Christ the King

26^th November 2000

Christ Church, Old Town

Daniel 7: 9-10

Revelation 1:4b-8

John 18:33-37

You have probably heard of the joke from the beginning of the Clinton presidency. Bill and Hilary are driving through Texas and stop at a garage to fill up with petrol. Bill notices the petrol attendant and says to Hilary, "Gee, Hilary, just think: if you hadn't married me you could be married to that petrol pump attendant and still be living here in the middle of nowhere." Hilary replies, "Bill dear, if I had married that petrol attendant, then he would be the president of the United States."

A joke like that demonstrates how we don't have a lot of respect for our leaders nowadays. We don't put people on a pedestal. In fact, we almost expect them to fail as soon as they are elected. But it also reflects a feeling that we are not quite sure who is in control of things these days. Who is really in control? Who is able to make sure the world remains a stable place? Al Gore? George Bush? The UN? The media? Multinational companies? Bill Gates? The Archbishop of Canterbury? The Pope? Posh and Becks? Simon Stevenette? The first problem we face is that if there is one thing we can say today about those in authority, it is probably that they do not really have authority.

Someone who had worked all his life in the service of the Royal Family, had recently retired and was telling some new recruits how he had handled the royalty during his years of service in Buckingham Palace.

"It didn't matter a hoot if he was a King, a prince, a Duke or even the Queen. I always told those them exactly where to get off.
"Wow, you must have been something," the admiring young recruits remarked.
"What was your job in the service?"
"I was a lift operator."

We have increasing problems in trusting even those who are democratically elected. Maybe this is because we suspect that despite appearances, there are always other interests behind-the-scenes influencing our leaders. They are always having to bow down to vested interests. There are few who are truly independent, truly able to act with integrity in the decisions they make. So for example, we look at the results of the conference in The Hague about global warming, and see that the decisions made there, for example, about America's quota of carbon dioxide emissions seem more influenced by the demands of big business than by real environmental considerations. So we find it difficult to trust anyone absolutely these days.

But it is not just that we feel we cannot trust our leaders. There are two things about the modern world that make it impossible for us to believe that even the most saintly person could get a grip on things. The first thing is that we have a new awareness of how big and complicated the world this. We have become aware of the complexity of the world, of all its problems, off the sheer enormity of the issues facing humankind in a way that even fifty years ago people would not have experienced. It is as if the whole of the world is beamed into our living room and we cannot contain it. So we get used to the idea that our resources are being exploited, people are dying in their thousands every day, the world is being threatened by environmental catastrophe, etc. etc. We get so used to the idea that we don't think we can even do anything about it, and none of art leaders certainly seemed to be able to cope with it. And the second problem is that we simply are suffering from overload. We cannot cope with the pace of change we face. It frightens us. No one seems to be able to control it. Who can cope with a world which overloads us with new ideas, new possibilities, new dangers every day? These two factors-the enormity of the world being thrown at us, and the pace of change, make any sense of control disappear out of the window.

Today, we have come full circle in the church year, and next Sunday we begin again with Advent. This last Sunday of the year we call "Christ the King Sunday." And it’s important, especially for all the reasons I have just given that at the end of our year we are reminded that history is NOT simply going around in circles, but that because Christ IS King, one day the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ. Our history is heading somewhere under him. He is the full stop at the end of the sentence. He is the capital letter and the beginning of the new one. He in fact is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end of the Greek alphabet, and the beginning and end of all history. He is the King.

But if we have problems with our democratically elected governments, then we have even greater problems with the idea of kings. We have got rid of most of them, or when monarchs do exist we have reduced them to having a symbolic role. They are outdated. Kings, more than anyone, seem to offer us little hope of a just and gentle rule.

Yet the good news is that Jesus is the King who cannot disappoint us, and cannot fail us. For most importantly he is a different kind of King. In April 1848, three young Englishmen found themselves in Paris in the midst of the revolution which overthrew King Louis Philippe. One of them kept a diary of their trip. There is one entry describing the sack of the Palace of the Tuilleries by a mob. Everything was being smashed, when suddenly the mob reached the chapel, broke in the doors, and found themselves confronting the huge painting of the crucified Christ behind the altar. Someone called out, "Hats off." Heads were bared, most of the crowd knelt down, and the picture was carried out to a neighbouring church in "the most utter silence--`you might have heard a fly buzz.'" The mob were after ending one kind of kingship, but they knew in the chapel they had come face to face with another. The way Jesus exercises his power is the direct opposite of the oppression of the French monarch, or even of the Pilate who questioned him. His is a kingdom not of this world, in that it is not a kingdom created through war, or sustained by the barrel of a gun, or by propaganda. And we can trust his rule because it is a power that is not based on serving vested interests, it is a power that is not gained at the expense of others, it is a power that is not subject to media speculation. It is a different kind of kingship. His is the power of suffering love.

