Sermon
23rd November 25
Today is the Solemnity of Christ the King. Our gospel reading tells of the superscription on the cross, identifying the crucified Christ as “The King of the Jews”. Yet, for the most part, our image of Christ the king is in heaven, where Jesus is seated on a throne, holding a central place, normally in the company of God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and alongside the Blessed Virgin Mary, and all the saints and angels. When we speak of the Kingdom of God, we think of heaven, wherever and however we imagine it to be. When we read all those parables of Jesus in the Gospels that begin “the kingdom of God is like …”, our minds go to the hereafter, to the life beyond this.
There is nothing wrong with this … but it can’t be all. In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven”. Familiar words indeed: but do we stop and contemplate their meaning? In this prayer, given to us by Jesus, we are asking that the kingdom of God, which we believe to be in heaven, should in the same way be seen here on earth: that Christ may rule as King, not just up there, out there, or wherever heaven may be, but also on this earth. That, in turn, implies that this world must be transformed into his kingdom, as much subject to his rule as the next.
That need not be as difficult as it may first appear. There are times when the kingdom of God in heaven comes close and touches this world. It happens when we pray, it happens especially at mass.
In his poem “House of Rest”, John Betjeman writes of a clergy widow, her sons also dead, her daughters with families far away. But once a week, she comes very close to them. The poem, which I’ve put in full on both our website and our WhatsApp group, concludes:
Now when the bells for Eucharist
Sound in the Market Square,
With sunshine struggling through the mist
And Sunday in the air,
The veil between her and her dead
Dissolves and shows them clear,
The Consecration Prayer is said
And all of them are near.
When we pray, when we come to mass, we too can feel that closeness to the kingdom of God in heaven. But, more than that, the dismissal at the end of mass, commands us to take that out into the world where we are “to love and serve the Lord”. We are each sent out to do our bit to transform this world into the kingdom of God. That needn’t mean preaching in the market place, or going door-to-door telling of God’s love. Rather, it means perhaps working for that reconciliation of which we were thinking last week: reconciliation between God and humankind, between conflicted groups of people, and between us and the environment given us by God.
Amen
HOUSE OF REST
Now all the world she knew is dead
In this small room she lives her days
The wash-hand stand and single bed
Screened from the public gaze.
The horse-brass shines, the kettle sings,
The cup of China tea
Is tasted among cared-for thing
Ranged round for me to see—
Lincoln, by Valentine and Co.,
Now yellowish brown and stained,
But there some fifty years ago
Her Harry was ordained;
Outside the Church at Woodhall Spa
The smiling groom and bride,
And here's his old tobacco jar
Dried lavender inside.
I do not like to ask if he
Was "High" or "Low" or "Broad"
Lest such a question seem to be
A mockery of Our Lord.
Her full grey eyes look far beyond
The little room and me
To village church and village pond
And ample rectory.
She sees her children each in place
Eyes downcast as they wait,
She hears her Harry murmur Grace,
Then heaps the porridge plate.
Aroused at seven, to bed by ten,
They fully lived each day,
Dead sons, so motor-bike-mad then,
And daughters far away.
Now when the bells for Eucharist
Sound in the Market Square,
With sunshine struggling through the mist
And Sunday in the air,
The veil between her and her dead
Dissolves and shows them clear,
The Consecration Prayer is said
And all of them are near.
John Betjeman
