Preached on Sunday, November 25, 2012 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. To listen to this sermon on our parish website, click here.
In the neighborhood where I grew up, at the end of the street, right next to our house, there was a field. It was probably about an acre or two in size. It was rarely mown, it stood in tall green grass for most of the summer which turned wheaten in the winter months when it was often covered in white frost. In the middle of the field, a generation or two of children armed with spoons, sticks and the occasional shovel had dug a hole, that over time deepened to about a foot and a half.
As is always the case with children, the field was a big canvas onto which we painted our playtime fantasies. It was a time when Combat starring Vic Morrow and directed by Robert Altman was popular on TV; as was The Rifleman starring Chuck Conners. So the games of choice in our neighborhood were either Army – or Cowboys and Indians. Our field might then serve as the wide open West, and pitched battles between settlers and savage Sioux warriors would be waged on a Saturday afternoon -- in which case, the hole served as the all precious fort that must be defended at all costs, and which would inevitably be surrounded at some point in the battle, allowing some overdramatic kid to shout, ‘We’re completely surrounded by Indians!” with a blood-curdled terror that would only add to everyone’s enjoyment. At other times, the field would serve as the snowbound Russian Front, and the Allies would battle the Nazis from the cover of their front line foxhole, lobbing dirt clod hand grenades with a merciless accuracy.
Most of the kids on our block were my little brother’s age, which is 19 months younger than me. Now 19 months is not a big age difference, but when you’re only 60 or 72 months old, it can seem like an eternity. Being so much older by the vast stretch of 19 months, and being therefore much more sophisticated, I eschewed both Army and Cowboys and Indians.
Somewhere in our family set of World Book encyclopedias, I had seen an entry all about medieval castles. I wanted to play Kings and Castles, not Army or Cowboys and Indians. I would lobby fiercely on behalf of my fantasy, but I rarely won out. No one really knew the script of Kings and Castles. Vic Morrow and Chuck Conners didn’t supply us with our lines. On the rare occasion when everyone agreed to play Kings and Castles, we’d run out of plot lines and scenarios rather quickly and then someone would shout, ‘We’re surrounded by Indians!’ and the battle would morph into Cowboys and Indians – and I’d sulk off home to read more of the encyclopedia.
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In the West, for much of history, our ideas about monarchy and our ideas of divinity have been closely linked. The Roman imperial leaders were proclaimed Gods. And the divine right of monarchs, the belief that the right to rule was granted to kings by God himself, was an idea that was very closely held throughout European history, perhaps by no one more staunchly than James the First of England, the same King James we have to thank for the “King James” Bible. In fact, the posture we use to pray to God is derived from the posture of supplicants and liegemen in obeisance before medieval kings. Often when we pray, we kneel, as did our medieval counterparts before their king, and we place our hands like so, as they did before the king to make a pledge of allegiance to their sovereign.
So, there’s been a sort of cross-pollination between our secular ideas about royalty and kings, and our sacred ideas about God – and about Jesus in particular. Christ is king of heaven and earth, we say, and sometimes sing. And it is Christ’s kingship of earth that is behind the celebration of Christ the King Sunday. This commemoration of Christ’s kingship wasn’t added to the liturgical calendar until 1925. World War I was just over and it had been for most of Europe a devastating, soul-killing and faith-destroying event. Christian nation had waged war against Christian nation, with a ferocity and deadliness that only modern technology could have brought about. In the aftermath of the war, a few of the old monarchies gave way to either democracy -- which owed its sovereignty to the consent of the governed, not the divine right of the monarch -- or to Communism, which was officially an atheistic form of governance. The church sought to help restore order and peace (and maybe a bit of its own prestige) by reminding the war-ravaged nations of the world that Christ was indeed king of earth as well as heaven, and that we should govern ourselves, and live together, as if continually in his sight, and under his authority.
It makes us wonder, what sort of king would Jesus be, if indeed he was to ascend an earthly throne in Westminster Abbey or in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo? It’s kind of hard to tell, really and we get some conflicting pictures from our Scripture readings today.
In Daniel, we are given a vision of the Ancient One with flowing, snow-white hair seated upon a fiery throne. This is one ruling in majesty and might, and great power. Then comes the one like a human being, ‘one like the son of Man’ in the older translation, who is given power and dominion over us, over all nations and peoples and languages, one whose authority and kingship is to last forever. That idea is echoed in our reading from the Revelation to John. In John’s vision, Jesus is the ruler of the rulers of the earth, to whom belongs glory and dominion forever.
Then we see Jesus himself, from the gospel of John, standing before one of those rulers of the earth, or at least that corner of the earth that Jesus called home. And the contrast between the two rulers couldn’t be more stark. Pilate is very interested in this idea of kingship, and whether Jesus is claiming it for himself or whether the crowd is about to. Judea had a king, Herod, a Roman client king and puppet. If Jesus is a claimant to Herod’s throne, then he is a challenge to Roman authority and stability. If Pilate can get Jesus to admit that, then he can put him to death with all due haste, and we can all get back to the Passover celebrations.
But Jesus refuses to play along. His kingship, he says, is not from the world. It’s not so much that he’s not claiming to be a king, but rather he’s pointing out that his authority is not like Pilate’s, it’s not based on power and might and conquest. Here is a king who is not a member of a dynasty or an aristocracy, he’s not a member of an occupying army or an empire. Christ’s kingship is not based on an earthly claim, but on sacred and timeless truth.
Christ hasn’t come into the world to take Herod’s throne away from him, and he’s not here to go head to head with Pilate. He doesn’t need an army or a nation of supplicants. He is here for one reason: to testify to the truth, and those who belong to the truth, hear him, hear his testimony and know that his word is truth. And that truth is the truth that sets us free; rather than binds us to a king or crown or any earthly power.
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What a world it would be if Christ was indeed our king, or if we acting like he was. No more games of Army, with the all the destruction and death that those kind of games bring. No more games of Cowboys and Indians, with the death of peoples and cultures and nature that those kind of games bring. No more games of Kings and Castles, that always result in more power and riches for the already powerful and rich. A world in which the truth that Jesus came to give testimony to was the only sovereign over women and men. And that truth was let loose upon the earth to liberate all people from sin and death and oppression and want. A kingdom of Christ on this earth that might bear some slight resemblance to the heavenly kingdom he has gone to prepare for all who act with mercy, charity and justice. Would that Christ were truly our King and we his most loyal subjects; who hear the word of truth, and are set free to set others free. +Amen.
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins
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