The Last Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King Sunday

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Proper 29 – Christ the King
The Rev’d Charles Everson
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
November 18, 2018
 
Have you ever walked in to the parish hall over here from the parking lot and been spooked by the lady who is perpetually in my back seat?  Yes, that’s my car.  Her Majesty the Queen (or at least a window decal depicting her) travels with me around wherever I go.  I think it’s fair to say that I’m a big fan of the British monarchy.  And that’s not a terribly unpredictable thing.  After all, I’m a priest in a church born out of the Church of England of which Her Majesty the Queen is the Supreme Governor.

However, I find it incredibly ironic that you and I are celebrating Christ the King Sunday today as members of the “Protestant Episcopal Church”.  For you see, this feast was created very recently by Pope Pius XI in 1925.  The irony isn’t so much in the date the feast was instituted, but in the context in which it was born.  For Pius XI served as bishop of Rome, and from the 8th century until the year 1870, the bishops of Rome not only had a leadership role in the Church, they held temporal power over territories of land of various sizes throughout the centuries.  In other words, they weren’t only bishops, they were kings.  In 1870, after a decades of increasing nationalism in Italy, King Victor Emmanuel, after nine years as king of Italy, annexed the last vestiges of the Papal States, and the papacy…lost his earthly kingdom.  The Italian king quickly took up residence in Quirinal Palace, the papal residence where the current pope had been elected in conclave and which many Roman citizens viewed as the ultimate sign of authority in the city.  To give you some insight into his mindset…when asked for the keys to Quirinal Palace, the pope reportedly asked, "Whom do these thieves think they are kidding asking for the keys to open the door? Let them knock it down if they, like Bonaparte's soldiers, when they wanted to seize Pius VI, came through the window, but even they did not have the effrontery to ask for the keys."  Side note: a locksmith was later hired.[1]  This bitter sting and horror at losing his earthly, temporal power certainly contributed to the proclamation of papal infallibility later in 1870, as well as the proclamation of this feast, “The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe” a few decades later.”

What sick and twisted irony.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus at least appears to be more self-aware than the pope was – he acknowledges that his kingship is “not of this world.”  He said, “’For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.”  “[Jesus] is, as he says here, from another world.  The church calls this the incarnation: the descent of God from the eternal realm of uncreated light into the violence, darkness, sickness, and death of this world.”[2]  Jesus is indeed King of the Universe, but he’s a king unlike any earthly king.  Jesus Christ rules over a kingdom where the King came not to be served, but to serve.  In God’s kingdom, in order to be first, you must be last of all and servant of all. This kingdom has an entirely different value system than earthly kingdoms do.  The kingdom of God is the reality of existence brought about by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in which the poor have been chosen to be rich in faith – in which the last shall be first and the first shall be last.[3] The most important in the kingdom of heaven are the worthless rags of earth.  We experience this kingdom partially now, but the powers of this world are not yet vanquished.  Our king was shamefully executed at the hands of those serving an earthly king (the Roman Emperor), but yet we proclaim our allegiance to him at this and every Eucharist, and we eagerly await his coming in the manager at Christmas, in the bread and wine of holy communion, and at the end of the ages.

Despite the fact that the prayers, and the scripture readings, and the hymns today point to Christ the King, our prayer book calls today The Last Sunday after Pentecost.  No mention of Christ the King in the title of today’s celebration.  But interestingly, though, there is one unique element of the prayer book’s treatment of The Last Sunday after Pentecost: the prayer book allows for the use of the generic blurb used at the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer – the proper preface – that is used during the entire season after Pentecost, but it also allows for the use of the preface of baptism. It’s the only Sunday liturgy that we are allowed to use the preface of baptism; that’s not even allowed when baptisms occur on a Sunday.  Here’s the preface for baptism: “Because in Jesus Christ our Lord thou hast received us as thy sons and daughters, made us citizens of thy kingdom, and given us the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth.” 

Why the preface for baptism on Christ the King Sunday?  Because it is through baptism that we are made citizens of God’s kingdom, and it is through baptism that we adopt the value system of this kingdom that is in utter and complete opposition to the values of this world.  It is through baptism that we submit ourselves, as sons and daughters, to a father who loves us without condition.  It is in our baptism that we first bend the knee to a king who has no temporal power, but reigns in the hearts of the men and women who trust not in their own righteousness, but in the King’s manifold and great mercies.  In order to follow this King, in order to be citizens of this heavenly kingdom, we are called to deny ourselves daily and take up our cross and follow Him.  We are called to put others before ourselves and put God’s ways before the ways of the world.  In God’s kingdom, the humble and meek are exalted while the mighty are put down from their seat. Peace reigns over war; love overcomes all evil and hate.  Today’s feast reminds us who we are and whose we are.

Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you a king?”  He certainly wasn’t the sort of king the Jews were expecting, and his kingship is certainly not analogous in every way to The Queen who rides with me around town.  I mean, Jesus didn’t exactly have Ladies-in-Waiting like the Queen does who personally respond to ordination invitations from folks in Kansas.  It isn’t royal pleasantries like this, or even regal religious ceremonies like the coronation that sold me on my devotion to Her Majesty The Queen. It was her annual Christmas message.  Nearly every year beginning in 1932, the sovereign has made a broadcast to his or her subjects, primarily written by the monarch him- or herself (one of the only speeches throughout the year not written by the Queen herself).  It was on Christmas Day in the year 2000 when I first encountered her Christmas speech online.  And year after year, I listen on Christmas Day, to what has become an important tradition for me.  For in these speeches, the earthly monarch of a line that stretches back over a thousand years…with palaces and wealth and ladies-in -waiting…such an earthly monarch reveals her allegiance to different sort of monarch entirely.  She shares her faith in the same King of the Universe recognized by the old, bitter Pope Pius XI whom we can thank for this feast today.  The Queen’s Christmas speech has become for me a sort of icon of Christ’s kingship over a realm where the first shall be last and the last shall be first and love rules over hate and peace rules over war.

So next time you pass by my car outside the parish hall door, of course you should turn and do a little curtsy.  But more importantly, be reminded that you are citizen of a different kingdom whose king is not of this world.  Jesus Christ is Lord and King of the Universe and of our hearts, and unlike the princely powers and dominions of this world, his kingdom shall have no end.  Amen.


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Question

[2] Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), 228-229 .

[3] James 2:5, NRSV