Obedience is unpopular, but we owe it to our King

Feast of Christ the King 
First Reading: Dn 7:13-14 
Second Reading: Rv 1:5-8
Gospel Reading: Jn 18:33b-37

This Sunday, the last of the Church’s liturgical year, is the Feast of Christ the King. (Notice that we call Christ our king: not our leader, president, or prime minister.)

According to the Sanhedrin (the Jewish council), Jesus deserved death because he had called God his Father and thus made himself God’s equal. However, for the Roman governor Pontius Pilate to ratify the death sentence, the council had to charge Jesus with something the Romans would understand. Therefore, they accused him of challenging Caesar by “making himself a king.” This is the charge to which, in effect, Jesus pleads guilty in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading, even though he explains that his kingdom “is not from this world.”

Jesus was executed, therefore, because he claimed to be God and king. However, it was the second charge that appeared on the inscription Pilate wrote for the cross: “Jesus the Nazarene, king of the Jews” (in Latin, “Iesus Nazarenus rex Iudaeorum,” whose initial letters we see on crucifixes). This is the title the Jewish leaders refused when they said, “We have no king but Caesar.”

Christ is a king like no other. “As king he claims dominion over all creation.” He is “king of the universe,” “ruler of the kings of the earth.” His dominion is “everlasting.” His kingship “shall never be destroyed.” His throne “has stood firm from of old.” He is the beginning and the end, he “who is and who was and who is to come.” He is “almighty;” his power is infinite. Christ is a king who deserves our worship, service, and obedience.

Obedience, in particular, is unpopular nowadays, especially in western democracies, as the late Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic of Toronto said to the World Synod of Bishops in 1994.

“For some decades command of any kind has enjoyed very poor press, both outside and inside the Church,” he said. “We have demanded that human commanding within the Church be carried out with as much reasonableness and reason as possible. Instinctively we want to be masters of our fate; we want to be self-starters. If God should wish us to do something, let him persuade us, convince us, cajole us; but let him not command, for command offends our autonomy.

“Commands are designed, by their very nature, to interfere with and to sway our daily lives and actions. At the moment a command reaches my ears, whether I obey or disobey, I am effectively notified that I am not my own; I am deprived of my self-produced equilibrium and disturbed in the peace I have created for myself.

“Behind our stress on love, our demand for co-responsibility, our demand that commands be explained and convincing, there lurks at times an unspoken and unadmitted demand that God approach us on our terms and acquiesce in our declaration of independence.

“God’s command reveals, in a concrete and inescapable manner, who God is and who I am. It demands obedience absolutely, thus containing the claim that the one doing the demanding is absolute, having the right to my unquestioned obedience. It rests on the assumption that whatever God commands makes sense, whether I understand it or not.”

The amazing thing about this supreme, everlasting, all-powerful king is that he knows each one of us intimately. Even more, he “loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood.”

He is our master, but he wants to “allure” us to him. As God said through the prophet Hosea, he wants us to respond to him like a bride to her bridegroom. He wants us to address him as “my husband,” not “my baal” (a word that means “lord” or “master”).

Accordingly, we can say, as we do in the Entrance Antiphon, “The lamb who was slain (for us) is worthy to receive strength and divinity, wisdom and power and honour. To him be glory and power forever.”

Father Hawkswell teaches a free course on the Catholic faith on Mondays until Pentecost: from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at St. Anthony’s Parish, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver, and again from 7 to 9 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way (just off 33rd Avenue between Oak and Cambie). Everyone is welcome, Catholic or non-Catholic.