Sermon: Christ the King

1 Samuel 8:4-20; John 18:33-37

Durham Cathedral, Matins 25^th November 2007. Christ the King.

About twenty years ago Brian Wren, one of England's most creative contemporary hymn writers, wrote a book about language in hymnody ("What language shall I borrow?"). Although Wren is a URC minister, he analysed the language of the Methodist Hymn Book of 1983. In looking at how the hymns speak of God, he discovered that "king" was the third most popular way to speak of the first person of the Trinity and the second most popular way to speak of the second Person of the Trinity. Lord and Father were the more frequently used addresses. He pointed out that over 80% of the masculine images of the first Person of the Trinity used in hymnody had to do with wielding power over others, and over 60% of the images for the second Person of the Trinity were titles of power, with few that spoke of his suffering, servanthood or humility.

When I lived in the US I once asked a few Americans what the word "king" meant for them and they replied in terms of a dominant male sovereign who demands obedience from his subjects. I then asked a few British friends and the answers were different. In Britain we have a monarch who reigns over us and for 119 of the last 170 years that monarch has been a queen not a king. In fact, anyone in Britain who is under 55 has never lived under a king.  I discovered that when we hear the word king it carries much more of a connotation of a monarch who is a respected national figurehead. I'm not saying the one nation has got it right and the other wrong, merely observing that we bring our own meanings to words like "king" so when we sing the same hymn and call God "king" we may be thinking of very different things. And we frequently sing of God as king: the concordance to the Hymnal of the Episcopal Church in the US shows that about 160 hymns refer to God as king.

In contrast to this, God is directly addressed as king only 29 times in the Old Testament and they all occur after the story we heard today when for the first time they had a human king. In other words the people only thought of calling God king once they had a human king. More commonly in the Old Testament God is named in images that came out of the people's daily experience: "rock", "the one who gives or withholds water, "refuge", "stronghold" or "strength": water was a necessity for life, in the desert or in battle "rock" was a strong and safe image, but only one hymn in the Episcopal Hymnal uses that image. And while we are talking of names for God, we should not forget that "Father" occurs just six times in the Old Testament as a name for God, it is essentially a NT address for God that reflects Jesus' relationship to God into which we are invited.

I'll come back to hymns but first want to turn to the two scriptures we have heard on this Christ the King Sunday.

First, some background. The rise of the monarchy in ancient Israel occurred around 1000BC, just at the time when some of the surrounding nations were weaker. This political situation contributed to the idea that the period of the early kings like David and Solomon was the golden age of Israel when it was enjoying military success. But a close reading of 1 Samuel suggests there is a blending of two different accounts of how the rise of the kings occurred and two different understandings of whether or not this was a good thing. We heard part of an account which suggests that Samuel, as judge not king, had pretty much subdued the Philistines but the people weren't satisfied: they wanted a king so they could be like other nations, a decision that is portrayed as disobedience to God. Years earlier Gideon had said to them, "God rules over you" and in our reading God said "they have rejected me as being king over them". So one line of thought says that to have a human king is to reject God's rule. In contrast there's a different version of the story woven alongside this which suggests that with the prophet Samuel's support Saul, a local boy, defeated the nation's enemies and through his charismatic leadership was a popular choice as king.

The editors of the texts in the bible retained both interpretations of the emergence of the monarchy, allowing each perspective its own integrity. They may reflect conflicting views within the nation of Israel itself, or may reflect the later experience when the monarchy had gone sour in contrast to the early experience of successful kings. So we are never absolutely sure whether or not kingship is a good thing for the nation, whether it is a God-given way of living or the result of the people's rebellion against God. And once the kingdoms divided into north and south there were two examples of succession: one had a dynastic monarchy that passed from father to son, the other chopped and changed, sometimes breaking with the ruling family in order to elect the most suitable military leader to succeed. Despite these differences, in Israel, unlike other nations, the king was not thought of as a son of God but human power and authority were always to be subjected to divine power and authority, human kingship had to reflect divine kingship, and the prophets criticised human kings who ignored their responsibilities to ensure protection, justice and mercy for their subjects just as God does. There is always a tension in the Old Testament between the idealised, but sometimes flawed, kingship of David and the variously good and bad examples of other kings of Israel and Judah.

