The image of Christ you see on
the cover of today’s bulletin (a close-up from one of the stained-glass
windows in the east nave of the Cathedral) doesn’t look much like a king
as he stands there in the garden receiving Judas’ kiss of betrayal,
vulnerable and utterly defenseless. If this is a king, it is a king like
no other. Christ is represented six times in those windows, and in none
of them does he look anything like a king.
A word about those
windows. Nearly thirty years ago, when we were preparing to renovate the
Cathedral, a noted stained-glass artist by the name of Hans von
Stockhausen came all the way from Germany to create those windows. At
the time, they were about half as long as they are now and they were
mostly hidden behind an ornate altarpiece from the 1950’s. Von
Stockhausen spent a week here, looking around the cathedral and taking
in the life of the cathedral. At the end of the week he told me: “I know
what we should do to complete those windows. We should tell the parable
of the Last Judgment from the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel.
You know the parable
well. You just heard it in today’s gospel. “…Come, you blessed of my
Father. Inherit the kingdom…because I was hungry and you gave me
food, thirsty and you gave me drink, imprisoned and you visited me,
naked and you clothed me.” A powerful parable, to be sure, but I
wondered why the artist was so certain that it was that particular story
that should be told in the new stained-glass. His answer was quick in
coming. “I have sat in this cathedral for a week,” he told me, “and I
have walked around these grounds, and what I have seen here day after
day is people doing those very things – feeding the hungry, visiting the
sick, welcoming the stranger.”
I was very moved. In
only a few days, he had discovered the heartbeat of St. James Cathedral!
He had discovered the holiness of this place. He had discovered you and
the people who have come before you!
This is the feast of
Christ the King. Did it seem a little strange to hear that gospel
passage about feeding the poor and clothing the naked? Why not
something a little more grand, more regal? And the answer is that the
king is not who we might think. The king was betrayed by a trusted
friend, taken prisoner, mocked and scourged and nailed to a cross. The
king was despised by almost everyone – weak, silent, defenseless.
The king was a laughingstock. And it’s no different now. The king, the
Christ, is still a laughingstock, still an object of scorn. Why? Because
he doesn’t look like a king and he doesn’t act like a king.
The king, the Christ, as
we heard in the parable, is poor and hungry and thirsty and naked and in
prison and all alone. The king, the Christ, is, in the words of
Dr. Martin Luther King, “the Least, the Lost, and the Last” – the very
ones Jesus identifies himself with in that parable when he says, “For as
often as you did it for one of these, the least of my brothers or
sisters, you did it for me.” And we are to do the same as Jesus
did: not just reach out to them in loving service (certainly that) but
to actually identify with them, to see ourselves as related to them - as
our brothers and sisters. Just as Jesus cared far more about his kinship
with them than he ever did about kingship, so should we.
My friends in Christ, as
you well know, this isn’t my gospel, nor is it some left-wing socialist
manifesto. It is the Christian gospel, the only gospel we have.
Sometime, I hope you
will take time to study those glorious windows in the east apse inspired
by today’s gospel, inspired by you and those who have come before you.
Study them, you must: it’s not enough just to glance at them and see
their beautiful colors. They are more than just colorful decorations –
they are gospels in glass, meant to be read, meant to be studied, meant
to be lived!
And if you do
study them, you will see the king there, the Christ. You will see him
betrayed in the garden, crowned with thorns, thirsting from the cross,
and so much more. And don’t stop there. Read the very words from today’s
gospel etched into those windows above and below each of the
representations of Christ: “I was hungry and you gave me food; I was
hungry and you did not give me food…thirsty and you gave me drink;
thirsty and you did not give me drink,” and on and on. Read those words
and then ask the questions the artist hoped you would ask when you saw
those windows: where is the hungry Christ now? Where is the thirsty
Christ now? Where is the lonely and abandoned Christ now?
My friends, as you know,
he is no longer in the garden of Gethsemane; he is no longer climbing
the lonely road to Calvary. He is here. In our midst. And we must
find him, and serve him. Right here…!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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