Patrick Comerford
We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints’ Day and Advent, and today is the Sunday next before Advent and the Feast of Christ the King. It will be good to back again at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Giles Church, Stony Stratford, later this morning, when I reading one of the lessons and leading the intercessions.
But, before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 18: 33-37 (NRSVA):
33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ 34 Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ 35 Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?’ 36 Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ 37 Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’
Today’s reflection:
Today is the Feast of Christ the King and the Sunday next before Advent (24 November 2024). Many of us may remember this Sunday from our childhood as ‘Stir-up Sunday.’ It was a play on words: the traditional collect in the Book of Common Prayer on this Sunday, the last Sunday in the Church Year, invited us to pray:
Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people;
that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works,
may of thee be plenteously rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
This was, of course, the time of the year that mothers and families began to stir-up the mixture for Christmas cakes and puddings, ‘stirring up’ the mixture that played on those words about ‘the fruit’ as they went about their good works.
The Christmas decorations, including trees and lights, are up in the streets and the shops in Stony Stratford and Milton Keynes. We are still a full calendar month away from Christmas Eve, but for some time now the Shopping Centres would have us believe Christmas has arrived as shop owners and traders try to breathe a festive air into our lives.
Despite the lights and the late nights, Christ is at the heart of Christmas, and that waiting for Christ, anticipating Christ, should be at the heart of the Advent season, which begins next Sunday (1 December 2024).
Advent is the season of preparing for Christmas, and in the weeks before Advent we even prepare for Advent itself, with readings telling us about the Coming of Christ.
We have made Christmas a far-too comfortable story. It was never meant to be, but we have made it comfortable with our Christmas card images of the sweet little baby Jesus, being visited by kings and surrounded by adoring, cute little animals and hosts of fluffy white angels. The reality, of course, is that Christmas was never meant to be a comfortable story.
Christmas is a story about poverty and about people who are homeless and rejected and who can find no place to stay.
It is a messy story about a child born surrounded by the filth of animals and the dirt of squalor.
It is a story of shepherds who are involved in dangerous work, staying up all night, out in the winter cold, watching out for wolves and sheep stealers.
It is a story of trickery, deceit and the corruption of political power that eventually leads to a cruel dictator stooping to murder, even the murder of innocent children, to secure his own grip on power.
But these sorts of images do not sell Christmas cards or help to get the boss drunk under the mistletoe at the office party.
That is why – in these weeks before Advent – we have readings that remind us what the coming of Christ into the world means, what the Kingdom of God is like, and how we should prepare for the coming of Christ and the coming of the Kingdom of God.
Marking the Sunday before Advent by crowning Christ as King helps us to focus on Advent from next Sunday, and Advent is supposed to be a time and a season of preparing for the coming of Christ.
Kings may not be a good role model for people living in modern democratic societies where the heads of state are elected. Nor are the models of kingship in history or in contemporary society so good. It is worth asking some questions:
What do you think a good king or a good ruler – a good president or good prime minister – should be like?
Without descending into party politics or party favouritism, how do you think a good ruler should behave in the interests of his or her people?
Do you remember how, as children, we would play games like ‘three wishes’? If you had to make decisions for this country – indeed, if you had to make decisions for the future of the world – what three priorities would rise to the top of your list?
In the second reading this morning (Revelation 1: 4b-8), Saint John writes to the Church as if we are gathered before the throne of God, and reminds us that God has made us a kingdom and made us priests serving God, mediators between God and the rest of humanity.
Christ comes again at the end of the age as judge and king, he is the beginning and the end, the Alpha (Α) and the Omega (Ω), the sovereign over all, the one who was, and is, and is to come.
The Gospel reading (John 18: 33-37), at the moment when Christ is on trial before Pilate, might seem a more appropriate reading for Holy Week than the week before Advent, a more appropriate preparation for Easter than for Christmas.
But at this stage, Pilate demands to know whether Christ is a King: ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ (John 18: 33).
And he answers: ‘My kingdom is not from this world … For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice’ (John 18: 36-37).
Christ comes not just as a cute cuddly babe wrapped up in the manger and under the floodlights of a front window in a large department store. We are also preparing for the coming of Christ as King.
In this reading, Christ rejects all dysfunctional models of majesty and kingship. He is not happy with Pilate trying to project onto him models of kingship that are taken from the haughty and the aloof, the daft and the barmy, or the despotic and the tyrannical.
As he is being tortured and crucified, his tormentors and detractors still try to project these models of kingship onto Christ as they whip him and beat him to humility, as they crown him with thorns and mock him, and finally as he is crucified for all the world to see.
What sort of a king did Pilate expect Christ to be?
Indeed, what does majesty and graciousness mean for you today?
Do you remember how, as children, we would play games like ‘three wishes’? If you had to make decisions for this country – indeed, if you had to make decisions for the future of the world – what three priorities would rise to the top of your list?
If I had three wishes for my community, my country, my continent, my world, would they, in truth, reflect my own selfish interests and those of my own inner circle?
Or, in truth, would they reflect the values of Christ, the coming King whose reign is marked by justice and mercy, peace and love?
Would I be found among those who belong to the truth and listen to his voice?
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 24 November 2024, Christ the King, the Sunday next before Advent):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence’. This theme is introduced today with a Programme Update:
Championing Justice, specifically ecological, economic, racial and gender justice, forms a key part of the mission of USPG. We stand with organisations such as the Anglican Alliance and Mothers’ Union in our hope to see women and men, girls and boys, living in just, equal and mutually supportive relationships, with each individual recognised as made in the image of God.
We support initiatives led by church partners. The Social-Economic Development of Women programme of the Church of North India launched in October 2023 to address gender inequalities, and promote work for rural women through entrepreneurship training and access to finance. The Anglican Council of Malawi’s three-year Gender Justice through Girls’ Education advocacy campaign seeks to improve retention and transition rates of girls in education as well as increase knowledge on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
16 day of Activism (25 November to 10 December) allows us to add our voice to all demanding an end to gender-based violence in every region of the world - we will continue to work with our partner churches and agencies to support this.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 24 November 2024, Feast of Christ the King, the Sunday next before Advent) invites us to pray reflecting on these words:
We implore you, O Lord, to stir up the desires of your faithful people so that they will abundantly bear the fruit of their good deeds and be abundantly blessed by you. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The Collect:
Eternal Father,
whose Son Jesus Christ ascended to the throne of heaven
that he might rule over all things as Lord and King:
keep the Church in the unity of the Spirit
and in the bond of peace,
and bring the whole created order to worship at his feet;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion Prayer:
Stir up, O Lord,
the wills of your faithful people;
that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works,
may by you be plenteously rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
God the Father,
help us to hear the call of Christ the King
and to follow in his service,
whose kingdom has no end;
for he reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, one glory.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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