The Last Sunday after Pentecost; The Reign of Christ; 20 November 2022; Proper 29C (RCL); Jeremiah 23:1-6; Canticle 16: Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43.
Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King in 1925 in response to the growing secularism and ultranationalism in Europe at the time, and also as a response to the unification of Italy and the looming loss of his hegemony over the Papal States. The Feast was to serve as a reminder that all Christians acknowledge Christ as their monarch. We can also perhaps see in it a cynical claim against the Kingdom of Italy for the pope’s rule over the Papal States. In subsequent years, though, we can read it as a check against totalitarianism, as it relativizes (at least for Christians) all human claims of power.
That ironic view of royal power has been part of the biblical tradition from the beginning. When the people of Israel ask Samuel for a king, he warns them of the abuses of power a king will exercise, conscripting men for labor and women for pleasure, and land and wealth for his own use. The same tradition, though, also sees a king as a boon for the nation. And while David, the shepherd king, is a man after God’s own heart, he falls into all the same abuses Samuel warned of.
Jeremiah sees these same abuses prevalent in his own day, and compares the bad kings of his day to bad shepherds (a reference to David?), and promises the day when God will raise up a true king who will have the good of the people at heart. It strikes me in this passage how influential Jeremiah’s poetry would later become. You can already see the germ of John’s use of the Good Shepherd imagery for Jesus, and Luke’s parable of the lost sheep in this passage. Ezekiel will take Jeremiah’s verses and expand on them in his own context.
The reading from Colossians makes its own dangerous political claims. In Christ, all thrones and dominions and rulers and powers, whether in heaven or on earth have been created. It’s a remarkable claim to make that Rome’s power has been created in Christ and for Christ. And even more remarkable to state that in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and by extension, since he is the head of the Church, that it dwells in us.
And the irony continues in the choice of the Gospel reading. Here is this stunning political claim in Colossians, followed by the image of Jesus reigning as king from the cross — not at all what we expect of royal power — a king unable to save himself. He forgives those who are crucifying him, and promises the repentant thief that he will be with him this day in paradise.
This passage puzzles me. The thief asks to be remembered when Jesus comes into his kingdom; this make sense within the expectation of the resurrection of the just when the kingdom is established. Jesus promises the thief that he will be with him today in paradise. Not in the future, and not exactly the kingdom. Jesus’ own resurrection is two days off (the third day). What is the nature of his promise to the thief? Paradise is a word that means a garden, usually with a stream in it, of the sort that might be connected to a royal palace.
When we think of power, we tend to think of it in terms of power over. We see the world as a zero sum game, and any power someone else has implies less for me. A totalitarian leader is able to exercise power over, by conscripting people and things to his own benefit. Everyone and everything is a means to an end, which is just more power. Jesus’ last act on the cross in Luke’s Gospel is directed toward an other. Power for implies an open sum game; what’s good for you is good for me, and what’s good for me is good for you. Totalitarianism obliterates the other. By recognizing the absolute reality of the other, power shifts from power over to power for. Christ’s royal power is power for the other, which comes at great cost, the cost of the surrender of the totality of the self.