As we tell children the story of Jesus, those of us who
attend churches that observe the church calendar have an advantage, in that
we walk through that story every year on special holy days. The best
known of these are Christmas and Easter, but there is also the season of Advent
(waiting for the Messiah), Epiphany (visit of the Magi), Good Friday (death of
Christ), Ascension Sunday (ascension of Christ), and more.
Today is the day we reach
the end of the Church Year: Christ the King Sunday. To be blunt, I have a
problem with this particular holy day. I was challenged in this regard several
years ago by N.T. Wright’s little book, For All the Saints, so much of
what I say here has been informed by that work.
The problem is this: why is the day honoring “Christ the
King” at the very end of the Church Year? Wasn’t He king before now? The
problem is made worse by the fact that this day is usually accompanied by
readings from “Second Coming” passages (or passages often assumed to be about
the Second Coming), which lends itself to a belief that Jesus only becomes king
at the Second Coming.
This is wrongheaded, I think, because, liturgically, Christ
has been king since way back in April, at Easter. Or to put it in terms of
history and our place in it, Christ has been king since His resurrection, which
means He is king now: we don’t have to wait until the Second Coming for
his coronation. This has tremendous implications for how we live, and for how
we view the Church, art, literature, politics, and, of course, the Bible
itself.
So some have come to believe that Jesus is not king yet; or that He is only king in Heaven, reigning over a "spiritual" kingdom, but is not yet king here on earth. I think it’s thinking like this that has
led to a kind of political schizophrenia among Christians, who tend to separate
“worldly” spheres like politics away from a Biblical faith. But if Christ is
king, that means Caesar—or the prime minister, or Congress, or the president—is
not. We can’t just leave “secular” areas out of reach of the lordship of Jesus.
Why not? Because He is king, now, here.
This makes a difference in how we tell God’s story to our
children, and how they understand their place in it. If Jesus is not king now
(or is only king in some mysterious, indefinable, “spiritual” sense), then we
will expect things to get worse and worse, until Jesus comes back to “claim His
throne.”
But if He is King now, then we should busy ourselves
with living out the implications of that kingship, and teach our children that
their place in God’s story is that of heralds, proclaiming the kingship of
Jesus to the world.
Wright put it this way in For All the Saints:
“The ‘Feast of Christ the King’…concludes the implicit
story-line at the wrong point and with the wrong point…It implies
that Jesus Christ becomes King at the end of the sequence, the end of the
story, as the result of a long process…None of this would matter if
Christian truth were just a ragbag of detachable doctrines and ideas that you could
in principle rearrange in any order. But it isn’t. It’s a story, the
story of God and the world, the story of God and Jesus, the story of God and
you and me. How do we learn this story? How do we make it our own?”
Not by implying that Christ only becomes King at the end of
history, or only reigns in Heaven. St. Paul says that after Christ became
obedient to death on the cross, “God also has
highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth…” (Phil. 2:9-10; emphasis
mine). Or as Jesus Himself said, “All authority has
been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of
all the nations…” (Matt. 28:18-19; emphasis mine).
Jesus is king now. Our church services should reflect that. And so should our lives.
Jesus is king now. Our church services should reflect that. And so should our lives.
