Tonight we hear the famous words of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.’ What is God stirring us to do? What are we doing with this renewed energy? What can we create with it? A deeper love for those who have too little, a stronger commitment to justice in the world, aligning what we say with how we act. A wider embrace for human beings who long to trust they are loved by no less a person than Christ, our true King. When we are stirred up, we are paying attention, alert to injustice, ready to act.
Philip Alston’s UN report on poverty in the UK has stirred many. Here is a brief excerpt:
‘homelessness is up 60% since 2010, rough sleeping is up 134%. There are 1.2 million people on the social housing waiting list, but less than 6,000 homes were built last year. Food bank use is up almost fourfold since 2012.’ So many in this city, as we gather here tonight, are in urgent need, serious pain, and profound worry. There are 320 000 homeless people in the UK. That’s the entire population of Coventry. Without shelter and living hour to hour. Our King, Jesus Christ, is always on the side of the poor. Our King is in the food bank, our King is with the homeless, our King is with the single parent afraid to choose between buying shoes for her son or heating their dilapidated home.
We must also be stirred up by violence that destroys lives in this city, resolving to resist it. This morning over 40 people offered responses in the Citizens UK Commission on Youth Violence, naming shared problems and fears, suggesting solutions, and campaigning for change so that lives may be saved. Today is also the UN International Day of the Elimination of Violence Against Women. From 25 November until 10 December the Anglican Communion holds 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. We work together to make the world a better place for all women and girls, through education, advocacy, support, and prayer. Throughout this time, there will be information about this in the south chapel, and I would encourage you to take part and to pray for all who face violence simply because they are female.
Christ our King stands in solidarity and hope with all girls and women who endure horrendous suffering. Christ our King teaches us that we are not objects, mere bodies to be controlled or denigrated, but his beloved subjects – honoured, respected, freed from others’ prejudice and inequality.
The Old and New Testament readings share a common theme, together with that ‘Stir up Sunday’ prayer, which means much more than Christmas puddings. That common theme is: eating. The feast in Daniel and feast in John’s Gospel could not be more different from each other. Belshazzar’s feast is infamously opulent, palatial, and dripping with luxury. It is also a moment of crisis, as the terrified king demands that Daniel interpret the mysterious graffiti that crashes his party.
The feast that Jesus offers his followers is a response to need, not greed: spontaneous, simple, and holy. The food that Belshazzar offers flows from exploitation and a fundamental misunderstanding about what being a king really is, and what this role requires. The food that Jesus offers flows from compassion alone, and God’s love is the source of the miraculous multiplication that allows each person, regardless of status or background, to eat more than enough.
At both feasts, there is far more food than is required. In Belshazzar’s case, this is a sign of overindulgence, greed, and gaudy display. He is ‘weighed in the balance and found wanting’. ‘God in whose power is [his] very breath…[he has] not honoured.’ In Jesus’ case, the miraculous feast is a sign of God’s lively abundance, which will be provided for everyone beyond what anyone gathered on that patch of grass, hungry for knowledge and hungry for bread, can imagine.
Our reading from John’s Gospel ends strangely. The people, full of bread, overjoyed, want to make Jesus their king. This is a good thing, surely – they have recognised his power and his potential to lead them, and want to honour him for it and obey him. Maybe, if they do everything right and praise him constantly, there will be so much bread that they’ll never have to starve again. Jesus’ reaction tells us that the kind of king they have in mind bears no authentic relationship to who Jesus really is. When they attempt to crown Jesus as their leader, they reveal that they don’t yet know that Jesus is King, and a sacrificial, subversive one who will not rule over a faction, but transform the world. They would, perhaps, do little more than assume that Jesus could be a benign and powerful Belshazzar.
The Feast of Christ the King is relatively new, instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as a response to growing nationalism and secularisation. He wanted to draw attention back to the core Christian truth of Christ as the ultimate ruler, who leads by offering his life so that we become part of God’s own family and find our home in Christ’s own heart. Today is a chance to ask ourselves some profoundly important questions: Who really is my king? Who am I serving when I speak, think, and act? Who receives my devotion and allegiance? Who really has my heart? Or maybe it’s a thing, or a company, or an idea, or an addiction. What controls us? Whatever it is, whoever it is, if we are honest with ourselves and discover that the answer we give might not be ‘Jesus’, we can choose to rediscover the who we are tonight. The more we are open to the idea that no leader, and no activity, can ever be more powerful than Christ our King, the more our sense of purpose and wholeness can grow.
This is the message at the centre of R. S. Thomas’ poem, ‘The Kingdom’:
It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones of the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.
No need for pride, for ego, for trying to outdo someone, or get the best bargains in Black Friday sales, or do something to prove you’re worth loving. No need to control others or to punish ourselves. Just be yourself, come as you are, and trust that you are enough. Because Christ is King, real power is found only in divine love that sets us free. That freedom is awake in us, telling us the truth, and stirring us up. Amen.