CLICK VIEW TO WATCH THE HOMILY. Then click “Watch on YOUTUBE,” scroll down and click “more…” if you want to find a specific part of the Liturgy of the Word to watch. 2 Samuel 5:1-3, Colossians 1:12-20, Luke 23:35-43
I was in novitiate during the late 60s and the novice master, Father Leon of happy memory, wanted, I suppose, to be a hip, up-to-date, Vatican II priest. On this feast day, Christ the King, he announced after the gospel, “Today, brothers, we will have a dialogue homily,” that is instead of him preaching we would all throw our two bits in. A few of the novices awkwardly made some pious comments about the feast. But Donny, a little bolder than the rest of us, made this observation: “Does it make sense to have a devotion to Christ the King in this day and age? After all, we don’t have any dealings with kings in this country – in fact, we fought a war so we wouldn’t have to put up with kings. So why not use a more benign image, say the Good Shepherd, instead of that of Christ the King for the feast day?” Father Leon seemed somewhat taken aback by the comment. He drew himself up and said in his best professor of philosophy voice, “But, Brother, don’t you see; it’s and analogous predication!” Oh sure. Cleared that right up! Needless to say, there were no more comments offered during the dialogue homily. And Father Leon never proposed another dialogue homily during the rest of our novitiate experience.
Once again, however, we as a nation are protesting the prospect of having to deal with a king. “NO KINGS” has been the rallying cry in confronting the national leadership. While we here in Church are proclaiming Christ as our king, we’re out on the street insisting we don’t want any king. How can both things be true? The short answer: there are kings and there are kings. A king, according to the protestors, does whatever he wants since he has the power. The protesters don’t want that kind of leadership. When we talk about Christ the King we have an entirely different version of kingship for our king is powerless. A powerful king sits on a throne in pomp and circumstance. Our powerless king is nailed to a cross in horror and disgrace. A powerful king wears a crown of gold, encrusted with jewels, signifying authority. Our powerless king wears a crown of thorns, designed in cruelty and showing degradation. A powerful king is surrounded by retainers and courtiers and flatterers and sycophants. Our king is abandoned by the crowds, his followers and even his faithful apostles. It is the powerless, not the powerful to which we owe allegiance. Our scripture readings for today help us to understand what it means for us to reverence a powerless king.
A powerful king is from royalty, one from a noble line, boasting a proud pedigree. He has, as the saying goes, blue blood. He is one of the rich, the elite, the privileged, the influential. A powerless king, as the Old Testament lesson from Second Samuel puts it, of our bone and flesh. He is an ordinary joe, someone you wouldn’t be able to pick out of a line-up. He is like us in all things but sin, the Bible says. He looks like us, he feels like us, he cries like us, he laughs like us. He knows what we are going through since he has gone through it himself. He has experienced loss and grief and fear and confusion. Our powerless king leads us not because of superiority but because of similarity. And because we have such a king, we understand how important, how precious every single person has become. We are bone and flesh with Christ the King so everyone we meet has this family resemblance with him and must be taken into account. Particularly, as Pope Francis and now Pope Leo remind us, we must recognize our powerless king in the powerless – the immigrant, the poor, the sick, the elderly, the abused. Because Christ is our king, we’re all in this together.
Again, a powerful king is all about getting – getting more power, more possessions, more territory, more authority, more control, more adulation. For a powerful king life is a zero sum game where something you have means that is something less for me to have. Contrast that with a powerless king who is not about getting but about giving. His generosity exists because a king without power understands that what he has is enough. St. Paul says, “All things were created through him and all things were created for him. In him all things hold together.” A powerless king doesn’t need anything else in order to be complete. The way he is already, the way he is made, makes him full. In fact, St. Paul says in another place that he empties himself so he can participate fully in the human condition. Because Christ is our king we already have enough and more than enough to live happy lives. We have the blessed assurance that nothing will keep us from the love of God, that love is stronger than death, that we are made for glory. What else could we need?
Finally, a powerful king divides the world into friends and foes, into allies and enemies. He will punish all those who oppose him, all those who have stood in his way. He is keeping score and will crush the opposition. A powerless king, in contrast, is about unity, about overcoming differences, about forgiveness. As Christ the King reigned on the cross in the midst of his suffering his last royal action was offering a complete pardon. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” As followers of Christ the king we too are about reconciliation, about forgiveness, about acceptance. For us, there are no enemies, no strangers, only friends we haven’t made yet. Our lives are not “my way or the highway” but about walking the long and winding road together. Not greater force, but greater forgiveness. Not greater strength, but greater compassion. Not greater power, but greater love. That’s what makes Christ Our King.
