The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Christ the King, Year C
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the promulgation of the Feast of Christ the King. A century ago the world was in turmoil – though, truth be told, the world has always been in turmoil. There is turmoil we can see and feel: tension and violence, conflict and contempt, hate and greed. And there is tension we ourselves might not feel, but exists for others throughout the globe: wars between countries that Americans would struggle to find on a map; American and European corporations buying up resources like water and minerals and leaving the worker oversea with drought and toxic remains; oppressive regimes that hoard wealth at the top while poverty devours up the masses of people that God has made in his own image.
Such it has been, in different ways, through all the ages.
And in looking at the turmoil around us, we see that our call to be Christians, to follow Christ, to bear the name of Christ, is our most fundamental task.
A hundred years ago, it was ideologies that fought for people’s undivided loyalty: fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany; the totalitarian communist regimes of Russia and Eastern Europe; the various forms of nationalism in China and Japan; the unbridled capitalist inflation we called the “Roaring Twenties” in the United States.
Though today we see those nationalisms and ideologies still in play, we are in a different scenario than a hundred years ago. The world is a much more global place than it once was, and ideologies and nationalism are more flexible than they once were. A deeply held belief that is proclaimed one day can be switched around the next, if the prevailing winds have shifted and one’s preferred politician has already pivoted. Few are ashamed of their hypocrisy, and even fewer even care for consistency; what matters most is whether your team is winning, and if the other team is losing. It is Henry Kissinger’s Realpolitik metastasized to all of creation, a value-less, amoral, unfeeling, calculating approach to life. It is nihilistic. It believes in nothing but power, and hopes for nothing other than merciless victory.
Corporations and their billionaire class absorb the wealth that labor produces by saying that they are the visionaries and deserve every drop of value. Politicians capitalize on cynicism and create laws that benefit themselves while pointing the finger elsewhere. Hate movements online seize the anger and alienation that young men feel, and these hate movements turn that despair into rage and murder toward scapegoats. The advent of AI and the technocracy looming on the horizon feeds into Silicon Valley’s desire to control all things in the name of abolishing human limitations; people will ask a chatbot to do their thinking for them, and now even churches can sign up for a chatbot Jesus to answer the questions of the faithful.
Our struggle, St Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities of the world, against the powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual evils around us.
I could give you a litany of names of people whose works are destroying the world and infecting it with turmoil – and yet, they are a symptom, not a cause. Would politicians and CEOs commit crimes against humanity and twist the law into injustice if it weren’t for a widespread belief that nothing matters except power? They are pawns and puppets of a spirit that knows nothing about love and cares for nothing other than its own power. If the powerful and wealthy did not lock themselves behind gates of privilege where money is law and exploitation the norm, perhaps they would be set free from the spirit of fear and manipulation that enslaves them, and then they might find greater freedom in the Spirit of Christ.
It is this Spirit of Christ that we Christians follow. We acclaim Christ as Lord and King and God. Christ is Lord, not anyone or anything else. Christ is God, and anything else that claims to be God is an idol, whether that be nation, or politics, or ideology, or power or wealth. Christ the King Sunday points to Christ the glorious King and Lord and God reigning from the cross. He offers himself out of abundant love; he accepts a way of suffering and death in order to set us free; he relinquishes the glory of eternity in order to take upon himself our human nature and walk among us; he proclaims the truth, even if it means that he himself will be condemned to die at our own hands.
We live in a time of turmoil, and we live in a time of idolatry and confusion. Political power proclaims itself as King – but we know no King but Christ. Money proclaims itself as Lord – but we know no Lord but Christ. We know that it is only Christ who brings us healing, light, life, and love – and he brings it so that we may share in it and share it with all the world, even those who set themselves up as kings, lords, and gods. Christ wants them to be set free, too. Because Christ is a most regal King in the flesh of a carpenter’s son, a most solemn Lord who eats and drinks with sinners and tax collectors, a most loving God who heals and absolves us as he dies on the cross.
We take our place under the banner of Christ the King, who bears his cross and his scars until the end of time. We set the table of Christ the Lord, bringing all the world in to eat the feast prepared from the foundation of the world. We sing our praises to Christ our God, who became human and served us that we might be renewed and restored as bearers of the Image of God. The times are tough. Turmoil, uncertainty, hate, conflict, greed, all these things surround us. So it has been since the beginning. But Christ was willing to walk among us, to be human like us, to suffer like us, to bring us everlasting life and love. Let us trust in Christ’s promises, let us trust in Christ’s death and resurrection! Let us persevere in faith, in hope, and in love – Christ our King reigns in love, now and forever. Amen.