Good evening, your majesties!
I read that “On being presented to Royalty, men ought to bow (from the neck and not the waist) and women should curtsey.” So I can do one of those all right. And I pray that I may be able to serve you well this evening. There is, of course, no doubt at all that I am here at your service!
I have addressed you all as kings and queens – I wonder if you even considered yourselves to be members of the Royal Family. But I think it must be so, because the Kingdom of God is not at all like an earthly kingdom.
This dispute that we heard about in the Gospel reading – let’s first of all have it clear in our minds when it arose. It was at the Last Supper. The meal is finished. Picture it. Jesus has his closest followers around him. He has just broken and given them the bread, and passed around the cup of wine, explaining to them that this is his body and his blood, and commanding them to do the same in remembrance of him. It’s the deepest, the most solemn and the holiest moment of communion, in which we too will be sharing in a few minutes’ time.
Immediately after sharing the cup, Jesus breaks the news that one of them is to betray him, and the twelve begin “to question among themselves which of them it might be”. Clearly, whoever is going to do this is the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth, and no-one wanted to think of himself in that light.
And that’s the very point where today’s reading starts: “Also a dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest.” In a way it was the obvious corollary of not wanting to think of themselves as the lowest of the low: wanting to establish who was the highest of the high. If there was a worst among them, then presumably there must also be a best.
But are we really celebrating and sharing in an event at which the apostles of Jesus Christ squabbled about status? In any case, what difference would being the best make? Presumably the others would look up to you. Either that, or try to show that they were just as good, or even better. Some sort of social process would take place whereby each would elbow each other into a natural rank order – a sort of a jungle law, where, as in the animal kingdom, competition and dominance establish a pecking order.
I ask you, could anything, anything at all, be further removed from the kind of following that Jesus was, at that very solemn moment, trying to engender? He knows he must immediately and urgently get down to their level and explain things so that they can really understand them.
And so he starts to talk about kings, kingship and kingdoms. This is familiar territory, which they can relate to. “The kings of the Gentiles,” he says, “lord it over them, and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that.” No lording it over others, then. No concept of yourself as someone who does good to others. Equality is the watchword. No-one is better than anyone else. Let’s get as far as possible away from thinking about ourselves as remotely resembling kings. Indeed, he goes on, if there is a natural pecking order, then turn it upside-down. “The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.”
And at this point, he turns the attention on himself. It’s obvious that, with the authority of his teaching and acts of power, and his assumption of leadership, they would regard him as the greatest among them? And Jesus is well aware of this. So he asks them this question: whether it’s the one at the table or the one serving that is greater, and the obvious answer is ‘the one at the table’. But Jesus says, “I am among you as one that serves.” – not only saying it, but demonstrating it in the very sharing of bread and wine that he has just enacted.
If he had stopped there, it would already have been a major lesson. If they had really grasped that, then Jesus could have breathed a sigh of relief. He’d managed to explain it in a way they could understand. Target achieved! Go on, off to play now!
But Jesus hasn’t got much time. He knows he isn’t going to be with them for long – at least not in the same way – and he has to go on to make the next statement, a statement which, to my mind, is one of the most amazing things Jesus ever said. He says, “I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me.”
Now we really can’t let such a statement just slip by, as if it were just a group of words: we must try to unpack it a little. He says his Father conferred a kingdom on him. When? Was it when he came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey? Was it at the Transfiguration? Or at his Baptism? Was it at his birth, when the wise men brought gold? Was it at his conception, when Gabriel announced, “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.”? Or was it at the beginning of time? And when did Jesus know about his kingship? Well, I’m afraid we can’t exactly answer any of these questions. All we can do is look for the moment in the gospel where he first acknowledges his kingship. In this statement, Jesus makes it clear that he has had a kingdom conferred on him by his heavenly Father. But when does he say so, before this moment, or even suggest it? And the answer is: Never! This is the very first mention of his kingship – other than in those words of Gabriel, which, you may have noticed, are all in the future tense.
And what accompanies this very first acknowledgement of his position as king? Well, he gives it away! Indeed, the giving away makes up the first part of his statement, his own kingship comes second: “I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me.” Sharing and enabling are absolutely instinctive to him. Now, if he has received a kingdom from God, it follows that he has authority to confer it on his disciples. So, in accepting it from him, they are also accepting that he is entitled to do this.
Now let’s consider what happens to Jesus’s kingship when he gives it away. Does he lose it? Are his status or his authority lessened? No, they’re not. Jesus is king, just as much after empowering his disciples with kingship as before. Notice that he doesn’t say, “I confer on you the kingdom, just as my Father conferred it on me.” The Kingdom of God is not a thing; it’s not a territory with boundaries like an earthly kingdom. Conferring it on someone else is not an abdication – absolutely not! As I said earlier, the Kingdom of God is not at all like an earthly kingdom.
But it’s not much good saying what the Kingdom of God isn’t like, unless we end up with an idea of what it is like. As you will know, Jesus spends a great deal of his ministry time preaching and teaching about the Kingdom. And when he sends out the twelve, what he tells them to do is to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. “What is the kingdom of God like?” he asks. “What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches.” Does that help? Well, it suggests the power to grow, if planted, into something which is a good place to be for many freedom-loving creatures.
“Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ’The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” because the kingdom of God is within you.’” And so when we say “Thy kingdom come,” we are praying for God’s rule within us.
But again, we seem to have more negatives than positives. If we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” how do we recognize whether our prayer has been answered? In modern parlance, what are the success criteria? If we are praying for God’s rule within, what is the nature of that rule?
To answer that question, I don’t think we can do better than look back at today’s reading. We accept that Jesus rules. And he says, “the one who rules [should be] like the one who serves... I am among you as one who serves.” So the character of his rule is the desire to serve. That’s how we recognize it. Jesus is the Servant King. That is the kingdom that was conferred on him by his Father. So when we pray, “Thy kingdom come” we are praying for the desire to serve to grow within us – just like a mustard seed which grows to make a good place for other freedom-loving creatures.
That is how Jesus can jump from saying “I am among you as one who serves” to saying, “I confer on you a kingdom,” as the kingdom is a kingdom of service. How far that is from the sort of kingdom that Jesus started talking about when he heard the disciples disputing about who was the greatest among them.
Now, has kingdom of service been planted within us, ready to grow? If so, then surely we can say that a kingdom has been conferred on us too, so that we too “may eat and drink at God’s table, and sit on thrones.” But if your majesties are still not convinced of your royal credentials, let me just bring in two final pieces of evidence.
First, the inspired insights of C.S. Lewis in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. As you know, Aslan, the lion, is king. The White Witch calls herself ‘Queen’, but she isn’t really: she is nothing more than a witch. But Aslan isn’t the only king. Remember, Peter and Edmund are also kings, and Susan and Lucy true queens. We are obviously in the same area of understanding, where many kings and queens can co-exist without rivalry or instability. But are those four particularly special? Well, we all love Lucy, I suppose, but aren’t the others horrid to her to start with? And what about Edmund? Isn’t he the lowest of the low? Isn’t he the betrayer? So how come he’s a king? But there is a throne at Cair Paravel, even for him. And, as we are told, once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen.”
Second, the inspired insights of St. Paul; he writes to the Romans, “we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.” and to the Galatians. “God sent his Son … that we might receive the full rights of sons.” And since here that involves an inheritance of royal status. we can conclude, your majesties, that, as Jesus’s disciples, we have had a kingdom conferred on us. So “Come! Take your inheritance: the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world!”