On the feast of Christ the King, we are called to acknowledge that Jesus is, in fact our King. It is one thing to say that he is our King because the song in Church we sang said that, or the preacher said that, or the Bible says that. Yes, faith does come by hearing. But there also comes a moment when WE must say that Jesus is our King. When we must personally affirm what the Church has always announced: “Jesus is Lord, and he is King, he is my king. He has authority in my life.”And this must become more than lip service. It must become a daily, increasing reality in our life.
Christ is the king we are called to follow and obey. A king who is not interested in power but in weakness, who lives and works among his people, enduring every pain and hardship they endure, a king who treats his subjects with the tender compassion of a shepherd caring for a lost and injured lamb. A king who healed body and soul, attending always to both spiritual and physical needs, while courageously calling out the structures of power that made injustice, poverty, and oppression look like just the way the world was supposed to be. This king is still calling us into a better way, into greener pastures, into the place of salvation and healing, into becoming what Martin Luther King Jr. called the “Beloved Community.”
Are we able to hear that call? Are we able to set aside our pride and our achievements and kneel at his feet? It isn’t easy. But the paradox of our faith is that the more we bind ourselves to obedience to God, the more we will experience true freedom, including freedom from all the powers and principalities of the world that are always working so hard to bind us to them instead of to Jesus.