"Christ our King, Lord of peace, Lord of love, Lord of truth, help us to learn more about you every day, amen".
You can't have failed to notice that this is a year of anniversaries. We have our own 925th of course; next year there'll be quite an important one, as we will be commemorating the King James version of the Bible which was first written in 1611. It's interesting how few people have actually ever heard of such a thing as the King James version, although most of the people I teach have just about heard of the Bible!
There are other anniversaries this year as well; apart from the many composers you may be aware of, (Chopin, Mahler) I heard on the radio of another anniversary recently as I was driving along. It was an anniversary of a book written a thousand years ago in 1010 A.D. called the Shahnama by Ferdowsi or the "Book of Kings". I pricked up my ears because of our own "Book of Kings" in the Old Testament. This particular "Book of Kings" recounts the histories of kings and empires of the East and apparently tries to tell a new generation so they can avoid mistakes and build a better world. I looked it up on Wikipedia and it said that it is a lengthy work which covers many things. Apparently in it the Shahs come and go, as the heroes and villains come and go. One of the main themes of this book is kingship and how to do it.ln the ancient world they also were interested in trying to explore how to do this business of ruling and governing, so today we are invited to look at the whole subject.
So what is a king anyway? If you look at the Latin, it's the rex, regis, the ruler: the implication is that it's somebody who is in charge and ruling, but hang on a minute. For warlords are in charge, and chancellors of Germany can be in charge - but they are certainly not 'the king'. It is interesting that when Oliver Cromwell was in full control of our country, he was very tempted by the crown; people wanted him actually to take it, but he decided he'd put it aside. He was obviously longing to take the crown but thought better of it. I suppose he realised how different it was to be a king. First of all it would be hereditary; and the idea also behind it was that it was God-ordained. Napoleon also angered many people, including of course, Beethoven, when he crowned himself Emperor because people immediately thought of the implications of that. The Romans had had emperors and thoughts like absolute rule and dictatorship must have gone through their minds.
We are still a bit ambivalent about kingship today. I think we are terribly lucky in this country because we can have a soft, respectful feeling about our own monarch; "Ah, the dear Queen", and her nice son and grandson and his bride - it is all very pleasant, but that's because she doesn't have any power and we like it that way. If she had real power we would feel quite different, I suspect, perhaps rather uneasy.
And of course it isn't just about power, either. The other thing we want in a king is authority. You may remember, (t's the English teacher in me now), "King Lear" by Shakespeare, where one of his servants whom he has in fact dismissed and who comes back in disguise says "You have about you something that I would fain serve". " What's that?" says Lear. And Kent answers: "Authority". So there's that powerful feeling of knowing that there is something about this person - that they have some kind of right to rule.
But one little aside about kingship. I don't know whether you have read Philip Pullman's admirable trilogy "His Dark Materials" which has many interesting and thought-provoking comments to make. It has some challenging points, one of which being that when he is thinking about heaven, he doesn't like the idea of the 'kingdom' of heaven. Instead, Pullman refers to the 'republic' of heaven. It appears that he doesn't like that idea of the rule of one person. He was the son of a Vicar, and was perhaps put off by the manifestations of power and by the way the in which the church has abused its authority, both in the past and still today sometimes. Because of course in a kingdom there is one king and it is God who reigns; it's a personal reign.
With all these thoughts in mind let's have a look at Samuel as the people plead with him to give them a ruler. The people are almost like children, who say in answer to: "I'd rather you didn't have X because you won't like it when you've got it" and the children still say "But we want X!" And Samuel is unhappy; he felt that the people should have realised after these disastrous judges, that God should be their ruler. In fact he talks to God about it and says: "I feel really bad about this". God answers: "Don't take it personally; it's me who is being rejected".
It is interesting to see why the people want a ruler and why they want specifically a king. They want to be like other nations: they want a king who will actually fight for them and might make life better for them. So instead of Samuel's warnings they beg him for a king. Samuel tells them what kings will do: because earthly royalty is about "lording it" over others, they'll take your daughters and your sons and your slaves and they'll tax you to the hilt. For us, kingship is associated simply with that lording over others, and Samuel was right to warn them, since Old Testament kings were absolute. There was no protection - no parliament, no layers of democratic government. I suppose you might possibly have an advisor, possibly you might ask a prophet, but then again you might stick him in a well or something, because in the end your word was law.
Yet the people still felt a king was better than those judges and better than nothing, however unsatisfactory they had been. Samuel being wise could understand that longing for authority but as he says, "What a pity if you are not grown up enough to do without this". He is vindicated, as there are some awful rulers in the Book of Kings. I was looking through it today trying to find the part where the people or some of their representatives go to a young man who has just taken over the kingship and say "You know your father was pretty awful? Could you be nicer please?" and the young man says "You think my father was awful, hah! You wait, I am going to be ten times worse than him!" (It is Rehoboam in 1 Kings 12)
So there are some terrible rulers: as you go through you find that A was good and did what the Lord wanted, B was pretty dreadful and didn't and then C was better again and so on. The trouble with kings is you cannot be sure what you'll get; you get dictators, you get totalitarian people in charge, you get Hitler and Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot because power corrupts and weak human beings are all fallible. This was the message in the Shahnama; it's the message in Machiavelli's "The Prince" and it's the message of all history, you cannot trust human beings with power. So who can you trust? Who is the only who can cope with power? Surely it is only God?
