Feast of Christ, Heart of the Universe
If there is hunger anywhere in the world,
then our celebration of the Eucharist
is incomplete everywhere in the world.
Pedro Arrupe SJ, former Jesuit superior general
None of us have the right to avert our gaze
William Sloan Coffin, 1924-2006
The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
William Sloan Coffin
The liturgical year has come full circle. Next week, with a whisper in the darkness, with a message to ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’ and have our expectations subverted. Valerie Kaur asks ‘Is this darkness the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb? What is wanting to be born of this moment? What is my role in that labour? How will I be guided by love?’ God’s reigning presence is embodied in Jesus and through us. We are formed, guides and carried by One who came as an infant, born in poverty. We learn the meaning of finding God in the weak and vulnerable, in the marginalised, the stranger and the prisoner. As we look at this embodied love, we learn what it means to embody love ourselves and reveal the One we serve. His title means relationship and connection, not greed, fear, violence, conquest, and domination. His kingdom is not of this world or originate in the world but is in the world where we have a role to play in justice and peace. Donald Trump’s re-election as US President reminds us of the challenges we always face for fairness, justice and peace everywhere. With an election on the horizon, we must choose to act to ensure that the politics of fear, hate and division in the USA is not repeated. This feast reminds us that Jesus gave his reign new meaning as we are called to live lives of justice and compassion, understanding and generosity through service and not by domination or control.
Instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius Xl in 1925, this feast was in response to Europe’s growing nationalism and secularism leading to hatred, blindness and violence in Germany and Russia. Things have not changed as see the revival of populist rhetoric, fascism, and democracy being undermined by lies, propaganda, indoctrination, and so-called fake news in the USA, Israel, Australia, Hungary, Turkey, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries. Pius Xl attempted to pierce the loud noises of such ideologies with a message of justice, peace, community and love in the public arena. During the US election campaign, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and ‘Christ is King’ emerged as slogans. They were used to suggest power over others which continues to be used in damaging ways against perceived enemies. In recent weeks, Jesus warned his followers against seeking positions of power and privileged. The kingdom or reign of God involves being a servant, washing people’s feet, being humble and connecting with others. Jesus does refer to the kingdom of God but little about being ‘king.’ The rhetoric applied to kingship with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a lowly donkey seems to be more a parody of imperial entry into Jerusalem on a war-horse.
Today’s feast subverts our understandings of power for an inclusive and empowering leadership. It subverts the ‘king thing.’ Recently, Jesus warned his disciples, ‘You know that those who are recognised as rulers over the gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority felt. But it shall not happen among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man came to serve and not to be served…’ (Mark 10). Maybe the kingdom of God isn’t like a king—maybe it’s like those who resist a king. It was subversive to say that the first will be last and the last first. It was subversive to tell those in power that our God loves all and ‘hears the cry of the poor.’ Where there is brutality, privilege and domination, Jesus reflects ‘the earth community’ consisting of love, justice and service. One living out the meaning of this subversive power must be prepared for controversy. As James Baldwin wrote, "Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society." We wonder how so many people surrendered their consciences by silence in the face of the current genocide in Palestine and Lebanon. Caesar, Herod, Trump, Netanyahu will all have their shelf life. Every empire will end. Though many dark powers scream no to life, love, peace and justice, we must believe that God will turn these nos or negatives in one resounding yes and eventually interrupt world history with this decisive and final yes.
Subservience, idolising, building up and putting people down have nothing to do with the power that Jesus displays as at the heart of justice, mercy and love. It does not endorse clericalism, patriarchy, or exceptionalism. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis says, ‘We are called to love everyone, without exception; at the same time, loving an oppressor does not mean allowing him to keep oppressing us, or letting him think that what he does is acceptable. On the contrary, true love for an oppressor means seeking ways to make him cease his oppression; it means stripping him of a power that he does not know how to use, and that diminishes his own humanity and that of others.’
Ignacio Ellacuría, a Jesuit Salvadorian martyr said, “We are people of the Gospel, a gospel that proclaims the reign of God, and that calls us to try to transform this earth into as close a likeness of that reign as possible” - the reign of Christ, not of ‘Pilate.’ It involves rediscovering God’s dream for humanity and the whole of creation. Jesus’ love defies boundaries. God’s reign has no boundaries. It is present wherever people love one another or share one another’s burdens, or advocate for justice and peace and work to build up a just and peaceful community.
Without exception, we are made to love and be loved by others. This love is active, risky, self-giving, and interdependent. It is willing to accept the gifts of others and recognise it when it comes from places we least expect – through people of different faiths, backgrounds, and ideologies. We are invited into a transforming alternative to the world of polemics. Today’s feast should overturn the triumphalist kind of Christianity that in the past sought to promote itself via violence. It is a deadly deception to see our faith through a lens of exclusion, supremacy, and triumphalism. This Christianity forced itself on Indigenous peoples around the world. Humanity’s false perception of violence in God has reinforced violence against each other. Failure to understand the utter nonviolence in God has resulted in a bloody history incompatible with Christ’s reign. The violence destroying the human and created world results from a failure to embody God’s love. Jesus’ scars reveal his compelling love for the world. His wounds and scars reveal him. This is his truth. The truth that he is the Word made flesh, who lives with us and remains with us. He came to change the world. This reign is subversive. It is based on a love and justice that leads to peace – not privilege, domination and divisive and exclusive power.
As disciples we are empowered and called to act and intervene wherever the power of death pervades in our society, community, and life. The disciple is empowered to ‘get in the way’ wherever people a reduced to a commodity or seen as a means to an end. This subversive reign of God allows new life to emerge in situations of hopelessness and violence. It comes about by love of others; where mercy is seen as foolishness, where love and compassion are seen as weak and vulnerable, where forgiveness and generosity are seen as softness. These threaten any society based on power, domination, and violence.
Jesus proclaimed and revealed a different way of being in the world. Jesus words, ‘My kingdom [reign] does not belong to this world’ apply as much to ecclesiastical powers as to political and financial institutions. The Church still seeks exemptions from anti-discrimination laws. It seeks guarantees of religious freedom yet ignores the freedoms of many within it. It seems to portray an façade or image rather than admit faults, injustice and wrongdoing. Are we convinced in the power that Jesus manifests when we stand in awe or assent or justify expenditures on weapons of war or join alliances with other countries that are more about threatening other countries rather than seeking peace?
In God’s world, broken people are integral. For us, the poor [meant inclusively] are the starting point for understanding the gospel as the good news of liberation. Jesus still stands before the rulers and powerful of this world and holds in his pierced hands, the poor, the starving, the unwanted, the abused and tortured, those shunned by important people. We are his but where do we stand or sit, and who do we sit with? It comes down to how we live day to day and whether our gaze is directed towards and behalf of the least of these. Christ is King or Jesus is Lord have no other meaning that to be a prophetic message that our hope not in politicians but in the God who ready to dethrone each of them.
This One who reigns, proclaims wholeness, healing, and spiritual power not as hierarchical power, as power over, but as power for, an enabling power. (E. S. Fiorenza in Feminist Spirituality, Christian Identity and Catholic Vision). This is how we experience this reign. It is here and now.