Christ the King 2019

Some clergy post all their sermons online. I don't very often, but this was a tidied-up version of the 8am homily today, and I thought was almost a blog post anyway.

Readings: Jeremiah 23.1-6; Luke 23.33-43

"The feast of Christ the King was only introduced in the Roman Catholic Church in 1925, and found its way into the Anglican calendar from the 1970s. So this year is the very first time in the UK that this feast day, when we celebrate the kingship of Jesus Christ and his sovereignty over all creation, has coincided with a general election campaign.

"Now, far be it from me, brothers and sisters, to influence how you might cast your ballots in any way, even if I could! But that declaration in Jeremiah that God will send his people a shepherd who will rule in righteousness and justice does compel us to think how that’s reflected in the earthly powers who govern us day by day.

"It seems to me that there are at least four kinds of political lies. The first are the kind of lies you tell to get out of trouble, to cover up something you’ve done or not done, and those come to all of us depressingly easily. Secondly, there are the lies you have to tell to avoid bad things happening, what Winston Churchill called not lies but ‘terminological inexactitudes’, like Jim Callaghan as Chancellor in the 1960s saying he had no plans to devalue the pound. Then there are the lies which represent what people want to believe is true, as when political parties say what they intend to do when they know they probably can’t, or when governments say they’ve spent X amount of money on a thing when it takes creative accountancy to arrive at that figure. Often the people who tell that sort of lie actually convince themselves it really is the case. But the fourth kind of lie is the deliberate, conscious attempt to deceive, and that, it strikes me, is uniquely corrupting.

"The whole of human society rests on trust. We have to believe that most of us, most of the time, mean what we say. If we stop believing that, normal human interaction starts to become impossible. It’s all very well to talk about ‘public trust in politicians being at an all-time low’, but I don’t think distrust in politics stays within politics: it bleeds outwards, affecting how we view each other and the kind of society we are part of. I’m not sure our politicians really understand how dangerous it is when they lie, dangerous not just to themselves and their own prospects, but to the whole of society: it corrupts all our relationships by shifting what we think is normal.

"The Crucifixion is a brutal reading to have on this last Sunday of the Church year. But what it holds before us is an unavoidable truth revealing who Jesus is, what God is like, and our own nature too. The Crucifixion shows us that it is the suffering one, the lowly and despised one, who God vindicates and crowns as the king of all creation. There is no dissembling here, no covering up, and no attempt to gloss over the real condition of things. There is instead in the Cross the triumph of something beyond all human control and power, which does not break down the truth, but makes honesty about who we are the basis for trust and hope. And at that all the powers of the earth should tremble. If they were paying attention! Amen."