Caminante, no hay camino

Proper 29B

[I tried to find a decent image of Christ to put here and googled 'Christ the King' -- you'd be amazed how many churches there are out there with this name! Instead of a painting, here is a cross from Rwanda.]

Proper 29B • 26 November 2006

The contrast between the end of the Season after Pentecost and the beginning of Advent always takes me by surprise. On the last Sunday of the current season, we always hear an account from the passion story. Next Sunday, we will start a new gospel, a new liturgical year, one that typically begins with portents of the apocalypse and the impending historical earthquake that comes with Jesus’ birth. As we move closer and closer to Christmas, we will regress in the chronology of Jesus’ story, until we arrive at the annunciation and then his birth. As the Christian year always is cyclical, it is fitting, then, to be reminded so close to the nativity of where the story is headed — namely, the cross. We know, of course, that the cross is not the end of the story, the resurrection is, but the cross is certainly is a reminder of what the Incarnation entails. In a nutshell, the Incarnation is about God’s love for humankind, a love so fierce and strong that it gave all.

In the Jesus of the Gospels we find a presence of God who has not come to endorse the way things are but to turn them upside down. The Biblical story of the coming of Jesus, the enfleshed presence of the Holy God, begins with the song of Mary: where the proud are brought down and the meek and lowly are exalted; where those who are satiated with goods are sent away empty, and the hungry are fed.

We find Jesus not as a King ruling over others, but as a person surrendering his life for others, paying the cost of obedience and faithfulness. Jesus, interrogated by the powers that be, is humiliated before all, and eventually crucified. This is our king, the Evangelist John seems to be saying. Not a king with royal forces surrounding and protecting him, but a king who rules with justice, with humility, grace and love, a king who has fought for the cause of the weak and marginalized, the poor and the outcast.

Indeed, three chapters before Jesus’ conversation with Pilate as to whether or not he is a king, Jesus tells his disciples, ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.’

So that is the king of kings whom we celebrate today: the one who reached out to and cared for those who lived on the margins of life, the one who consistently asked his disciples to move out from the centre to the margins so that all of God’s people would be loved, and the one who consistently proclaimed a gospel of inclusivity and love. This king of kings asked that his disciples be servants as he was. And he asked them to love one another and in that loving, they might find God and by finding God, they might find joy.

So if you still wonder what it is that we observe today when we talk about Christ the King, it is not that Christ rules by power but that Christ lives in us by love. Let us love one another as Christ has loved us. That is the great commandment that Christ left us, a commandment that surpasses time and season and one that will bear fruit throughout all ages.

What sort of a king, then, is this whom we remember today? Certainly not a triumphant king, but a self-giving king. This king on the cross represents the core of Christian faith — the self-emptying Christ. In the cross, we find the two fundamentals of our Christian theology: the Incarnation and kenosis. The Incarnation — God choosing to enter human flesh, live and die as one of us. Kenosis — the act of self-emptying, giving over of all power, all beauty and all glory that Jesus demonstrates in the passion.

Jean Vanier, founder of the international l’Arche communities, writes of the kenotic, self-emptying king this way:

When Jesus performed the miracle
of the multiplication of bread and fish,
the crowd wanted to make him king,
but he fled from them.
Jesus did not come to exercise a temporal and social power.
He came to reveal the truth of the God of love
and the Love of God.
It is only now, when he is bound in ropes,
that he accepts the title of king.
He is an imprisoned king, a vulnerable king,
a king with no earthly power.
He is the king of love
who wants to communicate his love
in and through his weakness and vulnerability.
He is a king yearning for the communion of hearts.
This is the truth he has come to proclaim.
Not power for the sake of power, but to build of world of love
at the service of the communion of hearts,
the power of love and compassion that heals, liberates and gives life,
that calls people to live in love with him.
We are all called to live a deep friendship with this vulnerable king.
That is why Jesus came to be with us. [cite to be added later]

It is to that self-giving, kenotic, king of love that Anglican poet George Herbert wrote the words that we find in hymn 382:

King of glory, King of peace, I will love thee;
and that love may never cease, I will move thee.
Thou hast granted my request, thou hast heard me;
thou didst note my working breast, thou hast spared me.

It is to that incarnate gentle one that his soul, and ours, exclaim:

Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise thee;
in my heart, though not in heaven, I can raise thee;
Small as it is in this poor sort to enroll thee;
e’en eternity’s too short to extol thee.