Solemnity of Christ the King Reflection
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage – Solemnity Of Christ The King – (Luke 23:35-43)
Our calling, the nature implanted within us… to reflect that full humanity and divinity revealed by Jesus, the Christ; the nature of God who is Love, compassionate, just yet merciful, good, and gracious … this is the image we are made to reflect. This is the mark that we miss, the misdirected destination we mistakenly seek… this is sin… falling short of the glory of God.
This is also the story of our journey of awakening, laying aside our illusions and paranoia, and coming to face this juxtaposition of the call of our implanted nature and that uneasy culpability and humiliation of being unable to be true to our God-nature.
This Paradox and contradiction confound us, unsettle us … set of teeth on edge, and enrages us to destroy any image that contradicts our distorted reflection, and so a new source of our image must be acclaimed. We demand a supreme commander, an ultimate ruler, an Emperor, a Czar, or even our favourite sports or film star to guide and justify and lead us, and most especially, to divert us from the emptiness of our uncertainty and fear.
In the cracks between these contradictions is to be found our greatest weakness as well as our greatest strength. Here we come face-to-face with the hypocrisy that allows us to make such easy bedfellows with all the deadly sins.
It is also here that we come face-to-face with the great paradox of the power of love that is at the same time vulnerable. The greatest is found among the smallest. Honour and power are found in the powerless one who came to serve, who comes to us as a servant, who comes to us in the simplicity of bread and wine.
In this great paradox lies also our greatest shame; our rejection of the vulnerability of love for the glitter of imperial power. This is the journey we are on, a choice made earlier has distracted us from the truth and beauty within us. It is a choice of darkness over light, the choice of illusion over Truth; and so we demanded… “Give us a king … a king like all the other nations have”. And so we also run to place our earthly crown on the head of Jesus, a beautiful blue-eyed Arian who sits meekly in our halls of power as an icon of our domination and of culture. Jesus rejected such temptation in the desert.
These are the kingdoms that continue to collide as Jesus and Pilate face each other in the Praetorian. All the glittering spender and symbols of imperial power that rules the world face an imprisoned carpenter, Jesus the servant who washes the feet of his disciples.
Jesus humbles and shames us with our flirtation and intoxication with those same glittering splendid symbols of imperial power. How often have we used power to dominate rather than to serve? Lord forgive us.
How often do we use the symbols of imperial power and our icons of domination to destroy and poison the cultures of those we consider inferior? Lord forgive us.
How often we use our own icons of domination to destroy and murder, to distort the face of God, and to silence God’s Word that resounds through all creation, in the forests, and the oceans. “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air and they shall tell you: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach you: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto you. Who knows not in all these that the hand of the Lord has done this?” (Job 12:7-9)
The roots of our faith, sometimes tangled and murky have outgrown our small container and no amount of re-gilding or re-branding can contain the flourishing of the awakening that is coming about; the renewal that will take place.
Holy Scripture has warned us… Jesus warns us: “look not for Truth, Life, and Light in the imperial courts of earthly power; look not for joy and peace in these places … Look for me among the small, the discarded, the ravaged, the naked, and the poor.” This is where Jesus the Christ, our model, and your guide is to be found.
We know and acknowledge that this great contradiction lies within us. How often do we fall short and must we begin again? Today is not a day of triumphant posturing. Today is a day of shame, but also a day of possibility: to listen closely so that all may live.
From his throne of earthly power and domination, Pilate is unable to hear Jesus, unable to understand Jesus. The glamour and allure of prestige and domination and comfortable lifestyle make us deaf to the vulnerability of the voice of love.
It is in communion that we come to see with God’s eyes, to walk with each other as brothers and sisters, to walk with and in God’s creation, seeking to hear always the Word of God, who whispers to us amongst the vulnerable, defeated and rejected: a little child born in an animal stall.
To hear and to encounter this Word of Love for us together as God’s family, yet also for each one of us by name, brings us that peace and that joy that the world cannot give.
Once again during this month of November, we remember all our beloved deceased brothers and sisters, those who have shaped our journey by remembering that small voice of all “The leaf”.
I asked the leaf whether it was frightened
because it was autumn and the other leaves were falling.
The leaf told me, “No.
During the whole spring and summer
I was completely alive.
I worked hard to help nourish the tree,
and now much of me is in the tree.
I am not limited by this form.
I am also the whole tree,
and when I go back to the soil,
I will continue to nourish the tree.
So I don’t worry at all.
As I leave this branch and float to the ground,
I will wave to the tree and tell her,
‘I will see you again very soon’.
- The Church Year and Advent - December 1, 2024
- Easter Sunday Reflection: The Way – Love Overcomes Violence & Death - March 29, 2024
- Palm Sunday Reflection: Re-Espousing And Anointing - March 22, 2024
