IF I were to ask you the question,
what does a king look like, you may well reply that he wears a crown of gold, and
a cloak of red or purple velvet. He looks impressive and dignified; everything
about him makes you go ‘Wow!’ It’s quite understandable – it’s how we expect a
king to look, it’s what we’ve grown up to expect: whenever we see pictures of
kings they look like this.
In this morning's gospel we are given an
entirely different picture of kingship. Our Lord will soon receive the outward
trappings and will be hailed as a King. And in the mockery people will not
realise that the joke is really on them. Christ is truly a King, but not in a
way that the world can easily understand. His kingdom is not of this world; the
way of God is not to use threats, mockery, or violence. Instead, Christ becomes
incarnate, becomes a human being, to bear witness to the truth. He who is the
way, the truth, and the life, comes that we might know the truth and that the
truth might set us free. As those who follow him, we as Christians are to be
free, to stand against this world and its power, to show it another way: where
weakness can triumph in the face of anger, where love can overcome bitterness.
The world around us cannot understand this, it could not at the time of our
Lord's passion, and it cannot even today. It needs to experience it before it
can begin to understand it. Christ shows the world his reign of glory by being
nailed to a cross and now exalted in glory and coming to be our judge he bears
in his body the wounds of nail and spear, the wounds of love, wounds which heal
and reconcile humanity.
In his dealings with Pilate, Christ
foreshadows the church and its dealings with secular power. Just as Pilate
could not wait for an answer, so the world around us can only treat the church
with impatience and contempt: neither then nor now can we hope to be
understood, we are instead to be threatened to capitulate to a secular power –
for the Romans and their power, read the whim of politicians and the tyranny of
so-called ‘equality legislation’. As the body of Christ, we exist to love and
to serve God and one another, and call the world to repent and to believe and
to be healed by God. We have bishops to be our Chief shepherds, as successors
of the apostles, those called and set apart by Christ to be shepherds and not
hirelings, laying down their lives like Christ and for Christ, and not solely
to sit in the High Court of Parliament. We then may advise the state, for its
own good, but primarily so that the church may continue to preach the gospel
and make disciples of this nation and every nation. The world may not understand
us, it may not listen to us, or like whom we are and what we do or do not do
on, but we cannot allow ourselves to be conformed to the world and its ways. In
loving and serving God we call the world to conform itself to his will.
Only then can we bring about that radical
transformation envisaged in the Gospels: living as a community of love and not
fear. It is through living it out in our lives and as the church that we can
show the world a better way of being, a way which acknowledges Jesus Christ as
King of all the universe, where his way of love washes away our sins with his
blood, reconciles us to God and each other, and forgiving others as we
ourselves are forgiven. Where the world wants blame we have to live out the
love and forgiveness, which we ourselves have received from God in Christ
Jesus. This then can truly be a kingdom and not of this world.
So as we prepare to enter the season
of Advent, where we will prepare ourselves to greet the King of the Universe
born in a stable in Bethlehem, let us acknowledge Christ as our King, whose
Sacred Heart burns with love for us, whose wounds still pour out that love upon
the world, and let us live as people loved, healed, restored and forgiven, that
the world may believe and all creation acknowledge God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all
might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
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