Jesus our King

What is the difference between a subject and a citizen? While researching our Community history, I found some Sisters have the words ‘British Subject by Birth’ on their entries. This is often the case for Sisters who were born abroad, and it affirms that their parent(s) were also British subjects. It did not necessarily mean they had a different status from those Sisters who were born in Britain; I think that at this stage everyone was a British Subject, and that citizenship came in later. I tried to research this on the internet, but the whole subject is complicated. Nevertheless, it provides some interesting thoughts.

British subjects are subjects of the monarch, whereas citizens are members of a country. It does raise questions of where your loyalty lies. But this is not really what I want to write about today. It’s not so much about our nationality as about our belonging to our faith, about how we relate to God. There are many ways of describing God, and different names imply a different relationship.  ‘Father’ is different from ‘creator’ or ‘king’, for example. It has crossed my notice that two of those labels are male orientated, which does affect how we view a God who is normally acknowledged to be neither male nor female. Changing those labels can be complicated, as it does involve changing our view of God; but it does also need to be said that those words do not sum up the whole of who God is. God always reaches beyond them. Can we bring a more female word in, to provide a more balanced view? Referring to God as ‘mother’ has a long history, but is by no means as common as ‘father’. Both can be complicated by our assumptions and understandings of those words; at the same time, both suggest a loving relationship with God which is not necessarily there for either ‘creator’ or ‘king’. But all this brings us into areas of theology which I have not studied.

The word ‘King’ is usually linked to Jesus, who was male, so I will continue to use that particular word as I write. What does it mean for Jesus to be our King? It feels a fairly old-fashioned word, especially, I suspect, for those of us who grew up with Elizabeth II as queen. Until recently, Kings went far back into the early 1950s, which many of us cannot remember. But we need to set these thoughts aside. Jesus is our King now, as he has been in the past, and will be in the future. I’m not sure how common it is now to relate to Jesus as ‘King’. We tend to stress the love of God, and it is that aspect – that Jesus loves us, that he is our friend, our brother – that is more familiar nowadays; and rightly so, for it is true. We can never over-emphasize the love of God. But I do wonder whether, by possibly sidelining Jesus as our King, we are also missing out on the total love of God for us.

What does it mean that to say that Jesus is our King? These are only a few thoughts. While looking up the British subject/citizen issue, one website I looked at pointed out that subjects owed loyalty to a person, in this case the British monarch. By becoming Christians, we are all publicly saying that we owe our loyalty to Jesus; our prime loyalty lies right there. It was a problem for the early Christians in the Roman empire, I believe; the emperor was ‘Lord’ of the empire, and Christians would not bow down to Caesar, as Christ was their Lord and King. It was subversive, in a way in which we are not challenged nowadays. But whatever our citizenship, and whether that includes a monarch or not, even today our prime loyalty, our first Lord, is Jesus, our King. That comes above all else: country, citizenship, family, work … It may be that for most of us these are not in conflict, but the fact remains that Jesus is our King, first and foremost. (How we respond if they are in conflict is for individuals and churches to work out, in whatever their own circumstances are). However patriotic we might feel, our first ‘patriotism’ should be to God.

So we worship Jesus as our King; that may or may not involve a certain amount of reverence, majesty and awe. But we should not lose sight of the love and compassion. It is not either/or but both/and. Jesus our king is also our friend and brother who loves us. We have a King who gave up all that and became a slave for our sake (see Philippians 2); who was born human, who lived, died and rose again to bring us back to the God who loves us. We do not have a King who lords it over us, but one who is our servant. That is the God we worship, and that is the King we follow. Concentrating on either kingship or love distorts the nature of the God we follow. Holding both in balance may just deepen our awareness of Who God is, and also deepen our willingness and ability to follow Jesus as he calls us to follow; to follow the King who became our servant, who was enthroned on the cross, and crowned not to subject us to himself, but to bring us all into one Community of love.