CHRIST THE KING.
Behold, the days come,
saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King
shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgement and justice in the
earth. Jer. 23:5.
Today is the last Sunday of
the Christian year, the Sunday Next Before Advent. Next Sunday, the First Sunday in Advent, we
turn our thoughts to preparing for the celebration of the Nativity of our
Lord. In one way or another the propers
for the four Sundays in Advent remind us that what we are looking forward to is
the birth of a King.
So it is fitting that on the
last Sunday of the year we celebrate Christ The King. The King foretold in Jeremiah 23:5 as a King
of David’s line. This king was awaited
with great expectations by the Jews.
They thought he would lead them to the restoration of their greatness as
a nation. They anticipated glorious
victories on the battlefield against their enemies, driving the occupiers from
their lands and reuniting the Jews.
But Jesus Christ proved to be
a very different King. This was a King
who could proclaim His difference in saying, Before Abraham was, I am!
(John 8:58). His Kingship stretches
throughout eternity. St. Paul so
acknowledged this all encompassing reign in Romans 14:9, For to this end
Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the
living and the dead.
This is a King whose dominion
extends far beyond those living on earth to include all heavenly things. He is the King who must gather all things
under his power, as St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, That in the
dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things
in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. (Eph.1:10.)
How dare mortal man work to
divide even the Body of Christ when God has ordained that all things in heaven
and in earth are to be united in Christ the King! Yet in this most unusual of Kingdoms, even
this is revealed as part of the plan. The
King will destroy all those powers which set themselves against Him. As the Psalmist testified:
The
Lord said unto my Lord,
Sit
thou on my right hand
Until
I make thine enemies thy footstool.
The
Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of
Rule
thou in the midst of thine enemies.
This is the King who the
world sought to slay upon the Cross, but found that God was waiting and ready
to turn that instrument of death into a throne of glory. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted
Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus
every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth and things under
the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father. (Phil.2:9-11).
John the Baptist…..looking
upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! (John 1:35).
This King, ordained and
anointed and crowned by God the Father was proclaimed to the world as a
lamb. What a strange way to describe any
king, let alone the King of Kings. On the
lips of the Baptist, the words were so portentious.
When the Angel of Death
passed through
The lamb was a sacrificial
animal and Isaiah the Prophet foresaw this of Jesus. In those exquisitely heart wrenching verses
of chapter 53, he wrote, He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he
opened not his mouth: he is brought like
a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he
openeth not his mouth. (Is.53:7).
In that picture of the
sacrificial lamb there is an undercurrent of surprising strength. Despite the humiliation and the agony
inflicted upon Him, Isaiah foretold that Jesus would remain silent, refusing
His tormentors the satisfaction of an answer.
Which leads to another thing
which may have been in John the Baptist’s mind when he proclaimed, Behold
the Lamb of God! Arising out of the
struggles of the Maccabees, which we read this past week in the daily offices,
comes the symbol of the lamb as a great conqueror. It was used to describe Judas Maccabaeus and
Samuel, David and Solomon.
In that term, the Lamb of
God, is a world of wonder. It bursts
with the love, the suffering, the sacrifice and the total triumph of Jesus
Christ. It is indeed a term fit for this
very different King, Jesus Christ.
In believing in His
Incarnation, we acknowledge His love for us, transcending time and space and
our three dimensional world.
In shuddering at His
suffering our eyes are opened to our fallen nature, helplessly mired in sin and
beyond our own power to redeem.
In comprehending the enormity
of the Cross, we can fall on our knees before it, bewail our sins and their
complicity in His death; and through our grief can show Him our heartfelt
repentance.
In lifting up our eyes
towards His throne we can proclaim the reality of our living, saving Lord and
worship our King.
For worship Him we must, in
love and in fear. This is a King of
awesome, irresistible power. He is not
some ephemeral phantom, not a figment of our imagination. He is a living, all knowing, just ruler who
demands that we all give an answer to His simple question, Do you love me? He will judge us one day by the answer we
give to that question, but we must understand that it is a question our King
puts to us each and every day.
And the answer He requires is
not some empty words, but the clear and constant demonstration of our obedience
to His commandments. He is our example
and our supreme task in this life is to show sincere, unflinchingly courageous
loyalty to our King in following that example.
How easy that is to say!
How hard we have to work at
accomplishing it and making it the reality of our lives. Kyrie Eleison! Lord, have mercy upon us!
We cannot escape the truth
that a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgement and justice
in the earth.
But this King knows His
subjects. He knows how desperately weak
we are and in His love He is unfailing in His help. His arms are always there to catch us when we
fall and cry out to Him. So to Christ
our King we can say with complete confidence:
O Lord in thee have I trusted,
let me never be confounded.
Peter Jardine+
Christ The King,