Martyrs and Kings

Every transition has an end, a middle, and a beginning. The Church Year ends with the feast of Christ the King, the Reign of Christ, a feast instituted by Pope Pius X during the rise of Fascism in Italy in the 1920s. The feast spread to many other church bodies; we celebrate it now as a reminder that God reigns, not us. The Church Year begins anew four Sundays before Christmas Day (whether it occurs on a Sunday or a week day).  

And so as we reach the end of the season that culminates in the feast of Christ the King, we find the story of Jesus about to loop around itself from the end back to the beginning: from the consummation of time to the birth of a baby. "Come thou long expected Jesus" we soon will sing. And he arrives twice! First he comes to us as the infant terrorizing Herod and again as the one before whose throne all will gather. Same person. 

Herod the Great, ruler of Palestine under Roman sponsorship -- who built the great buildings whose ruin Jesus prophesies -- got the message early and he did not like it. That earthbound despot wanted no rivals, especially legitimate ones. Some more recent sovereigns have had similar inclinations.  But God prevails. 

And that is good news that we hear today : Christ forewarned his followers of the difficulties ahead of them and yet reassured them of their ultimate vindication. And so it is when we face hard times, adversity, or mortality: we are not alone. That is why the one who comes is called "Emmanuel" - God with us.

This good news comforts the comfortable and the afflicted, the desperate and the sorrowful and the joyous alike. Since sometimes that can be all of us or any of us this is good news indeed.

That reminder that God reigns came home with force within a decade or two after the feast was first proclaimed. Among those who made it stick in hearts and minds was Kaj Munk, a Danish playwright and pastor, who wrote an impolitic play during the second World War. 

What was the point, and what was the problem, was that he uniquely compared Herod to Hitler. And this did not make the occupying army happy: indeed he was soon a martyr, murdered by the Gestapo, his body found in a ditch the morning after a midnight abduction. 

Call it an arrest or call it an abduction: it was the prelude to murder. He was not the last. Not certainly the last. There have been many martyrs and prophets since his death who have stood in front of evil and proclaimed God’s reign. 

Later in the 20th century it was Janani Luwum, Archbishop in Uganda, who confronted an evil regime with the power of love. He paid with his life. One night he was summoned to the presidential palace, and he stood right in front of his country’s ruler, Idi Amin, and refused to renounce the truth. For that he was shot and killed.

These are among the known martyrs; others are known but to God. But their work continues; their truth persists; and the culmination of this year and all years is still this: God reigns. That means that whatever claims on our allegiance are offered to us, none is as important as the integrity of the faith that God keeps with us. And that we, faltering and failing and forgiven, attempt to keep with God.  

How are we to follow this one who rejected earthly titles but is 'ruler of the kings of earth' and seated at the right hand of God? Challenging questions as we anticipate the arrival of the King of Kings.

 

The book of Daniel and the book of Revelation reveal visions of what God is doing by telling us what they see God doing in the future. In some ways the prophecies of Daniel seem like visionary accounts of what was already happening in his time while revealing what is really going on in the deep currents of time. 

For example, he speaks of four kingdoms that could be the successors to Alexander the Great. 

Indeed it was one of these, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, r. 175 BCE-164 BCE, who was the immediate enemy of Israel at the time of the book’s composition. 

Nevertheless it has implications beyond that moment, for Daniel prophesies not only what is happening, or has happened, or is going to happen, but what it means. What it means is that God reigns; not Pharaoh, not Nebuchadnezzer, not Cyrus, and certainly not Antiochus IV Epiphanes. 

 

What then is the nature of that reign? Jesus refuses the label of comparative kingship, as if he were to be a head of state alongside the clients of Rome or its rival powers. No, his kingdom is not of this world: it is a heavenly kingdom. But what is that to us? What does it mean for us? 

 

It means our loyalty lies beyond the immediate present press of events; our faith is in something transcendent, someone eternal. The Ancient of Days, in fact. The one who is and was and is to come. And in the Son of Man, who is likewise the first and the last, first born of the resurrection and witness of all that is coming to pass, has come to pass, and will come to pass.

 

And we are in their hands, ultimately; the hands of God. 

 

Our God reigns. Where does he reign? Most of all, in the human heart.

Yes, first of all in the human heart. But it does not end there: it is more than that.

When Jesus speaks of truth he speaks of what is solid, reliable, real. And it implies there is something to be done. Truth that is God made known in Jesus Christ is actionable knowledge. If you know Jesus, you act upon that knowledge.

And so when you know that truth, you have a way, a life, before you: a truth that will set you free.  Free to center your life on the abundant grace of God, revealed in Jesus Christ in its fullness. 

So as the psalm says there may be a night of sorrow but it will open into a new dawn of joy.

 

That is something people of faith have held onto, from that day to this, when that night looks black.

 

And that is the sunrise into glory that we anticipate on the feast day of Christ the King.

JRL+