The King will answer them, `Truly, I say to you, as you did
it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'
At St. John the Baptist, Newcastle, the English
parish where I served my first curacy, I once suffered a mild crisis of
conscience. On Accession Day, the annual anniversary of the 'dread sovereign' –
as she was known in the parish—it was the custom -- and a custom mandated by
the English Prayer Book—to sing “God save the Queen” at the end of the
High Mass. The vicar and the servers solemnly wondered ‘what will Fr. Allen do?”
What was I supposed to do? Fold my arms, refuse to join in and think “I will
have no truck with this undemocratic nonsense”. Actually with children like
Queen Elizabeth II has she needs all the prayers she can get! I sang loudly and
with just a bit more enthusiasm than everyone else.
Although we Americans are avid consumers of
everything royal, few of us would actually like to be ruled by a monarch. Huck
says to Jim in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Fin “All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take
them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised”. “Ornery’ is something of an understatement when it comes to kings.
Ivan the Terrible merited his nickname by
torturing enemies and friends alike for sheer pleasure. Henry VIII altered the
moral code to suit himself and married six times, murdering two of his wives to
clear the way for others. Montezuma, great king of the Aztecs, waged war solely
to obtain thousands of captives for human sacrifice. Almost every monarch you
can think of has grown rich at the expense of their subjects.
It was not God’s idea that Israel should have a
king. It was the people who demanded “give us a king”.Samuel warned them: he will take your sons for
soldiers; he will make your daughter
slaves; he will tax you; seize your grain and cattle; and the day will
come when you will pray to be delivered from kings. Besides you already have a
king: the Lord your God. But still the people said: “we want to be like other
nations: set a king over us.”
Fast forward to Ezekiel: the day has finally
come: the net result of centuries of apostate, corrupt, greedy and murderous kings
is the destruction of Israel: the Babylonian captivity. God says enough is
enough: "For
thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep, and will
seek them out”.
Fast forward again: the prophesy is fulfilled in
Jesus Christ: God himself reasserts his rule and authority over his people.
The Gospels insist on two things about Jesus. First that he was a king, descended from the House of David . Second he
was a King like no other: born in royal
David's city, Bethlehem, but in a stable not a palace, with no place to lay his
head, and buried in another man's tomb. His accession to the throne was his
entry into Jerusalem, the royal capital, riding on a donkey rather than in a
state coach. His royal robe was a spittle-covered purple rag, his crown was of
thorns and his scepter a reed. He made his royal progress weak and bleeding
through the streets, to the jeers not the cheers of the populace. At Calvary he
was enthroned on a cross.
From beginning to end the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus mocks rather than imitates earthly kings. In his realm
there are no masters because everyone is a servant. Even the King came to serve
and not to be served. Those who would be greatest in the Kingdom are those who
make themselves the least. The reward for service is not promotion and
financial gain but to be given further opportunities for service. When his
subjects become rich or gain promotion, they are impoverished and demoted, the
mighty being cast from their thrones and the lowly exalted. The lowest are the
highest and tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the Kingdom before the
hypocritical Pharisees, members of the religious and political establishment,
who take the best seats in the synagogues, encourage salutations in the market
places and create heavy burdens for other people to bear without lifting a
finger to help them.
The hard thing for Christians is that we live
simultaneously in two kingdoms, that of this world and that of Christ. We are prone to amalgamate them, to make one
look so much like the other that we can't tell the difference. “We want to be
like other nations.” Often it seems that the Church, and our lives within it, have
been made to fit the image of an temporal earthly kingdom rather than making
earthly kingdoms fit the image of Christ's eternal heavenly Kingdom.
“I will feed them with justice” says the Lord
God. The distinguishing feature of Christ's rule is that of justice, but not
the kind of justice we're used to, not the justice we deserve but just the
opposite. Most of us would be cast into that outer
darkness Jesus talks about in today's Gospel. Throughout his life Jesus
emphasized forgiveness and it is this that tempers justice.
You can recognize the people who feel at home in
the Kingdom, they are the ones who are ready to forgive. They are the people
who feed and give drink to the hungry and thirsty, who welcome strangers, who
clothe the naked and visit the sick and imprisoned.
The only tell-tale signs of the King and His
Kingdom around here and everywhere.
The King will answer them, `Truly, I say to you, as you did
it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'
As is the
often the case I had Dominican help with this homily, Fr. Anthony Axe; they are the experts in preaching after all
and I only steal from the best.
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