Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 24 November 2019

Feast of Christ the King

Down the years, I've thought long and hard about this feast and as I get older my sense of awe about majesty and power diminishes. Somehow the images of kingship and the trappings of courtly glory sit uneasily with Jesus Christ the shepherd of our souls! I know many people love the romance of royalty and power, heaven knows we still have enough trappings of ancient ceremonial and vesture in both Church and State, but there are others for whom it is a symbol of entitlement and privilege. If we regard it as harmless then happy shall we be, but once all this finery and flummery are taken too seriously and used in defence of power, we may run a terrible risk of splitting the human family into those who have and have not, but this can never be part of our vocation. It doesn't stop there, a sense of entitlement produces adverse effects in the way we perceive and deal with our planet and its life! We become arrogant, careless and unheeding, but also out of touch with the raw nerves and difficult situations of life!

So, what of Christ the King? Maybe it is one of those feasts that does need some reshaping in the way we imagine it. The idea of an autocratic divine ruler of all may serve to enhance our sense of Christian triumph, but it does not mark the real route of the Gospel, nor indeed the encounter with the Christ that he himself continually reveals in the scriptures. Luke's dialogue between the thief on the cross and the dying Jesus gives us a glimpse into a different realm, a kingdom in which the King is servant, where reconciliation and redemption are the hallmarks of its currency of love! The criminal says, no doubt in choking anguish: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied to him, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Lk 22:42,43) This isn't the hauteur of an absolute monarch in the mould of Louis XIV or the Great Ming Emperor, this is the compassion of a brother or a friend, one to whom we are intimately joined in that image of the Body of Christ, head and members, but it is also the humility of a God who overturns every harrier and every obstacle to get as close as possible to each one of us.

I shall leave you with one image, that of Holman Hunt's 'Light of the World'. In this painting the figure of Christ, crowned with thorns comes with his light to knock at the door of each one of us, a door covered in brambles and weeds, a door that can only be opened from the inside. This King comes for one reason only: "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me." (Rev 3: 20) This is the bridegroom king, the welcoming king, and the shepherd king who rules in love in our hearts, not in any earthly sense of power and whose desire is to be with us! That is not the full understanding of Christ, but it points us more to the reality of who he really is for us, the one who becomes humbler yet!

Lectio Divina

John Donne (1571 - 1631)

Our Last Awakening

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity: in the habitations of thy majesty and glory, world without end.
Amen.

The Kingdom of God

by Francis Thompson

In No Strange Land

O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air-
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;-and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,-clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!