Shepherd, Servant and Sovereign!
November 22, 2020: Solemnity of Christ the KingEzekiel 34: 11-12, 15-17; 1 Corinthians 15: 20-26, 28; Matthew 25: 31-46
Christ the King Sunday marks the beginning of the last week of the Liturgical year and thus it serves as a fitting culmination of the year, a climax to end the year with! The one whose birth, life, death and resurrection that we remembered and celebrated all through this liturgical year, is our King, says this Sunday.
We celebrate our King today, our King who is madly in love with us, our King who had given up everything for the sake of the love that he had for us, our King who even today is ready to give up on anything, all just for the love that he has for us. Our King, definitely, is different from the rest of the kings we can think or see around. To be served, to have authority over all, to rule over all and to hoard as much as possible for oneself: these are what being a king would mean today.
Enough to look around we have all sorts: rulers who were all their life hoarding things and died so miserable and despicable; rulers who pose themselves shamelessly as 'greatest ever' and think that they can never be dethroned; rulers who do all they can to please every one whom they can merely to stay in power and hold on to the throne; rulers who manipulate every one and every thing and project themselves to be the saviours but all the time gnawing at the very roots of the happiness of the common folk; rulers who openly suppress rights of people and rule by fear; rulers who have all secret pacts to destroy anyone who stands against them, caring nothing about the innocents and vulnerable who are trampled in the bargain! Oh...what range of them! But we the people of God, are a privileged lot because we have a King who is a contrast to all these !
The King we have is a Shepherd King: he comes in search of us, strains himself for our good, provides for our needs, binds our wounds, leads us, directs us, feeds us, nourishes us, defends us and does everything necessary for our peaceful and happy life. None of us can ever deny the fact that we have the protecting and providing hand of God hovering over us, because without that we would find our life tough and sometimes even terrible. A King who comes in search of us, not one who waits in his throne for us to go begging!
Certainly you have come across that cartoon that was circulated during this COVID lock-down - the devil laughing at God saying, "Ah...I managed to close all your Churches!". And God smiling back retorting, "And I have just opened one in each home!" Whether we go in search of God or not. God is ever search of us. All that we need to do is open the door of our hearts and he shall enter, and make home with us!
The King we have is a Servant King: it is strange that our king, kind of depends on us. All that he is concerned about is not so much to "rule" us as to "serve" us. He wishes that we feed him, clothe him, console him... he says he depends on us! What sort of a king is he who depends on his subjects, a king who wants his subjects to give him in mercy to eat, who identifies himself with his subjects who are in want and in dire need. What sort of a king is he who feels sad when his subjects are sad, feels abandoned when his subjects are left to suffer alone, feels neglected when his subjects are left without no one to care for. Truly he is a servant king, who desires that we play his role, take his side and be his ambassadors when there are our brothers and sisters who are in hunger, in need, in dire want, in loneliness, in suffering!
If the King is a servant, the subjects and servants of the king, what do they become? Kings? No, servants of the Servant king! The more I humble myself, the more I become a true subject of my King. The more I reach out in service to the needy, the more I grow in the image of my King who came reaching out to me, leaving behind all the regalia of a king. The more I look at every one around me as person whom I need to serve, the more I become like the King who announced: I have come to serve, not to be served! What an example we have!
The King we have is a Sovereign King: every knee shall bow and every tongue confess the he is King and he is Lord! The dependence that we see in the king is not a sign of weakness, it is the very nature of our King and Lord who is a relational Being; God who is a community, God who is three persons, in relationship with each other, and defines what right relationships should be like. God orders the movements of the planets and the heavenly bodies but gives each of his sons and daughters, a divine freedom that fills them with respect and dignity. We are given a royal identity, that we are sons and daughters of the Sovereign king.
The Creator, the protector, the ultimate judge, the righteous arbiter, the King of the Universe...that is what the Lord is. There can be millions of inventions and thousands of theories with which people in history have tried to do away with God and replace God with something! But it has never worked. There is invariably a point after which no one can proceed without compromising on certainty and clarity in their negation of God. Besides all these, there is no need for anyone to try to prove God! God does not need our proofs...and if God does need them, it cannot be God. We do not try to prove God... we experience God and share that experience with the others. So, let us not get upset when we are not able to "prove" God's existence to people around us...but we need to get worried when we are not able to communicate God-experience to others in and through our life, because we have not had it ourselves! That is what we need to strive for - to have a deep God-experience within us, so that we can share it with all those around us.
Yes, we have a King who is all powerful, governs every aspect of this universe, but when it comes to his love for us, he loves us so tenderly that he looks so weak like a servant, so humble like a shepherd and yet no one can deny the Sovereign that God is!