Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
November 22, 2015

Listen to this homily (.mp3 file)

     Christ the King. On a wall of my apartment is a large, Byzantine-style icon of Christ in glory.  Against a background of gold and vivid red, he sits enthroned flanked by saints and angels in serene and timeless splendor, the very image of majesty, of kingship.

     But that icon, beautiful as it is, doesn’t say everything about Christ the King.  It could even be misleading, if taken all by itself, because there is something rather remote and detached about that image of Christ in glory, something that could reinforce the common perception we have about kings and royalty: that they are distant and aloof figures, far removed from where ordinary mortals like you and me live our lives.  Because isn’t it true that, while we may at times show a certain tabloid fascination with royalty, we know that the world of royalty is clearly not our world?

     So let me (at the risk of letting you think that I live in a religious art gallery!), tell you about another representation of Christ in my living room.  This one is in stark contrast to the kingly icon, different as night from day.  In black and white strokes, stripped and brutally exposed, is a likeness of the suffering Christ, head bowed, eyes closed, arms hanging limp at his side -- the very image of vulnerability.  This engraving of Christ is the work of the great twentieth-century French artist, Georges Roualt, who once wrote about his work (and I quote), “My only ambition in life is to be able some day to paint a Christ so moving that those who see him will be converted.”

     I have to own that, much as I love the icon of Christ in glory, it is this image of the suffering Jesus that prompts me to look inward and to face the truth within myself and about myself.  It can sometimes pierce my soul, awaken deep emotions and, yes, inspire moments of profound conversion.

     The scriptures today paint for us in word and story two pictures of Christ that correspond perfectly to those two images on my wall.  And we must attend to both of them if we would know this Christ, this king so unlike any other.  For the Christ who stands mute before Pontius Pilate, a human failure by almost any reckoning, is no less a king than the exalted Christ of the Responsorial Psalm, “robed in majesty,” and the Christ of the Book of Revelation, “the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead and ruler of the kings of earth; the Alpha and the Omega, the One who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty….”

     We know these things, yet we stumble over them.  St. Paul was surely right when he called the cross a scandal, a stumbling block, a mystery.  It is the mystery of divinity abandoned or, to use St. Paul’s words, of divinity “not clung to.”  It is the mystery of the Godhead become human – almost too human: frail, weak, powerless, and utterly vulnerable.  It is a mystery more profound than anything you and I can ever fully grasp because, in our view of things, power is not something to be let go of: power is something to be craved, and seized.  And used.

     But Jesus didn’t see it that way.  The innocent Jesus who stood accused before Pilate, the dying Jesus on the cross who refused to curse but only to bless, absolving his executioners and befriending the repentant thief, gave the world a whole new vision of what real power and real kingship are all about.  In God’s kingdom, real power is about letting go and real kingship is about serving others, setting others free.

     We know this.  We are reminded of it every time we pray in this cathedral and it’s a big reason why many of us come here.   We have taken to heart the words that call out to us from the vault high above this altar, “I am in your midst as one who serves.  Those words are a gospel definition of kingship. Jesus spoke them to settle a petty dispute among his disciples – a dispute as to who among them was the greatest, the most important.  He spoke them during his last Supper with them, on the eve of the day when he would define for all time the true meaning of kingship.  “Among the pagans,” he told his followers, “kings lord it over people.  Their great ones make their authority felt.  It cannot be that way with you.  No the greatest among you must behave as if he were the least, and the leader as if he were the one who serves… I am in your midst as one who serves….”

     My friends, earlier I quoted the artist Georges Roualt whose great ambition in life was to paint a Christ so moving that those who saw him would be converted.  Now, as far as I know, the only Christ that Roualt ever painted was the suffering Christ, similar to the one on my living room wall.  Never a Christ in glory.  Interesting, isn’t it?  But maybe not surprising.  After all, it was the suffering Christ, the Christ without an ounce of power or a hint of majesty in him, who converted the wretched thief who hung alongside him on the cross and turned the Roman centurion into a believer.  He is still working wonders like those in our time as he shows us his face – often in the faces of the poorest among us who have a unique and mysterious ability to convert us. And he works wonders, too, in this and every Eucharist we celebrate - in bread blessed and broken and in wine poured out – his own Body and Blood given for us. For our conversion, for our life!

     Father Michael G. Ryan