The Christ pictured on the cover of today’s bulletin (a close up
from one of the bronze ceremonial doors) hardly looks like a king as he
stands there, bound and vulnerable and crowned with thorns. If this is a
king, it is a king like no other. And so is the Christ on the beautiful
processional crucifix up at the altar. He, too, defies any notion of
kingship.
The same can be said of the Christ of those
great stained-glass windows of the east apse. He is represented six
times in those windows, but in none of them does he look anything like a
king. Take time to give them a careful look sometime if you haven’t
already. They are more than just colorful decorations. I think of them
as gospels in glass - meant to be read, meant to be studied, meant to be
lived!
Those windows have an interesting history.
Nearly thirty years ago, when we were renovating 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
elaborate 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. 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 deeply 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!
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 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.
When you have a chance, I hope you will take
time to study those glorious windows in the east apse inspired by
today’s gospel, inspired by you. Study them, you must: it’s not enough
just to glance at them and see their beautiful colors. But 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
Gethsemane; he is no longer climbing the lonely road to Calvary. He is
here. In disguise. Hidden, yet in our midst. This is where we must look
for him; this is where will find him!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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