In a paradox, one of many in our faith ,God the creator, God the ruler of the universe, the creator, the One who is absolutely in charge, reveals Himself in the shape of a baby, and what is more powerless than that? What can you not do to a small helpless baby, about a foot long? But if you've been a parent you know that in fact nothing has more power: if you've heard a baby cry, your own or even someone else's, you'll know that power. It sears your heart: you're desperate to act, to respond. Even if a baby is happy, if it starts flirting with you using its eyes and its lips you feel completely in its command. I am rather in love with somebody's baby at the moment whom I call "His imperial gorgeousness" and I coo madly over this baby every time I see it. It's not every baby that does it to me, but you find yourself, as we did yesterday, crowding around and 'worshipping'. Of course it's helpless this baby: it can do nothing if we don't love it, we are completely in fact undermined by love, or the cynics would say just by our programming.
But look how the scene changes: that baby in the nativity scene, so helpless and so powerful, grows to become one whom the Pharisees distrust because He speaks with authority and because He mentions kingdom and then at the end of His ministry He is brought before the powers of occupation. We see Him now in the second reading before that most powerful person in the world - the representative of the emperor. To him He says He's a king. Oh my! You can see the torturers salivating, can't you, and smiling and licking their lips. It's like when you're in front of a crowd of bullies and you stand up to them, saying you're stronger than them. How much more fun, think the bullies, they will have cutting you down to size because you stood up to them.
Jesus had as it were told them His own "Room 101". You may recognise the reference to George Orwell in his book 1984 in which the powers know the particular fear that plagues each person. He reveals that weakness that will enable the torturers to fit exactly with what He's been talking about. You can imagine them the moment they hear the word "king" looking at Him, tired, exhausted and about to be flogged. They look at each other thinking, what a gift: 'right, let's get a robe, let's get a crown, this is going to be fun'. He appears to be mad, and the soldiers look forward to their game. It'll be so wonderfully humiliating to joke about this powerless man's power. A king! - who can be tortured, beaten, abused.
Pilate reacts a little differently. After all he knows one or two things about power and control, He's spent his life on them, he's cynical and world weary, he's hardened and unscrupulous and he's mindful of his back as other writers of the time have made it clear. More than this though Pilate is disturbed because there's something about this madman that he just can't put his finger on. Here's a man who says he has followers and says he is a king. Pilate can't see any of those followers just now, they seem to have abandoned him; at the same time he is more personally curious. He asks the question presumably dripping with sarcasm or perhaps as if humouring a madman: "So you're a king?" and yet Jesus' answers are such that we still have a record of them. We know what He said.
"The kingdom" he said "is not of this world". Oh yes, that much was clear. He then continues: "Those who listen to me understand the truth". The truth. Ah, at last Pilate has a line, something to comment on. For him, with his cynical view, the truth is seldom pure and never simple, etc. etc. and so he answers very wearily: "The truth... YOU tell ME what the truth is..."
Some of us still ask that question today because for humans it is still so difficult to know the answers, so difficult to know what can be absolute truth when each one of us sees it slightly differently. What, indeed, is absolute truth? It fascinates Pilate to think of someone saying of himself that he is the truth. We still look at Jesus today and know that He is the only one who could possibly BE the truth.
What Jesus said in that court room, in His powerlessness, must have sounded incredibly wet to those who were used to looking after themselves, those who were hurting others to get their way. There are and always have been so many people in this world who do exactly that, those for whom money and power is basically all there is. We cannot expect Pilate, that world-weary cynic' to understand that there could be a kingdom that was about the absolute opposite, about innocence and trust and love and freedom. I imagine he would just have laughed, and there is no historical evidence that he ever did anything else in his life.
But as Christians, we must be willing to look differently at power and rule and authority. We understand that our position is the same as that for our Lord: that when it comes to power, God lets go. God does not act like a worldly ruler, ruler though He is; He gives us freedom to choose, He forgives all that we do, He is pleased when we do that which is right for us. His kingdom is about the rule of love, it is about letting go of power, it is about being weak and humble and without power. Christ our King is the ruler of hearts. He is the one who gave up power but invites us to share in that seeming powerlessness. Our King serves others, He washes feet; yes, He commands but He commands what we give freely, our worship and our love. He commands as that baby commands me. I crowd round because he is so delightful, so attractive. So did Jesus command our worship as a baby and as an adult. This is the King whom, as this season which is about to come upon us progresses, we prepare to meet and welcome again as Christ our King.
Amen
Christine Shepherd
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