Christ the King (Year B)


Commentary on Daniel 7:13-14; Revelation 1:5-8; John 18:33-37

We have almost reached the end of the Church year. Today is the 34th and final Sunday of the year. And as usual, we celebrate today the feast of Christ the Universal King.

Contrast
There is a great contrast between the readings. The First Reading is from the Book of Daniel and the Second is from the Book of Revelation. These are what we call apocalyptic books. The word ‘apocalypse’ comes from a Greek word (apokalypsis) which means an ‘uncovering’ or a ‘revelation’ of something hidden. The books reveal the inner meaning of life and both were written for people who were suffering great persecution for fidelity to their religious beliefs—Jews in one case and early Christians in the other. The books are full of hope and look forward to a day when God will come in triumph and overcome the earthly powers which commit so many evils and bring so much suffering.

Son of Man
The Book of Daniel was written during the time of King Antiochus Epiphanes who desecrated the Temple of Jerusalem and forced many Jews to adopt idolatrous customs, and to abandon the requirements of their Law. Many resisted and paid for their actions with torture and death. It is in this dark atmosphere that the author of Daniel wrote in today’s reading:

I saw one like a human being
coming with the clouds of heaven.

Christians, of course, see in the “human being” (also translated “son of man”), Jesus their Lord who often referred to himself as the ‘Son of Man’. He was presented before the “Ancient One”, God the Father, from whom he received “dominion and glory and kingship”. And this kingdom, unlike all those which have gone before:

…is an everlasting dominion
that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
that shall never be destroyed.

As Jesus himself was to say:

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

This kingdom is indestructible and everlasting.

Fierce persecution
The Book of Revelation from which our Second Reading comes was written in similar circumstances to Daniel. The Church in parts of the Roman Empire was undergoing fierce persecution. Many were being arrested and martyred while others were driven underground. The Book of Revelation represents an underground document intended to rally morale and build up the courage of Christians. It is full of symbolical language and imagery, which the Christians could understand, but which made little sense to their non-Christian persecutors. While the meaning of much of the symbolism and images has been recovered, there are still parts of the book whose meaning we can only guess at. (Thus giving a field day to some evangelical preachers to see in these symbols references to present day events—most of these speculations are quite unjustified.)

Today’s reading comes from the opening chapter and is a hymn of praise for Jesus:

…the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

Echoing the Book of Daniel, it sings:

Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him…

“Even those who pierced him” refers to those who condemned Jesus to death on the cross. The passage continues:

…and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.

They will “wail”, i.e. lament, both out of compassion for his sufferings and out of guilt in so far as their sins caused them. And in a way, that includes all of us. For, it was because of our sins that he died on the cross. There is none of us who can say: “It does not touch me.”

Alpha and Omega
But as the Lord says:

I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come…

Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. They represent the beginning and the end. Jesus Christ is, as Paul in the letter to the Colossians and John in his Gospel tell us, the source of all that is, the Alpha. Through him, the creating Word of God, all things were created.

And he is also the Omega—the final goal for all creation. Every experience, every dream, every achievement is subordinated to this. Said St Augustine:

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts will never rest until they rest in you…

This is another way of saying that Jesus Christ is our King. He alone gives meaning to our existence, to our lives.

The King before his judges
The Gospel brings us to a totally different setting. Jesus has been arrested in the garden. He has been subjected to a summary trial by his enemies and found guilty of the capital crime of blasphemy for equating himself with God. However, the Jews have no authority to carry out capital punishment, so they have to submit their prisoner to the Roman authorities.

Jesus now stands before Pontius Pilate the Roman governor of Palestine. Pilate asks Jesus:

Are you the King of the Jews?

It is hard not to hear a mocking tone in the question as Jesus stands there before him, a dishevelled prisoner in his simple garment. Immediately, as happened before the Sanhedrin, Pilate experiences the power and dignity of Jesus:

Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?

Pilate was not used to being addressed like this, especially by one of his subjugated people. And it is a challenge to Pilate the Roman to come forward with the kind of firm evidence that was required by a Roman law court. (It is a challenge to us too. Is our knowledge of Jesus based on personal experience or simply on what we have been told in catechism class or sermons?)

Anger and contempt
Not used to being challenged by Jews, there is anger and contempt in Pilate’s retort:

I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?

There again is the phrase “handed over”, which echoes right through the Gospel. John the Baptist, Jesus and his disciples are all ‘handed over’ into the hands of those who would wish to destroy them. And in the Eucharist—in a very different and loving way—the Body of Christ is ‘handed over’ to us to be broken and shared among us.

And the question: “What have you done?” How is it to be answered in a few words? It is the story of Jesus from the moment of the Annunciation, through Bethlehem and Nazareth, to the public life of preaching and teaching, healing and liberating, and finally suffering—dying and rising—out of love. Instead of answering, Jesus speaks of the nature of his kingship:

My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.

His kingdom does not belong to this world—it is on a different level altogether. If it was a political kingdom, then his followers would rally together to save him from being ‘handed over’ to his own people. But no one is rallying to his cause. His followers, with one or two exceptions, have fled in fear and confusion. His kingship is on a different level, a level over which Pilate has no control.

‘I am a king’
Again, Pilate asks—now a little more respectful in response to the dignity and power he recognises in Jesus:

So you are a king?

And Jesus responds:

You say that I am a king.

But Jesus goes on to explain what being a king for him means:

For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.

Jesus’ kingship is not one of executive or coercive power. It is to open people’s eyes to the real meaning of life, of their existence and that of the whole world in which they live. And, he continues:

Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

These are words of challenge thrown to Pilate, to his Jewish judges and to all of us. And that is how one becomes a subject of this King, by sharing fully with him his vision of what is real, his vision of life and to share his goals.

Extraordinary liberation
To be subject to this King is to experience an extraordinary liberation and an exciting new outlook on life. Earlier he had said:

…and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. (John 8:32)

Many see Christianity as a religion of bondage. They imagine they have a greater sense of liberation by leaving the Church. This is such a distorted reading of the meaning of Jesus and his mission (a distortion, it must be said, not always of their own making).

No one is more free than the one who has seen the truth through the eyes of Jesus his or her King, and who accepts that truth as the Way to Life in its fullness. Jesus said:

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
(John 10:10)

Today then, we celebrate Jesus Christ as our King. And not only our King, but the King of people everywhere, whether they are Christians or not. We are all called to submit ourselves to the same Truth, the same Reality which governs all things.

Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of all things. Through him as the Word of God, we are led to the throne of the one who is all Truth and all Love. As St Augustine said:

Our hearts will find no rest until they rest in Him.

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