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DonateNovember 21, 2004 |
See also: [Year C Archive] |
Jeremiah
23:1-6
Luke
1:68-79
Colossians
1:11-20
Luke
23:33-43
The final Sunday of the liturgical year is traditionally recognized as the feast of Christ the King, or, more inclusively, the feast of the Reign of Christ. The lessons appointed for the day all reflect this theme. But the notion of the Reign of Christ can present the contemporary interpreter with significant challenges, especially as we wrestle with the religious dimensions and ethical consequences of the emerging American Empire. The whole imagery of “king,” “kingship,” and “reign” is tied to hierarchical, patriarchal, and political domination systems which are highly problematic for us, and which grieve us as we see them acted out in our nation’s role in international relations. As Process & Faith’s Christian Proclamation against American Empire puts it, the earliest and enduring Christian witness is “all in antithesis to Empire: the coercive power it employs, the religion it exploits, and the idolatrous loyalty it demands in the name of patriotism.” The readings appointed for the Feast of the Reign of Christ in Year C draw our attention to a different notion of “reign,” one which rejects the ideology of empire in favor of a vision of persuasive power and interrelated good.
Jeremiah
23:1-6
Jeremiah
speaks a word of woe and warning to “the shepherds who destroy and
scatter the sheep of God’s pasture,” that is, to the kings of
Judah
who have attempted to play power politics in the imperial gamesmanship of
Jeremiah’s day. As the Assyrian Empire broke up, the kings of
Judah
pursued various alliances with other small states, and with the imperial
ambitions of
Egypt
, to try to resist the growing power of the Neo-Babylonians. Throughout
these political machinations, the state-sponsored
Temple
prophets proclaimed that
Judah
could not fail and
Jerusalem
could not fall, because the presence of the
Temple
assured that God would fight for the city and never let it be overthrown.
In the meantime, the kings pursued policies that focused on military
ambitions, rather than justice and peace for the people. Jeremiah warned
that such ambitions would destroy the kingdom and scatter the people,
sending them into exile under the power of the Babylonian Empire. In the
midst of such warning, however, this passage also speaks a word of hope:
after the shepherds who scatter the sheep, God will raise up a new
shepherd, a new kind of leader, who shall “deal wisely” and “execute
justice and righteousness in the land” for the good of the people rather
than the pursuit of political power. As Christians, we see that promise of
persuasive power for mutual good made manifest in Jesus, and we are called
to work for that kind of power in the midst of the imperial gamesmanship
of our own day.
Luke
1:68-79
This
selection from Luke, sometimes called “The Song of Zechariah,” is the
passionate outburst of Zechariah when his voice is restored to him at the
birth of his son, John the Baptist. In this child Zechariah sees the
future “prophet of the Most High” who will prepare the way for the
Messiah by giving the people “knowledge of salvation” in “the
forgiveness of their sins.” John will prepare the way for a reign in
which the people will be rescued from the hands of their enemies, and will
serve God in holiness and righteousness without fear. It is an image of a
peaceable kingdom, set free from the ambitions and machinations of
imperial contenders, for whom enmity and fear and the threat of the shadow
of death are means of power. This passage should be read along with the
Song of Mary, twenty verses earlier in Luke’s chapter 1, as companion
pieces predicting the great reversal of earthly power that will come
through the mission of the Christ. In the context of this Sunday, the song
echoes the promise of a kind of leadership in community that is
fundamentally different from the coercive power of emperors and kings.
Colossians
1:11-20
The
central image in this passage is the transfer of citizenship of the
faithful, from “the power of darkness” to “the
kingdom
of
God’s beloved Son.” Whereas before Christ we were held in the coercive
power of forces of domination and corruption, in Christ those power
structures are replaced by “redemption” and “the forgiveness of
sins,” which enable new relationships of mutuality and shared creative
power. Moreover, these new relationships extend beyond the human community
to embrace the cosmological community as well: Jesus is “the image of
the invisible God,” and “the firstborn of all creation,” so that “
in him all things in heaven and on earth were created” and “in him all
things hold together” and in him all things find their ultimate
fulfillment. Therefore the new order of relationships in Christ goes
beyond the human plane to bring the promise of reconciliation to all
created beings. The new Way in Jesus undercuts the human hegemony over
nature, the political power of empire, the economic injustice of runaway
wealth—all forms of “power over” that refuse “power with.” As
citizens of this new kind of reign, Christians are called to be agents and
ministers of reconciliation in the concrete circumstances of their actual
worlds as well.
Luke
23:33-43
This
passage from Luke’s Passion story gives us the paradoxical picture of
Jesus who reigns as a king from a cross. There is no pomp or finery or
trappings of power in this picture: Jesus is stripped, crucified, in
physical pain, with no one to defend him, mocked by the soldiers and
bystanders and one of the thieves condemned to die with him. Yet at the
same time Luke shows Jesus acting with the authority of a true ruler:
pardoning the soldiers who crucify him, granting admittance to paradise to
the thief who repents. Although Jesus is powerless by the world’s
standards—standards that measure power in terms of coercion and
domination—he is powerful in grace, powerful in forgiveness and
transformed relationships that reveal new possibilities for creativity and
life. Jesus enthroned on the Cross rejects all coercive power for the
persuasive power of divine love. In doing so, and in being raised again in
the power of divine love, Jesus shows us and invites us into a practice of
power that strives above all to create right relationships of mutual
well-being for ourselves and for all. That is the meaning of Christ as king,
and that is the power we celebrate and serve on this Feast of the Reign of
Christ.
Paul S. Nancarrow is rector of St. George's Episcopal Church in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. and canon theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota. He is a co-author of The Call of the Spirit: Process Spirituality in a Relational World.
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