Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Reign of Christ, alternatively known as The Feast of Christ the King.  The Feast was first enacted in the Roman Catholic Church and added to the Western liturgical calendar by Pope Pius XI in 1925.  That date is a rather interesting one given it was also the year in which the United Church of Canada was formed out of its previous founding denominations.  It is also significant that the Feast was initiated in 1925.  Pius founded the feast in an encyclical entitled Quas Primas (Who or What is First/Primary?).  The encyclical emerges in the wake of the horrors of the First World War and during the time of the rise of existentialism, the Lost Generation, and a period of malaise and soon on the cusp of the Great Depression. 

 

Pius saw the world heading away from Christ as King, from the moral rule of Christian values over the Western world.  He created the feast in part to remind the world who was in fact Ruler over the world.  Now he lived in an age and in a theological position in which the Kingdom of God was essentially equated with the Roman Catholic Church and that Roman Catholic Church almost exclusively with the Papacy.  So you can see where saying Christ was King was headed.  In this church, growing out of the same time period there was the movement towards Uniting Churches or ecumenism as a way of re-uniting all the Protestant denominations under one umbrella in order to make the 20th century in the words of the magazine, "The Christian Century."  Two world wars, genocides, decolonization, The Cold War, among others and we see how well that vision turned out.  And worse the tendency to equate Christianity or the spreading of the Gospel and its values with the spreading of European colonialism, to conquer the world for Christ. 

 

In 1969 growing out of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI moved the Feast from its earlier position which was the Sunday before all saints to its current position, namely the last week of the Liturgical Year, the last Sunday that is before Advent which begins next week.  Paul VI wanted to emphasize Christ's Lordship or Reinging in a Cosmic sense, in the Final Age.  Which is why the gospel reading this morning is the story of Jesus as the Judge of the Universe.  Paul VI's moving of the feast overcame many of the problems of its earlier incarnation—namely that Christianity would be imposed on all the earth.  However in so doing it sent Christ's Kingly or reigning nature so far off into the future that it could become sorta etherealized and disconnected from our current day to day existence. 

 

We need I think to return this sense of Christ as King as Reigning to our daily lives but not in a way like the earlier versions of the Feast, in ways that are still practiced and understood by some members of the Christian family.  To conquer the world for Jesus.  We need a third way if this feast is to mean anything to us for our lives.  I think this Feast is a vital one or could be if we find a way of explaining and proclaiming it that is both true to the tradition and true our day and time. 

 

If we lived in a world of persecution than we would immediately grasp the significance of saying Jesus Christ is King, that he reigns.  We do not live in such a world, but it is worth remembering today our Christian brothers and sisters—as well as those of any religious background—who suffer persecution for their beliefs.  In China, Egypt, parts of India, in Palestine, Nigeria, Sudan, and countless other places across the globe. 

 

But that is not our reality.  So how do find a way of making this Feast our own?  Let me suggest two interrelated ways. 
The first.  In the ancient traditions kings and monarchs were certainly connected with government and rule.  But there was another tradition associated with this as well.  The tradition of devotion.  To be in the King (or Queen's) company was to be blessed.  It was a joy to be able to serve them.  A lightness in their presence.  In the Christian tradition this form of spirituality is often associated with saints and mystics like Francis of Assisi, Dominic, Bridget of Sweden, and Ignatius of Loyola.  There was a sense in them of being like a roving band of troubadours, ministering and minstrel-ing for Christ.  Some who go ahead into the towns and proclaim that the King was coming to the people.   

 

The King that we serve, the one who reigns, is a King of Peace.  A King of Mercy and Humility.  Who follows the way of Wisdom, of Justice.  Who divests himself off the normal notions we have of monarchs.  Who is a King in a way that critiques our notions of power.  And to be in his presence, to sit with him, to devote and surrender to him is to learn his ways.  To have The Spirit guide us in his footsteps.  The first way then is to have, as the evangelicals of old would say, Jesus as King of our hearts. 

 

The second way which is related to the first, also strong in the tradition of a Francis, Ignatius, or the Wesley Brothers is serving this Lord.  This Lord who as the gospel stated asks whether the hungry were feed, the naked clothed, the imprisoned visited.  To be workers in the Master's vineyard.  Where life becomes lived through the interplay, the polarity of being with the Lord and serving the Lord.  What St. Benedict called ora et labora:  life as prayer and work as prayer.  As we spend more and more time we learn more and more what the Master desires.  As we spend more time in his presence and begin to see the Reign, the Kingdom that he envisions, our hearts are moved to help make that vision real. 

 

As Oscar Romero said, "He is the Master Builder.  We are the workers."  Our churches and our spirituality has long promoted a practice of the imitation of Christ.  That line of spirituality has a long and venerable tradition and I'm not here to disparage that tradition.  But sometimes I think that tradition can lead us to assume we know what Jesus wants and the operative issue then is simply imitating him.  Not succumbing to temptation, not acting in ways contradicting what Jesus would do.  But that needs to be balanced with a view that has Jesus in front of us and we following him, not necessarily needing to imitate or be just like him but rather to place our trust in him, to be open to surprise, to first come and see what he is about.  To constantly re-learn and re-member what it is that he is about.  It's a more communal vision, a more corporate one, more dynamic ultimately.   

 

The Feast is his.  He is King, he reigns.  We do not, and we need not.  But we can be caught up in that reality, participate in it, be drawn into it at deeper and deeper levels of our being.  There is a great freedom then in this realization, in this feast.  We don't need to have the whole vision.  We don't need to see the entire plans as Romero would say.  We just need to see what are the next best choices to be made from where we are.  Without the first way, we can fall into the notion that we are mini-Messiahs running around the world, having to fix everything, save everyone.  This leads to burn out.  The first way, through prayer, through worship, through reading of the Bible, reorients us and puts things in the proper order.  Without the second way, there is no action, no energy flowing from the first.  It can become far too individualistic and far too centered in my subjectivity.  He is King (the first way) and there is a Kingdom (the second way).  With both ways connected, then this feast will be a proclamation, will announce a counter-story to the dominant myths of our world.  Will enact a community that would seek the way of life that grows from this counter-myth.  It will then be real for our day and time and world.  It will then have actual meaning and meaning-making capacity. 

 

The Feast will then rightly be placed at the end of our liturgical calendar, for it will announce an end the old way and the transition to a new.  It will then announce a new vision and lead us immediately into expectation of that new vision, to await its arrival, to practice in other words, what begins next week Advent.