I begin with confession: I have a strong affinity for movies that feature the forces of good triumphing over the forces of evil (the two being quite clearly distinguishable) and especially if there’s nail-biting battle scene where the hero rides in on a white horse at the last minute to save the day. Think Gandalf on said horse leading the riders of Rohan to save the good guys at Helm’s Deep in the “Lord of the Rings.”
Another confession: I do actually like the fuss over royalty. I don’t mean celebrity; there’s a difference. I mean the grace and understated authority of, say, Queen Elizabeth II. The idea of swearing fealty to a beneficent monarch – especially if she could actually fix things – appeals to me.
Given these confessions, the Feast of Christ the King ought to be a slam dunk in my book. Many Christians will celebrate this feast on November 22 this year, which brings the long season after Pentecost to a close. This makes a great deal of liturgical sense. As the Christian calendar ends (the first Sunday of Advent on November 29 marks the beginning of the new Christian year), we Christians laud our King and anticipate the coming Kingdom of God – and given recent world events, not a moment too soon.
Yes, I harbor fantasies of Christ-as-Gandalf riding in on that great horse and solving the terrorism problem. And yes, I would gladly bow and genuflect before Jesus, my Lord and King. But I am deeply troubled.
The trouble began some years ago by reading and listening carefully to feminist critiques of male power and the way institutional Christianity supports male dominance over women (and basically everything else). That dominance is made explicit in our accolades for “Christ the King.” The trouble deepened by delving into the history of the Roman Empire’s appropriation of Christ as a figure of imperial authority, wedding “church” and “state” in a bond that has wreaked cultural havoc ever since.
Given those problems, I sympathize with efforts to revise this last Sunday of the year with language about the “reign of God” or even the “divine commonwealth.” I suppose we could try using the language of “governor” or “president.”
But no. The problem is governance itself, lordship, reigning, presiding, ruling, or in short, power. I’d like to think humans capable of discerning the difference between beneficial and malignant power. Alas, we are easily beguiled by power and mostly, it seems to me, incapable of imagining (much less enacting) a non-coercive power – or even articulating what in the world that means.
In a world of violence and terror, power itself is a dangerous concept, even when wielded by the ostensibly beneficent. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us years ago, hate can never cast out hate; only love can do that. And so I wonder about power itself in the light of Dr. King’s insight and in a world where “kingly” power is all too evident in its ghastly effects.
I found some solace in these vexations, for a time, by returning to my Evangelical roots. Rather than anticipating a worldly kingdom, I turned inward and focused on the need for Christ to “reign” in my heart, to transform it and rule over it. And, of course, there too the problem of coercive power remained.
A student reminded me of this rather pointedly in one of my classes last year. I made an offhand remark about how “compelling” and “irresistible” God is as a source for transformation. The student objected. “Anything that even sounds like coercion is not God,” he said. I objected in return, but only half-heartedly; he was right. (And I thank God for the gift of teaching, from which I learn so much.)
There is no throne in my heart from which Christ needs to reign and there is no throne on this planet just waiting for Christ to sit in it – even though I still long for both moments. Ah – longing! That’s where my attention belongs.
A world of violent power doesn’t need Christians gathered to one-up the world’s power with the “true king,” no matter how we dress it up. If the world needs anything from Christians it’s the way the Gospel could inspire us to create desirable spaces. I mean, spaces where we can remember desire itself, or perhaps touch for the first time our deepest longings, yearnings, and hopes.
What God does in Christ, in other words, is lure us toward love, planting within us the desire for love and connection, for justice and peace, for unimaginable reconciliation. The divine lure toward love, vulnerability, and trust – that alone will change the world.
This year, on the Feast of Christ the King, many Christians will be hearing these words from John’s Jesus as he stood before Pilate, representing the might of Rome: “If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would be fighting…”
The “kingship” of Christ has nothing to do with fighting, with dominance, with victories defined by how many losers are subdued or killed. The “kingship” of Christ has nothing to do with power at all of the kind that any of us now know.
Christ the King rejects kingship in favor of vulnerability, the kind born from love, the kind that breeds trust, the kind that changes me so that I can help to change the world. If that’s what “kingship” is, I would gladly genuflect – and then stand up and start loving.
Jay –
Thank you for sharing these words. As I’ve prepared to preach this morning, I’ve wrestled with these very same thoughts. It’s a tough Sunday.
I’ve decided that the Reign of Christ/Christ the King is more about belonging than anything else. It’s a celebration of the ever-widening circle. Jesus invited into his circle those who were deemed most inappropriate by the society and Empire of the day. The unlikelies, outcasts, and misfits. Women, poor women at that, were the heroes of his stories. Samaritans. Children. Lepers. It is no different today. The kingship of Christ allows me to say, perhaps for the very first time, “I belong. There is a safe space that was created just for me.”
http://youtu.be/Cm6bZz22znE
This is a link to a song I heard for the first time at a music and worship camp this past summer. It was written by Mark Miller, a biracial gay adoptee who knows a thing or two about being an outcast. He is the composer-in-residence at Drew, and when he was asked to coordinate the worship for the General Convention of the United Methodist Church, this song was included. A subtle reminder of the Reign of Christ, I cannot think of a better theme song for the church as webmove from one liturgical year to the next.
Draw the circle wide
Draw it wider still.
Let this be our song:
No one stands alone.
Standing side by side,
Draw the circle –
Draw the circle wide.
Would love to hear your sermon goes!
Here is quintessential Jay Emerson Johnson…exquisite in every way.
Here is quintessential the Reverend Jay Emerson Johnson, Ph.D: exquisite in every way.