Christ the King – A Preacher’s Ponderings

Royal power?

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.

Truth

Last Sunday after Pentecost; Christ the King; 21 November 2021; Proper 29B (RCL); 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37.

Too bad the lectionary didn’t include the next sentence in John’s Gospel. Pilate asks, “What is truth?” That’s where we seem to be as a nation; truth is contested. The Enlightenment was supposed to fix that problem. Descartes sought a kind of truth that could be deduced from first principles, and hence would not be contested. But we have discovered recently that even the logic by which truth is deduced from those first principles (indeed, even the first principles themselves) is socially constructed and conditioned.

Discernment

Last Sunday after Pentecost; Christ the King; 22 November 2020; Proper 29A (RCL); Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 100; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46.

Matthew has this thing about judgment as separation: separating wheat from weeds, good fish from bad fish, sheep from goats. And always someone is thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I would love to know what was going on in his community that required such a final separation