Today we celebrate the feast of  Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe , formerly called the Feast of Christ the King. What do we learn from our readings today? What’s the ‘pearl’, the ‘take-home’ message we can apply to our lives? How do we respond to a celebration of Christ’s kingship?

Most of us have very little experience of royalty. We , of course, are familiar with Queen Elizabeth 2 and the British royal family and their comings and goings. Queen Elizabeth 2 has certainly been exemplary in her role as queen. Our democratic mindset does not easily accommodate the notion of a hereditary Queen or King with power over our lives. When we think of kings we are more likely to think of an obscure African nation with a despotic King or emperor who uses his position to acquire a large Swiss bank account.  Someone like Idi Amin of Uganda. Our history books are filled with the lives of kings who cared only for themselves and not for their subjects. For us, closer to home, we can think of the top executives of large companies pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars while ordinary, hard-working people see their mortgages foreclosed and lose their homes. We have witnessed many examples of people in public life lately who have acquired great wealth and the power, which goes with it, only to see that they have become corrupted by it. The latest example is President-elect Donald Trump!

What a contrast we have in Jesus, who is a true King, master of all that exists as we hear in our Second Reading. “Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible…and in him all things hold together.”(Col1:15ff)  This image of Jesus on the cross with its inscripiton INRI, ‘Jesus the Nazarean King of the Jews, turns upside down our ideas of who God is.

Jesus is a true hereditary king as a descendant of David. Our First Reading today reminds us that David was anointed by Samuel to replace Saul who had died and his reign is seen as the Golden Age of Jewish history. David began as a shepherd looking after his father’s flocks and he was anointed as a king and shepherd to lead the people. After David, there were a succession of kings who were not faithful to the covenant with God and the Kingdom of Israel ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile six hundred years before Jesus was born.  Following this, there were many prophecies that a new Kingdom would rise up led by a Messiah, a descendant of David. As Zechariah prophesied at John the Baptist’s birth, “Let us praise the Lord, the God of Israel! He has come to the help of his people….He has provided for us a mighty Saviour, a descendent of his servant David.”(Luke 1:67).

Jesus was born and lived among us. The symbol of his royalty was not a scepter and a crown but a towel. This King knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples. Although the inscription on his cross was “King of the Jews,” He did not save himself from the cross through power and domination. As he told his disciples when he was arrested and they pulled out their swords to defend him, “Don’t you know that I could call on my Father for help, and at once he would send me more than twelve armies of angels?”(Matt 26:53) When Pilate asked if he were a king, Jesus replied “My kingdom does not belong to this world; if my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities.”(John 18:36). Jesus accepted death as a criminal, on a cross.

This is so incredible that we must pause and reflect on it. Jesus, “the eikon, the image of the invisible God” allows himself to be tortured and to die. Why? He is the shepherd protecting his flock, protecting us.  But the enemy is not the wolf outside it is the wolf within.  The enemy Jesus saves us from is our own selfishness and sinfulness, which can only lead to our destruction. We need to look in the mirror. When we act selfishly, when we disregard the sufferings of someone, when we want to be the first in line, when we take more than our share, when we do not care about our environment, when we are not moved to do something when we see injustice around us--- are we not then acting as despotic, autocratic, kings/queens?

Jesus truly entered our human world, our history as a descendant of David but he surpassed David as a true King and shepherd and leads us through the gates of death into his Father’s kingdom, where there will be no more tears. “For in Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”(Second Reading)

How do we respond to this generosity on God’s part? We need to answer that question personally and as a community.

Luke’s Gospel today gives us a possible answer. There are two possible responses as we hear from the lips of two criminals dying with Jesus. We can despair, we can give up, we can curse the perversity of life, we can lose our faith in a good and caring Father as we slowly suffocate on the cross—that’s what happened to one criminal: He mocked Jesus, could not accept that this was the Messiah, the King descended from David,” Save yourself and us!” The second possible response is that of DIsmas, the ‘good thief’, who recognized that he was a criminal and his punishment just.

As one commentator puts it: “Most of us are not criminals, yet each of us has a story.  We hide our faults and know our private addictions. The path into addiction and then out of addiction toward healing is like the journey our criminal makes.  Recovering addicts speak the truth, admit their wrongdoing and accept the consequences.  They admit their powerlessness and embrace a higher power.. .True prayer includes fearless honesty, living in the moment and accepting our dependence on God as our Creator. “(Karen Johnson, Preaching Resources)

By acknowledging his own need to be saved, the good thief receives the promise, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

When we do turn toward Jesus , recognizing our need to be saved from ourselves, our attitude changes radically and we begin to recognize ourselves mirrored in those around us. Every person has been reconciled “through the blood of his cross.” We become the face of the invisible God to all those we encounter when, despite our failures, we do not give in to despair but accept Jesus’ gift of Himself that has saved each of us from the destructiveness of our ego and  ultimately from the death which it brings.

There is a  story of a little girl  who was drawing a ‘picture of God’. Her mother said, “Honey nobody knows what God looks like.” The little girl replied,”Now they will” as she held up a simple child’s drawing. We are all called to be that simple drawing, becoming the face of a loving God in our communities through our joy and our willingness to ‘wash each other’s feet’ as our King and Saviour did  on the night before He died for us.

In conclusion, let St. Paul’s words from our Second Reading be on our lips as well:

“Give thanks to the Father who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.”(Second Reading)