Sermon: Christ the King

There is an irony in today's second lesson.  After Jesus has fed the crowd, John says that he hid himself ‘because they were about to take him by force to make him king'.  On the day we celebrate Christ the King, the gospel tells us that this is precisely the title Jesus refuses!  And not only here but throughout John's Gospel. Of all the titles of Jesus, John seems to say, it's the one most susceptible to misuse.  When Nathaniel is the first to recognise Jesus as a man like no other, he says: ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!' And Jesus' responds by telling Nathaniel not to make too much of it: ‘do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?  You will see greater things than these'.  And this understated way of using Old Testament kingship language pervades the whole gospel.  Jesus distances himself from popular acclaim as if to say: you have your ideas about what kingship means; but I will show you another way.  So he contrasts the shepherd-kings of Israel and Judah who abused and betrayed their trust with the Good Shepherd who loves the sheep and lays down his life for them. The messianic ruler, entering his city on a donkey to palm branches and shouts of hosanna turns out to be the Teacher and Lord who washes feet. 

When Pilate says to him in the passion story, ‘so you are a king then?' he replies, ‘this is your word, not mine.  But if this is the language you insist on using, I had better explain carefully what it does and doesn't mean'.  ‘My kingdom is not from this world' he begins.  The ‘kingdom of God' is such a hallmark of Jesus' teaching in the other three gospels, but in John's Gospel, it only occurs in one other place where Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born ‘from above' if he is to see or enter the kingdom of God.  The contrast is between being born of the ‘flesh', by natural means, and being born ‘from above', born of the Spirit as the mysterious gift of God.  In the prologue to the gospel John says that those who have power to become children of God were born not ‘of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man' but of God.  There is a complete contrast between kingship as a human institution and the divine character of God's rule.  Jesus' kingship comes from a source invisible to mortals.  It is stronger than any earthly power.  It endures when all other kingdoms have crumbled to dust.  But not everyone can see it, still less welcome and embrace it. 

This is not the kind of rule Pilate knows about.  His is the world of power politics and coercive force.  But what Jesus is speaking about comes from a different place. ‘If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.'  Power and violence are not very far apart in most societies, whether it is the Rome of Pilate, the Jerusalem of the zealots, or the Babylon of Belshazzar's feast.  Jesus emphatically rejects a kingship built on them. His reign is based on a different premise, what he calls the ‘truth'.  What does it mean to be citizens of this kingdom of truth?  This is what Jesus goes on to explain to Pilate.  ‘For this was I born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice'.  ‘Truth', like ‘life', ‘light' and ‘love' is one St John's big words.  In the upper room, Jesus has spoken of himself as ‘the true and living way.  Truth is rooted in his own person, it is what he himself embodies. In him we gaze upon ‘grace and truth' for his is nothing less than the face of God himself.  To know the truth and be set free by it is Jesus' gift to his disciples.  He prays that they may be sanctified ‘in the truth: your word is truth'.  And truth will sustain them through ‘the Spirit of truth' who will lead and guide them into all the truth.  Truth, in the way Jesus means it, scrutinises how we see ourselves.  It's an uncomfortable judgment upon each of us as human beings, and all of us collectively.  Truth has implications for all that belongs to ‘human empire': the governance of nations, the leadership of society the management of institutions, and all that belongs to the lives and relationships of every human being.

So Jesus creates a template for his disciples.  He has come to testify to the truth, and so must they.  This is why they must not be seduced by the exercise of power: their vocation is to imitate him.  The character of the church is being defined here.  We easily fall prey to lazy notions of victory and triumph, and perhaps that is a temptation on this particular day.  For some churches it is elaborate building projects; for others it is church growth.  We begin to think that we can grow or build or extend God's kingdom.  Yet Jesus teaches us that the kingdom is God's act, not ours.  We must be open to it, embrace it, live out its values, but we can never bring it about.  In cathedrals we must be especially vigilant against triumphalism.  The Normans built Durham's castle and Cathedral as an inescapable sign of their conquest of the Saxons of the north country.  That subjugation was accompanied by terrible attrition, the notorious harrying of the north.  The theme is continued by the prince-bishops with their highest throne in Christendom.  It all sits uncomfortably alongside St John's image of the Christ who washes the feet of his disciples and goes out to die.  We need to understand the ambivalence of even this most perfect of Norman buildings.  The glory of man is embodied here as well as the glory of God. 

How is the human power embodied in a place such as this redeemed then?  One answer is, in the shrine of the man who was remembered for his Christ-like humility and truth-seeking holiness.  Cuthbert is its conscience, the key to its spirituality, the antidote to triumphalism.  This is how his beloved St John saw things, for one of the identifying marks of the church for him is truth.  It would take a Bonhoeffer to explore what life together as a ‘community of truth' would look like.  Truth-telling, in the sense of open, honest unafraid relationships, is part of being ‘aligned' to truth. ‘Truth-telling' is an outcome of loving the truth for its own sake, believing that truth is something to stake one's life on.  I am saying that to be the church in an authentic way, truth-seeking must always be at the core of our endeavour.  It is costly and difficult.  It involves dying to oneself.  Bearing witness to it entails sacrifice. We must not forget that the Jesus who speaks of being ‘from the truth' is on his way to the cross.

The cross is where this kingdom ‘not from here' is finally revealed.  Golgotha is the writing on the wall of the world-empires.  There, the fingers of the man's hand write the fateful words for all to see: that they are numbered, weighed, divided and destined to topple before the coming kingdom of truth and peace.  The cross is the judgment of truth on all the falsehood and fantasy symbolised by Belshazzar's feast and all the reckless, idolatrous displays of power since.  I was struck by the contrast between the politics of man and the politics of God when I went to the ‘Sacred Made Real' exhibition at the National Gallery last week.  There, at the hands of the great 17^th century Spanish masters like Zurbarán, all the risk and pain and vulnerability of the cross is laid bare. Yet never did you see the crucified Christ portrayed more compellingly.  In those vast, dark canvasses, we see where real power lies.  I thought of Jesus' words: ‘now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out'.  We who want to hear the voice of our king and be his loyal subjects know where we must go.  We will find him not where crowd-pulling signs and wonders are worked, but outside the city wall.  For if he is Christ the King, then his heavenly reign is not different from his earthly coronation on Golgotha where, high and lifted up, he is sovereign in a purple robe and crown of thorns.  Yes, we have been to the place of a Skull.  We have seen his glory. 

Daniel 5; John 6.1-15