A Kingdom Not of This World

A priest I know was giving a homily one Sunday, and he was on a roll. As he went on and on, he got more and more animated. And then he made a sweeping gesture — and knocked all his notes off the ambo. He scrambled to pick them up, then asked, “Now, where was I?” And a voice from the congregation immediately called out, “Right near the end!”

And that’s where we find ourselves today, right near the end — not of the homily, mind you, but of our liturgical year. Today, on this thirty-fourth and final Sunday in Ordinary Time, we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King. It’s the pinnacle of our Church year, the culminating feast that everything has been building toward since last fall. For today we celebrate the glorious enthronement of Christ, our victorious King in Heaven.

Christ’s kingship is central to all of our readings this morning. The first reading from the Book of Daniel speaks of the Son of Man coming on the clouds, glorified by God, and given a dominion that will last forever. Our responsorial psalm proclaims, “The Lord is King! He is robed in majesty.” And in our second reading from the Book of Revelation, we see the Risen Christ once more coming amid the clouds, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end of all things. Finally, in John’s Gospel we find Jesus before Pilate, proclaiming his sovereignty and kingship over a kingdom that is not of this world.

These readings are probably familiar to most of us — the coming of Christ our King in glory. Clearly the first and second readings give an image of the apocalypse, the end of times. And when we hear Jesus tell Pilate that his kingdom “does not belong to this world,” we tend to think of the Kingdom of Heaven, a kingship beyond the here and now.

But I’d like to offer a different interpretation. Christ came among us to bring us a Truth, a new world order. He came to establish a new kind of kingdom, a kingdom of justice, of peace — a kingdom of love. And through his Incarnation, his ministry, his Passion and Death, and — most of all — his Resurrection, he established that kingdom. And truly that kingdom was —AND IS — not of this world — a world of politics, hatred, jealousy, injustice, intrigue, lies and deceit.

We tend to think of our nation as predominantly Christian, a “city on the hill,” an example of how things should be. We support “liberty and justice for all” and claim that “all men are created equal.” Yet even so, when we take a hard look at the reality of our worldly kingdom through the lens of the Gospel, we see deep dysfunction within our own society: abortion on demand, political discord and rancor, intolerance and indifference, ever increasing tribalism and hostility — and the list goes on. Even as people of faith, in the midst of so much turmoil, uncertainty, pain, and suffering, it would be all too easy to turn inward and look to that future state, to simply “wait in joyful hope for the coming of the Kingdom.” But that lets us off the hook. Christ is calling us to be something more, to shake off our blinders and indifference and become “the Kingdom of God” HERE and NOW.

Because Christ’s Kingdom already exists IN this world. There’s a beautiful commentary by our very own Gerry Darring that lays this out very well. “The Kingdom of God is a space. It exists in every home where parents and children love each other, in every region and country that cares for its weak and vulnerable, in every parish that reaches out to the needy.

The Kingdom of God is a time. It happens whenever someone feeds a hungry person, shelters a homeless person, or shows care to a neglected person. It happens whenever we overturn an unjust law, correct an injustice, or avert a war. It happens whenever people join in the struggle to overcome poverty, to erase ignorance, to pass on the Faith. The Kingdom of God is in the past (in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth); it’s in the present (in the work of the Church and … many others to create a world of goodness and justice); it’s in the future (reaching its completion in the age to come).

The Kingdom of God is a condition. Its symptoms are love, justice, and peace.”

We are called to be Christ’s kingdom, a kingdom not OF this world, but very much IN this world and this time. We need to take a hard look at our true commitment to Christ the King. Until we respond to love, serve, and follow where Jesus leads, then truly Christ is not our King. We need to surrender our lives to Jesus, to trust him to guide us in every moral decision we face. We need to live the model of servant-leadershipthat Christ the King gave us, especially in serving the poor and the suffering in our midst, pursuing justice and peace for all. And most importantly, we need to live out the primary law of Christ’s Kingdom — the law of love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself” — to “Love one another as I have loved you.”

We have been called to become Christ’s Kingdom, a Kingdom not OF this world, but very much IN it. On this great Feast of Christ the King, let us resolve to bring that kingdom to life as a people of faith, hope, and loving service to Christ, our Lord and King. Let us resolve to BECOME the Kingdom of God.