And Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (NRSV, Matthew 28:18).
You may have noticed that whereas crucifixes in this country and in Western Europe usually depict Christ as our Saviour hanging in agony on the Cross, those of the Eastern Church are of Christ the King in royal robes.
There is no contradiction here, for each gives expression to one part of the twofold theme of the Saviour-King which runs through the Christian faith. Thus before Our Lord’s Birth the angel told Joseph that Our Lady would bear a Son “and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (NRSV, Matthew 1:21). In contrast, Gabriel had told Our Lady that “of his kingdom there will be no end” (NRSV, Luke 1:33).
Both these two prophecies began to be fulfilled on Good Friday, for it was than that, hanging between heaven and earth on the Cross of Calvary, he died to reunite heaven with earth by restoring fallen man to God. It was then that his Kingdom began, even though its crown was a crown of thorns. For then began the fulfilment of his own prophecy of himself, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (NRSV, John 12:32).
Until Good Friday had come and gone the Apostles had thought of Jesus, not as their Saviour but only as their King – and even then only as an earthly King who would drive the Romans into the sea. But as soon as they knew that he was their Saviour too, so they began to see that he was King of men and of angels and that his Kingdom was an everlasting Kingdom. That grander vision, of a King over the hearts and minds of human beings, stretching to the uttermost parts of the earth and embracing the world to come, that grander vision was revealed by him to the Apostles during the forty days after Easter when he spoke to them “about the kingdom of God” (NRSV, Acts 1:3).
And on Ascension Day he described to them his eternal Kingship itself, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (NRSV, Matthew 28:18) – a truth which was dramatically illustrated at the moment of the Ascension itself when, surrounded by the glory of God and clothed in Divine splendour, he was for the second time poised between heaven and earth, but majestically now as King of both.
Yet even in heaven the Ascended King is still the Crucified Saviour and is described in Holy Scripture, not only as the King of kings and Lord of lords but also as the Lamb as it has been slain, or, in the words of the hymn:
“Crown him with many crowns,
the Lamb upon his throne”. (1)
And it is as Our Ascended Saviour and King that he enters our lives today and makes both our worship of God and our obedience to God truly personal.
Our Blessed Lord said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (NRSV, John 14:6), or, in other words we cannot make our way into the Presence of God unless Our Saviour brings us there. And this is a true description of the Eucharist. For the Eucharist is not something which we just say or sing or attend or watch or listen to. It is something which Our Lord and we do together. At the Consecration, in the hidden splendour of his Ascended Body, he escorts us into the very Presence of his Father in heaven, and as the Blessed Sacrament, the Host and Chalice, is raised between heaven and earth, we in turn offer him to our heavenly Father as the Saviour of the world.
Thus the Eucharist, so far from being a routine service which we as Christians are under an obligation to attend every Sunday, is in point of fact a re-enacting of our restoration to God by Our Crucified and Ascended Saviour.
And what is true of the worship of God offered by Christians, is equally true of their obedience to God, not merely in the actions of their daily lives but in their spoken and unspoken thoughts. That obedience too should be truly personal. For we are called to obey, not a collection of laws issued by some remote, impersonal authority, but Our Divine King himself.
For Christian obedience is not the mere observance of a code of injunctions and prohibitions, but a willing loyalty to One who matters more than all else in the world. In other words, its motive force is not any uneasy fear of punishment but a love which proves itself by being dutiful. “If you love me”, says Our Lord, “you will keep my commandments” (NRSV, John 14:15). Because one thing is certain, if we don’t love him we won’t keep them, and as a result our lives, both outwardly and in the inner recesses of our souls, will have all too much in common with the non-Christian world around us.
Thus our loyalty to Our Lord outside Church should be a natural consequence of our friendship with him and his Father inside, and a proof that the latter has been active and sincere. As Our Blessed Lord put it, “You are my friends if you do what I command you” (NRSV, John 15:14).
For true obedience is not only the fruit of true worship but also the test by which the inner quality of our worship may be measured. For if we respond to Our Lord as Our Saviour, we shall also be found loyal to him as our King.
Reference
1. Bridges, M. (1800-1894) The head that once was crowned with thorns. Available from: http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/c/c396.html (Accessed 07 November 2015) (Internet).