Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ

Jeremiah 23.1-6 I will raise up shepherds over them so they fear no longer.

Colossians 1.11-20 The Father has created a place for us in the kingdom of the Son that he loves

Luke 23.33-43 ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’

 

‘Thou art the King of Glory O Christ, the Eternal Son of the Father’

 

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‘Thou art the King of Glory O Christ, the Eternal Son of the Father’.

 

These are the stirring words in the ‘Te Deum Laudamus’ an ancient hymn of the Church sung on great occasions, and traditionally at the end of the Office of Lauds, the first office of prayer of the day.

 

Te Deum Laudamus means ‘We praise thee, O God’, and today we praise God for the Kingship of his Son, Jesus Christ.

 

The Feast of Christ the King – or ‘The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe’ to give it its full title - is one of the newer solemnities of the Church.

 

‘Christ the King’ was instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, and embraced by the Church of England over half a century later.

 

The date 1925 was not an accident, for that was the sixteen hundredth anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the great Council, or meeting of the Church, which, in 325 AD, formally defined the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father; in other words, in the mystery of God, Father and Son are wholly one.

 

This mattered, and matters today, because it affirms that Jesus Christ is fully and truly divine, not created by God, but is of the very essence – the substance – of God.

 

As Jesus says in St John’s Gospel, ‘the Father and I are one’ (John 10.30).

 

Hence why we can say, ‘Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ, the Eternal Son of the Father’.

 

But having a feast of Christ the King is not without its detractors.

 

Not unreasonably, some have argued that we don’t need to celebrate Christ the King because the celebration of the Ascension of the Lord covers that base: for, when he ascends into heaven, Jesus Christ is proclaimed as universal king over all creation which is perfectly true.

 

Today helps us consider the bearing that the Kingship of Christ has on us as we live our Christian lives today.

 

There are three areas we can focus on today.

 

First, the cross is the throne of Christ the King: a throne of love and not of dominion.

 

His sacrificial death on the cross, laying down his life that we might live, has above it the twisted, ironic words of Pilate that for us are deeply true, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’ (Luke 23.38).

 

In the cross we see such love, love that surpasses expectation and comprehension; love he gives his all for his people.

 

That’s why St John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople in the fourth century, gazing at Christ on the cross declares, ‘I see him Crucified; I call him King’.

 

Second, it’s about politics and where our allegiance lies.

 

The political establishment of Jesus’ day was Roman.

 

The loyal Roman citizen would say ‘kaiser kurios’, ‘Caesar is the Lord’,

 

Political stability was found under Roman authority and Roman power, the so-called Pax Romana.

 

For the first Christians the death of Jesus on the Cross and his Resurrection from the dead meant that they would declare not ‘Kaiser kurios’ but ‘Jesus kurios’, ‘Jesus is Lord’.

 

The Ascended Lord Christ the divine universal King is Christ the King of all the earth.

 

His sovereignty is not removed; it is real and connected in our lives.

 

He is the one to whom final allegiance is due, and by whom our lives are properly ordered.

 

There are many things that seek to claim lordship in our lives: ideologies, disruptions, the ‘temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil’.

 

All the time the Christian holds onto the declaration ‘Jesus kurios’, ‘Jesus is Lord’.

 

What does it mean to you to say Jesus Christ is king of your life? What does the world look like when Jesus Christ is acknowledged as King over all creation? When saying yes to Christ, that he is Lord and King, what do you have to reject and turn away from?

 

Finally the Kingship of Christ has a bearing on our national life today.

 

Next year we will witness an event that has not be seen for 70 years and traces its from back to St Dunstan and the coronation of Edgar in 973 (13 years after Elfsie is the first recorded priest of Croydon).

 

The coronation of the British Sovereign draws on Biblical images of Kingship rooted supremely in the Kingship of Jesus Christ.

 

Perhaps the most sacred element of this sacred rite is the anointing; a rite straight out of the Old Testament and validated in the New: the word ‘Christ’, Χρήστος in Greek means the Anointed One.

 

Our King, who by virtue of baptism like you and me, shares in the life of the Anointed One, Jesus Christ, will be asked to hold before him the example of the Servant King, the forgiving King, the loving King.

 

By God’s grace, we pray, that the King will be a mirror and exemplar of service to our national and local political life, in our families and places of work and in all places we people come together.

 

So then, to say, ‘Thou art the King of Glory O Christ, the Eternal Son of the Father’, is to say that, Jesus Christ, who is one with the Father, reveals his Kingship on the Cross; that, for the Christian, Christ must be sovereign in our lives; that the Kingship of Christ shapes our common life in his ways, such that we say ‘Jesus kurios, Jesus Rex’: Jesus is Lord; Jesus is King.

