"King is a Five-Letter Word"
Roger Dick
Sunday, November 25th 2007

“And far overhead in that long-vaulted hall
(he saw) The splendor of the presence of the King
Throned, and delivering doom.”

Yipes! Alfred Lord Tennyson is describing King Arthur, but an Arthur who is a thinly disguised symbol for a much grander king.

It’s surprising that we still have such nostalgia for royalty, for monarchy: T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, John F. Kennedy and Camelot, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Return of the King, C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, even Disney’s The Lion King. Not having a great affection for the Disneyfication of reality, I don’t know why beasts of the jungle should be concerned with the patrimony of King Carnivore, with who has the right to devour them. It may be true, however, that most kings are carnivores.

Just as Disney’s story has nothing to do with real lions, it seems the less we know of real kings, the greater grows our nostalgia, romanticism and sentimental affection for them. “King” is a very seductive image. I as much as anyone have long been under its spell, ever since seventh grade when I gave an oral book report on the Arthurian legend. It ran for twenty minutes, until Sister Noel, fearing for my safety, urged me to sit down lest I meet my demise on the playground that very afternoon.

On this last Sunday of the liturgical year we have such contrasting images of Christ, as king and criminal, as all-powerful and utterly powerless. I was surprised to learn that the feast of Christ the King is only twelve years older than I am, having been proclaimed by Pius XI in 1925. So I’ve been asking myself why, at a time when monarchy has all but disappeared, one would invoke its image. Using human images to describe God is like focusing a movie projector on some low-hanging cloud in the night sky and then mistaking our projections for God himself.

We may employ images for our own purposes, forgetting that they have a life of their own, that they carry their own baggage. Consider the recent controversy over the image of a “noose” or the “Fighting Sioux” logo. “King” has layer upon layer of associations and resonances: historical, literary, mythological, political, religious, class, rank, status, gender. What the word chiefly conveys, however, is absolute power.

When the Jews ask Samuel to give them a king so they can be like other nations, God takes it as a direct repudiation of his leadership. He tells Samuel to let the Jews know what they are in for. A king is going to take their sons and daughters, their best land, their servants, their animals. A king is going to eat them out of house and home (I Samuel 8:1-22).

Up until about 300 years ago we believed in the Divine Right of Kings: a king was a king because God had made him a king. It was nobody else’s business. He did not have to answer to anyone but God. The powers that be are the powers that be because God has made them the powers that be. There’s nothing you can do about it. In fact, to challenge the existing order is to rebel against God himself. Such a belief enforced a rigid, static society and a trickle-down theory of power. Visually we’re all familiar with the trappings used to proclaim that power: the throne, the crown, the scepter, the rich and ornate robes, the bowing and scraping and genuflecting.

In 1649 the English Parliament put Charles I on trial. Charles refused to recognize the authority of the court, arguing that it had no right to try him and insisting that he was king by Divine Right alone. So, they chopped off his head! Power had shifted. Since then the claims of Divine Right and absolute power have never quite recovered.

Shakespeare was fascinated by power. His histories and tragedies are studies in power. Who’s got it? How did they get it? How are they using it? Is it legitimate or illegitimate? What happens if you have a legitimate king who is weak and bumbling? What happens if you have an illegitimate king who is strong and competent? What happens if a king wants to give up the responsibilities of his office but retain the trappings of power? I doubt that we can fully appreciate how Jefferson and Company wrestled with power: how to chop it up, divvy it out, tether it, hobble it, balance it against itself.

You may ask, “Why bother us with these antique enquiries about power?” Well, they’re still of burning importance. For example, there are those who say George Bush is our legitimate president and is a strong and effective leader. Another group would argue that, yes, he’s legitimate, but weak and incompetent. A third group maintains he is illegitimate but strong and effective. A final group claims he is both illegitimate and utterly inept.

And what has all of this to do with Christ the King? I can only say that if Christ is a king he is unlike any king we’ve ever heard of, historical, mythical, political, religious, or any king we could ever dream up. In fact, he seems to be utterly opposed to our notion of king.

I can’t think of anyone less interested in pomp and circumstance. I can almost hear him protest in the words of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “Why do you dress me in borrowed robes?” He was a threat to kings ever since his birth. To proclaim him as anything like an earthly king puts us in the same boat as the crowds of his own day who wanted to make him king. How quickly he slipped out of sight. When Satan offers him all the kingdoms of the world, he thumbs his nose at them. In the gospel of Mark he says, “You know that among the pagans their so-called rulers lord it over them, and their great men make their authority felt. This is not to happen among you. No; anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be slave to all.” And then he tells us directly he “did not come to be served but to serve . . . “ (Mark 10:42-45).

There is a brief but breathtaking glimpse of his reputation when the Pharisees say, “We know you are not afraid of anyone, because a man’s rank means nothing to you,” which prompts me to ask, “If Christ our model is no respecter of rank, why then should we be?”

As for naked power, at the time of his arrest he says that, if he asked, he could be rescued by twelve legions of angels. Since a Roman legion consisted of 6,000 men, we’re talking about 72,000 angels! Ah, wouldn’t the Pentagon love to have that airborne division!

Every once in awhile I come to see Christ in a new light. This year I’ve come to see him as a master of street theater. How he choreographs his entry into Jerusalem, making a parody of the power and prestige of kings by riding in on a donkey. Hello. Kings don’t ride donkeys. Kings ride Clydesdales, for that Scottish breed is the last descendant of the medieval warhorse. The authorities, the powers that be, are afraid to touch this master of street theater because, as Mark tells us, “the crowds love him,” or, as Luke so beautifully puts it, the people “hung on his words” (Luke 19:47-48).

How often have we been told that God operates just the opposite of what makes sense to us? He says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, My ways not your ways” (Isaiah 55:8-9). The first shall be last, the last first. The poor are rich, the rich are poor. High is low, up is down. It’s enough to make your head swim. Might it not be just like God, then, not to have power trickle down from above but to well up from below or, even better, from within? In her book on the Rule of St. Benedict, Sr. Joan Chittister quotes a surprising Jewish midrash, “The voice of the people is as the voice of God.” Though we may proclaim him a king, we should remember the stories of lowly origins. He was an itinerant peasant. His mother didn’t have two nickels to rub together. David was a shepherd boy. Our own Joan of Arc was a fifteenth century peasant. And a teenager, for cryin’ out loud! And a girl, for Pete’s sake!

The other lesson we might learn is what any decent parent or teacher knows: the purpose of power is to empower. Not to dominate, not to dazzle with your splendor. Any coach, director, conductor, any decent leader, empowers. It’s the imposters who use power as a cudgel to intimidate and dominate.

Next week we begin the season of Advent and I’d like to leave you with a bit of a poem from the fourteenth century. We have just enough time for a stunning image of Christ, not as “king” but as “mystery,” the mystery of the Incarnation.

To quickly paraphrase the heart of the poem:

He came oh so quietly where his mother was,

      as dew in April falls on the grass.

He came so stealthily to his mother’s bedroom,

      as dew in April falls on the flowers.

He came so mysteriously where his mother lay,

      as dew in April falls on the flowering branches.

In Chaucer’s Middle English it sounds like this:

He cam also stille

      Ther his moder was,

As dew in Aprille

      That fallith on gras.

He cam also stille

      To his moderes bowr,

As dew in Aprille

      That fallith on the flowr.

He cam also stille

      Ther his moder lay,

As dew in Aprille

      That fallith on the spray.

He cam also stille . . .

He cam also stille . . .

He cam also stille. . .