Christ the King Year B Revelation
Sermon Preached by Reverend Michael Hillier on Sunday, 24 November 2024.
1.4b-8; John 18.33-37
Today we keep the Feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday in the Church’s year. Let me begin this way. Imagine a television broadcast of a cricket or football match. The camera scans the oval where the action is taking place and the crowd is watching. Then we notice the camera zoom in to look at a particular piece of field play, or individual spectators watching from a distance.
Our liturgical year is like that. The camera seems to pull back to allow us to see that bigger picture. Then it will focus on something, such as Christmas or Pentecost. We notice this close-up in detail before once again drawing back to view that larger picture. Today the camera is zooming in on Christ the King.
As we move through our liturgical year there are times when we think not much is happening. But we are once again preparing to focus on the details. Think of the Season of Epiphany as it awaits the coming of Lent or the long weeks and months that follow Pentecost before we once more arrive at Advent.
We can think of this as we would a wonderful opera. There can seem long periods between the arias and duets that we just love and long to hear again. But it would be emotionally exhausting if the opera was simply one masterpiece after another. We need time that is not so intense in its beauty to begin to look forward to that next gem. And so, it is with our liturgical year with its focused moments scattered across the year.
Without a liturgical year, we could easily forget to whom we belong and that our story is part of a much bigger one. In all this, our transformation is the key.
Other calendars might have a functional or useful purpose such as the secular year or the tax year, but the liturgical year is teaching us how to be rather than do. It is teaching us to have a sense of presence rather than simply having a role or a function that is useful to society. We need both of these dimensions in life.
To develop this sense of presence our liturgical year continually reminds us of the central story of Jesus and that He walks with us as we journey through life towards death. It reminds us who we are and who Jesus is and slowly we are transformed, growing into His likeness. As Joan Chittister writes, ‘Over the years we melt into what we seek’.
Christ the King as a name or title, has a long history, but was only instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 and moved to this date in the Roman Rite in 1969. Now, many Churches celebrate it. To paraphrase, Pius noted that in the aftermath of World War I though hostilities had ceased, there was no true peace. He deplored the rise of class divisions and unbridled nationalism. He believed that true peace could only be found under the Kingship of Christ as ‘Prince of Peace’. Both the truth of this and our need for this is still very obvious today.
So how might we allow this Feast of Christ the King to speak to us today? How might it speak into our lives? What might its message to us be? Let me begin this way.
It is almost to state the obvious but we live in an age where a good many of us feel somewhat overwhelmed by all that is happening: Economically, politically, technologically, global security affairs, climate, environmental and societal issues; these all stretch us, as we struggle to understand and find ways forward. The pandemic just adds to our woes as do the problems of the Church.
Each of these problems is huge in itself with complex answers – if there are answers at all! What can today’s Feast say to us without seeming slick and shallow? Add to that, to speak of kings and kingdoms in an age of so much republicanism around the world seems almost anachronistic.
Let’s turn to our second reading for today that comes from the Revelation to John the Divine. John is writing near the end of the first century, on the island of Patmos off the coast of modern Turkey, while in exile, because of his love for Christ and his witness to the Christian faith (1.9).
For those early Christians, it was a troubled age. They were small in numbers, dealing with internal divisions and beginning to face active persecution. How were they to survive? Where would they find hope? How not to be overwhelmed by all that was happening around them in a world dominated overwhelmingly by paganism.
And yet John begins his Revelation with shouts of praise, exuberance and hopefulness. And yes, even joy. Praise bursts forth from his lips that speak of a full heart that rejoices in God.
Christ is seen as ‘the Alpha and the Omega’, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the one who is the Almighty (1.8). There is nothing lukewarm or half-hearted here.
This is not personal or private, this is out in the open, almost cosmic. This is big picture stuff. God’s grace flows through all, filling the universe. There is nothing tentative or cautious about this. In the face of evil and human pettiness in so many areas of life, we see the power of God springing forth. God’s will, will be ultimate. As Isaiah so long before reminds us: God’s Word will not return to Him empty (55.10-11).
The world at large scorns or despises Christ or at least trivialise Him. But each one of us must take Him seriously for at the end of the day we each have to give an account of ourselves.
Jesus is Lord and King overall but this is something hidden for the moment, only there for those who have the eyes to see; for Jesus said in our Gospel reading ‘My Kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18.36). You can easily miss the claim He makes on your life if you are not attentive and watchful.
All this I think is something that we slowly grow into over the years. For some, it may all happen in the ‘twinkling of an eye’ but for most of us, I think it is a slowly deepening awareness that comes as we surrender more and more of ourselves to God.
And as we find ourselves more and more drawn in this direction so we find that grace that comes from God strangely warming our hearts. A sense of new peace and stability slowly emerges in our life and we find ourselves more and more living out of a new centre that is Christ. We come to see Him as our Lord and King. And this is something that delights us.
It is something that begins here in worship, and that flows out into the rest of our life as we live the coming week. This is a good way to begin our coming week: to begin centred in Christ, recognising his Lordship over us and enthroning him as King in our hearts.
So today we keep the Feast of Christ the King, and this is fitting, for He is Lord of all creation. And with the elders in the Book of Revelation, we can and should proclaim: ‘You are worthy, our Lord God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will, they existed and were created’ (4.11).