November 22, 2009 Donor Appreciation Sunday Reflection on Daniel 7:13-14 Revelations 1: 5-8 John 18: 33-37 by Patricia Crowley, OSB.

This feast of Christ the King is filled with (apocalyptic) images from dreams and visions that are meant to stretch our imaginations and expand our ways of thinking about God and that, sometimes, trap us into one way of thinking. If we read these descriptions without a poetic approach, we may fall into the pitfall of pictures of God that are extreme opposites and not able to be reconciled (e.g. a mighty king or a helpless infant? An old man or a woman giving birth? – both can be true and real in the language of God).

Christianity is meant to be a both / and religion as its roots are in the Semitic way of thinking. We, westerners have taken on a rational approach which often promotes an either / or way of living life. There is usually only one logical conclusion to a syllogism.

Our scriptures contain contrasting ideas and present God in many different ways. Today’s primary image is that of Kingship.

I. Kingship is proclaimed in this feast.

a. Pius XI saw, in the midst of the roaring 20’s, a definite trend toward secularization in the western world after World War I. In 1925, in hope of countering this trend, he instituted the Solemnity of Christ the King to declare the sacred as central in our lives.

b. As I thought about this fact, I thought about the fact that the polarization of the secular and of the sacred is often even more pronounced in these last 84 years. The intent of this feast, we are told, was to challenge us as human beings to look at our priorities – to see Jesus as incarnate divinity and as primary in our lives and to stretch our imaginations and expand how we think about God. There are lots of things about kingship and royalty that are fascinating and that encourage us to think big, to think beyond ourselves.

c. On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to take this concept too literally we can get caught in a rather limiting idea of God. If we polarize the sacred and the secular.

d. This feast could lead us to “put Jesus in a box, a royal box to be sure, but nevertheless a box.” We don’t want to do that for the reality of Jesus in the incarnation is that humanity, in Jesus Christ, has experienced a new way of being human. If we put it in a box, we are going to miss the dynamism of God in our lives.

e. So…how do we avoid these pitfalls?

II. Readings

f. The first two readings give vivid descriptions of enthronement in heaven and they invite us to think about God in new ways….

g. Daniel recounts a vision: I saw one like the Son of Man…a received dominion, glory, kingship….

“Daniel tells of the mysterious Son of Man with whom Jesus would later identify himself, given dominion that will last forever.” (Diane Bergant)

h. Revelations gives us another vision: Jesus Christ …the faithful witness, fist born from the dead…ruler of kings of the earth…in the clouds…every eye will see him…even those who pierced him…all will lament him…I am the Alpha – the Omega, the one who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty…..

“In the reading from Revelation, the risen Christ comes amid the clouds as the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last of all things.” (Diane Bergant)

i. The gospel account according to John tells us a story in a dialogue between Pilate and Jesus:
Are you the King of the Jews?…..You say that I am a King….No, your own people say that you claim to be a king….My kingdom is not of this world…Then you are a king? ….For this I came …to testify to the truth….

Jesus was a threat to those around him not because he wielded power over them but because he was secure in himself and throngs followed him wherever he went.

III. Kingship is not a dominant gospel theme (the coming of the kingdom is…..)

j. According to the Jerome Biblical Commentary, five dominant images are used by the evangelists: prophet, messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, and Lord. King is not among them these five and it is a part of many gospel stories. The “Kingdom of God” is often mentioned.

k. The gospel reading for today, which we just heard, ironically seems to tell us that the title of king is not an appropriate one for what Jesus is about. It is a term used in the gospels by his enemies, and is often used to trick him….

l. Perhaps, in frustration and from fatigue, and as Pilate reports that the chief priests have said that Jesus has claimed to be a king, Jesus offers a completely different version of what kingdom / kingship might mean - stating that his kingdom is not of this world.

m. The gospels present countless images and leave lots to our imaginations. Vatican II proclaimed these images in splendid documents which helped us to see the array of scriptural and theological notions of God and, indeed, of ourselves, in this Church and in this world. Our post-Vatican church often tends to want to “put things into a box”, albeit a gilded and ceremonial box at times.

n. Avery Dulles, the Jesuit theologian , said way back in 1969:

Had there been a holy office when the four gospels were written, we, in the Catholic Church, would have just one Gospel in our bible – Mark. But in our history books we’d have reference to three heretics (Matthew, Luke, and John). (Bellarmine Lecture at St. Louis University, October 8, 1969.

Kingship is only one little aspect of the splendor of Jesus, the Christ. If we are truly a religion rooted in a Semitic approach to life, “kingship” is one among many images. It is an image that can challenge us to look at the way we see God in our lives.

IV. Re-imagining God is the invitation that our Scriptures make over and over again in the Old Testament and in the New Testament readings we hear within our liturgies.

o. A God who is like a compassionate parent,

p. A God who is like a woman giving birth,

q. A God who is immediately forgiving of others – without requiring the other to prove innocence,

r. A God who loves and reaches out to those whom the religious society of the day pushes to the edges and often ignores or condemns……..

The way we see our God often depends on our own ability or inability to re-imagine ourselves, our world, and to resist the temptation of putting things into neat categories (in a box….) or into a syllogism so that we can control and understand what we perceive as reality.

V. Conclusion

So, this feast of Christ the King and its vivid scriptural selections invite us to:

1 Explore kingship in new ways,

2 Avoid putting our images of Christ and of God into any kind of box,

3 Avoid an either/or approach to life,

4 Embrace not one but many splendid and sometimes contradictory images of God that our Scriptures and our documents give us

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