We Celebrate the Servant King

“The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.”

Our readings today may feel like we’re celebrating Good Shepherd Sunday. But it is, in fact, the Solemnity of Christ the King, which I think gives us some insight into just what it means to be King in the Kingdom of God.

“The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.” This is the heart of our message this weekend. This is the core of what the Church is telling us about the Kingship of Christ: that what we have is not a King as any worldly powers would recognize him. This King spreads a banquet before us. He anoints our heads with oil, he fills our cup to overflowing. Our King is a shepherd, a nurturer, a servant.

The prophet Ezekiel sets up this theme in the first reading: “Thus says the Lord God: I myself will look after and tend my sheep.” Scripture relates to us how the people of Israel have never fared well under the leadership of human powers. Prior to this passage, Ezekiel has some harsh words for them; “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves!”

Such is the nature, all too often, of the kingly powers of the world. Leaders look, not to what’s best for the people, but to what’s in it for them. They “pasture themselves” and leave the flock to fend for itself. In First Samuel, when the people of Israel ask for a king, the Lord warns them exactly what they’re in for.

He will take your sons and assign them to his chariots and horses, and they will run before his chariot. He will make them do his plowing and harvesting and produce his weapons of war and chariotry. He will use your daughters as perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He will take your best fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will tithe your crops and grape harvests to give to his officials and his servants. He will take your best oxen and donkeys and use them to do his work. He will tithe your flocks. And as for you, you will become his slaves.

I Samuel 8: 11

And of course God was right. Even the celebrated King David was not above helping himself to another man’s wife when it suited him. In the end none of the kings of Israel could resist the temptation to use and abuse their authority for their own wants and desires, their own comfort, to “pasture themselves” instead of their flock.

The people of Israel wanted a king, essentially because “everyone else has one.” The surrounding nations all had their own kings — powerful rulers who could lead them in battle and win them all the spoils of war. They wanted that for themselves. God tried to warn them that the strength of the sword is double-edged — that the conqueror who plunders your neighbor can just as readily turn and plunder you.

And yet, after all this, the people of Israel still looked for a Messiah who would be a political savior. In Jesus’s own time, they wanted a new King who would conquer the Romans and step into their place as the new King of Israel. Even today, too often, we look for a political savior. With the election just a few weeks behind us, we see too well the corrupting effect of worldly power. Those who claim the title “Christian” are digging in behind their favorite candidate, refusing to yield to basic truth. As Catholics, of course, we should put our trust in Christ our King over any political party, shouldn’t we?

This is the context of our first reading from Ezekiel. This is the context in which the Lord says, to us today as much as to Israel then: “the lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal; but the sleek and the strong I will destroy, shepherding them rightly.”

The sleek and the strong He shall destroy, shepherding them rightly. It doesn’t seem entirely consistent with the image from the Psalm — of the gentle shepherd who leads us by restful waters and refreshes our soul. But as we look at this larger picture of Israel’s general bad luck with earthly kings, we see this as God restoring a sense of justice. God plunders the plunderers; he conquers the conquerors; he brings his flocks back into their rightful pasture.

Saint Paul touches on this in our second reading, as he identifies Christ as the culmination of God’s promise through Ezekiel. “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” The sleek and the strong, the tyrants, the bullies; those shepherds who scatter the flocks instead of gathering them together, those who pasture themselves, will be brought down by the reign of Christ.

And the last enemy to be destroyed, Paul tells us, is death. The ultimate bully, that final tyrant — death is that which gives all other tyrants their power. Life and death is the ultimate power one man may hold over another — the power to give life or bring death. And no man has power over life, so the tyrant must deal in death.

God, of course, has the ultimate authority over life, and none of us, no earthly power can ever take that from him. The fear of death is all we have, those of us who are not God; if we can’t give life we can at least threaten death.

So Christ, in conquering death, has extinguished that power. The lords of this world have nothing more to threaten us with. It is in this final victory that Christ has liberated us from all fear, all cares, all worry for this life.

This is actually a remarkable truth of our faith which I think we often don’t appreciate. And that’s not to say that we should take our life for granted or be careless with this greatest of God’s gifts. But how often do we truly stop to consider that our God has liberated us from the fear of Death? To think about what that truly means? Now that death has no hold on us, we are finally, truly free. So what do we do with this freedom?

Saint Paul concludes this reading, saying “when everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected…” This is the truly radical part of the reign of Christ — that the King becomes the subject. The Conqueror relinquishes his conquest. He has cast down the mighty from their throne, but instead of stepping into their place, he lifts up the lowly.

And even more than that, the Gospel shows us how Christ has not merely humbled the exalted and exalted the humble; he has completely upended the social structure of the world as we know it.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him,” when he comes to pass judgement on all the nations, he hands that authority over to the poor, the downtrodden, and the lowly. This, then, is the final culmination of Ezekiel’s prophecy. Christ the King, the Good Shepherd, will pasture his flock by becoming one with them. He becomes the servant of all, and in so doing he invites us to serve one another.

This gives us a completely different understanding of conquest. Christ does not conquer by force, but by love. He will destroy the sleek and the strong through what Saint Oscar Romero called the “violence of love” … “the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us.” The challenge of Christ the conqueror is for each of us to cast down our own strength, our pride, our ambition from their throne within our heart, and to lift up the lowliness of humility and servitude, built on love.

Love is the foundation of the Kingdom of God, and service is the active form of love. We know this from our own relationships, within our families and among our friends — we express our love in what we do for those we love, always seeking the good of the loved one above our own. This is the essence of Christ’s Kingdom.

As we celebrate this Solemnity of Christ the King, one of Christ’s royal titles we recognize is that of the “Servant King.” And we see him fulfill this role in so many ways — as he washes the apostles’ feet; as he heals the sick; as he feeds the crowds; and most of all as he submits to death on the cross. In love and service, he sets the example he expects us to follow.

And he spells it out for us, here in the Gospel. If you see me hungry, give me food. If you see me thirsty, give me drink. Welcome the stranger; clothe the naked; care for the sick; visit the imprisoned — these acts, these Corporal Works of Mercy, are what make our faith real.

Because in the end, when the Son of Man comes in his glory, with all his angels with him, the Christ who will sit in judgement will be the Christ we meet in the beggar; the homeless; the destitute and the downtrodden. It will be those most in need, those who in life were denied their share of the gifts of God’s Creation, who we will answer to. Did we participate in the world’s neglect, seeking our own ends, pasturing ourselves? Or do we see, and recognize, that in the poorest and humblest of people we encounter and serve our Lord and King?