Christ, a King like no other
What could possibly make an army of 400,000 soldiers afraid of one woman? How could one of the cruelest military regimes in the world be so terrified of a frail 65 year old womanwith a gracious smile and a garland of fresh flowers in her hair? The woman they were afraid of was Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s lawfully elected leader since 1990who was released after nearly 2 decades of house arrest in 2010.Her crime for all those years spent under house arrest? It was very simple. She spoke the truth. And she worked tirelessly to give to the people of Burma what is their right…the right to choose their own leaders without the use of force or violence.And following Suu Kyi’s example, the people of Burma spoke with almost one unanimous voice for democracy, and that voice has been way too powerful to be silenced even by the power of violence or the gun.
For sure,a man or a woman with a gun can take another person’s life. But they can never take their freedom. And freedom is our greatest weapon in the struggle for truth. A woman or a man with a gun might be powerful…but they’re really only cowards…And cowards aren’t free…They’re not free to meet the other as an equal…They haven’t the freedom to risk respecting and loving the other…The other becomes a threat to be eradicated…The gun makes its bearer a prisoner in his own ideologies…
It’s the defenceless one without the gun who’s free. Free from fear of the other’s difference. Free meet the other person half way. Free to be able to respect and to love the other…
Suu Kyi had a simple motto that she uttered time and time again when confronted with violence: “I have no fear…”she has no fear, because she’s not the one that’s been imprisoned really…she has no fear, because although others can harm her body and take her physical freedom and lock her up no-one has the power to take her freedom to believe and to speak the truth…
That’s what the Feast of Christ the King is all about. Its about the triumph of truth over falsehood. Its about triumph of freedom over enslavement…Because the Son of God has a freedom that no earthly power can ever take from him…They could (and did) persecute him…they could torture him…they could take away his physical freedom, imprison and crucify Jesus, but they could never take his freedom to speak the truth…the freedom to be who he was…
There have been great empires and kingdoms down through the ages, whose power and glory it seemed would never end…but all of them have come and gone.The most they enjoy now is a page or two in our history books…
But Jesus Christ, had no earthly power…he enjoyed none of the wealth or glory of worldly kings and leaders, yet his presence and his mission in the world had such an impact on humanity, that his birth even changed the way we record time…Christ the Universal King doesn’t just stand for the truth, like the great prophets of our time who fight for truth and justice…Christ IS the Truth…the truth of God’s love for each of us…
Like the good thief on the Cross, our encounter with Christ brings us to the truth of God’s love. And its God’s love alone that has the the power to set us free…
In the words of a beautiful Irish prayer:
“O king of the Friday, Whose limbs were stretched on the Cross. O Lord who did suffer, the bruises, the wounds, the loss. We stretch ourselves, beneath the shield of thy might,
Some fruit from the tree of thy passion, fall on us this night”
DG