The Feast of Christ the King 2011, St. Paul’s Cathedral
Matthew 21:1-11
The President of the United States came to the Capital of our nation. The
Messiah came to Jerusalem the Capital of Israel. Canberra was astir, but
Jerusalem was shaken to its foundations. Mr Obama arrived in two aircraft, an
enormous limo with all kinds of devices, 35 other cars, hundreds of support
staff but Jesus arrived on a donkey in fulfilment of a prophecy, surrounded by a
crowd. Mr Obama arrives as the President and Commander in Chief of the most
powerful nation on the planet, who named one of its nuclear submarines, ‘Corpus
Christi’ but Jesus arrived as a gentle king, the Prince of Peace.
The President’s visit happened a couple of days ago, but Jesus entry to
Jerusalem was 2000 years ago. The President’s visit is highly relevant to
Australia as the political commentary makes clear, but can we say the same
about Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem?
A clue is given by two other comparisons. Mr Obama is the leader of the world’s
superpower visiting a small nation. Jesus enters the capital of a small nation
under the control of Rome the world’s only superpower at that time. The
security of America is the President’s top priority and he will and does oppose
with force any one threatening that security. Rome likewise had its own
security as its top priority and punished any threat with the crucifixion of each
and every person involved.
Secondly Mr Obama’s visit was highly orchestrated and so was Jesus’ entrée
into Jerusalem. The donkey was acquired – even prearranged with a password –
so Jesus could ride it into Jerusalem in order to make the prophecy from
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Zechariah come true. But just riding a donkey wouldn’t make it come true.
Why? Because according to the prophecy it was Israel’s King that would be
riding on the donkey. Jesus’ riding a donkey into Jerusalem would only fulfil
the prophecy if Jesus was indeed the King of the Jews. Not only a prophet
from Nazareth as the crowd knew, but King. His riding the donkey was his
asserting his authority and claiming the city and its people as their King. Not
the puppet kings like Herod who were vassals of Rome, but Israel’s true King,
God’s Messiah.
In the scale of the Roman empire a King of a little corner of the empire is no
ultimate threat, and in any case the Legions could deal with any rebellion as they
did with the one that exploded forty years after Jesus death. Of course they
expected Jewish authorities to handle any disturbance by fanatics. This is
what happened within a week of Jesus’ riding the donkey into the city. But
exactly what was the disturbance provoked by Jesus? The claim to be Messiah
is hardly a hanging offence among Jews. The Messiah was expected. It cannot
have been that claim as such but rather something about the claim that was
disturbing, notwithstanding his coming as the gentle Messiah of Zechariah’s
prophesy.
Here is another clue. By riding the donkey into Jerusalem he asserted his
authority from God, as he had been doing ever since he started to publically
announce the Kingdom of God beginning in Galilee. After his arrival in
Jerusalem the assertion of authority continued with his stopping the operation
of the Temple by overturning the tables of the money changers. This was not a
cleansing of the corrupt temple. It foreshadowed its destruction. It continued
with his attracting the blind and the lame into the Temple and healing them,
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thereby breaking King David’s ruling that they should be excluded from the
Temple.
These actions show another prophecy coming true. God had spoken through the
prophet Hosea, saying “I desire mercy not sacrifice.” It is a word Jesus said at
least twice in response to his critics: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire
mercy not sacrifice’”. Here he stops the temple sacrifices and heals the lame –
mercy not sacrifice. You see why the city was shaken to its foundations. The
Temple was the heart of the City. Then as a result the children in the Temple
shouted out ‘Hosanna to the son of David’ , meaning of course the Messiah. The
Chief priest complained to Jesus demanding in effect that Jesus silence the
children. But Jesus answered him with the verse from Psalm 8, “Out of the
mouths of babies and infants you have prepared praise for yourself’. But of
course the children had been praising Jesus. This claim to stand where only
God was expected to stand was precisely what it was about Jesus’ Messianic
claim that was so disturbing. It was all the more disturbing because it came
through in everything he did, in his teaching, his forgiving sins, his mighty works
which continued despite his table fellowship with the unclean, which did not
render him unclean before God, the standard view of the day.
This King was not just the royal claimant to rule a little nation in a little corner
of the Roman Empire but the Lord of Heaven and Earth. God was visiting the
City and the Temple. This also challenged the tendencies of the Empire to
divinise its Emperors.
But it is only superficially like the President visiting our
capital City.
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Is this relevant to us? We have no Temple and almost everyone would say that
our culture is secular not religious. But this is superficial. In a sense we are all
religious, it is only a question of what we value, that is of what we worship, of
what stories we tell to make sense of life, and of the identity we embrace as a
result. You see every culture has its cult. The cult defines what is ultimately
real and of value and it tells how we may live in touch with the ultimate. What
is the ‘ultimate’ that our culture inculcates, even insinuates in each of us?
On a daily basis in our culture it is the techno-sciences that tell us what is real
and it is the market that tells us what is of value, that is what is of value to the
market according to the golden rule those who have the gold make the rules .
Consequently you have value if you add value, (as a producer) you get value if you
can pay for it (as a consumer). In tension with this is the claim that privately
family and friends are most important and also that publically the ‘fair go’ for all
that is our key value.
The problem is that public life is ever intruding into our private lives by the
massive effects of high tech communications forming us as persons. As work
demands expand and the pace of living increases, we have to stay more and more
on the surface of relationships – you can’t go too deep if you are always on the
move. And we are all being moved faster and faster to keep up with the
demands of an ever growing economy. We are more and more being drawn into
an abstract form of relationship, mediated by our technology, so that these
become predominant compared to face to face relationships.
Underneath this construal of reality and of value there is the deeper claim from
the techno sciences that there is no ultimate purpose to the universe, and so
there is no ultimate value written into the fabric of the universe. We just
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make it up. Into this void, comes the ever expanding market, the ever growing
economy as the surrogate purpose for the form of life we are all part of. Even
more deeply, the message is that the personal is only a product of the
underlying impersonal order of energy, matter and the laws by which they
undergo transformations.
All this is the cult at the heart of our culture. This is what our culture
insinuates into our lives. It drives the operation of a virulent social form that
takes over and makes over more and more of life in its terms, including us. In
political science terms it operates as if it was sovereign power – that power of
which there is none greater.
The President’s visit was all about building on and securing these foundations
not questioning them, much less shaking them. Yet they are questionable as the
continuing financial crises testify, as does climate change with the prospect, on
the balance of probabilities, of an ecological catastrophe.
But we celebrate Christ the King, the true sovereign power, of which there is
none greater, who is the author and giver of life, through whom and for whom all
things were created, who claims us as his subjects, and so sets us free, that like
him we too may be life’s most passionate servants, so that we and all God’s
children may be free and the whole earth live to praise God’s name.
Now may
the original blessing of our being created in the image of God and given real
power be truly manifest in human life on this planet in our history, in all its
fullness, a foretaste of Christ’s coming in glory.
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In doing this let us be united with all of this King’s ‘subjects’. Who are his
‘subjects’? Jesus has told us very clearly in the beatitudes:
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what is right, they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.
Who are these King’s subjects? Whoever they are!
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