we are here. And our worship as sisters and brothers of King Jesus, as children of the Resurrection should, above all, be joyful. Be of good cheer, there are four weeks of penitence near at hand; but, just for this week, smile for King Jesus!