Reigning with Christ
25 November 2007
Few recognized the dangers of political power as clearly as Lord Acton, who became Regius Professor of Modern History in Cambridge in 1895. He understood that rulers put their own interests above all and will do just about anything to stay in power. They routinely lie. They smear their competitors. They seize others’ money and goods. They destroy property. Sometimes they assassinate people, even mark down multitudes for slaughter. A Catholic, he was an outspoken critic of Catholic intolerance, even if it brought him into conflict with Catholic authority. Because he was not prepared to condone the abuse of power wherever it was to be found, he was unable to accept that the historian’s role was only to explain events and not to make moral judgements about them, insisting that evil actions, like murder, were always evil. “The papacy contrived murder and massacred on the largest and also on the most cruel and inhuman scale,” he wrote, referring to the Inquisition. “They were not only wholesale assassins, but they made the principle of assassination a law of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.” He was, he confided to a friend, among those “who sacrifice the real to the ideal, interest to duty, authority to morality.” And so it was that Acton found fault with the Anglican historian Mandell Creighton who, in his History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation, did not condemn the medieval papacy, the promoter of the Inquisition. Acton and Creighton had a cordial correspondence which led to Acton’s most unforgettable lines, written in April 1887: “I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as power increases …… Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The celebration of today’s feast confronts us with the divine meaning of power and authority and kingship. In modern Western culture, monarchs do not exercise much power. However, in our study of history, both of the state and of the Church, we see power exercised absolutely as Acton all too frequently found. In the Bible, we find the same, Saul and David being no exceptions. But what we celebrate today is the power of Jesus Christ, the Universal King, who never used his power to his own advantage. And as we seek to understand this authority, real and effective though it is, we realize that it is very different from power as the world perceives it. And so, we must suppose, we must not presume that we know what it is we are celebrating. Today, then, we are to discover the power of Jesus, how it works and what are its effects, so that we can celebrate it.
So what is Jesus’ way of exercising power? What constitutes his kingship? What is this divine way which is so contrary to worldly displays of power? Our Gospel reading invites us to consider this extraordinary paradox – that Jesus exercises power as he hangs on the cross. How does St Luke present Jesus to us? He hangs between two criminals, “one on the right and one on the left,” as Luke puts it dramatically two verses before today’s Gospel begins. There is no question of Jesus’ cross being slightly higher than the others, as in some representations of the scene. We feel for Jesus as we imagine the scene. He is mocked by the religious leaders and the soldiers and by one of the criminals. Their humiliating taunt is surely true: he saved others, but now he cannot save himself. But the truth is, of course, that he will not save himself, and that goes to the heart of Jesus’ divine display of kingly power. Jesus freely enters into that lowly and humiliating state so that he can reveal God’s power, and that power is the power of divine love, that same love which is an extension of, or continuing expression of, God’s creative energy. “God so loved that he gave” is what St John tells us. As the creator he cannot let go of loving, a loving that now expresses itself finally and completely in the redeeming death of the Son.
One of the criminals rebuked the other who railed at Jesus and abused him. As he acknowledged the justice of his sentence, he proclaimed the innocence of Jesus, asking to be remembered when he would enter into his kingdom. So he for one recognized the kingly power of Jesus on the cross. And it is here in Jesus’ answer to the good thief that he invites us to share with him in the effects of his power where the lowly are lifted up and set in the company of princes. The good thief is the perfect symbol of this process and we must enter with deep emotion into his moment of grace. Up to that moment he was nobody, but now, because Jesus shares his shameful fate, he has his moment of history, a moment of grace and truth. Jesus praises him for his faith and, how extraordinary, they both enter into paradise together. This is surely a unique moment in the history of mankind, a sacred moment when God’s power is at its height, when the great high priest is reconciling the world to God – but what do we see? Two crucified men, hanging side by side, yet one is the Saviour, the other the saved, and only the eyes of faith will perceive this. What a judgement it is on how the world judges greatness or holiness, whether of people or of places!
St Paul, writing whilst “wearing fetters like a criminal,” as he says in his second letter to Timothy, says this to us: “If we have died with (Jesus), we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him… (2:12). Jesus’ way of exercising power, the divine way, and his invitation to us to share in it, is good news for us, as it is for all mankind. It is a call to conversion as we become aware of how little this kind of power is known and practised, even by Jesus’ followers, as Acton lamented as he surveyed the history of the Church. As we repent for the way Christians have misrepresented the power of God so often to the world in ways that have not revealed the image of our crucified Lord, we can only feel a longing for the coming of God’s kingdom. As Advent approaches, we can only cry out with the whole creation as it groans, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom!” That kingdom, we know, is a kingdom of truth, honesty, integrity, and love. And the Church must never be still as it plants seeds of that kingdom in human hearts, inviting all men and women to reign with Jesus Christ
The Rt Revd Roger Jupp SSC Vicar, Christ Church, St Leonard's, and sometime Bishop of Popondota