ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
The Feast of Christ the King 22 November 2009
Sermon preached by Fr. Julian Browning at High Mass
Readings: Daniel 7:9-10 & 13-14; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37
What is truth? It's out there somewhere: the truth about God, the truth about ourselves. But because we prefer our own agenda, we hide from the truth. I'll give you an example. I preached on the Feast of Christ the King a couple of years back. It was a very dull sermon that day. The sermon never reached the truth, it got stuck in information we didn't really need, about kings, it was about kingship, and the shepherd kings of the Old Testament, and a rather irritating monarchist theme, the divine right of kings, and goodness knows what else. Our spiritual lives can be a bit like a dull sermon, if you don't mind me dragging you into it at this point. We know it all, we learn a bit more each year, we believe most of it, we practise some of it, but the religion somehow goes cold, and there's no warmth, no life, no catching of the breath at the sight of the truth. Religion is about catching fire. Religion is about the truth catching fire within us. The way we've chosen to find that truth is the Christian way, and when we follow that way, God gets through to us and we learn the truth about ourselves. Without those revelations we get stuck in part time religion. And that's worse than no religion at all. Christianity is full time and everywhere. We come to church so that we can then go home and be the Church where we are. The kingship of Christ, which we celebrate today, is the kingship of God, it reaches everywhere, it's full time, that's what Pilate doesn't understand. He thought he was dealing with a Jewish king. My kingdom is not of this world, said Jesus. Jesus takes us out of our little selves, where we are in charge, to a world beyond worlds, where he's in charge. But there's a difference. We think of kingship in terms of power and control. Jesus doesn't; Christ the King is Christ the shepherd, the servant of all. It isn't easy getting to grips with that idea. It isn't easy, because all the time we want to be in control, as little kings again, we want to know it all, and then we can make our decisions. So it is threatening to be told that the only way to this wonderful new life I've talked about, is to follow, not to lead.
The Feast of Christ the King is a modern feast, instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925. The date is significant because that was an era which saw dictatorships growing in Europe, and the rise of a secular way of looking at our lives, and for many people religion was turning into a part time thing, a sort of hobby, to make you feel better. In those days, as now, the state was taking control. So one of the themes of this Feast of Christ the King was and is religious freedom. Jesus crosses the boundaries of our human lives, leads us beyond them. So too, the way of Jesus, what we call Christianity, is not confined within national or ethnic boundaries. Christ is king of the cosmos, the whole world. His kingdom is limitless, without definition. What is this kingship? Christ comes to us disguised as our life. His Kingdom is what we make of it each day, when the Holy Spirit calls out to us. We fear that sort of freedom to act, we fear open spaces, infinity, not knowing, but this freedom is God's gift to us. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. That is somewhere where the new dictators of our time, the very clever atheist scientists and philosophers, can not, or will not follow. They want to set the boundaries, define the terms, restrict the language, control the knowledge, and see us live by bread alone. Atheists are long in science and short of humour. It infuriates them to be told that, however big their universe becomes, Christ the King has the greater reach.
As we shall sing later in this service:
thou art a sea without a shore,
a sun without a sphere;
thy time is now and evermore,
thy place is everywhere.
In the Book of Revelation, God only speaks directly to John twice, both times saying the words we heard this morning. I am the Alpha and the Omega. The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, the beginning and the end. And there they are, revealed this year for us all to see, alpha and omega. In the middle is the empty cross, the sign of resurrection. There it is, the truth of the Feast of Christ the King above you, in three clear symbols. In Christ is God's power, God's reach, God's love, God's kingdom. Jesus is also the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. This is where our Church year ends today, with the power of God revealed in that cross, and this is where our new life begins today, to every believer the promise of God, a resurrection life in which death has no power, a life in which truth catches fire, a life which reflects each day the glory of a loving God.