Christ the King, Sunday 20 November 2011

There has never been a less propitious time to speak of kingly power than this, for kingly power is unaccountable and capricious, and we have had our fill of it.

Think of mad Caligula, the emperor who appointed his horse a Roman consul and himself a god. Think of Shakespeare’s Richard III, the king who had his brother drowned in a malmsey butt and his nephews smothered in the Tower. Think of the Bible’s Jezebel, the queen who slaughtered the prophets of ancient Israel and whose name is still a byword for cruel treachery. Think of any of the monarchs whose bloody fingerprints stain the pages of history and mythology and you will conclude that what unites them is the exercise of unaccountable and capricious power

There are no horses in the House of Commons; there are no malmsey butts on Fleet Street; and they’re not building altars to Baal in the Square Mile – not quite – but the exercise of capricious and unaccountable power has dominated our public life for four years.

In the parliamentary expenses crisis, in the tabloid phone-hacking crisis, and in the ongoing economic crisis we have been exposed to power that has treated us with contempt. Ethics have been abandoned; laws have been broken; and responsibilities have been shirked. Systems have been abused; lies have been told; and fortunes have been made. Democracy has suffered; lives have been ruined; and the economic well-being of millions has been put in jeopardy. No one should be surprised that there are tents outside our Cathedral. Power has ignored our needs. It has ignored our requirement of confidence in the integrity of those who represent us. It has ignored our expectation of honesty among those who report and communicate the news. And it has ignored our entitlement to stability in our homes, our incomes, our pensions and our savings. Power has ignored us.

So there has never been a less propitious time to speak of kingly power than this. We object to it intellectually and we are outraged by it morally. Yet speak of kingly power we must, for we proclaim that Christ is King. That proclamation, the earliest Christian creed, was once punishable by death. The one who made it denied that Caesar was king; the one who made it claimed an alternative allegiance; the one who made it was a traitor to the imperial state. The consequences for those make it today are similarly drastic. We belong to Christ – not to Westminster, not to Wapping, and not to Wall Street. We belong to Christ. We reject the claims of systems, political, media and economic. We reject their pretensions to ultimate authority over us. Christ rejects the capricious and unaccountable power that they have exercised. They ignore our needs. Christ cannot.

His kingly power is characterized by his abandonment of the prestige, security and comfort to which those who wield unaccountable and capricious power cling. Christ’s kingly power is characterized by his identification with the hungry and thirsty, with the estranged and the naked, with the sick and the imprisoned. “Truly I tell you, just as you did to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”. Christ’s kingly power is located wherever our need is greatest. It does not exacerbate our need. It meets it.

And this, I think, is ultimately why there is never a propitious time to speak of the kingly power of Christ. It’s not that in speaking of it we have to face intellectual objection; it’s not in speaking of it we have to face moral outrage, although we do. It’s that we cannot speak of it without speaking of our needs, without acknowledging that they are great, and without acknowledging that the answer to them is beyond us.

That is hard for a generation used to shaping its own intellectual terrain and ever more accustomed to taking to the streets in pursuit of its liberties. Our needs are great and the answer to them is beyond us. Some hunger for forgiveness. Some thirst for the capacity to forgive. Some know the loneliness of estrangement from those to whom they appear closest. Some are naked before hostile enquiry. And some are imprisoned by destructive habits.

But in the darkness of human need the kingly power of Christ is encountered, and in the darkness of human need the nature of that kingly power is revealed. It is revealed as the most devastating power imaginable: capricious, yes; unaccountable, yes; abusive, never. It is revealed as love, absolute and infinite, undiscriminating and eternal. It fills the hungry and clothes the naked. It encircles the sick and embraces the prisoner. It cannot be diverted by intellectual objection, for it speaks an alternative language. It cannot arouse moral outrage, for it is unfailingly gentle.

This is the power in which the Church meets. It is a power which calls us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the prisoner. This is the power in which we baptize Guy and Rihanna. It is a power which will never ignore them, never oppress them, and never treat them as less than a beloved son and daughter. And this is the power which, we are promised, will redeem the world. It is a power which will overcome poverty, destitution, sickness, and captivity. It is a power which will bring a new creation to birth. In the water of Baptism and in the bread and wine of the Eucharist we touch that new creation. This is the power of Christ the King. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Amen.