Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 20, 2022: If you are King of the Jews...

If you are King of the Jews…

What does it mean to be king? 

    In the Second Book of Samuel, David is made king of Israel when the elders of Israel come to him with the request that he unite the people once again. David is one they recognize as having led them into battle; they recognize in him the qualities necessary to a successful king. They are his bone and his flesh, his strength and his vulnerability. It is thanks to David’s conquest of the Jebusites that, in Psalm 122, the people can go rejoicing to the house of the Lord. Jerusalem thus becomes his city and represents the united people of Israel; the temple there is their spiritual heart. David is a temporal king of a specific geographical region; his house will give rise to the King of all Kings, Jesus Christ. '

    And yet… when Jesus is on the cross, the soldiers jeer at him, calling out, If you are King of the Jews, save yourself. In Luke’s Gospel, the cross is Jesus’ moment of coronation, not because he is crowned with a crown of thorns, but by his death and resurrection. The kingdom is present wherever Christ rules, even in our world, but the kingdom in its fullness is beyond this world. The jeering that surrounds Jesus is part of the earthly kingdom, where the human desire is to control, to dominate. But the kingdom of God is not about military power but about loving humility; Jesus is crowned King because of the power of his love, and that kingdom is revealed every time we open our hearts in love to another person. Thanks to Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul tells the Colossians, we are delivered from the power of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. Our focal point should be Christ, who delivers us from darkness into a kingdom of light. Jesus, the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, is and must be the King that rules our hearts, that we might join him in death; he is our hope. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class. 

Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 20, 2016: If you are King of the Jews...

  If you are King of the Jews…  

How do you understand the power of God?  

   In Luke's Gospel, as Jesus suffers on the cross before the rulers and soldiers of Israel, they mock him because of the inscription above his head; If you are King of the Jews, save yourself, they say.  What they fail to understand is that God’s power lies precisely in the apparent weakness, or foolishness, of the cross:  the crucifixion is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise of love, and so Jesus dies in the ultimate expression of that love.  We have been brought into a kingdom that is not ruled as the world rules, because the world’s definitions do not include the fullness of God, God’s infinite love.  We can’t comprehend that love, but we can begin to experience it when we allow the power of the love of God to transform us.  One of the thieves hanging on the cross beside Jesus comes to understand this:  dying to his own past sin, he is transformed as he acknowledges that Jesus is King:  Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

   This understanding of strength in conjunction with apparent weakness is present as early as the stories of David told in 2 Samuel, where Israel invites David, already the King of Judah, to be its king as well; David and Israel share bone and flesh, strength and vulnerability.  In accepting to be king, David is accepting full responsibility; as shepherd, he must embrace humiity as well, so that when he takes his judgment seat, as Psalm 122 reminds us, he will proffer justice grounded in the wisdom and love of God.

   Thanks to that love, Paul reminds the Colossians, we, too, are fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light.  Why?  Because Jesus, God’s beloved Son and the firstborn of all creation, has made peace by the blood of his cross.  Only through the cross can we come to be transferred to the kingdom, that kingdom of inversion in which the values of power and possession beloved by the world are turned upside down.  From a place of humility, then, Let us give thanks to the Father for the gift of this inheritance, an inheritance of love, the true and infinite power of God, and the single most important indicator of God’s kingdom.

Happy Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe!

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle