In the Name of our God who is all kindness,
Christ who reigns in justice, and the Holy Spirit
who recreates our every moment.
Amen.
The story is told about the baptism of King Aengus by St. Patrick in the middle of the fifth century. Sometime during the rite, St. Patrick leaned on his sharp-pointed staff and inadvertently stabbed the king's foot. After the baptism was over, St. Patrick looked down and realized what he had done, and begged the king's forgiveness. “Why did you suffer this pain in silence,” Patrick wanted to know. The king replied, "I thought it was part of the ritual."
Today we celebrate a feast about a king who was stabbed in the foot . . . and the hand, and the side and the head and all that part of the horrible ritual of crucifixion.
In his book, The Wounded Healer, author Henri Nouwen tells the story of how one day a fugitive came into a village to hide himself from soldiers. The people gave him shelter and refused to tell where he was when the soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill every male if the young man were not handed over to them.
The people went to the pastor of the church and asked what they should do. He told them he would pray about it and look for an answer in the Scripture. Early in the morning his eyes fell upon the text, “It is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost.” He closed the Bible and called the soldiers and told them where the boy was hidden.
After they led the fugitive away to kill him, the pastor withdrew to his room in deep sadness.
That night an angel came to him to ask what he had done. “I handed the fugitive boy over to the enemy,” he said. “Don’t you know that you handed over the Messiah?” “How could I know,” the pastor replied anxiously. The angel said, “If instead of relying on the Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known.”
On this the Sunday of Christ the King, we are asked to do what Pilate did not do, perhaps could not do: look into the eyes of Truth, the Light who has come into the world to redeem it from its insanity, all of its unhealthiness and pollution and corruption and to usher in the Reign of Godliness and Goodness.
Jesus’ reply to Pilate’s interrogation, “My kingdom is not from this world” may come as a huge relief for any of us who more and more wonder if this world isn’t the insane asylum for the universe.
We probably should expect that the Gospel reading would portray Christ in glory—sitting on the throne, attended by angels, and in charge of our destiny. But that isn’t what we get. The Gospel we heard affirms that Jesus is God’s Chosen One, but in very different terms. The kingship of Jesus is expressed through the Cross and through his ministry of compassion, reconciliation, restoration, and forgiveness.
We have come to know this King in the stories we’ve heard in the Gospels. We’ve seen him call sinners and outcasts his friends. We’ve seen him heal the hurts of people no one wanted anywhere near them. We’ve seen him bundled in straw in a manger, walking the dusty streets of Palestine, teaching and curing people from all walks of life, riding on a donkey through the crowded streets of Jerusalem, washing the feet of his dearest friends, and now we see him standing trial in the palace of Pontius Pilate—soon after to hang on the wood of the cross.
“My kingdom is not from this world,” he responds to his judge. Jesus did not mean that his kingdom was other worldly, some sort of fantasy nation or land of aliens. He meant that his kingdom is different from the kingdoms of this world, that it does not rest upon the same power and authority nor are his politics what passes for politics in this world.
This is a very different kind of king than the world would expect in royalty or power or authority. This king weeps with those who mourn and seeks out those bound by the shackles of oppression. This king raises the dead and promises the dying the new life of resurrection.
He condemns a religious and political system that leaves the poor destitute, and saves his harshest criticism for those who not only exploit the vulnerable and marginalize the browbeaten but who do so in God’s name. His kingdom is, indeed, different and, indeed, not of this world.
Joseph Girzone in his work, My Struggle with Faith, writes “What was remarkable about Jesus—and Jesus is the living reflection of God—was that he could pass over the shabby, crude exterior in people’s lives and see, deep within, their potential for goodness.
William R. Boyer, in his book, A Confusion of the Heart relates the story of the Revolutionary War when King George III was so distraught about the loss of the colonies that for the rest of his life, he could not say the word "independence" without tripping over it.
When the fighting in America stopped, King George and all his royal cronies in Europe were sure that George Washington would have himself crowned "Emperor of the New World." That's what they would have done. When he was told that Washington planned to surrender his military commission and return to Mt. Vernon, George III said, "Well, if he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."
There is power in giving up power, in emptying oneself. Jesus knew it, Pilate didn't.
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