Today we are celebrating the feast of Christ the King. It was a hundred years ago in December 1925 that Pope Pius XI wrote his encyclical entitled Quas Primas (it means “that which is first”). In it he decreed that the church should celebrate a feast to be known as Christ the King. Initially it was to be celebrated on the Sunday immediately before All Saints, but it was moved in 1969 to the last Sunday of the church’s year, the Sunday before Advent. And so here we are today.

If we were to look back to 1925, we would see that it had been a quite extraordinary year. Pope Pius had watched the various events of that year unfold in front of him and he was hugely concerned about what he saw as the rising tide of secularism and nationalism. Let me remind you of some of the things he would have seen as he looked out from the Vatican.

On January 3 Mussolini made a speech in the Italian parliament through which he effectively became the dictator of Italy and the democratic constitution fell into the background and the rule of violence became the order of the day.

On April 10 Scott Fitzgerald published his novel The Great Gatsby which was a celebration of the hedonism of the jazz age. Three weeks ago President Trump held a Halloween party at Mar a Lago in which guests were invited to attend ‘the Great Gatsby Party’.

On July 18 Adolf Hitler publish Mein Kampf, part one. It had been written while he was serving a prison sentence for a failed coup in 1923. As you almost certainly will know the focus of the book was the threat, he said, that Jews posed to the survival of the German people, and it led to the revival of anti-Semitism.

Between July 10-21 in Tennessee, a teacher was accused of teaching evolution, and he was tried in what became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. The basis of the case against him was that a fundamentalist interpretation of the creation story was the only allowable one.

On August 8 the Ku Klux Klan – a white supremacist group – had 30 to 35,000 of its members march in full regalia down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC.

On Oct 2, what you might think of as a more positive note, the very first TV pictures were broadcast by John Logie Baird

On November 9 the Schutzstaffel, better known as the SS, was formed as a personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler.

You may recognise quite a number of the underlying beliefs that shaped those events as beliefs that continue to underpin quite a lot of activity in our own day and age. I wonder what resonated with you as I listed those events? Was it the nationalism which seems to be growing rapidly across the world we thought of as global and democratic? Was it the failure of democratic institutions to stand up to increasing autocracy? Was it the othering and demonising of groups said to be a threat to our national life? Was it the rise of a purported Christian nationalism that rejects rather than welcomes the stranger? Was it the anti-Semitism we have witnessed in recent months? Was it the increasing gap between rich and poor? Or was it perhaps the conflict between a fundamentalist approach to the bible and our growing understanding of so much in our world, not least in the area of sexuality and marriage.

As Pope Pius surveyed and reflected on those and other events he was rightly alarmed. He decided that the only answer to all that was to call the church and the world to focus upon the kingship of Christ, which he believed was the only answer to the needs of the world.

Our first lesson spoke powerfully about that Kingship of Christ, both its origin and its extent. Christ through whom all things were created and in whom all things now hold together; who having been raised from death now has the first place in everything. Everything we can see in this universe and everything we cannot see has been created by Jesus Christ. There is no nation, no government, no earthly ruler, who has not been created through Jesus and for Jesus. That is why he is called the King of kings. And the only reason that things in this world haven’t fallen completely apart is also because of him. In him all things hold together. He is the glue holding the world together.

And Paul tells us that we have been rescued and transferred into his Kingdom where we experience forgiveness and where find ourselves in a Kingdom marked by reconciliation and peace.

These are huge sweeping statements about Christ’s total pre-eminence and its effect. And if we grasped those truths, surely it would alter any self-centred and nation-centred thinking and acting.

Can you imagine a world in which whenever the leaders of countries met each other – one to one or in larger groups – they began by acknowledging together that Jesus Christ is King, and King of kings. And perhaps that before discussing any item on their agenda they would say together “Jesus Christ is King”. That may have been the dream that Pope Pius had when launching this feast day.

But if Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords you may well be asking why is our gospel reading about the crucifixion and not for instance about the transfiguration? Isn’t his crucifixion the opposite of his Kingship? Or at the very least, a precursor which we can move on from and then focus on the glory of his being seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

The answer is a very definite “No”. It is at the place of his crucifixion that we see what his kingship is really all about. There was much talk in that place – the place called “the skull” – about his kingship. His claims of kingship were mocked by the religious and political leaders, by the soldiers and by the person we know as the first thief. The crowd who had welcomed him with palms only a week earlier were now silent.

So how and why does a King, let alone the King of kings, allow himself to be killed in the most dreadful fashion imaginable? What kind of king reigns from a cross? Of course, we know the answer to that. It was only by dying that he could save us and could defeat all those powers that rage against him.

There were two thieves being executed alongside him. The first one joins in the mockery of this supposed king challenging him to save himself and them if he is really the Messiah.  But the second thief gets it. He knows that he deserves to die for what he has done wrong, and he recognises that Jesus unlike them has done nothing wrong, but that through his dying Jesus will be entering into his kingdom, which is a kingdom where death will have been defeated. And so in a truly remarkable cry of faith he asks to be remembered by Jesus when he enters that kingdom. And Jesus promises that he will be in paradise with him.

Let’s again imagine those world leaders meeting together and acknowledging Christ’s Kingship, and adding to it now an acknowledment that he is a King who laid down his life for others and calls us to follow him and do the same.

As you know we are coming to the end of the church’s year. Next week we begin a new year as we enter into Advent. In Advent our focus is on Jesus coming to his kingdom as we prepare to celebrate his first coming, and we look forward to his coming again when he will bring in his kingdom in all its fullness.

It may be a time for new year resolutions. But as we look out at our world, as Pope Pius looked at his, you may feel there is not a lot to be positive about. There is much that we are concerned about that is way outside our control.

And so often we are not in control not only of world events but of our own personal circumstances. And so we often find ourselves troubled and fearful. We may not be able to change our circumstances, but it is our response to those circumstances that we can do something about.

I don’t know how familiar you are with the Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. But I am reminded of one of his better known passages in the Fellowship of the Ring. We may not be in the midst of a war fighting Sauron, but like Frodo, we might be pretty scared of what we are facing as we struggle with all that is going on in our lives and in our world. Frodo speaking to Gandalf expressed his wishes that “it need not have happened in my time”, to which the wise Gandalf replied: “so do all who live to see such times. But it is not for us to decide. All we have to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given to us”.

Later at the end of this service we will pray the Prayer Book collect for the Sunday before Advent. We will be asking God to stir up the wills of his faithful people to produce the fruit of good works.

So on this feast of Christ the King, our calling is to follow our King who embraced the cross as the mark of his Kingship – giving up his life – that we might live and follow in his footsteps in his Kingdom of reconciliation and peace.

Amen.