But can we believe that Christ is king of all the countries, peoples, cultures, customs, problems, complexities, flavours of our world? Can he cope with its immensity in a way that we are unable to? The visions of Daniel and Revelation call us to see that the one who stood bruised and battered is the one to whom all power, all authority, all Dominion is going to be handed. He is the king of time, the king of the world, the king who can see all nations and all peoples and customs in a way which is impossible for any of us. We can never be in control of it all, he can. There is not one square inch of creation over which he does not say "It is mine, all mine!"

And in what we are doing today in supporting world mission we are making a statement that we believe as a church that Christ is king over all peoples and cultures and aspects of life. I want just to talk a bit about world mission, because to be honest many of us might feel uneasy about it these days. Since the 1950s there has been a growing sense that the idea of missionary work is in something of a crisis. In fact, in one year, back in 1964 four books were published all about world mission. Their titles were “Missions in a time of testing”, “Missionary, go home!”, “The Unpopular missionary”, and “The Ugly missionary”. This unease comes from several areas. We are challenged by the way in which the West is becoming increasingly dechristianized, by our guilt about the sometimes imperialistic overtones of mission and the continuing gap between rich and poor, and finally by an increasing sense of independence shown by third world churches. Today Christians number more than half the population in two-thirds of the world's 225 nations and still constitute one third of humanity. In addition, having been predominantly white, Christianity is now an amalgam of the races and peoples of the world, with whites numbering 40 % or less. Churches in Korea send missionaries to Russia, China, the USA. Most missionaries come from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This may make us rejoice, and we know that like Islam and Buddhism, Christianity is a missionary religion. Jesus sent his disciples to the ends of the earth. But the picture that all of these factors add up to may well make us ask, “Who are we to be missionaries to them?”

There are indeed lots of questions we need to ask ourselves about what mission is all about today. But what we've symbolised today by our commitment to world mission is that we are people of the whole world, that we are part of a family which is across all nations. We are not serving a king who is English, but who is king of the world. The alternative could only be to pretend that what matters is our own life would rob us of a sense of the fact that we are a universal Church. That Christianity has spread throughout the globe, and that our king is not just king of Christ Church Old Town, but also of Christ Church Kampala, Christ Church Kuala Lumpur, Christ Church Santiago. We need to re-assess what we are doing, and I know that the mission partners we support do that as part of their work. But Christ the king of all people calls to rejoice in the fact that we are world Christians.

Can we believe as well that Jesus can be king in such a rapidly changing world? Well, we ourselves are embracing change as a church today. Because we are saying goodbye to one form of worship in the Alternative Service Book and getting ready to adapt to a new form of worship next week in Common Worship. And perhaps in doing so we are acknowledging that Christ is a king who leads us into change. Now I know most of us have taken this on board and are willing to believe that the Church of England can be trusted to lead us in a fruitful direction. However, if we are honest, this might well be another change which we just don't like.

Mickey's wife bought a new line of expensive cosmetics guaranteed to make her look years younger. After a lengthy sitting before the mirror applying the “miracle" products, she asked, "Darling, honestly, what age would you say I am?"
Looking over her carefully, Mickey replied, "Judging from your skin, twenty; your hair, eighteen; and your figure, twenty five." "Oh, you flatterer!" she gushed.
"Hey, wait a minute!" Mickey interrupted. "I haven't added them up
yet."

We feel much safer if things look the same. We like to keep them the way they have always been. We love the familiar, we love to have security. And it may be that for many of us Church and what goes on here has represented something that doesn't change while the world seems to slide into chaos around us. The world may look completely different, but Church has been the one thing that we knew would always be the same. But now change is even intruding on what we have known in our worship, and we are understandably nervous.

Christ the king would call us to be rooted people in a world of change. But all our worship, all our liturgy, all our tradition, is only the means to the end of being rooted in him. To finding our security in his presence and in his rule. He, not the ASB, the BCP, the PCC, or a form of worship, is the rock on which we stand. Because he is the king of all time. Empires rise and fall but he is the same for ever. Churches are built and fall down, but he is king, congregations grow and decrease, but he is king. In a world of change he is the king who was, and is, and is to come. And just as every knee shall bow as he receives all honour and authority and Dominion in God's coming kingdom, he calls us to be a church who can acknowledge him now.

But the other reality of his rule is that it is not static, it is dynamic. It is not outside history, but it is within it. Christ is king of every age, of every decade. And he calls us to be people who can respond to him in every age and for every age. Christian missionaries have always found ways of adapting to the culture around them to make the unchanging Christ accessible to those in their societies. If we are to see Christ becoming king in Old Town then we need to ensure that we are able and prepared to provide people with opportunities to see him. Common Worship will give the church greater flexibility and variety as we try to find ways of worship which will open doors for the huge variety of people we live among.

So we can move forward as a church into a new year and a new century knowing that in a world of compromised and struggling leadership, Jesus is the King who can be trusted, in a world of overwhelming complexity and challenge, Jesus is the King with all power and authority, and in a world of change he is the everlasting King who promises to be with us always.

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