Christ the King

Crucifixion, 15th century, with the Good Thief to your left.

Welcome to the Christmas—that is, the Advent—season. This last Sunday was the Feast of Christ the King. It is the last Sunday of the liturgical year, which begins anew with Advent.

The Gospel, from Luke (23: 35-43), tells of the crucifixion of Jesus as “King of the Jews.” A bit odd, at first glance, for the celebration of Christ's kingship at the end of time.

The rulers sneered at Jesus and said,

"He saved others, let him save himself

if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God." 

Even the soldiers jeered at him. 

As they approached to offer him wine they called out,

"If you are King of the Jews, save yourself." 

Above him there was an inscription that read,

"This is the King of the Jews."

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying,

"Are you not the Christ?

Save yourself and us." 

The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply,

"Have you no fear of God,

for you are subject to the same condemnation?

And indeed, we have been condemned justly,

for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes,

but this man has done nothing criminal."

Then he said,

"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

He replied to him,

"Amen, I say to you,

today you will be with me in Paradise."

Above him there was an inscription that read “This is the King of the Jews.” That's it.

If not humour—not a lot of laughs at a multiple execution--there is obvious irony here. The rulers and soldiers mock Jesus for being quite visibly not a king; and yet this genuinely represents his true coronation as Christ the King, ruler of the cosmos.

Crazy? Not so—the point is, this fact is apparent at the time. Apparent, not to the rulers of this world, but to one of the two thieves executed with him. The second thief says to Jesus, “remember me when you come into your kingdom”--despite the obvious appearances, right then and there, he understands that Jesus really is the King. And right at that moment: “today,” Jesus responds, “you will be with me in Paradise.”

Jesus (your right) welcomes Dismas (your left) into Paradise.

How is this possible?

Note first that Jesus's reference to “today” does not seem to mean the obvious, that they are both about to die and go to heaven. It is not just that one would expect the thief to first spend some time in Purgatory for his crimes—perhaps dying on a cross means that he has already paid all debts in this life. It is that Jesus himself does not go directly to Heaven—he spends three days harrowing Hell first.

No—“today” in this reading must be the “Eternal Now”--once we get there, all days are today in heaven, including not just days in the future, but days in the past as well—in the same sense that “The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You” at all times. Even on the cross, Jesus was already the Cosmic Christ, and Dismas was already in paradise. The grace of the crucifixion radiates backwards as well as forwards in time.

So it is already and always the Feast of Christ the King.

The Good Thief enters Paradise (your left).

The next obvious question is, how does St. Dismas know? How does this man, despite all appearances to the contrary, know more or less instantly that the man being crucified next to him is the King of the Universe? Would we know, in his position?

As readers here, we know only two things about Dismas—the gospel gives us only two clues to the source of this great insight. First, we know with certainly—he has himself admitted, had we not the authorities' word for it as well—that he is a sinner, a thief. St. Dismas is being executed for an act that genuinely deserves execution in his own estimation. Second, we know that he has a very strong sense of justice, of right and wrong. Even in the face of his own death, he is not as concerned about death as about the question of whether it is rightful or not. And, even at the point of his own death, his first concern is the wrong being done to the man beside him.

It is a question of justice, too, not merely compassion for Jesus as a sufferer. For, were the Good Thief motivated by compassion instead of justice, wouldn't he be equally compassionate to the thief who mocks Jesus? Yet he makes the firm distinction—the other thief deserves his fate. He didn't have to say that, did he?

When Dismas says, “remember me when you come into your kingdom,” therefore, we can be certain, even given the little we know about him, that St. Dismas means this earnestly, not just as a comfortable lie to ease a delusional neighbour's last moments. This is not a man for comfortable or convenient lies, for himself or others.

How does he know? Not because he is a great sinner—welcome to the human condition. It must be, instead, because of this uncommonly strong sense of justice.

Being a moral absolutist, having a clear and inelastic view of right and wrong—even though he obviously did not always follow its direction—St. Dismas

If, then, one sees these unjust rulers put a man to torture and death, at the same time mocking him, as if he were the worst of all possible criminals, and there is no visible, credible reason for them to condemn the man, the case is obvious: this must be the rightful ruler.

This should indeed be equally apparent to us. Christ crucified is Christ crowned as rightful king of the world. It is, accordingly, the height of theological mischief to try to avert attention from the crucifixion.

Given that for Dismas, right and wrong are absolute and inalienable values, they necessarily cannot be made to be otherwise than they are. This is like the doctrine of human rights: the rights are real and absolute regardless of whether this or that government recognizes them. Therefore, regardless of present appearances, Jesus really is king. So Dismas addresses him as such.

Jesus corrects him, slightly. Dismas imagines this present, physical world as a place of exile, from which Jesus will “come into his kingdom” in the future, as perhaps he departed from it at some past date. Dismas is still speaking from the viewpoint of the present, physical world. Jesus, speaking from the viewpoint of eternity, corrects him: you and I, he explains, are in Paradise today.

So are we all, if God is on the next cross.

And hence this reading is appropriate for the Feast of Christ the King.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Heaven, with the Good Thief entering at the upper right.
All images courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

As a separate reflection, emerging from the reading, the extent to which Jesus, the rightful ruler, is acknowledged as such is a precisely accurate measure of the legitimacy and moral uprightness of any leader or regime, in any “Western” (i.e., historically Christian) jurisdiction.