+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Yesterday Victoria and Joanie reaffirmed their Baptismal commitments and became card carrying Episcopalians, for which we congratulate them and will fete them at coffee hour today. Because the notice of yesterday’s deanery-wide confirmation service came rather late, I subjected them to a marathon class last week instead of several sessions. Anyway, one of the things that I always need to emphasize when we’re going through the church history portion, particularly since it’s such an uncomfortable part of our own Anglican identity, is the long history of conflict between religious and secular authorities in Western Europe.
Lest we think Henry VIII’s venality and concupiscence was an isolated incident, it’s important to realize that this was and remained a long-standing issue. This was particularly a problem with regard to the appointment of bishops and other prelates. The ancient practice of diocesan clergy or cathedral chapters electing bishops had been slowly but surely replaced by one of two alternatives–either the bishop of Rome (i.e., the pope) made the appointment, or the emperor or king or prince over the see in question did. Thus, there was constant wrangling between the Vatican and whoever happened to be on his bad side at the time–the Holy Roman Emperor or the King of France or the Grand Duke of Lithuania or whoever.
Naturally, the English were frequently on the naughty list, which reached a head during the reign of bad King John (of Robin Hood fame) whose spat with the Pope over the latter’s appointment of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury in A.D. 1208, led not just to the former’s excommunication but a general papal interdict–meaning that for six years all churches in England and Wales were closed, administration of the sacraments was forbidden except to those nearing death, and even those fortunate souls could not be buried in the churchyard. Just imagine how awful it would be to be deprived of the solace of the church’s ministrations for so long. Thus when the barons confronted King John at Runnymede and made him sign Magna Carta (the document itself having been drafted by Archbishop Langton) the provision that the Church of England should remain free, meant it should be free from the King’s meddling, not the Pope’s. So, it’s not comfortable for me as an Anglican to admit, but three hundred years later Henry VIII established a scheme which was clearly unconstitutional, the exact opposite of what a “strict constructionist” might define as the Church of England’s freedom. All that said, as an American Episcopalian, I am relieved that the bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction here and equally relieved that the only authority King Charles III has that touches on our common life is that he technically still appoints the Archbishop of Canterbury, though in practice the monarch just chooses whoever a church commission tells the prime minister to tell the king to appoint.
The relatively new feast day which we celebrate today, Christ the King–which only came about in the Roman Catholic Church in 1925 and in our own in 1979–comes from a similarly messy history. While secularism and even atheistic regimes like the then-recently founded Soviet Union were genuine threats to the church’s flourishing (and religiosity more broadly) perhaps the most pressing concern which led to the establishment of Christ the King Sunday was the so-called “Roman Question.” The unification of Italy into a single kingdom in the Nineteenth Century had meant the church’s loss of secular authority and control of large swathes of territory and eventually the fall of Rome itself. Thus the pope was said to be a prisoner within his own, now extremely circumscribed domain, which would come to be known as Vatican City. Rapprochement only occurred with the Lateran treaties in which the church was given a rather raw deal by King Victor Emmanuel III and his Prime Minister, Benito Mussolini. In any event, the reiteration of Christ’s kingship with the establishment of its own festival day was meant as a not-so-subtle reminder to the faithful that whatever secular authorities might claim, Christ’s authority was supreme.
That being the case, we must note that even those insisting on the church’s freedom from secular control sometimes missed the point themselves, particularly considering the Roman Church’s claim to more than spiritual authority against the Kingdom of Italy. You see, the sort of Kingdom which is God’s and the sort of kingship which is Christ’s is not a mere argument for church authority in temporal affairs. It is, rather an entirely different sort of reign. Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel make this much clear. Pilate would not have understood what sort of kingdom Christ was claiming, his view of power being entirely concerned with control over men and nations. Christ’s Kingdom is different. It is not of this world or its values.
The King of Glory is a King whose law is love, and (as I’ve said from this pulpit before) Christian love is not about warm, sentimental feelings; it’s about treating those people we call brothers and sisters as if they really were our brothers and sisters. It’s about comforting the weak and feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and putting the stranger’s needs before our own.
the Kingship of Christ is not only different from the kingship of the emperor; it is diametrically opposed to the spirit of our age- the spirit which revels in individualism and so-called enlightened self interest. There is no place in the Kingdom for ethical egoism. I am not sure which is worse: an Emperor in Rome or a king in every man’s self-estimation. Whichever is worse, the latter is the contemporary sin, and it is more dangerous than the former at least as it regards our souls.
So our response to the Kingship of Christ is pretty simple. It is in loving sacrifice that we involve ourselves in Christ’s Kingship. It is in that remarkable paradox in which we see Christ reigning not only from His Throne of Glory, but from the Cross of Shame with a Crown bejeweled by thorns. Our own Glory, our own Kingship is bought on that more shameful throne with that most heavy crown, and our acceptance of the reign which Christ wishes to give us is a condition of our willingness to take up that Cross, put on that crown and follow.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.