 

Getting real with hope

Malachi 3.19-20 For you the sun of righteousness will shone out

2 Thessalonians 3.7-12 Do not let anyone have food if he refuses to work

Luke 21.5-19 The destruction of the Temple foretold

 

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Today’s gospel can, on one level, sound gloomy and grim.

And that is a fair reading of the world today, as it was in Jesus’ own day.

Many challenges, fears and worries stalk the world and our lives.

But equally clear is that we must not allow that fear to be the last word or have us in its thrall: for as Christians, as believers in God – we are not like other people, ‘who’ in St Paul’s words ‘have no hope’

We cannot be like that because of our belief in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Thessalonians 4.13,14) and the enduring mercy of God.

This is all about how we face the fears of things that we cannot control ourselves.

It comes down to acting in the name of Jesus and having hope in the name of Jesus.

The world and contemporary culture will ridicule that, but he tells us, ‘by your endurance you will gain your souls’. (Luke 21.19).

This is all about being real with hope

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In today’s gospel Jesus foretells the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Indeed, in AD70 the Temple – which was the religious, political and spiritual beating heart of the life of the people of Israel - was torn down by the Romans.

The Temple mattered to the people of Israel; its destruction was a massive spiritual, psychological and emotional blow to the Jewish people.

The Temple was the sacrificial heart of the worship of Israel.

It was the meeting place on earth between the God of Israel, the Lord of Hosts, with his people.

The Temple mirrored the tabernacle sanctuary set up in the wilderness on divine proportions as the people journeyed to the Promised Land.

The Temple was an image of heaven on earth.

We can barely begin to imagine the significance of it to the Jews of the first century.

With the destruction of the Temple their world came crashing down.

To this day Jews lament the destruction of the Temple.

And for Christians the Temple is not without significance.

After all, Jesus was presented in the Temple, according to the Law of Moses, at 40 days old; he taught the Elders of the Law in the Temple whilst on pilgrimage there when only 12 years old; he cleansed the Temple of those who exploited Temple pilgrims and took away its sacred character as a house of prayer; he taught in the Temple precincts right up to his death.

In St John’s gospel, Jesus also equates his own body to the Temple.

In that he is saying that he is the meeting point of heaven and earth, of divinity and humanity; he is the place of prayer, of wisdom, of teaching and of sacrificial love.

His body, like the Temple, will be destroyed by his death on the cross; but will be raised again, unlike the Temple, in three days.

Through the anguish of destruction comes salvation and healing: this is what we call hope, and it is revealed in the Cross and Resurrection.

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We see this pattern too in our first reading from the prophet Malachi who speaks of total destruction.

In some ways Malachi and the Biblical prophets sound something like the secular apocalyptists we hear a lot today.

A relentless stream of doom fills the airwaves: climate; cost of living; war, natural disaster, famine, plague, family breakdown, uncertainty of identity.

But a Biblical account of reality always involves hope, always involves promise.

Malachi gives us the perspective of God, the Lord of Hosts, that out of the dust of destruction: ‘for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings’. (Malachi 4.2a)

The Biblical imagination, which finds its fulfilment in Jesus Christ, does not offer a vision of the temple or of the world or of human lives and existence annihilated, but rather purged and transformed.

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This is being real with hope.

Until recently the West lived with the secular liberal analysis that said ‘things can only get better’; that, somehow, Progress is inevitable.

That was utterly unrealistic and ahistorical, taking no account of our flawed humanity that needs amendment of life.

That has given way to another secular narrative of annihilation, despair and unremitting negativity where the young, especially, find the future hard to imagine.

Yet the Biblical witness insists that however desolate, barren and hopeless things seem we are in fact in the process of growth and purgation not destruction.

The Temple and the edifices we create will crumble, but God endures; hope endures.

The Christian account of the world is not frothy or naïve, but rooted in being real with hope.

This is asserted beautifully in the prophecy of Jeremiah, ‘For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.’ (Jeremiah 29:11)

The very act of stretching out your hands tonight to receive Christ in the sacrament is to reach out for the hope that comes from his name.

The future he is rests in our hands, so that we can go out and be signs of real hope in a yearning world.

To God they are all alive

Job 19.23-27a I know that my redeemer lives

2 Thessalonians 2.1-5, 13-end May the Lord strengthen you in everything good that you do or say

Luke 20.27-38 He is God, not of the dead, but of the living

 

‘Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’

 

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Well, this morning’s Gospel reading puts a big question in front of us.

 

I suppose you could put it like this: if our Easter faith, in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, is true, then what happens to us when we die?

