Candle Without A Torch: Christ the King
“I remember throwin’ punches around. And preachin’ from my chair” — Pete Townshend, “Who Are You?”
This Sunday, 21 November 2021, is traditionally celebrated as the annual “Feast of Christ the King,” a celebration created by Pope Pius XI in 1925. [1] Pope Pius, I gather, was understandably concerned with both worldly and spiritual matters in doing so. It’s not my intention to suggest one set of concerns was more important for Pope Pius than the other; indeed for most of us it can be challenging to know ourselves what motivations are taking predominance.
Even apart from this liturgical occasion, it’s a useful exercise to be asking God, through prayer and study of scripture, “who are you?” Is God like The Force? Like a superhero? Like a king — and if so, what sort of king? And so the concept of “Christ the King” can be a rewarding one or a dangerous one, depending on the assumptions one applies to the concept of “king” and what understanding of God to which those assumptions lead.
Dangerous in the sense that Christ warned of when asked if he was a king: confusing earthly political power with divine power. Rewarding in the sense that a mindset that sees and understands Christ as the authoritative reference point can, as scripture predicts, yield peace and joy and love for one another.
The Feast of Christ the King was inaugurated in the shadow cast by the geopolitical conflicts of the First World War, where contested empires and allegiances had contributed to bloodshed and horror. Pope Pius XI was also speaking after a season of conflict while Rome came under the control of the Italian fascists. So a celebration establishing Jesus’s political dominion over the world was undoubtedly informed by the control that would imply for Jesus’s authoritative representatives on Earth.[2]
I suspect Pius was, at the same time, concerned with peace and social harmony. His encyclical exhorts both the faithful and those outside the Church that a reorientation towards Jesus as authority would dispel the type of tensions that engulfed Europe, and bring about a better and more peaceful society. As Pius put it, “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.”
Pope Pius XI builds his characterization of Christ the King from Biblical sources. From the 72nd Psalm he takes the phrase that “he shall have dominion also from sea to sea.” That feels a bit odd, as in context it is a prayer to God from David that his son, King Solomon, should have such dominion. But it’s worth recognizing that the psalmist’s prayers glide a bit, as prayers can do, into prophecies. And given the assumption Christ was the “son of David,” i.e., royalty descended from kings, Pope Pius is reading Psalm 72 as a prophecy as to what rule under the Messiah would be like.
Indeed, in the New Testament the apostles imagine eagerly the powerful Messiah of which the prophets spoke will establish once again Jewish kingly authority (see, e.g., Luke 7:20). They argue who will be seated closest to the throne (Luke 22:24) and presume to ask if hellfire should destroy those who do not welcome Jesus (Luke 9:46–56).
Jesus rebukes them both times. He, indeed, promises that he will bestow upon them a kingdom (Luke 22:29). And that those who opposed Jesus will come to suffering. But it will be a kingdom where “he who governs will be as he who serves.” And suffering comes not in the form of a castle dungeon, but as a horrified conscience, as Judas suffered (see Matthew 27). This is not a King concerned with pursuit of status, acclaim or power.
I worry that too often conceiving of Christ the King leads us, sadly, to exactly this place. If Christ is King, then those who do not obey his authority are not merely missing out on the joy, they are breaking the law and should be forced to conform. If Christ is King, Christians are the only people qualified to rule — something which if not fulfilled in next year’s election will be fulfilled in eschatological time. As Dana Carvey’s fictional “Church Lady” used to say, “how convenient…”[3]
Online, I found a sermon by The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer that aptly explains how our limited imaginations inform limited views of Christ the King.[4] Rev. Shafer explains “all too often our imaginations are dominated by our experience. So…we imagine God to be violent because we live in a world of violence.” Jesus makes clear his authority, to be sure. But it as it is authority from God, it is an authority of love, not violence. And it is a divine and infinite love that is, well, beyond imagination.
So while Christ is quite clear in the Gospels as to the scope and source of his authority, he is equally clear he is not a “King” as we imagine it. “So… then you are a king?” asks Pilate . Jesus answers carefully “you say I am king.” But rather than agree with that characterization, Jesus describes himself to Pilate, as he did to his disciples, as something rather different. “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth,” Jesus answers. (John 18:33–37)
Christ makes clear he has come to rule not through force — or even courts of law. He rules because well, simply, his way is truly the way things work. And the way things work is that to conquer, one must surrender. To govern, one must govern oneself. Real power derives from how one treats those who are worst off, not by how one treats those most fortunate (see Matthew 25).
On balance, “Christ the King” takes a lot to unpack, given how we typically think of kings and authority, to make it a useful image. But if Christ is a “king,” let us recognize him as a king who serves. He serves by going first to the cross and then reappearing resurrected, to drive home the point that there is more to each of us than our titles, our wealth, our authority, our power, even our own lives. And that this “more” is more precious than all the gold of Midas, all the lands of the largest empire, or a majority in the Electoral College.
[1]“Quas Primas,” https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_11121925_quas-primas.html
[2]And so the encyclical notes “[w]hen we pay honor to the princely dignity of Christ, men will doubtless be reminded that the Church, founded by Christ as a perfect society, has a natural and inalienable right to perfect freedom and immunity from the power of the state…” Id.
[3]Because this view of Christ is so pernicious, Canon law cautions, as I noted in an earlier blog, that divine law in fact prescribes that “[n]o one is ever permitted to coerce persons to embrace the Catholic faith against their conscience “Candle, Not a Torch,” Reflections on Three ‘Isms’, https://chuckc-18299.medium.com/candle-not-a-torch-reflections-on-three-isms-58cb869592c7#_ftn10
[4]https://mtolivelutheranchurch.org/worship/sermons/489-christ-the-king-a-no-to-violence
