November 28th, 2024
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
I am very fond of the corona here in the cathedral. It’s a symbolic representation of the crown of thorns. This symbol, perhaps more than any other takes us to the heart of the paradox of Jesus character and ministry. He is on the one had the coming king, as we remembered last Sunday on the feast of Christ the king, but at the same time remarkably human.
Jesus’ favoured way of referring to himself was as the ‘son of man’. The phrase is used 78 times in the Gospels. This phrase, like the crown of thorns, brings this paradox into view. On the one hand Jesus uses the phrase instead of saying ‘I’ and to reference his humanity and humility, eventually to be handed over and crucified. But the title is also used when describing Jesus’ authority. In Matthew 9: 6 after healing the paralysed man, Jesus says, “I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”.
Jesus is picking up Old Testament ideas about a coming messiah that you find particularly in the Book of Daniel. There is the idea that God is King but that he has given the stewardship of the world to human beings. Jesus infers that he is the ideal human. Paul takes it further by calling Jesus the second Adam. But there are also ideas the New Testament writers pick up and see fleshed out in Jesus. Jesus is claimed to fulfil the destiny of God’s people, re-capitulating the story of Israel but doing it properly.
If Jesus is this extraordinary ‘both and’ character, it is no surprise that his kingdom is not like the kingdoms of this world. In his final conversation with Pilate in John 18 Jesus is explicit, “My kingdom is not of this world”. Its origin is not in the will of human beings with their desires for power and control. It is an expression of God’s justice and righteousness which will never end. It is easy to see a statement like ‘not of this world’ as implying something spiritual and detached from the realities of life. If that were the case the Christian faith would have nothing to say in matters of culture, politics and ethics. Such a separation can be found clearly in the writings of the Gnostics. They wrote some of the non-biblical gospels long after the event, which people sometimes suggest should have been in the New Testament. Their super-spiritual ideas are a long way from the kingdom Jesus envisaged. The marks of the Kingdom Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount are about character, behaviour and ethics, and perceptive insight into where happiness is really to be found. It paints a picture of a transformed earth of kindness, love, mutual support and contentment. But these things don’t appear in isolation but when we submit to Christ as King.
As Pope Pius XI said as he introduced this festival to the Calendar in 1925, “If to Christ our Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth; if all men, purchased by his precious blood, are by a new right subjected to his dominion; if this power embraces all men, it must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire. He must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God.”
I’ll finish with a rather lovely poem by Malcolm Guite’s poem borne of his reflections on Psalm 21 which takes us back to the corona where we started.
Now may you find in Christ, riches and rest
May you be blessed in him, and he in you
In Heaven, where to grant you your request
Is always blessing, for your heart is true:
True to yourself and true to Christ your king.
Breathe through this coronation psalm and view
The glory of his golden crown, then sing
The exaltation, goodness, life and power,
The blessing and salvation Christ will bring.
But first he wears a darker crown. The hour
Is coming and has come. Our Lord comes down
Into the heart of all our hurts to wear
With us the sharp corona spina, crown
Of thorns, and to descend with us to death
Before he shares with us the golden crown.
+Richard