Year B, Christ the King
John 18:33-37
Today
is the Feast of Christ the King. It’s not one of our more well-known feast
days. There are no greeting cards, no fun traditions and no special decorations or cookies. The feast itself is less than 100 years
old. It was 1925 when Pope Pius XI
declared that this Sunday would be the Feast of Christ the King. In 1925 Europe was still recovering from the
devastating effects of World War I.
Italy was leaning much more secular than it previously had. A church that had once experienced great
power, saw their power and influence waning.
Until
1870, the pope had authority and control over considerable geographic areas of
Italy. That changed in 1870 when the
pope and The Roman Catholic Church lost power over all the land they previously
held, which meant that while the pope retained spiritual authority, he had no
political power. This was a cause of
consternation for the Roman Catholic Church.
After World War I, Italy was struggling to recover from the war. Mussolini came to power and the Catholic
Church found itself negotiating with this new fascist government attempting to retain
some authority in Italy and the world.
The compromise was the creation of Vatican City as an independent
city-state, and recognizing the pope as the head of state. That final compromise came about in 1929,
only 4 years after Christ the King feast day was inaugurated.
It’s
interesting that this feast day, a day committed to recognizing the supreme
authority of Jesus Christ, came in the midst of this political turmoil, a time
when the Roman Catholic Church was struggling to hold on to their own
authority. Now, you could easily look at
the timing and assume that the creation of this feast was a purely political
move by the Church. Many have come to
that conclusion. But I think it was more
than that. The Holy Spirit was in the
midst of this.
I believe
that the leadership of the church was genuinely scared about the future of
Christianity. They had just witnessed
the First World War. It was violence and
death on a scale that no one had seen.
The Church that had once had a voice in the public and political sphere
was now being virtually ignored. The
pope wanted to remind the people, anyone who was still listening, that God was
still almighty, still all powerful. Just
because the church did not have an army behind it did not mean that it did not have
power. So they did what they knew how to
do, they created liturgy to remind people of what real authority and power
looked like.
Now
I have no idea who picked the readings that would be associated with this feast
day. It seems like choosing this reading
from The Gospel of John would have been an odd choice for a church trying to
reassert their authority. If you asked
me to choose a reading to display the power and authority of Jesus, I would
have looked for something where Jesus looked impressive, perhaps the feeding of
the 5000, or one of the many times he spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, or even
one of the resurrection accounts. Those
are feel good moments.
But the
trial scene?? We typically associate this trial scene with Holy Week. We read it on Good Friday and feel sad
because Jesus is about to die and instead of defending himself like any other
self-respecting king, he asks questions and responds with confusing answers
about where his kingdom is. Jesus was a
gifted orator. He was often besting the great theologians of his time. He loved to put powerful people in their
place. What happened to that Jesus?
That is the Jesus we need when we talk about authority and leadership. We don’t need this slightly docile and
evasive Jesus who seemed to cooperate with this Roman leader, who was widely
perceived as an ineffective leader.
Or
maybe…this was exactly the kind of leader that the pope was trying to remind a
beleaguered people after World War I-- who were searching for identity and hope
in the rubble and ash of their pre-war existence. And frankly, this might be exactly the kind
of leader we need now, in a time when the church has virtually no political
power and very little cultural influence.
We are even losing our authority as a moral guide. Church attendance and participation is at an
all-time low and sliding lower every single year. Churches everywhere are scrambling for the
perfect program, the cure all that will enable us to thrive again….to matter.
I
remember when I was first learning about the Episcopal Church, I was told that
there were more US presidents who were Episcopalian than any other
denomination. I was appropriately
impressed. We were the church of the
establishment. If you were an important member of your community, odds were,
you went to the Episcopal Church. Alas, what no one told me was that since
1945, only 2 presidents have been Episcopalians, only one in my lifetime. We are no longer the church of the
establishment. There are a lot of people
who mourn that loss. There are many days
when I do, even though I have never actually experienced the church as a
powerful church. It would be a lot
easier to be part of church whose name people could actually pronounce.
But you know
what….I don’t think Jesus ever meant for it to be easy. I think that if Jesus wanted his church to be
a church that held worldly power, he probably would not have been born in a
barn to a poor unmarried couple. He told Pilate, “If my kingdom were from this
world, my followers would be fighting to keep be from being handed over to the
Jews.” In saying that, he was not
telling Pilate that his kingdom wasn’t this world. Of course it is. He was saying that he did not choose to wield
his power in the same way that earthly kings did. Could he have created an army and taken the
Romans by force? Of course he could have.
He could have raised a dead army to fight. But he chose not to, because
that was not what power looked like to him.
Power didn’t come from a weapon or a throne, it came from the
heart. It came from sacrifice.
Of
course I wish that the church had more authority and that we could influence
public opinion and behavior. I would
like that because we have some important truths to share. In fact, that is one of the things that Jesus
said to Pilate, that he came to testify to the truth and that everyone who belongs
to the truth listens to his voice. My
friends, we might not belong to a powerful church, but that does not mean we
don’t belong to something or someone powerful. We belong to the truth. We belong to a King who wore a crown of
thorns instead of a crown of gold. His throne was not a gilded chair with
velvet cushions. It was cross covered in
his blood. That is the king who we belong to.
I truly believe that the more we can identify with that king, the more
authority we will have. It will not be
authority given by worldly leaders whose power is fleeting. It will be the authority of the King of kings
and the Lord of lords.
While I wish
we could just create a new feast day and make that happen, we know that’s not
going to work. It didn’t work in 1925
and it won’t work now. What we need to
do is go back to our roots…not our 1610 roots, but our 33 AD roots. If we actually follow God’s call to us, a
call to sacrifice, a call to love the powerless, the abandoned, and the
ignored, then we won’t need to claim authority.
We won’t need to sit in the highest positions of power, because then, we
will be standing with the people who matter.
Then people will listen to us.
The world will notice. The world will change because we belong to the
truth.
