Christ, the King of Love

Christ the King, 21 November 2021
8:00am and 11:00am Eucharists
Revd Catherine Edenborough

Today is a bit like New Year’s Eve in the church’s calendar - the final Sunday of the church’s year and next week, we begin the new liturgical year with the first Sunday of Advent. So this week is an opportunity to take a breath, to look back at the past year, the good and the bad bits, and to prepare ourselves to move on. And we do this with a look at Christ’s kingdom and what his power is like.

In the church’s history this is a comparatively recent festival – only instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI in response to the rise of fascism and dictatorships and to proclaim that there is a greater king beyond this world, who rules with justice and mercy. Thankfully we no longer live in those times, but we certainly have plenty going on around us and within us to remind us of our need of Christ’s kingship in our lives: the regimes which see power as a way to oppress people, the hoarding of resources by the wealthy few, leaders getting addicted to their powerful position and ending up using their power to protect themselves rather than serve their people. We see this with Pilate. He didn’t see a reason to send Jesus to death, but he was not brave enough to go against the cries of the crowd to crucify him. He valued his position.

Then there’s our own need to be liked or approved of, our desire to convey an image of strength and everything being OK, when it might not be. All of it coming from a place of insecurity and a need to be in control. We have a false sense that the power lies with us and we build a protective shell around us to keep ourselves safe.

Two thousand years ago, the people longed for Jesus to usher in a kingdom of power and might. The ultimate kingdom which would win every time. We too still long for a powerful leader who will protect us, provide certainty and make everything alright.

However, Jesus says to Pilate that his kingdom is not from this world. If it were a regular kingdom as we know it, he says, his followers would be fighting to protect him from his opponents – and apart from Peter cutting off the ear of a priest’s servant, there wasn’t too much of that going on. So what is this kingdom like?

When we look at the life of Jesus we see he turns on its head our understanding of how power is exercised: he comes to earth not in a blaze of glory but as a helpless baby, he chooses a group of unskilled men as his top team, he teaches that the last will be first. He seeks out the marginalised and

outcasts. He takes on the role of a servant washing the disciples’ feet, he does not resist arrest, and he goes to the ultimate place of weakness and humiliation – the cross. He overcomes death and redeems the brokenness of the whole world.

“That’s all understood,” you might be thinking. “I get that – Jesus’ kingdom is countercultural and radical.” And so the question we need to ask is ‘so what?’

On one level there’s the sense that our response to this radical alternative way of exercising power is that we should be activists out there saving the world and doing great things to make a difference – and there is truth in that… we do need to be doing what we can, but it’s easy to feel overwhelmed at the task ahead or to end up doing all this activism in our own strength.

The difference in Christ’s kingship is that this radical alternative kingdom starts and ends with love. Not a sentimental, airy-fairy love that’s all meek and mild, but a burning, yearning love that comes after us and longs for us so much it stops at nothing to demonstrate the extent to which we are loved and desired by God. The power of this kingdom is not in force and strength, but in love.

This love which has overcome death is easily strong enough to pierce our outer shell of protection and get through to our heart. It disarms all our defences and gets underneath the masks we wear. It allows us to be more vulnerable and real. It relocates the true centre of power to its rightful place – in God – so we are freed up and no longer need to use our power to protect ourselves.

When this happens, we are transformed. We naturally find ourselves doing the things that Jesus would do, wanting to love and serve others and we start to make a difference where we are, a real difference in the world. We can’t not! We find ourselves part of this radical, alternative kingdom.

So the question for us on this New Year’s Eve, as we look back at the past year, is how have I let this love of Christ touch and change me in the past 12 months? Where am I holding onto my own power and resisting his love? Where is Christ inviting me into a fuller experience of his kingship for the year to come?