Thy Kingdom Come Sunday
2 Samuel 5:1-3; Colossians 1:12-20; Luke 23:35-43
Christians are builders of God’s Kingdom, if they choose to. The choice to participate in building God’s Kingdom requires right modeling or the need to imitate God, whose Kingdom we want to build.
Our first reading discourages wrong modeling because it leads to bad outcome or failed project. A concrete example is found in Israel. Israel moved away from a theocracy (God’s leadership) which teaches about WHO they are—builders of God’s Kingdom, to a monarchy (human kingdom) copying from human rules because Israel wanted to be like other nations, and repudiated its aspiration to divinity—being like God.
The mistake of Israel brings to the fore a fundamental aspect of life—the human ability to choose how to live life, and who it wants to model its life after. The tribes of Israel made a choice, “In those days, all the tribes of Israel came to David in Hebron and said: ‘Here we are, your bone and flesh’” (2 Samuel 5:1). Biological resemblance was the basis for human monarchy—since you look like us, you can lead us as your subjects. Israel’s renouncement and renunciation of God as its leader did not count, what did matter for them was the physical and material configuration to other nations.
Our first reading shows how Israel turned a Kingdom of love and service of God into a contract between a king and his subjects: “King David made an agreement with them there before the Lord, and they anointed him king of Israel” (2 Samuel 5:3). The role of God in human enterprise was extinguished: God was neither the initiator nor guarantor of human lives, but simply a witness to humanly ratified rules and regulations. This is the final rejection of God’s authority over Israel.
Even today, we continue to reject God one way or the other. For instance, when Joe Biden was asked about his commitments to his Christian faith to define marriage as heterosexual and abortion and contraception as evil, his response was: it is the constitution of the United States that will guide my leadership of the United States of America, not my Christian beliefs!
Who still doubts that God has been outlawed and banned from human polity? If you still have your doubts because you are not American, simply look at the lifestyle of the politicians of your country vis-à-vis God’s commandments, and judge for yourselves if God is still given a place in our societies today.
The denial of the importance of God in human polity is at the origin of today’s feast day—Christ-the-King Sunday. Friends, we have drifted far away from God, and God’s plans for our lives. Christ-the-King Solemnity invites us to a rethink.
Since one of the Church’s many roles is to remind us of who we are, today’s feast reminds us of our wickedness made manifest in our expulsion of God from our polity and lives. The reality of today’s gospel is ours: we sneer and jeer at God by substituting God’s commandments with our criminal justice system; we reject our affinity with God by replacing the Bible with a humanly contrived constitution. Instead of asking the question of “who are we?” (God’s children), we worry about “what” we are (our countries and constitutions).
Thy-Kingdom-Come Sunday, this Sunday, teaches us how to be builders of God’s Kingdom by returning to God’s leadership over us. The drama of Jesus on the Cross shows an example of how to build the Kingdom of God—sacrifice or daily martyrdom.
To be a builder of God’s Kingdom, there needs be the willingness to go to Golgotha to hang on the wood of the cross of Calvary. One must be careful, though, of Kingdom hijackers—the bad thieves!
Our gospel narrates how two thieves were slugging it out on what the Kingdom of God was all about, what it means to build the Kingdom of God—dying a sacrificial death. “Are you not the Christ?”, says one of the thieves, “Save yourself and us”. That is to say, leadership and power are for self-service; if you have powers, Jesus, use it now to free us from the cross. How utilitarian!
Human approach to God, when in troubled waters, God becomes a tool to be used and discarded afterwards. In fact, the inscription above Jesus’ cross says it all: “This is the King of the Jews”; Jesus became a King on the cross!
A King who hangs on the cross builds a kingdom of sacrificial love. He dies to build a kingdom! The good thief said: “Have you no fear of God? . . . Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” he concluded. In order to prove that he is indeed a King building a Kingdom, Jesus replied: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:35-43); what a moment to make Heaven/Paradise, the true Kingdom of God!
Thy-Kingdom-Come Sunday invites us to imitate the audacity of the good thief to challenge the bad thief, although both of them were thieves. Building the Kingdom of God requires “the fear of God” which the bad thief lacked! For those who have the fear of God, God remembers them by providing them with access to his Kingdom—Paradise.
Our two thieves reveal to us how the game of life is played, the confrontation between the good and the bad, between those who stand on the side of God and challenge our godless societies and those who promote the arsenal of evil and architects of Satan, in the name of democracy and freedom. On the side of reality is Christ-the-King, he who has powers over human lives and souls, who can decree who goes to Heaven or Hell of Fires. The kingship dear to Jesus is the offer of eternal life to all and sundry. Hanging between two criminals simply manifests his desire to save every sinner, just for the asking. He hangs everyday on the Cross as universal King of Salvation, offering us salvation; a very strong reminder that God’s mercy continues even after the closure of the Year of Mercy (November 20, 2016), because Mercy is perennial.
The beauty and singularity of Jesus’ kingship, as a kinship of salvation, is argued for in our second reading. Indeed, Jesus is a King, because he has a kingdom, a kingdom of FORGIVENESS OF SINS; “He delivered us,” Paul says, “from the power of darkness and transferred us to the KINGDOM of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of Sins.” This first quality of Jesus’ Kingdom makes Jesus the guarantor of salvation and not human beings. This Kingdom offers salvation to all who ask it of Jesus, like the thief on the cross, who was promised salvation upon asking. On account of Jesus’ promise, the “good thief” was transferred from the kingdom of sin and death to Paradise, Jesus’ Kingdom and kinship of salvation.
In order to benefit from Jesus’ Kingdom and Kingship, it is important to recognize, as the good thief did, that “[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him”. There is no cluster of words that can better express the Universal Kingship of Jesus Christ, like these words of Paul do! One key element to human salvation is the recognition of the divinity of Jesus Christ and the evocation of his power to save.
Finally, the symbolism of a king who hangs on the cross teaches human beings about kingship and offers them a model of leadership—a king dies for his subjects, not his subjects for him. Better still, Jesus hangs on the cross, according to Paul: “through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross”. Human salvation and redemption came at the price of Jesus’ cross. To look at and accept every cross in our lives is to become builders of God’s Kingdom like Jesus Christ. We are kings over our bodies and minds, to make sure that vices have no places in them but virtues and holiness. When we practice abstinence and mortifications, we rule our bodies as kings and prepare them for Heaven. When we take sides with the Bible and the Church, we affirm the kingship of Jesus Christ. When we accept everyone as a child of God and fight against every form of segregation and injustice, we promote the universal reign of Christ-the-King and build his Kingdom on earth.
Jesus is a universal king because his kingship goes beyond biology (our acceptance of theocracy). Jesus is a King of salvation (our recognition of our heavenly citizenship) because his kingship is primarily for eternal salvation, and not of this world. Jesus is God and the Bible contains his laws for human lives and actions (our enthronement of divine laws).
Assignment for the Week:
Identify one cross you are carrying, and find joy in carrying it this week because it shows you are a king like Jesus, despite the shamefulness of the cross OR Do something this week that shows that Jesus is KING.