Human kingship derives from and reflects God's sovereignty, not vice-versa so we must be very careful when bringing our own experience of kingship to bear on how we think of Christ the king. In our day we can thank God for our own Queen and the example she sets us by the way she reigns, but we cannot extrapolate from that to say God is like that only more so. Instead, going back to hymnody, we must follow the example of George Herbert who wrote the hymn we sang earlier, "King of glory, king of peace, I will love thee." This is one of the hymns that subverts Brian Wren's observation that most hymns use images for God that are associated with wielding power over others. To write the hymn Herbert had to set aside his experience of human kingship in the tense times of pre-Civil War England just a few years before King Charles I, with his belief in the divine right of kings, would lose his head. Instead, Herbert grasped truths about God's kingship and was confident to approach his loving heavenly king with demands that love should never cease, that he should spend all his days in praise to his heavenly king.

Which brings us, on this Christ the King Sunday, to Jesus Christ. He is the Son of David: there is a link with David's kingship. But in the visions of Revelation he is also King of kings and Lord of lords, as Handel so stirringly reminds us, and he is also the Lamb of God who was slain. We have to hold all those truths together, which is why his kingship cannot be extrapolated from human kingship. In John's gospel Pontius Pilate, whose experience of kingship was defined by the Roman Emperor and Roman imperialism, tries to do this and comes straight out with the question "Are you the king of the Jews?" Because the question is not that simple Jesus refuses a direct answer, forcing Pilate onto the defensive with his alternative question. In fact there are six questions in this short exchange and Jesus defines his kingship in relation to heaven, not earth, thus echoing the opening words of John's prologue where the Word is with God and the glory that we see is that of the Father's only son, full of grace and truth. "What is truth?" asks Pilate and the answer, which Pilate cannot understand because he is hooked into the Roman way of thinking, lies in Jesus' kingship and kingdom which is not from this world but nevertheless is expressed in this world, and we need to bring our recollection of all the stories of Jesus we have heard this past year to our celebration of Christ the King.

The familiarity of the words of our final hymn, "The head that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now", dulls us to the shock of them: in God's hands kingship is not just a right to be claimed or power to be asserted, but is the cue for love that bears whatever is thrown at it, in this case a cross and a crown of thorns, suffering and death. But in God's hands that is not the only truth and so we sing not only of the crown of thorns but of the crown of glory, the royal diadem that adorns the king of kings and lord of lords. That concept of kingship which embraces both thorns and glory is too much for human categorisation, which is perhaps why the biblical writers tell us the story of Christ the King rather than spelling out the doctrine theoretically, we need the story if we are to grasp something so radical.

We're at the end of a church year. Next Sunday we start to hear again the story of Christ the King. We are going to have to look for a king in a stable, a king eating with the outcasts of society, a king on a cross, a king who is raised from the dead but whose body still bears the wounds, a king who takes that wounded yet glorified body to heaven. If we want to understand Christ the king we need to listen hard to that story, familiar as it may be, and in this coming year let our understanding of kingship be re-defined.

Sing of the King who was born as an outcast

Mother unmarried, his birth far from home.

Born in a stable in occupied country,

Toddler in exile for fear of the throne.

Sing of the King who mixed with life's rejects,

Cared for them, talked with them, welcomed them in;

Hope for the hopeless and love for the loveless,

Moved with compassion when faced with our sin.

Sing of the King whose crown of thorns wounds him,

Whose throne is a cross, his sceptre a reed,

Robed in his torn flesh, without human beauty,

Dying with convicts, abandoned in need.

Sing of the King, now raised from the dark tomb,

In heaven still bearing the scars of his love.

Reigning, yet still the servant and lover,

Raising our frailty to glory above.

(hymn text copyright © 1989 Rosalind Brown)