Jesus, The King of Mercy

Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King

The way in which we read the various Gospels each Sunday gives us something of a patchwork quilt of the narrative. The only way to read the Gospel as each of the authors intended is to sit with the entire story and read it as we would any other story, from beginning to end. Obviously, as we gather for our weekly worship, it is impossible to do this, and, consequently, we must be satisfied with getting it in smaller pieces.

However, if we were to read St. Luke’s Gospel from beginning to end, we would discover what a powerful story it is and how masterfully St. Luke composed his version of the Gospel as a continuous narrative. The infancy narrative that stands at the beginning of this Gospel gives us a chance to meditate upon the basic theme of the Gospel; namely, that anyone wishing to be great in God’s kingdom must make himself small. God chooses people who are best described as the leftovers, the remnant of Israel. Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, and Simeon and Anna are people of no consequence in the hierarchy of Jerusalem or Israel. Elizabeth the barren, Anna the widow, and Mary the maid of Nazareth would not ordinarily be destined for greatness. Zechariah, a rural priest, Joseph, a carpenter, and Simeon, a zealot, would, if it were not for the part they play in the great mystery of the incarnation of God, be forgettable characters. Yet it is these little ones that God uses to bring about the great mystery of God’s presence in our midst. When Mary sings her praise of God, she powerfully illustrates God’s intention. God has “shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart. He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty.” The infancy narrative begins in the Temple of Jerusalem with the Annunciation of John’s birth and ends in the very same Temple as Jesus confounds the elders of Jerusalem. It acts as an introduction or prelude before the body or meat of the narrative. I mean

The actual ministry of Jesus begins in in a synagogue of Nazareth where Jesus takes a scroll and opens it to the messianic prophecy of Isaiah. He proclaims that prophecy: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Rolling up the scroll, he looks into the faces of his neighbors and says: “Today, this prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing.” Over the next nineteen chapters of his text, St. Luke tells us of how Jesus gives sight to the blind, cast out demons, makes the lame to walk, cures lepers, and even raises the son of the widow of Nain as he is being carried out to his tomb. When people ask if Jesus is the Messiah, the promised one, he responds by telling them to look at his deeds.

In chapter nine of the Gospel, Jesus resolutely determines to walk to Jerusalem. On his way there, he reveals to his disciples, not once but three times, that he will be handed over to the elders and scribes who will put him to death for. However, he will not be deterred in making his way to Jerusalem knowing what will happen to him when he arrives. In today’s passage from the Gospel of St. Luke, Jesus actually makes good on Isaiah’s prophecy as he releases his fellow captive and promises to remember him in paradise. Throughout the Gospel, St. Luke has shown Jesus to be the very compassion of God as he reaches out to the poor and heals the sick. Yet it is when he is at his weakest point, in his most vulnerable state, as he is dying on a cross, that he displays the very essence of compassion as he forgives the sins of a thief.

As we all know, this act of forgiveness is not the climax of the Gospel, for in the final chapter of the Gospel, Jesus rises from the dead and appears to his disciples in the upper room after bolstering the confidence and courage of two of those disciples who, for all intents and purposes, have given up and decided to return to their home in Emmaus. However, by granting the thief’s request as he hangs on the cross, Jesus reminds all of us that forgiveness can be ours if we simply admit our guilt. This is the good news of the Gospel. This is the message that the apostles are commissioned to preach throughout the world, the message of reconciliation.

The proclamation of the prophecy of Isaiah in chapter four and the act of forgiveness in chapter twenty-three stand as the book ends to the ministerial life of Jesus. As he makes his way to Jerusalem, he continues to instruct his disciples in word and deed. Today, the supreme irony of the Gospel is revealed as Pilate orders that a plaque to be posted above the head of the crucified Jesus proclaiming him the King of the Jews. Yes, he is the king not only of the Jews but of all those who believe that he is the Christ, the anointed one of God, sent to remind us that true greatness and true power lie in littleness and weakness and vulnerability. He is the merciful King of the Universe, the great reconciliation of humankind. Is it any wonder that the Gospel has been called, “The Greatest Story Ever Told”?