On November 24, the last Sunday of the church year, I collaborated with our worship leaders in organizing a service that would move us from the symbolism of “Christ the King,” often associated with this day, to one that invites us into the vision of a new creation.
Long-time readers of my work would instantly recognize why I pressed for this new approach. Let me just give a bit of background. (Hold on to your telescopes, this is longer than usual!) Christ the King Sunday (under various names) was instituted in the Roman Catholic Church in 1925 by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quas Primus. Originally proposed for the Sunday before All Saints it has subsequently floated to the last Sunday of the Church year. Coming amidst the collapse of the western church’s traditional cultural hegemony and the rise of various secularist, nationalistic, and fascistic movements, this Solemnity sought to reinvigorate the “Kingship of Christ” in people’s hearts and in society generally. Overcoming rampant anti-clericalism, the Catholic Church would reclaim its dominant role in societies around the world. Over the years, many Protestant denominations took over this annual Sunday, in spite of the Catholic supremacy in religion and society that the Pope’s declaration promoted.
However, it has always sat uneasily in the context of democratic and republican societies that have rejected the ancient patterns of kingship and the church’s control over social and political affairs. It stands increasingly as a symbolic legitimation of various forms of Christian supremacy, nationalism, or opposition to gender equality and even women’s citizenship. Its meaning for ecumenical relationships, to say the least, is problematic.
Moreover, it seizes on one title for Jesus and the meaning of the Christ, much contested in the Gospels themselves. Rooted as it is in the symbolism of particular ancient power systems and operating to legitimize models of rule by patriarchs and monarchs, it sits increasingly in tension with the struggle for republican and democratic governance as well as citizenship beyond the categories of race, sex, gender and inherited status. This struggle for democratic, republican, and constitutional governance is by no means over, as this year’s election campaigns illustrate. Kingship and monarchical models of governance are increasingly fraught with extremely troublesome ethical implications.
However, the sense of the centrality and eventual victory of the Spirit that was in Christ Jesus, as Saint Paul might say, is a central component in most strands of Christian faith. Kingship can no longer convey the awesome mystery of this culmination of God’s purposes for creation, but we ought not lose sight of this sensibility of faith. However, it needs new concepts, symbols, and rituals to enable us to live more fully into this desire of the Spirit. We need new ways to align ourselves with the impulses that Jesus’s life and teaching infused into the realization of God’s purposes. Indeed, we need new ways to understand what the symbol of “Christ” might mean, not only historically but cosmically.
Fortunately, there are alternative symbols, theological frameworks, and even rituals that might enable us to pursue another course. First, there is the symbol of God’s Spirit (breath, wind, fire) that courses through Scripture from Genesis 1:2 to Revelations 22:17. It is this Spirit that creates and recreates the universe, drawing it into its fruition. This vibrant doctrine of the Holy Spirit, so evident in the church’s Pentecostal experience, has begun to re-emerge from its subordination to the Father and Son images of the Trinity, with many implications for the church’s life as well as our understanding of the workings of our universe.
Second, theology in our time is increasingly aware of the way scientific theories of atomic reality as well as of an ever-expanding universe call us to a new stance regarding our concepts of God the Creator, Transformer, and Redeemer of our world. The rise of a new ecological perspective and commitment seeks in this more expansive cosmology an adequate framework for its perspectives and values. This was dramatized by a photo from the Webb telescope that was on the cover of our bulletin. The star is 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta.
Star WR 124 (NASA-Webb Telescope)
This world of concepts and symbols begins in the Pauline epistles, where, as in Colossians 1:15-20, we are called to internalize and live out the completion of God’s work revealed in the Christ of the Gospels. Christ as the Wisdom of God (I Corinthians 2) is lifted up as the core of all creative and salvific power in the universe. In our own time the Jesuit paleontologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as well as process theologians like Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, Jr., Marjorie Suchocki, and Thomas Hosinski have re-imagined the divine life, power, and creativity in light of the atomic, electromagnetic, and evolutionary models of life and of the universe, Chardin called this source and goal of all of life the “Omega Point.” Many others, like Richard Rohr or Ilia Delio, speak of the “Cosmic Christ”—the underlying pattern for an existence that seeks a perfection in love. And, of course, there is the enduring image of a “New Heaven and a New Earth” from the Book of Revelation. All of these images can lead us beyond the narrow and despairing symbols that have lost their power to guide and inspire. We have only begun to explore this new symbolism.
The worship we developed began with a liturgy and meditation opening us up to the incredible cosmos that God has created and is continually recreating. We are called into awareness of this power and presence of God. We recognize a “mysterium tremendum” that overpowers as well as amazes us.
The second meditation acknowledged our finitude and dependence as well as seeming insignificance. We lament the evident indifference of a universe whose life far transcends our own and our planet’s. We seek expression of our longing for a new creation, even with fear and trepidation for this New Being. We seek a sense of realization that is personal and historical as well as cosmic.
The third meditation explored God’s promise of creation’s fulfilment and our calling to participate in this cosmic drama, which has a “Big Story” of evolutionary development and a “Little Story” of our own historical drama on planet earth. Such a vision needs to find some coherence between our visions of beloved community and God’s righteous republic with the evolutionary culmination of all creative flourishing—an overwhelming vision, but one with wide Scriptural expression. (Isaiah 61, Romans 8:18-25, Ephesians 1:3-10, Colossians 1:15-20, Revelations 21 and 22)
The service concluded with a litany of our re-commitment to enter into the great mystery of God’s purposes in this ever-expanding universe. Here are the basic components:
