Were you holding your breath for the eight days in which Hamas and Israel were bombarding each other with rockets? It’s been a long century of wars. We’ve endured two great world-wide conflicts – and so many lesser conflicts from 1945 on, at home and abroad. This past week it seemed as if war would break out in the Middle East yet again, as Hamas and Israel traded accusations along with rocket fire. Benjamin Netanyahu even threatened an armed invasion of Gaza. As threats began to escalate, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, representing President Obama, joined Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in “shuttle diplomacy.” Going back and forth between the combatants, the two managed to bring both sides to the table. As some of us were fervently praying, “Let there be peace,” a cease-fire was announced on Wednesday evening. Although a young Palestinian man was killed and nine others wounded in a clash with Israeli soldiers on Friday, once again we hope that both sides can take concrete steps towards resolving the conflict. Once again we hope that Hilary Clinton, Mohamed Morsi, Benjamin Netanyahu, and those representing the interests of the Palestinians can find a way to ensure peace and political stability in a region sacred to Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
As we continue to watch events play out in Israel and Palestine, you and I trust Mrs. Clinton and all our representatives to do all that they can to ensure a just and fair peace. What we may not remember is that you and I also represent a leader. On this feast day of Christ the King, the church reminds us that we who dare to call ourselves Christians, that we who claim to be Jesus’ disciples represent the Christos, God’s anointed one. Although the one whom we represent discouraged his friends from calling him “king” or “messiah,” we nevertheless acknowledge him as our leader, as the one who invited us to follow him into a new country, a new realm, the Kingdom of God.
Who is this leader to whom we profess allegiance? What kind of leader do we claim to follow, speak for, celebrate, and represent to others? Here is what he is not: despite the title of “king,” despite the identification by Pope Pius XI in 1925 of this day as Christ the King Sunday, the leader whom we follow is anything but a traditional king. In declaring to Pilate that “My kingdom is not from this world,” he was declaring that he was not like Caesar, the king whom Pilate represented. He was not like the other kings of the ancient world – or like the Kaisers and tsars of the nineteenth century. He did not build his realm on structures of power, dominance, and exploitation. He did not claim or wish to exercise absolute power, and he had no need of heaps of gold, rich clothes, gorgeous palaces, or crowds of servants. He did not hide himself away from his subjects or force them, as did Henry VIII, to kneel in his presence and speak only if he deigned to address them. Nor did he proclaim himself the leader of a merely a spiritual kingdom, or of one that would come into being only in heaven, or even of one that his followers would see only in some future age beyond history.
In his journey to Jerusalem these last couple of months in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus gave us some clues as to the kind of leader he really was. Instead of showing us the tyranny of traditional kings, or promising us “pie in the sky when you die,” Jesus showed us a leader who was the servant of all, who cared for the “least of those” among us, who left the constraints of his own community to minister to any and to all who needed his help. Jesus showed us a leader who stood in opposition to traditional structures of power. Instead of slavery, he offered his followers liberation – from their own egoism and selfishness, from suffering, sickness, exclusion, tyranny, persecution, even death. Jesus showed us a leader who ultimately gave his own body and blood for the life of the world.
This is the leader whom we profess to represent. As truly as Hilary Clinton represented the U.S. in the shuttle diplomacy in Gaza, we are called to represent Jesus to the world around us. We are called to represent him in a world at war, where mourners weep over the deaths of innocent bystanders, where fathers, son, and brothers die in battle, and where invading armies rape and pillage with abandon. We are called to represent him in a world steeped in greed, where CEOs receive lavish bonuses while workers on the floor see their pensions erode and their health insurance disappear. We are called to represent him to a world that hugely profits from his birth, even as our national holidays steadily disappear. We are called to represent him in a world where people still go hungry. We are called to represent him in a world that couldn’t care less about his message, and in which churches are rapidly becoming minority communities deemed irrelevant by the rest of the world.
In this warring, greedy, hungry, and broken world, as Jesus’ representatives, we are called to be countercultural. We are called to shout “Jesus is Lord, not Caesar! Forget your Kaisers and tsars, forget your kings and queens, forget even your presidents and prime ministers, Jesus is our boss, our head honcho, the one whom we trust, the one whose decisions for us are final.” If Jesus is the one whom we represent, then, for us, Jesus is in charge, Jesus is the one whom we obey, Jesus is the one whom we follow, wherever he leads, even to the cross. If we say that Jesus is the one whom we represent, then his priorities become our priorities. Did he minister to those on the margins of his society? Did he touch those whom religious leaders declared unclean? Did he feed the hungry and heal the sick? If we truly call ourselves citizens of his country, then so must we. If Jesus is our leader, then we must take our allegiance to him seriously. We must worship regularly, draw closer to one another in community, pray regularly, and return some of our wealth back to God. If we say that Jesus is then one whom we represent, then we declare that we will place our loyalty to him above every other loyalty, and that we will give to no other person, cause, organization, or even country, the loyalty and allegiance that we owe to him.
If Jesus is the one whom we represent, whose values we profess, whose model we follow, then, God willing, we strive to create communities in his name where all his friends are welcome, most especially those whom we may serve. Who are some of those friends who are welcome in a community led by Jesus’ representatives? We welcome those who are single, married, divorced, gay, rich, poor, or yo no habla Ingles. We like crying newborns, those who can sing with the angels, and those who don’t know one note from another. We welcome those who are just browsing, who haven’t been here since their cousin’s baptism, or who just got out of jail. We welcome soccer moms, NASCAR dads, artists, environmentalists, vegetarians, or junk food eaters. We welcome all those who are depressed, and all those who are “spiritual but not religious.” We welcome those who need prayer, all those who had religion forced on them, and all those who got lost on SR 7 and wound up here by mistake.1 All and more are subjects of the king whose name we bear, and, in his name we welcome all for whom he gave his life.
And we rejoice to represent him to all to whom he sends us. We will probably never join the Secretary of State in shuttle diplomacy – at least not on the international level – though we may be called to represent Jesus in peacemaking efforts on a local level. Even so, as Jesus’ representatives, we can reach out to a hurting and broken world, tending to the least in the Kingdom of God and bringing his presence and values into our own world wherever we are. In a few minutes we will say the Lord’s Prayer. As you do so, know that saying this prayer is truly a subversive act. Know that you are asking God that, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” As Daniel Clendinen reminds us, “people who pray this way have a very different agenda than Caesar’s, whether Republican or Democrat, whether capitalist, socialist, communist, whether democratic or theocratic. Why? Because they’ve entered a kingdom, pledged their allegiance to a ruler, and submitted to the reign of Christ the King.”2 May it please his Majesty that we may look only where the banner of our King is flying and follow wherever it leads us!
1. Adapted from Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Community Church Bulletin, as quoted in Synthesis, November 25, 2012.
2. “’Yes, I am a King:’ The Anti-Politics of Christ the King,” Journey with Jesus, http://www.journeywithjesus.net, accessed 11/19/2012.
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