Minds, wills, hearts and bodies

24 November 2024

If I was to ask you to describe or to visualise God, I wonder what you would come up with? Would it be such as we saw in the Book of Daniel earlier? An ancient one, with clothing as white as snow and long white hair and beard, sat on a fiery throne, surrounded by thousands. Or a William Blake-like image of a muscular, isolated figure but still with the long hair and beard? Or the Michelangelo variation, with the muscles and beard again but this time clothed and stretching out his hand as far as he can towards Adam?

I’ve seen one child describe God as a kindly old man with very big ears to hear everything that’s being said. Another had someone at a desk with hundreds of computer screens around them patching into CCTV so that they could see all that was happening around the world.

Or is it easier to visualise Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human? Even then, what picture or scene do you have in your head – particularly today when we’re asked to think of Christ as a King? If I asked how you thought of Jesus, I hazard that most would tell me about his birth, his death or his resurrection. Or would it be the miracles or the parables or the encounters with people on the margins? But Christ as King?

Pius XI

Perhaps part of the problem is how we feel about Kings and Queens. The most recent statistics have an overall 65% of the UK population in favour of the monarchy – but there are sharp differences between age groups. It’s 82% in favour for those who are retired but only 35% for those aged between 18 and 24. And do we think of royalty in a mostly ceremonial way rather than holding any real power?

You might recall from Café Church last year, that Pope Pius XI introduced this Feast of Christ the King in 1925. So, 100 years ago next year. He said that he had done it in response to the growing nationalism and secularism that he saw in the world around him.

Because the 1920’s saw the rise of radical political movements. Communism spread under Lenin following the Russian Revolution. The fascist leader Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922. Dictators emerged in the Balkans, Poland and Yugoslavia. Meanwhile there was a famine in Russia and economic collapse in Germany.

Christ our Lord must reign

But the 1920’s were also referred to as the ‘Roaring Twenties’ due to the economic prosperity experienced by many countries following the tragedies of the 1^st World War and the Spanish Flu pandemic. Sometimes it’s called the ‘Jazz Age’ to reflect what was happening in music and culture. And authors like Hemingway, Woolf and Fitzgerald were on the Best Sellers list.

Pius XI wrote this: Christ our Lord…must reign:

In our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ.
In our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God.
In our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things and cleave to him alone.
In our bodies, which should serve as instruments of justice unto God.

Minds, wills, hearts and bodies. I don’t think any of us would disagree that these are all laudable points for Pius XI to make and they’re not so far from Deuteronomy 6: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength’. We could do a lot worse than spend some time reflecting on how much of each of these we really do give in service. To ask ourselves to what extent Christ really does reign in each of these areas of our lives.

But then history doesn’t show that introducing this Feast of Christ the King stemmed the tide of Communism, Fascism or Naziism. Neither did the world get any less secular. Whilst it was well meant it didn’t oblige the generations before us to stop in their tracks and take stock – any more than it does to us today.

King of the Jews

As you know, we follow a 3-year cycle of Bible Readings. The Gospel today is from John 18. It’s the part where Jesus is brought before Pilate – and Pilate is asking if he’s the King of the Jews. Jesus didn’t look his best. He’d been bound and questioned already. He’d been struck in the face. He would have been bloodied and bruised. He wouldn’t look much like a king. And all we have to go on is the words. We don’t hear the tone of voice. We don’t see the body language. And maybe Pilate is being sarcastic and mocking: “Are you the King of the Jews?” But maybe he’s seriously enquiring: “Are you the King of the Jews?” If you were to visualise Jesus as King, is this the passage that you would have chosen?

Next year’s reading, from Luke, has Jesus on the cross in-between 2 criminals. Again, it’s not where you would expect to see a king. One criminal jeers, but the other asks to be remembered. To not be forgotten. And don’t we all want that? To not be forgotten? Jesus exceeds the man’s wildest dreams and tells him that they will be together in paradise.

The year after that the reading is from Matthew. It’s the bit where Jesus says that when the Son of Man comes in glory and sits on the throne, he will separate out those who gave him food when he was hungry, and clothed him when he was naked, and took care of him when he was sick and visited him when he was in prison. And when the righteous ask “when did we do that?” – Jesus says: “when you did it for the least of these who are my family, you did it for me too”.

Twists and turns

This is how the Gospel writers saw Christ the King. Bedraggled and beaten. On a cross, showing compassion to someone else, whilst in agony himself. Or telling his disciples that he could be found amongst the hungry, the naked, the sick and those in prison.

But then if you reflect a bit more you might remember that many of his parables were about his kingdom. “The kingdom of God is like…” Those short stories with their twists and turns, the unlikely endings, the heroes and villains swopping places. We begin to get the sense that all we thought we knew about kings and kingdoms needs to go out the window because the kingdom of which Christ is King is likely to be outrageous and humorous and overturning conventions. A kingdom where people are set free rather than living under oppression and injustice.

Because in the kingdom of which Christ is King, a badly wounded man is tended by a person who is despised, after being avoided by the great and the good who you’d expect to stop and help. In the kingdom of which Christ is King a father humiliates himself by running after both his wayward son and the upright, uptight son who stayed. And in the kingdom of which Christ is King a shepherd leaves his large flock untended to go after the single errant sheep that hadn’t made it back in time for tea. And then it probably became tea in the celebration that followed…

Two realms

You and I, we live in 2 realms, 2 kingdoms. We have the rules which we need to abide by as being part of the society in which we live. A society that will never quite be what God promised. Not quite as just, not quite as equitable. But having had a glimpse of the kingdom of God, then perhaps we should be more actively working for more of that kingdom to be visible in our midst rather than just complaining about it.

For that to happen, our faith can no longer be private. For that to happen we can’t sing a good hymn in here but then not help our neighbour out there. We can’t say “Thy Kingdom come” and then ignore the plight of the earth or manage our money and resources as if they belonged to us rather than being entrusted to us.

The Kingdom of God is around us and within us. It beckons us to live by its vision and values now, not some point in the distant future. For that to happen, Pius XI was right. It needs our minds, wills, hearts and bodies to submit to the topsy turvy reign of Christ. A Christ who stands beaten and alone. A Christ who gives comfort to a dying thief and a Christ who notices when we care for him by the way we treat the very least of his family. Do we recognise that king, fully God and fully human? The rule of Christ insists that the love of our fellow human beings should be at the heart of our vision of society.

Next week is the start of Advent. We think about the king who came to meet us in our weakness and in our need, becoming weak and needful himself. A king willing to embrace and forgive and redeem all, because that’s his nature. A king who comes to usher in his kingdom – but needs us, implores us, to recognise the kingdom already around us – and by our minds, wills, hearts and bodies to make him and his kingdom more visible for the world. Amen

‘Minds, wills, hearts and bodies’ was delivered by Ian Banks at Christ Church Walmersley on Sunday 24^th November 2024. It was based on Daniel 7:9-10,13-14 and John 18:33-37.

Minds, wills, hearts and bodies