True King

Propers: Christ the King, A.D. 2019 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What is it to be King? What is it to be Lord?

It cannot be mere tyranny, for no tyrant could be king in any real or meaningful sense. It cannot be brute force, for that is but to make a desolation and call it peace. The true King, the true Lord, exhibits selflessness in nobility, courageousness in virtue. He leads, not simply by dint of His blood or His blade, but by the right of His office, by the strength of His character, by the love of the people whom He has sworn to serve and defend and uplift and set free.

The true King serves, and is thereby worthy of being obeyed. Show the people such a King, and they shall gladly follow Him with joy and true devotion in their hearts. Show us such a King, worthy of Lordship, and we shall follow Him even unto the ends of the earth. Verily, with Him, we shall march into hell for a heavenly cause.

To confess that Christ is Lord is a political as well as a spiritual act. Make no mistake. If Christ is King—if Christ has such claim of lordship over you—then no-one and nothing else does. Nothing can steal you from those loving and crucified hands. All other loyalties, all other authorities, all other obligations must take their proper place in orbit around Him. And if they are good—if they are true authorities, worthy obligations—then the Kingship of Christ will ennoble them, enflame them, bring them to life. But if they are wicked and unworthy, then Christ abolishes them all.

You see how dangerous this is, I trust. What Caesar would ever tolerate a sovereignty greater than his own? What government could ever trust subjects who openly profess loyalty to a higher moral authority? If Christ is King, then no-one else is. If Christ is Lord, then there are none higher. And if Christ is God, then I needs must concede that I am not, in fact, my own god. And that’s a hard pill to swallow for sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.

Jesus wasn’t crucified for His religion. Heavens, no. Rome could care less what sandy little gods the Hebrews worshipped out there in the deserts that drove men mad. So Christ claims to be a god? Fine, why not? Worship what you may, so long as you first make sure to bow the knee to the imperial cult and the gods of the state. After all, what harm could but a pinch of incense do, save to traitors and fanatics?

Jesus wasn’t killed for being a God. He was killed for being a King; for indeed, “we have no king but Caesar.” You can’t trust these Christians, forever prattling on about women and slaves and peasants and miscellaneous other riffraff. And there are such rumors, you know, about how they eat human flesh and drink human blood, hidden away down in the catacombs with the dead. Better to make an example of them. Remind the people who’s really in charge.

From the beginning, the claim that Christ is King was a scandalous one. All the titles we give Him—Savior, Lord, Son of God—these were titles that Caesar reserved for himself. You can see it on the coins he mints, the very currency of the Empire. Indeed, you can always tell who a society’s real gods are, if you but look at the money.

This Feast of Christ the King is the final Sunday of the Western Church’s year. But its inclusion on our calendar is a fairly recent innovation. It was established in direct and defiant response to the rise of totalitarian powers, on both the Far Right and Far Left, in twentieth century Europe: namely, the Nazis and the Soviets. The Nazis were fascists, worshipping the cruel and ancient gods of Blood and Soil: the purity of the nation, the strength and security of the fatherland. The Soviets worshipped the newer gods of Class and of Party: forever striving to raise up Utopia upon the bones of everyone who ever got in their way.

And if it’s hard to tell the difference—if the atrocities of the Nazis and the Soviets all blend and bleed together in the horrors of the Bloodlands—that’s simply because any ideology, taken to the extreme, becomes its own opposite. The animals looked from pig to man, and it was impossible to say which was which.

In response to such savagery, the Church held aloft our King on the Cross: Jesus Christ, God made Man, who came down to live and laugh and weep and bleed and die with us; to suffer unjustly, at our hands and for our sake; to plunge headlong into hell and there to conquer, trampling down death by death, and rising again with the forgiven damned streaming up and into Heaven; a worthy King at last, whose Crown is of Thorns, whose Throne is the Cross.

“Blood and Soil are not your lords,” He cries. “Party and Class are not your gods. I have made you, I’ve redeemed you, and I’ve claimed you. You are mine, my own, and I will have no rivals, I will tolerate no other gods, no other claims upon you!”

The love of God poured out from the Cross in Christ Jesus our Lord is as inexorable as it is victorious. He is our King, and He will not be denied: King, not by force, not by tyranny, but by a power and a passion that raise up the very dead; by a love that cannot be stopped, cannot be killed, can barely even be slowed down.

You are not your political party. You are not your citizenship, race, or class. You are not your job, or your possessions, or your clothes, or your house. You are not your bank account, or the piles of useless stuff that we all order from Amazon with two-day shipping. You are Christ’s beloved own. You owe homage to the King.

And He will not tarry, and He will not delay, and He will not stop, ever, until every fetter binding you, every barrier separating you from Him, every false god enslaving you to a will that you think is your own, has been cast down, torn asunder, and trampled underfoot. And then the King—the One True King—shall reign forever.

And we shall be free for the first time in the history of the world.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.