A royal flush? Damian Entwistle’s Thought for the Week

‘Kingship requires careful handling.’

I’ve been sifting the statement, ‘Christ the King’ of late, and have reached some personal conclusions. 

In the Catholic tradition (of which I was once part), the statement refers to Christ’s dominion over creation. It is given a day of celebration, held on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. Advent follows immediately. Its placement here is both logical and resonant. It is the closing bracket of salvation history – the omega to Advent’s alpha. 

The theology underpinning the statement is very ancient. ‘Christ the King’ embraces and sustains creation, as source and end point. This perspective might resonate with Friends, particularly when we put forward our testimonies about simplicity and sustainability. 

But the New Testament does not proclaim ‘Christ the King’ with unalloyed enthusiasm. In fact, it also offers an antithetical take. In Matthew’s infancy narrative, Jesus is not born in Herod’s palace, but to an ordinary family. Furthermore, as Jesus prepares for public ministry, he explicitly disavows earthly dominion. Subsequently, throughout this public ministry, Jesus refers commonly to the ‘Kingdom of God/Heaven’, and is depicted as one who promotes and extends that kingdom. But he never lays claim to kingship – rather, he sees the ‘Kingdom’ as being God’s plan for humanity breaking into the world. At the very end of his life and ministry, when he appears before Pilate, he personally disavows kingship once more.

So, kingship requires careful handling. It’s easy to see why scripture might use the title – how else might the relationship between God and humans have found expression in those cultures? But the problems are legion when we seek to incarnate or justify kingship, and attribute it to Christ.

When Jesus says he is not a king, I take him at his word. To posit a heavenly kingdom where he is king is clumsy, and muddies things. It adds nothing to what Christians have always attested, with respect to God, and God’s relationship with creation. Creation does its thing, de facto and de jure: it does not need to be ‘subjected’ to Christ. Creation is always in right ordering. Rather, the call to right ordering is a uniquely human requirement, a consequence of free will, and poor choices on our part.

As a consequence of all this sifting, ‘Christ the King’ does not sit well with me. 

This is timely, perhaps. Among some Christians, particularly in the USA, the acclamation has evolved into a horse of a different stripe. It has become code for a Christianity of a very particular sort – one that is socially and theologically conservative (if not actually regressive). Its proponents are quite ready to subject civil society, and those of other faiths, to its norms, under penalty of the law. This causes me deep unease. 

The term ‘Christ the King’ is coloured by precisely those tainted values that the Old Testament prophets, and Jesus himself, called out as inimical to the reign of God. And so I say, ‘Not my King’.

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