Christ the King

John the Baptist stood, with two of his disciples; and looking upon Jesus as He walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!

For the second time in two days, John the Baptist refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God. I will return to the first occasion in a moment.

Today is the last Sunday of the Christian year. Next Sunday begins the season of Advent, the New Year, four Sundays which lead up to the Holy celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord. The Nativity is a joyful occasion, but the Advent season is given to prepare our minds for a spiritual joy, not one cloyed with saccharine sentimentality. Thus, there is a penitential aspect to Advent and you will see much purple around the altar. That is appropriate, given the reason for the Nativity, and you will hear much more about that in the coming weeks. This week is perhaps an appropriate time to think about what kind of Christians we have been during the past year. How well have we served and obeyed Jesus Christ?

Today, as well as closing off the year, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King and it is on that I would like to reflect for a few moments.

The Gospel according to St. John opens with: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.

When He made it, it was perfect, for with God it could be nothing else. We were perfect and in our perfection we were in complete accord with God. Then came the Fall. Our perfection, made in the likeness of God was cast aside and our very nature became corrupt. From His place in heaven, the Word watched as we, who like the Word Himself expressed the Father’s mind, wasted in ever worsening corruption. This was the inevitable consequence of a fallen race, for we had lost the ability to reverse the trend of corruption and all goodness was disappearing. Death was the penalty of the Transgression, of the Fall and there is nothing we ourselves could do to change that. Helplessness is our condition.

The Word, who was also the King saw those perfect beings of His own making disappearing and to Him that was intolerable. But this King is different from any other king. What was happening was intolerable not because it make Him angry, but because it conflicted with His vast Love and compassion for His creatures. We had acquired a serious defect and the Word was determined that He would remove the defect, and once and for all conquer death.

St. Athanasius wrote, Rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body as our own.

The Word, the King of all, lived in another country, as He does even now. There were many ways in which He could have stopped the vicious downward spiral of human corruption. The power was His, even to consume us all with fire and start again. But He chose a different way and from the fountainhead of all love came the greatest expression of Love. He took a young and very human woman, a virgin untouched by a man and made of her a temple fit to carry Himself as He took from her our flesh. And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. John 1:

When John the Baptist first saw the Word made flesh, he proclaimed those words I repeated earlier, Behold the Lamb of God, but on that first occasion, the Baptist added something extremely significant. He added the words, Which taketh away the sin of the world. These words teach nothing less than the doctrine of Atonement.

This King we celebrate today, the King of Love, took a body like our own, and we might ask why. The answer is because He is immortal and cannot die, but every human body is subject to death and He offered His human body to the Father, surrendering it to death as a sacrifice for all of us. And He did it in such a way that we are left in no doubt about what was done for us.

But there is much more to it than that. He came into our world, honouring it by His presence. He took our form, which as Isaiah said doesn’t amount to much – He hath no form nor comeliness. Yet the King honoured our form by taking it Himself. He subjected Himself to all the horrors of the human condition, to all the things we do to each other. Isaiah wrote, He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised and we esteemed Him not. Is.53:3.

Yet this King lived through His years with us without spot of sin. What an awesome display of Divine power that is to a race of people who react to every slight, real or imagined; to every trivial hurt, real or imagined, which come our way.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth. Is.53:7. It was the lot of the unfortunate lamb to be a sacrificial creature, slain upon holy and pagan altars alike.

Behold the Lamb of God! The Word, our King, is immortal and cannot die. He is the Father’s only begotten Son, and cannot die. So He assumed a body which was capable of death and in that body made to the Father the perfect sacrifice for all mankind for all time. In that body, sacrificed upon the Cross, He turned the Cross into a coronation throne, and there He was crowned King, not by human hands, but by the Father.

This act of kingly love was followed by the Divinely majestic act of His Resurrection, through which death is conquered once and for all, and corrupt man is offered incorruptibility once more.

The King upon the Cross reclaims His subjects, bringing them back to the Father. By the example of His life, He shows us the way to worship Him in this life and join Him in the next, where He, risen and ascended, reigns in heavenly splendour. I am the way, the truth, and the light, He says, no man cometh to the Father, but by me.

From His heavenly throne our King reaches out to each and every one of us. He is the light from which we cannot hide, the light which reaches into our very hearts. We can turn our backs on that light, we can close our hearts to it, but we can never extinguish it or hide from it. The spread of His Gospel from Calvary to every place on this earth proves that.

This King wants nothing more than to reach the hearts of every one of His subjects, and there to dwell. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, Know ye not that ye are the temple of God? This King wants to reign, not just in heaven, but in the heart of every faithful Christian. And more than that, He wants all to hear His Gospel and to become a faithful Christian. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. No one is excluded from His all encompassing Love.

Jesus Christ our King is the light of the world, as St. John wrote, In Him was life and the life was the light of the world, and the light shineth in darkness and the darkness overcame it not. In His own words He teaches us that when He reigns in our hearts, we can be part of that light, for as faithful Christians, Ye are the light of the world.

Then we have a joyful task to perform for our King, in obedience to His command, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Behold the Lamb of God!

Behold your King!

Peter Jardine+

Trinity 24; Christ the King, 2007