[A sermon preached to Hinckley Unitarians on Sunday 20th of November 2022]
(Readings: Overthrowing the Emperor by Peter Rollins and Christ the King by Malcolm Guite)
So, here we are at the end of the year. No, I’m not a couple of months early! I’m talking about the liturgical year. The Christian calendar begins at Advent and goes around, providing a framework for worship on Sundays, all the way around to today. So, what is today, this ecclesiastical equivalent of New Year’s Eve commemorated as? Well, in the majority of the Western Church, it is The Feast of Christ the King and well… I have some thoughts about this.
Firstly, its grand title and position on the very last Sunday of the liturgical calendar might make you believe that this is an ancient feat day with vast amounts of tradition behind it. In fact, this fest was first held at this time all the way back in… 1970. Admittedly it was first celebrated on a different day when it was first introduced but that only happened in 1925.
So this day is not exactly old. It has little to no weight of tradition behind it and, while all holy days must be invented, this one can feel especially manufactured for some.
That said, I do not mind that too much. Innovation is often a good thing, and it beats the situation beforehand where the church year went out with something of a whimper. Unless you place great importance on the traditional prayer for today that begins with, “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.” With the “stir up” part widely being taken as an invitation for congregants to start preparing their Christmas puddings today!
But I have another problem with this Feat of Christ the King, and that is, when I think of Christ or being Christlike, I do not quickly think of kings. I certainly struggle to see Christ as a King. Images of Christ that do most for my spirituality are depictions of him as a shepherd, a carpenter, as an ordinary working man – not some grandiose and remote ruler.
I was always told that the Bible could be understood as a history of conflict between the kings who had power and the prophets who preached righteousness. To refer to Christ, in all his prophetic greatness, as a king seems to be making a mistake.
To me, a king is most often thought of as someone with worldly power. Applying such labels to the divine can easily encourage us to see God as some great army general rather than as the Spirit of Love. As much as I hate criticising things by using the term ‘medieval’ as a pejorative (I’m friends with too many medieval historians to make that mistake), describing Christ as King seems to immediately conjure up the medieval idea of the “Great chain of being” that sees God at the top of the pile, followed by Jesus, followed by several orders of angels, followed by the pope, followed by kings and emperors, followed by bishops, followed by Lords, followed by Priests and Magistrates, then all of us common plebs down at the bottom. Just above beats, plants, and whatever occupies hell.
I do not know about you, but that does not sit right with me, and it shouldn’t do! The enlightenment, the reformation, and our Unitarian ancestors in faith all played a part in ripping up this outdated hierarchical model.
If we are to think of Christ as King today, then we have to look again at our assumptions about what a king is. Malcolm Guite’s poem really helped me to do that.
Guite takes his inspiration for the sonnet that we heard today from the Gospel of Matthew 25:31-46. It is the passage of the sheep and the goats. You know the one, where Christ separates the people into sheep and goats, and the sheep are those who gave Him food and they say, “when did we give you food”, and he replies, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” That is the passage Guite used to craft his poem and image of a thirsty, hungry, naked king seen more as a nuisance or a threat than a powerful authority figure.
Yet it is in people who are thirsty and downtrodden where we are told to seek the Divine. As Peter Rollins’s story tells us, our true King is not to be found in royal palaces of gold and alabaster, or the mansions of the rich and famous, or processing down the corridors of power. Instead, our King is to be found in the face of the weeping trans person, the scared face of the refugee fleeing conflict, the outstretched hands of a hungry child, and the tears of a homeless alcoholic and in the hearts of those who take them time to be with them, to feed them, to listen to them and hear their stories and crys for help.
What a world we could build if we ceased chasing after earthly idols and rulers and started serving the Divine spirit that lives within us all, the King that resides within the least of us.
May we build that world together.
Amen.
