Sermon given at Sung Eucharist on Christ the King 2012

25th November 2012 at 11:00 am

The Reverend Andrew Tremlett, Canon of Westminster and Rector of St Margaret's

The Festival of Christ the King, the last Sunday in Trinity before the new Christian year begins next Sunday at Advent, gives us an opportunity to reflect on how the Christian Church relates to temporal, political and imperial power.

I’ve chosen to do so this year with reference to one of the most ancient and important motifs of Christian art, that of Majestas Domini, the glory of Christ or Christ in Majesty. And I am therefore delighted to be able to welcome the artist Keith West, who exhibited here in St Margaret’s during Lent, along with his depiction of Maiestas Domini.

Keith is available after the service to talk in detail about his work, but let me first place the painting in some sort of historical context, and then reflect on how today’s scripture reading prompts us to ask how the kingship of Christ is to be understood. Finally, I want to say a word about General Synod’s decision this week in relation to temporal power.

This Trinity season in the liturgical year began with our reading of the origins of the Christian Church as a small sect of the Jewish faith, tucked away in a corner of the Mediterranean: insignificant in number, influence, and reach. And yet within decades we hear of converts in the imperial household, missionary activity spread through the major cities, and bishops meeting in synod to regularise orthodox belief and practice.

The adoption of the Christian faith by the Emperor Constantine is well-known: read up your history of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 before which Constantine received a vision. And if you go to the Coliseum in Rome today, just to the side is the Arch of Constantine with a frieze depicting the Emperor flanked by his officials.

As it became the state-authorised religion, the Byzantine church adopted this image and applied it to Christ: as Christ the lawgiver – handing out not imperial edicts, but the laws of God – or as Christ Pantocrator, the ruler of the universe, presiding in majesty.

This was a cosmological understanding of God in Christ: Christ as the creative Word rooted in St John’s Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

One by-product of this identification of Christ as Emperor of the universe was that over time the images of Christ get larger, and those accompanying him reduce in size. In Byzantine art, this was called the δεησις – an image in which Christ stands alone as an object of prayer, encircled in a mandorla, perhaps accompanied only by the four gospel-writers or indeed Mary the Mother of God and St John the Baptist.

But today’s Gospel from St John 18 reminds us that something else is going on. Because it’s easy to see how corrupting an association of Christ with political power can be. If Christ is imagined as being a universal ruler, then it’s all too easy for rulers to claim that not only are they accountable to God, but that their power is somehow derived from God.

Which is why the exchange between Jesus and Pilate is so important. Jesus has been arrested, betrayed by Peter his loyal lieutenant, tried by a Jewish court and handed over to Pilate as the representative of Roman imperial power. Jesus is without support, powerless, his case hopeless.

‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ asks Pilate. ‘Are you leading a revolution against Rome?’ is the question, are you confronting political power? But Jesus, despite his powerlessness, indeed perhaps because of his powerlessness, replies: ‘My kingdom is not from this world’. In St John’s gospel this is a key theme: it is the world which God loves so much that he gives his Son’s life to save it, and yet Christ is not bound to the world, nor are we as Christians.

And in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was this image of the humanised, powerless Christ which came to the fore. A world away from the imperial depictions of Christ presiding over humanity, this is Christ the wounded human being who speaks truth to power not through the weight of majestic, imperial power but through his maiestas, his authority, his humanity, his wounds.

The depiction by William Dyce of a fully human Christ in the fresco ‘Religion’ in the Robing Room of the House of Lords captures this; Hans Feibusch’s mural in Goring-by-Sea likewise; Keith West’s image here today of Christ sitting on a throne fashioned from the stony slab of an altar tomb evokes this beautifully.

But I can’t end this morning without reflecting a little on the nature of moral authority and the right to speak truth to power. Because implicit in all that I have said is the assumption that the Christian Church has the right, and more than that the absolute duty, to speak truth to power, to model an alternative kingdom, a kingdom not of this world but of a better, richer, fairer nature.

Which is what has made the events in General Synod this week so very troubling in the Church of England’s relationship with the State. It is worth reminding ourselves that the Church nationally has expressed its will: the overwhelming majority of dioceses, bishops, priests, and lay people have signalled their desire to welcome and embrace the ministry of women as bishops – something I too long to see. It is worth reminding ourselves that the vote was lost by a tiny margin: the bar is set high because we value unity rather than the tyranny of democracy. It is worth reminding ourselves that the Church of England does not have any specific exemption from Equality Legislation and that repealing the law would impact on all faith communities, compelling for example Roman Catholics to ordain women. It is, finally, worth reminding ourselves that the vote was not carried because while many who were opposed voted against, a number of those in favour of women bishops also voted against because they believed too much ground had been given.

But while those within the Church who cannot accept ordained women are concerned with the authority of Scripture and the place of Christian unity, our colleagues across the road – and the nation at large – have heard this as a debate about equality. And while the Church appears to be discriminating at a fundamental level against one half of humanity, it means that our voice carries less weight when we speak for the marginalised, the poor, the dispossessed.

Indeed, this week it has been the nation speaking truth to power in the Church.