Feast of Christ the King, Year C
First reading: 2 Sm 5:1-3
Second reading: Col 1:12-20
Gospel reading: Lk 23:35-43

This Sunday, we hear how David came to be king of Israel and how the Romans executed Jesus, David’s heir, because he claimed to be “king of the Jews.”

Originally, God was Israel’s only king. However, around 1000 BC, the people begged for a human king and God agreed. The first king, Saul, disobeyed God, and God rejected him as king. The second, David, the youngest son of Jesse, who lived at Bethlehem, made Israel a nation, with Jerusalem as its capital and spiritual centre.

“Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me,” God promised David; “your throne shall stand firm forever.”

In 586 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. He slew the sons of King Zedekiah, blinded him, bound him, and deported him to Babylon.

However, some two centuries earlier, Isaiah had foretold that “a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse.” Also, God had said to King Ahaz of Judah, “Listen, O house of David! ... the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel,” meaning “God is with us.”

Jesus fulfilled both these prophecies. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, he was Son of God; by his legal father, Joseph, he was son of David.

“You gave Jesus legal paternity in the line of David,” Pope St. John Paul II said in a prayer to St. Joseph in Montreal in 1984.

At the Annunciation, Gabriel told Mary, already legally bound to Joseph, a man “of the house of David,” that her son would inherit “the throne of David his father” and “rule over the house of Jacob forever.”

In telling Joseph to take Mary into his home as his wife and to name her child, the angel addressed him as “son of David.” Jesus was born in Bethlehem, “David’s town,” where Joseph had gone to register, being of “the house and lineage of David.” There, said St. John Paul, he “fulfilled for the child (Jesus) the significant task of officially inserting the name ‘Jesus, son of Joseph of Nazareth’ in the registry of the Roman Empire.”

From the prophecies, every Jew knew that the Messiah, who would restore the kingdom of Israel, would be of David’s line. Accordingly, Matthew starts his Gospel with “a family record of Jesus Christ, son of David.” When Jesus asked the Pharisees whose son the Messiah would be, they answered, “David’s.” Those who recognized Jesus addressed him as “son of David”; others wondered whether he could be “David’s son.”

And Jesus accepted this title. When the children cried “Hosanna to the Son of David!” the priests rebuked them, but Jesus said, “Did you never read this: ‘From the speech of infants and children you have framed a hymn of praise’?”

During Jesus’ trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin, the high priest said, “I order you to tell us under oath before the living God whether you are the Messiah, the Son of God,” and Jesus replied, “I am.” Accordingly, the Jews condemned him to death because he called himself God’s son.

However, under Roman rule, a death sentence had to be ratified by the local Roman governor. Pilate did not feel threatened by Jesus’ claim to be God’s son, so he said repeatedly, “I find no case against him.” However, when he heard that the Messiah would be heir to David’s throne and therefore hereditary king of the Jews, he sentenced him to death because he claimed to be “king of the Jews.”

God had made the old covenants with the Jews, but, at Jesus’ death, he made a new and eternal covenant with the whole human race. Under this covenant, everyone who recognizes Jesus as God’s son is entitled to call upon him as king, for he has rescued us from Satan and transferred us into his kingdom.

This Sunday, therefore, we worship Christ as king of the universe: “To him be glory and power forever.”

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English, with new insights. The whole course is available in written form and, one session per week, in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Father is also teaching the course in person: on Sundays at 2 p.m. in the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, Vancouver (33rd and Willow); and on Mondays at 10 a.m. in St. Anthony’s Church hall, 2347 Inglewood Ave., West Vancouver. Next week’s topic is “A Place for Science in the Catholic Faith.”