Blood On Their Hands

“O come, O King of nations, come, O Cornerstone that binds in one: refresh the hearts that long for you; restore the broken, make us new.”

Christ the King Sunday didn’t find its way onto the liturgical calendar until 1925, just ninety-nine years ago, when Pope Pius XI instituted the festival in response to the rise of authoritarian regimes across Europe. In his encyclical, Quas primas, Pius decreed: “Christ has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence or usurped, but his by essence and by nature.”^[1] In other words, Christ is king, not Mussolini. Christ is king, not Hitler. Christ is king, not any authority who promises peace and prosperity by means of repression.

Worldly kings are bound to get blood on their hands. That’s what crowns them kings in the first place, and what keeps them on their thrones. It’s a tried and true strategy for consolidating power: identify scapegoats, marginalize and dehumanize them, and lead them away to crosses of various kinds. The survivors will just be relieved that the king didn’t come after them.

But, the only blood on Jesus’ hands is his own. “My kingdom does not belong to this world,” he tells Pontius Pilate in our Gospel from John today. “If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

Pilate’s interrogation is but one step in the inexorable process that leads to Jesus’ execution. That Jesus would become a political fall guy is no surprise; what is remarkable is his refusal to fight fire with fire. As far removed as the cross is from any throne, Jesus is crowned the King of nations in the moment that he renounces violent power and hangs closest to the crucified of this world.

Hear how Martin Luther states the case for Christ the King:

[Excerpt from Day by Day We Magnify You, p.11]

Friends, which king will we trust? Will we continue to stand idly by while conventional kings grind more and more victims under the wheels of their terrible machinery? Or, will we trust Christ the King to endure the cross on account of the world’s hostility, and by refusing to deal in the way of kings, to become the only king who can guide our feet into the way of peace?^[2]

[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_the_King.

[2] Luke 1:79.