Today we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. But do we really know why we call Christ the King of the Universe? The readings for today offer a nice scriptural background for our understanding.
The First Reading from the Book of 2Samuel (5:1-3) describes an incident in the life of King David who was among the greatest kings of the Old Testament. David’s predecessor, King Saul has been killed in battle and recognizing the renown of David as a military leader during the time of Saul, the Israelite leaders approach David and anoint him as king. He becomes the next shepherd of the people of Israel.
A few chapters later we find one of the central passages from the Old Testament for our understanding of Christ as King (2Samuel 7:1-17). King David has conquered Israel’s archnemesis, the Philistines as well as the territory of Jerusalem. He has moved the Ark of the Covenant, which contains the presence of God in the form of God’s Word on the stones of the Ten Commandments to the new capitol. He has thereby made Jerusalem the center of worship for the nation of Israel.
At this point David voices his concern to his adviser, the prophet Nathan, that God is living in a tent while he resides in a house of Cedar. He tells Nathan that he wishes to build a Holy Temple for God, a place to house the Ark of the Covenant and become the destination for pilgrimage feasts for the people. However, as often occurs, God has alternate plans.
That night, the LORD speaks to Nathan and instructs him to relay a message to David that it is not David who will build a house for the Lord, but rather David’s son who will complete the task.
The LORD makes this promise to David, “When your days have been completed and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, sprung from your loins, and I will establish his kingdom. He it is who shall build a house for my name, and I will establish his royal throne forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. If he does wrong, I will reprove him with a human rod and with human punishments; but I will not withdraw my favor from him as I withdrew it from Saul who was before you. Your house and your kingdom are firm forever before me; your throne shall be firmly established forever” (2Samuel 7:12-16).
With these words God has a made an irrevocable and unconditional covenant with David to raise up an heir from his line for whom he will build an everlasting dynasty and royal kingdom as a father would do for a son. This royal ideology establishes the metaphor of divine “sonship” and creates a father-son relationship through adoption between God and David and the subsequent kings of his dynasty.
This event will generate the expectation of a future king from the line of David to be called the “anointed one”, or “messiah”, more familiarly known to us from the Greek as “Christos.” The Old Testament prophets will continually write of this promised messiah until the time of Jesus, as a future leader who will restore the kingdom of Israel and bring peace and prosperity to the land.
It is partly using this royal ideology that the writers of the New Testament determine the messiahship of Christ, seeing him as the fulfillment of the promise made to David and perpetuated by the prophets of Israel. They make use of this theology of adoption in order to describe Jesus as the “Son of God” at the event of his Baptism (Mk.1:9-11, Mt.3:13-17, Lk.3:21-23, Jn.1:32-33), borrowing the royal coronation language of the psalms: “You are my son: today I have begotten you” (Ps. 2:7). They also use the occasion of the Transfiguration (Mt.17:1–8, Mk.9:2–8, Lk.9:28–36) to label Jesus as God’s beloved Son.
In a similar fashion Jesus identifies himself as the Son of God and long-awaited anointed king when he announces that the Kingdom of God has arrived through his ministry: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
In today’s Gospel from Luke (23:25-43) we see the Jewish leaders taunting Jesus for making this claim: “He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God.” The soldiers jeer at Jesus: “If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.” They also put an inscription above him on the cross to further the mocking: “This is the King of the Jews.”
Jesus is not the type of king the people of Israel have been expecting. He is not a powerful warrior or military figure. Nor does he possess a kingdom of gold and a court of royal officials. Rather the kingdom of God that Christ brings is the one that the good thief on the cross recognizes. It is a kingdom of justice and love, of mercy and forgiveness, and of willingness to die on behalf of others.
For Christians, then, through the events of his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus becomes identified as the heir and anointed Son from the line of David, the Christ and King of the Universe who ushers in the Kingdom of God and, for all nations, the peace and love with which it is associated.