 

This is the question underlying the passage we have heard read.

 

The Sadducees frame the question in a totally theoretical, and almost comical, way.

 

It is a hypothetical scenario of a woman marrying seven brothers in turn, as each one dies.

 

The Sadducees who come to Jesus are developing a scenario from the Law of Moses, known as Levirate marriage.

 

Now the first thing to be aware of is that the Sadducees were a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus who rejected any notion that there is a resurrection.

 

They were out to disprove and ridicule the notion of resurrection.

 

In that sense they were very different from the Pharisees, despite being lumped together as opponents of Jesus’ ministry and mission.

 

The Pharisees did accept the promise of resurrection, albeit they did not see it as embodied in Jesus Christ.

 

It’s like that today.

 

There are people who, like the Sadducees, think that life after death is not a thing.

 

Our existence on this earth is all there is, they say, there is no hope of heaven and so we live our lives ethically and well, but that’s about it.

 

Now that is a standpoint or worldview that can itself be challenged. But we don’t have time for that just now.

 

Similarly, like the Pharisees, there are people today who have a belief that ‘there must be something more’ and a vague notion of an afterlife, but that belief is rather undefined.

 

That is close to, but not the same as, the Christian hope of resurrection.

 

The Christian hope of resurrection is not a generalised hope that after I die something will happen or that, somehow, I’ll meet up with deceased relatives and friends, but it is a hope embodied in the person and resurrected body of Jesus Christ.

 

When Job says, in our first reading, ‘I know that my redeemer lives’ he is instinctively identifying what Christian theology holds, that if we are raised from the dead then there is a redeemer who makes that happen.

 

It’s much like salvation needing a Saviour: resurrection and salvation are not unspecific, generalised concepts, they are real, embodied experiences and utterly dependent on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 

St Paul, himself brought up and trained as a Pharisee, so hitherto comfortable with a generalised resurrection, came to see this because of his faith in the actual bodily resurrection of Christ, who he encountered on the road to Damascus, and mused: ‘If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins’. (1 Corinthians 15.17).

 

The passage that quote comes from, chapter fifteen of St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, is like an extended meditation on this morning’s gospel reading.

 

It really addresses the Big Question about what happens to us when we die.

 

It’s interesting the Sadducees chose marriage as the scenario to test out Jesus’ teaching on resurrection.

 

Marriage in the Bible is not just about husband and wife, a man and a woman, though it is profoundly about a man and a woman too.

 

Marriage is also an emblem, a sign, of God’s relationship with his people and the fidelity of that relationship: we see that explored in the book of the prophet Hosea.

 

Marriage and consummation, is also a sign of the union of Christ, the bridegroom, with his bride, the Church: that is powerfully explored in the book of Revelation which speaks of the marriage banquet of the Lamb.

 

It is inclusive, in the sense that in the life of husband and wife, marriage aspires to reflect and echo to everyone, married or not, the fidelity of God to Israel and Christ to the Church.

 

Marriage is a Biblical image because all the while God remains faithful even when we err and stray.

 

So here’s the absurd, syllogistic, scenario again: a woman marries seven brothers in turn because one after another dies.

 

The next step of the scenario assumes that marriage endures in the resurrection.

 

Hence the question: when they have all died who will she be married to?

 

The Sadducees were taking the mickey really by asking this question.

 

Jesus responds clearly.

 

Marriage is something that exists on earth as a sign of fidelity and the fruitful coming together of two different, but complimentary, persons.

 

In the resurrection, when the redeemed are raised from the dead, then marriage is not the primary relationship or purpose they have, and nor is biological relationship or friendship.

 

That may be a source of sorrow for some to contemplate, and perhaps a source of relief to others.

 

So back to the Big Question and Jesus’ answer.

 

In the resurrection, the defining relationship is with the Living God, just as was the case with the Biblical patriarchs: God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

 

So, Message One to take away from this Gospel: those who have died are not dead to God.

 

You are not, and never will be, dead to God, for in baptism you have died with Christ and been raised to life in him.

 

Jesus points out that the Sadducees have made a category error: they’re talking and thinking in earthbound ways and not the ways of the resurrection.

 

Belief in the Resurrection means we cannot look at ourselves, human destiny or the world in the same way again.

 

Let us, of course, nurture and cherish now all the relationships we have in this life; siblings, spouses, friends knowing that the relating of heaven is very much more.

 

Message Two to take away today is that life in the resurrection is a total transformation of life as we know it or can conceive of it; it is life lived in all its abundance and fullness, without the inhibitors of human neediness, wilfulness, infidelity or sin. For Christ will be everything and in everything.

 

‘[For] he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’