Most people may not realize it, but the feast we’re celebrating today, the Feast of Christ the King, is a very new one on the church calendar.  It was added by Pope Pius XI in 1925.  He created this feast as a reaction against the prevailing attitudes of his day – a way to refute the growing threats of communism and secularism.  Two “isms” that sought to make man, not God, the most powerful force in the world.  Within a few years, of course, the world would have another “ism” to confront, totalitarianism – making this feast even moresignificant.

Almost a century later, those threats have been replaced by others that tend to marginalize God—”isms” like materialism or relativism.  But here and now, this feast still stands in defiance of our culture.  And it stands before us as a challenge.

It asks us: “Who – or WHAT — really rules our lives?”  That’s a question we could spend all of Advent asking ourselves, and praying over.  And maybe we should!

But today though, we would do well to spend a few minutes considering not just Christ the King – but Christ’s kingdom.  Because this feast reminds us of what we pray for, day after day, week after week, when we pray “thy kingdom come.”

This kingdom doesn’t have a castle or a court.  It isn’t a place of royal fanfare.  It isn’t even found on a map.  It is a kingdom that dwells within the human heart!  And its great, defininglandmark……is the cross!

Today’s gospel allows us to focus for a moment on a brief, but very significant episode in the story that probably typicallygets rather short shrift.  On Good Friday, and in the season of Lent, our attention is directed at the overall thrust of the narrative, the inexorable move towards Golgotha and the crucifixion.  Often details get ignored by our single-minded focus on the drama of cross and resurrection.  So the opportunity to pause, and reflect on a particular incident like this, may help us look at the story in a slightly differentperspective, to see it with new eyes.

Even so, the choice of this particular episode for our reflection on ‘Christ the King’ Sunday may seem somewhat odd.  Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?”  Very typically, Jesus’s response is another question:  “Do you ask this of your own accord, or did others tell you this about me?”  It’s a question about Jesus’s identity, and as such it calls to mind another very similar question asked elsewhere in the gospels.  In Mark, as Jesus and his disciples walk near Caesarea Philippi, in a region dominated by Roman imperial power and imagery, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” Then he asked, “But who do you say that I am?”  These questions were the occasion for Peter’s brash affirmation, “You are the Christ.”

Now here, in a direct confrontation with the agent of Roman imperial power, the question of Jesus’ identity is raised again.  “Are you the king of the Jews?”  Jesus, and I suspect, both we ourselves know full well that Pilate is not asking the question honestly.  He neither knows, nor cares who Jesus in fact is.  In reality, he seems much more interested in finding some way to avoid responsibility for what is taking place.  And Jesus seems equally willing to help Pilate extricate himself from what is to come!

The exchange between Pilate and Jesus is about kingship.  Jesus responds to Pilate, “my kingdom is not from this world.”  It’s easy for us to side with Jesus, to confess him as King, and to realize that his kingship was something quite different to what either the Roman or the Jewish leaders understood by the term.  We get that.  We may not have any trouble proclaiming our allegiance to Jesus’s kingship, even if we do not fully understand what that might mean, and though we may not really want to live our lives as if our primary and our only allegiance is to Christ’s kingship.

The problem for us is not the proclaiming of this, but rather living as if we believed that Christ is King, and that our allegiance to him, transcends every other loyalty, commitment or connection.  The difficulty for us is that although we praythe words, “Thy Kingdom come”, alas, we don’t really mean it!

The crux of the matter is that we suffer from the same malaise that plagued Pilate.  Throughout his dealings with Jesus in this gospel, Pilate reveals himself as deeply cynical.  One can’t read any of his statements as coming from the heart, as being sincere.  He is always looking for ways to navigate through the situation in order to preserve his power, and avoid difficult decisions as the story evolves in the verses which follow.  It is that temptation which confronts us today, every day – the temptation to confess with our lips, but deny with our lives that Christ is King.  We are surrounded by such cynicism—the manipulation of images, our feelings, our values, for financial or political gain.  It is hard for us not to succumb, but there was one who was pure, one who was sincere. It was Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, who went from there to the cross, died and was raised, Jesus Christ our King, who demands our allegiance, our truth, and our all.

Psalm 93 though presents us with a much stronger and more positive view of the kingship of Christ, complete with all the trappings of power with which we are all more familiar, and too I suspect, much more comfortable!

Had we not known otherwise, we might have been forgivenfor thinking that our 1^st Reading, from the Book of Daniel, came rather from the Revelation, where the whole concept of heaven is conveyed as a somewhat terrifying dream, bordering almost on a nightmare.  Those same, surreal qualities are clearly much in evidence here, but serve to emphasise the overwhelming power and majesty of God by making everything rather larger than life.

Our 2^nd Reading was indeed from the Revelation, but early onin the book, and so the characteristics and qualities to which I have just alluded have yet to emerge.   There is a message here of calm reassurance and peace, but as we read on it becomesincreasingly apparent that this is pointing us firmly in the direction of Advent, where we shall find ourselves next Sunday, and so we embark once more on a new liturgical year – Year C in the reading cycle.

I mentioned at the outset that this feast is relatively new to the Church – but what it represents is as old as Christianity itself.  An ancient Father of the Church, Cyril of Jerusalem, beautifully described how the first Christians received communion, saying that they “made their hands like a throne” to receive the Lord.  The very title “Christ the King” has outlasted most of the world’s monarchies. Kings, of course, have increasingly fallen out of fashion as republics have taken hold — there are now only about 40 real monarchs ruling in the world, and most of them are no more than mere figureheads!

However, the one we honour and celebrate today, of course, isn’t.  As Paul describes him: he is the “firstborn of allcreation…for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”   This is the one we shall prepare to welcome here on earth in only a few more weeks’ time. And, this is the one we will greet very shortly, with our hands outstretched, like a throne.

This afternoon then, on this singular feast, this last Sunday of the liturgical year, we open the gates.  We lift up our voices.  We stretch out our hands!

And we welcome this King of Glory into our hearts, praying : ‘Thy Kingdom come; they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.  Amen