HAIL, KING OF THE JEWS!

A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING

Our Lord had spent his entire life trying to show his chosen people that he was their King.  Not a king in the traditional sense of the term, but a spiritual king, whose kingdom, as he pointed out to the unbelieving Pontius Pilate, was not of this world. 

Pontius Pilate was not alone in his failure to understand the type of kingship that Our Lord brought to this world.  When the three Wise Men had told King Herod about the birth of a king in the land, Herod feared that this new king would be a rival, and plotted his death, slaughtering the Holy Innocents as Our Lord was forced to flee into Egypt to escape his wrath.  Later on, the Jewish Sanhedrin wanted a military leader to be their king, someone along the lines of Judas Maccabeus, who would put an end to the sacrilegious Roman occupation of the holy places.  But Our Lord was not at all the type of Messiah they were looking for, and so they turned on him, and, like Herod, plotted the death of this Most Holy of all Innocents.

And so it was that Our Lord found himself before Pilate, who asked him outright: “Art thou a king?”   But Pilate didn’t understand our Lord’s answer, and so he appealed to the Jewish mob, asking them to choose between the murderer Barabbas, and their King.  The mob responded “We have no king but Caesar,” and Pilate turned Our Lord over to the soldiers to be scourged.

After Jesus had been scourged, the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe and a reed in his right hand: and they smote him with their hands, and bowed the knee before him, and mocked him saying, Hail, King of the Jews!  And at that moment, the world changed.

Ever since the expulsion of the rebellious angels from heaven, this world had been the domain of Satan, and Satan was its Lord.  After our Lord fasted in the wilderness, the devil tempted him by offered him all the kingdoms of the world, which were his to give, if only he would kneel and worship him.  Our Lord replied with the holy words of truth, that “thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”  But he did not deny the words of Satan, who indeed had been permitted to hold dominion over the earth and be God’s unwitting instrument to test man through his nefarious traps and temptations. 

Satan was Lord of the World.  Now into his kingdom had come this man who was not like the others.  Satan had tried his best to tempt him, but had found out that here lay the difference between him and the rest of mankind, that he was like us in all things but sin.  Until now, Satan had been unable to compromise this man by luring him into sin, but now, finally, here was Satan’s chance to rid his domain of this holy man who sinned not.  If sin was the only thing separating him from the rest of mortal men, then surely he can die.  And so Satan would make sure he died, and with the most horrible death his angelic intellect and powers could devise.  He, Satan, was Lord of the World, and this man they hailed King of the Jews was not going to overthrow him and become King and Lord in his place.

Emboldened by the success of his vicious scourging of our Lord’s human body, the devil now intensifies his attack with an even more malicious assault against Christ’s divinity.  Satan has grasped the surprising reality of the moment, that this Son of God was not going to fight back.  At the scourging, thousands of years of hatred and envy are unleashed by the devil against Christ’s humanity, so apparently inferior to his own angelic nature.  Now Satan sets his sights on the divinity of Christ and dares to launch his most blatant attack ever against the Godhead itself.  It is history’s darkest hour and Satan’s hour of triumph, what he thinks will be his final revenge for the insult of his banishment from heaven by the sword of St. Michael.  Satan can begin to taste the victory that must surely be his.

In order to achieve victory Satan needed to strike at the very essence of our Lord’s kingship.  After the scourging, it seemed that there was very little left to do.  Already humbled and bleeding, bound and spat upon by the soldiers, our Lord looked like the very antithesis of royal power.  All that remained to do was a direct attack on his kingship, accomplished through mockery and humiliation.  There would be a coronation of this “king”, but it would be with a crown of thorns.  Earlier that day, our Lord had dismissed the idea of his kingship on earth, claiming to Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world but another.  Among those who heard these remarks, a cruel few set about constructing the only crown our Lord would ever truly wear during his earthly life as a man.  This was of course the crown whose razor-sharp thorns were to be squeezed tight around his head. 

Little did Satan realize that he was dealing with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, a king whose kingdom was not of this world.  He had not the slightest chance of overthrowing this divine King who was the Supreme Being from whom derives all authority and power, who held the undisputable sovereignty of Creator over his creatures. This King was the ultimate source of all order in the universe, controlling by his divine will the movement of the stars and planets, the natural and physical laws that regulate and govern our world and everything in it.  He was the Supreme Being, almighty in his power and all-wise in the use of that power. 

When the soldiers mocked Christ, hailing him as “King of the Jews” with his purple rags and crown of thorns, they were doing the devil’s bidding and directly attacking Christ as God.  It is as though the soldiers are possessed, the demons within them furiously revolting against the very nature of God, his authority and sovereignty over them and all his creatures. They are taking their revenge for their expulsion from Paradise.  They are making the most of this opportunity to retaliate against God for elevating this Son of Man to a higher level than their own.  They are mocking their true King.

Christ was crowned not with great displays of solemnity and reverence, but with mockery and blasphemy.  And yet, he was crowned.  And that is why that at the moment of his coronation, his crowning with thorns, the world changed.  From that moment, in spite of the sacrilegious intent behind the words “Hail, King of the Jews!” Our Lord Jesus Christ was indeed crowned King.  And in spite of all mankind’s offences, sacrileges and blasphemies that have continued, and even increased, to this day, Christ is still King.  He has reclaimed the domain of Satan over man by his death on the cross, showing himself to be our true Messiah, our King of kings, and Lord of Lords, whose kingdom shall have no end.

Our Lord was not born in a palace, but in a miserable stable, to a life of poverty and suffering.  It is fitting that his coronation should also be without pomp and ceremony, and that he should humbly accept his crown of thorns and the malicious insults that went with it.  It is our reminder that we too must always choose humility, that we must embrace the humiliations we receive, and even the persecutions we must suffer, if we want to be true followers of Christ.  Today, on this great feast day of the Kingship of Christ we should renew those resolutions, and make reparation for the offences committed against the Most Sacred Heart of our King.  As commanded by the Church on this day, we shall now kneel before the crucifix, and make together the Consecration of the Human Race to the Most Sacred of Jesus…