HOW TO BE A KING

In one of the great scenes from the movie “Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail,” the legendary King Arthur, who is presented as a buffoon in this film, rides his pretend horse in to a muddy field of medieval peasants who are doing degrading menial labor, and the following dialog takes place:

King Arthur: “I am your king.”

Peasant: “King, eh? Oh very nice. And how did you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society…”

King Arthur: “Be quiet. I order you to be quiet!”

Peasant: “Ordering, eh? Who does he think he is?”

King Arthur: “I am your king!”

Peasant: “Well I didn’t vote for you.”

King Arthur: “You don’t vote for kings.”

Peasant: “Well then how did you become king then?”

King Arthur: “The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.”

Peasant: “Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is NO basis for a system of government.”

King Arthur: “Shut up!”

Peasant: “Oh now we see the violence inherent in the system!”

Of course every word of this exchange is farcical, dripping with sarcasm, and, in my opinion, therefore extremely funny. The makers of that movie intended it to be so. But beneath all the humor, the questions cut pretty close to the bone, that is to say how does one get to be a king, and what is his responsibility to the poor and voiceless?

In the legends of medieval Europe, when this mythical story was first created, the answers were imagined to be obvious. One got to be a king by being born into a royal family – or by marrying into one. It helped a lot if one was wealthy. And his responsibility to the poor was approximately zero. Given all things, perhaps there’s a serious parable here for us to attend to now. It’s a little less funny today than it was when that film was made 40 years ago. And on this feast day of the Church it is probably right to ask, just how does one become a king? We would do well to recall that this was precisely the question about Jesus that was considered by both King Herod and Pontius Pilate during his earthly ministry. “So you are a king are you? Well you sure don’t look like one, and I didn’t vote for you.”

As we see elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus was himself was regarded as something of a fool by both political and religious authorities of his day, in large part because he dared to questions what that title “king” means, and what it requires… especially with regard to the poor.

But he was a dangerous fool, because the oppressed and the marginalized recognized in him a powerful and determined friend and holy man, and they began to follow him, in large numbers. No merely earthly king or governor is ever pleased by that, then or now.

So the questions before us Christians on the Feast of Christ the King today is this:

• Do we have a preconceived idea of what a so-called "king" must be, and then try to make Jesus fit in to it?
• Or is it the other way around? Does Jesus get to tell us what true kingship is, and then let the presumed powerful and privileged people of this world try to work into that?

The gospel of Matthew today leaves little doubt as to which of those is true for people of faith.

This is the only place in any of the gospels which presumes to describe what our final judgement will look like at the end of time, and what is required of us in order to share in Christ’s “kingship” for eternity. And it makes no reference at all to earthly power or dominance or success or reputation or militarism. Instead it has everything to do with attention to the poor, the outcast, the alien, the naked, the hungry, the prisoner. You get to be a king by holding in reverence and mercy all of those “throwaway” people. It is little wonder that Jesus was thought to be foolish by many. That blows apart all of our assumptions about what it means to rule with majestic power and royal prestige. But it may be that we are the ones being exposed as being prone to foolishness here.

So is Jesus Christ really our king? Absolutely! It is his will and not ours that will prove true and enduring at the end of the world and at the end of our lives. But will that cohere with what we regard the usual trappings of kingship to be? Well that depends upon whether we default to the Monty Python tale of King Arthur, or whether we hear and heed the gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25. It’s right here.