by Br. Marty Singer

    The year has all too quickly come to an end, and in glorious tradition we bring it to a close celebrating the kingly aspect of Jesus Christ.  This is a feast that most of us 21st century Americans find the hardest to get our hands around.  The whole founding of this great nation was based on the political idea that we do not need a king to govern us.  This notion of independence and representative democracy comes up hard against the idea of a monarchy.  We often act as if we would much rather prefer a Jesus who operated under the checks and balances of our political system, popular votes and market forces inform the ruling party how they should judge.

     As we consider today’s reading we realize that the Christ the King cannot even be considered within our human notions of how an earthly king governs.  Here we have the blazing vision of Jesus coming out of the heaven surrounded by his angels seated on his throne ready to judge.  The nations of peoples are divided like sheep and goats. And so justice is quickly rendered to all.  But this judgement is the judgement of one more like a shepherd than an autocratic king.  It is a judgement based not on some arbitrary set of human desires of power or prestige, but rather on our ability to care for each other.  We find out that we are each of us a reflection of the one true king.  We are judged on how well we honor the king that is within the other person.  This king is most especially found in those who need the most.  At times this also means us.  If we saw Christ the King in ourselves would we make some of the rash judgments we decree on others in our own little kingdom.

     As we head into Advent lets take a few moments out of our busy lives and sit next to the king and recognize the mercy he shows others and ourselves, should we show any less.

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