Reign of Christ
21 Nov 2021
My kingdom is not of this world.
Then just where is it Jesus? Is it some sort of place in the afterlife? If I am good enough will I go there and see my long dead ancestors and my beloved pets?
I don’t think Jesus spent a lot of time talking about God’s reign in terms of what happens after death. We have been following Jesus all over Palestine this year through the eyes of Mark. He keeps saying “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” I don’t think he means you are about to die, at least not in the sense of taking your last breath.
Today, the last Sunday of the liturgical year, we have a chance to both celebrate and ponder the Reign of Christ and try to understand what it might mean for our lives and for the world. After all, it has been 2000 years since Jesus died so we should have some idea of what the realm is all about.
Yet much of the time I don’t. I think I start to understand a bit about the realm of God and the truth, then it slips right out of my brain. But it is not my brain that needs the answer; it is my heart. It is not intellectual assent; it is not the Nicene or even the Apostle’s Creed that is the truth. Pilate asks, “What is truth?” and over the ages the doctors of the church, the great theologians, have come up with all sorts of beliefs and dogmas and litany tests for “truth.” It seems to me that there are so many claims to truth as correct belief that it all becomes dizzying. Clerics spend years studying all the various nuances and shades of those claims. At the end of his life, Aquinas said it was all “bunk.”
The truth was standing before Pilate. Jesus himself was the truth, for Jesus is God and God is the ultimate truth, and the ultimate truth is Love. Love and Truth are one and the same; God the creator and Jesus the redeemer are one and the same.
One of the earliest hymns I remember learning was “Jesus Loves Me; This I Know”. It contains theology of the highest order in a hymn a child can understand.
Don’t misunderstand me; philosophy and theology are important subjects to master. I had no exposure to either until I embarked on a ministerial path. I am grateful for what I have learned of church history, of the great philosophers, living and long dead, and of all the theological nuances I now understand. I couldn’t do what I do very well without that background. But it does not, any of it, answer the two questions put before us today: what is truth and what exactly is the realm of God?
The other texts for the day all address kingship, or sovereignty to use a more gender-neutral term, in different ways. David, whose last speech is anything but that, said what is rather a white wash of his own history:
“Whoever rules rightly over people, whoever rules in the fear of God, 4 is like the light of sunrise on a morning with no clouds, like the bright gleam after the rain that brings grass from the ground.
That is a beautiful metaphor and truly a statement of what a human ruler should be. Humans must rule rightly and justly, for that is ruling in the fear of God. In Western European history, which is the history I know best, that was almost never, or should I say never, never, the case. People ruled in the name of God and Jesus, but that was as far as it went. They did not rule in truth or in love.
Revelation, so often used as a text of terror for non-believers, is a message of hope. He is coming from the clouds, the one who loves and frees us.
God is truth and Jesus is truth. They are love and together, with the Holy Spirit, they deliver the realm of God to us. Where is this realm? Each week as we say the words of the Eucharist, we say Christ will come again. As we speak, we must remember what Matthew, Mark, and Luke say to us about the where, or more to the point, what the Reign of Christ really is.
Jesus preached all over Palestine, ironically not until the very end of his ministry did he preach in Jerusalem, the place which for Jewish people was where God lived. Instead he preached in all the backwater places, in places where Jews lived and where Gentiles lived. Even Jesus expanded his notion of the Realm when he was put in his place by a Syrophoenician woman. What are some of the concepts about the Kingdom that he repeats? Or maybe clues are a better choice of words. “Seek ye first the Kingdom and his righteousness”, “The knowledge of the secrets is yours”, “You are not far from the Kingdom.” Luke says it plainly: the Kingdom of God is within you. Bingo.
God did not, and does not, reign in one place nor will God reign in one time. God’s reign is that of righteous justice and it is for all human history, past, present, future. Theologian Frank Thomas says this is a community, in the here and now and yet outside of time, that “lives in radical love, joy, peace, truth, and righteousness.” The Good News is that we need not go any farther than our own hearts to find it. It is not a place. “The realm of God is preached….: it is here, but it is also on the way.” It is a paradox!! Anyone can be part of the kingdom, but most never see it. It is so real it is inescapable, but never fully realized. In the church we participate in the coming of the realm of God, but in a flawed way. Thomas says two things that are profoundly true: the realm of God is the most beautiful and alluring thing, but the most demanding and radical. People who saw that and lived it out often ended as martyrs.
And lastly: God’s reign is the “God’s government set up in the human heart.” I will repeat: God’s government set up in the human heart. You are holy people; when you accept this with your heart and mind, then the realm of God is here on earth. When enough hearts are governed by God, there will be no more war. All will have enough to eat, and no one will be denied their full humanity. [i]
In 1925 Pope Pious XI declared this feast day; he did so in counterpoint to the rising power of Benito Mussolini, reminding the puffed-up dictator of who was really in charge.
Mussolini and all the authoritarian rulers of history die. Their rule ends. But the realm of God, of Christ, is forever; it is deep inside each one of us, waiting for its full expression of love.
[i] Frank Thomas, Living By the Word, Christian Century, October 26, 2021
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