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Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

CONFESSIONS
January 2005

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CHRIST THE NON-KING

Every year, it seems, I end up somewhere besides my regular parish on the feast of Christ the King. And every year, it seems, the homily I hear that Sunday is one long embarrassed attempt to explain away the notion of Christ the King. Last year, I heard about a wax statue of Christ whose upraised arms melted — providentially, mind you — just enough for his gesture heavenward to become an embrace. Not the stern, commanding Christ, but Christ our brother. Not an exhortation, but a support.

The dichotomy was false. Yes, Christ is our supportive brother, thanks to our adoption into His mystical body. Yes, he walked the earth and suffered as we suffer and loves us tenderly and abides in us and ministers to us. There is nothing in any of this to keep him from being our king, from commanding us to "go and sin no more," to "be perfect," to take up our crosses and follow Him, to love Him above all things and lay down our lives for His sake. If He can be both true God and true man, He can pull off loving brother and commanding king.

This year, at a different parish, I got a preface to the homily which told me about how scripture is conditioned by time and place, how people back in biblical days didn't know about democracy and freedom from oppression. Now even if people hadn't heard of the Greeks, I don't think this is quite true.

At the end of Judges, it says that "in those days, there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes." Sounds like freedom from oppression to me. By the first book of Samuel, the Israelites are demanding a king, despite God's warning that a king would take their sons and daughters for his service, and the best of all their crops and herds and wine. But never mind; it was only the preface.

The priest's principal objective was to remind us of what sort of king Jesus wasn't. He wasn't a king who lived in splendor — he was born in a stable. He wasn't a king who ruled from a throne. Instead, he did his work from the cross, and his crown was woven from thorns. He was not and is not a distant, haughty king. Rather, he said, "I know my sheep and my sheep know me." And like the previous year, I got a reminder that Jesus is not a king who lords it over us.

All this is true. But Father was so busy explaining the ways that Jesus was unlike earthly kings that he forgot to mention the ways that he was like them. He forgot, on the feast of Christ the King, to offer any reason why Christ should be so named. Off the top of my head: a king demands fidelity and obedience, service and sacrifice. And because this king is also the good God, He is truly worthy of the honor, the adoration, and the worship that so many kings have demanded.

Another similarity: as the Israelites noted when they demanded a king from Samuel, a king goes out before his people to fight in battle. Once again, back to Walker Percy and the rantings of character Lancelot Lamar in the novel Lancelot: "There is only one way and we could have had it if you Catholics hadn't blown it: the old Catholic way.... Then we knew what a woman should be like, your Lady, and what a man should be like, your Lord. I'd have fought for your Lady, because Christ has the broadsword. Now you've gotten rid of your Lady and taken the sword from Christ."

"Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." And, if I may be so bold as to append an addition to scripture, in the interior places. There is a war on, even if we are so in love with staying comfortable that we need constant reminders of its existence. And we have a king who can lead us to victory in that war, if we but give Him the broadsword. Is it too much to hope that, on at least one Sunday a year, we can call Christ our king without apology, swear fealty to Him without shame, and rally with him against "this present darkness"?

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