Sunday XXXIV Year B – Lord Jesus, you are a very strange king!
Readings: Dan 7:13-14; Rev 1:5-8; Jn 18:33-37
Lord Jesus, you are a most strange king! The book of Daniel, in the First Reading (Dan 7:13-14) and Revelation, in the Second Reading (Rev 1:5-8) present you glorious and triumphant, but your palace leaves much to be desired: you are born in a stable, your cradle is a manger, for there is no room for you in the inn (Lk 2:7), and, all your life, you have “not even where to lay your head” (Mt 8:20).
Your court is a disaster: you surround yourself not with the nobility and the great of your time, but you are the “friend of publicans and sinners” (Mt 11:19; Lk 7:34), and you are not afraid to scandalize the well-to-do by sitting at the table of these outcasts (Lk 5:27-32; 7:36-50; 15:1-2; 19:1-10). You do not frequent the healthy, but the sick (Mt 9:12).
You spend your kingly life not among pleasures and softness, but among the poor, the outcast, the oppressed, the foulest sick (Lk 7:18-22; Acts 10:38; Mt 4:24; 8:2-4; 9:35; 14:35-36…).
You are a strange King who suffers thirst (Jn 4:7), weariness (Jn 4:6), sleep (Mt 8:24). Your family members think you are crazy (Mk 3:21), your fellow citizens want to kill you (Lk 4:28-29), your trustees do not understand you, they abandon you (Jn 6:66; Mt 26:56), they betray you (Mt 26:47-50); and even your prime minister denies you three times (Mt 26:69-75).
The only anointing you receive is an anointing for death (Jn 12:7), the only crown you wear is a crown of thorns (Jn 19:2), the only cloak you wear is a mock cloak (Jn 19:2); and when, thus anointed and clothed in purple, you are presented as king to your subjects, they cry out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” (Jn 19:6). Lord Jesus, you are a very strange king!
Besides, Lord, what kind of subjects do you choose! You proclaim that your Kingdom is reserved for the poor, for those who suffer, for the meek who never raise their voices, for those who die of hunger and thirst, for those whose hearts are wretched, for the simple, for those who repudiate all violence, for the persecuted throughout the earth, and you tell them that they will be blessed when they are insulted and slandered, and you exhort them to rejoice and exult because of this (Mt 5:3-12; Lk 6:20-26). In your Kingdom even publicans and prostitutes have precedence (Mt 21:31). Lord Jesus, you are a very strange King!
In your Kingdom, then, things all go backwards: the last are first and the first the last (Mt 19:30), you overthrow the mighty from their thrones and raise the lowly, you fill the hungry with goods and send the rich back empty-handed (Lk 1:52-53), to save one’s life one must lose it (Mk 8:35), whoever wants to be the greatest must become like a child (Mt 18:4), whoever wants to be first must make himself the servant of all (Mk 10:43-44). You yourself did not want to be served but to serve (Mk 10:45), you did not come to exercise dominion over others but to give your life for all (Mk 10:45). And when you sit at the table, you, the Master and Lord, perform the act of the slave, washing the feet of your subjects (Jn 13:1-20). Lord Jesus, you are a most strange King!
When they acclaim you Son of God, you impose silence (Mk 1:34,43-44); when they want to acknowledge you as King after the multiplication of the loaves, you flee to the mountain, all alone (Jn 6:15); when they proclaim you King at the entrance to Jerusalem, you displace everyone by riding a donkey (Mk 11:1-11); when they arrest you, you do not want your own people to fight for you, even forsaking the defense of twelve legions of angels (Mt 26:51-53).
You manifest yourself as King only when you are lost, chained before a pagan (Jn 18:33-37). Your throne is a Cross, on which finally stands the inscription that you are the King (Jn 19:19-22): as the Psalmist had proclaimed, “The Lord reigns from the wood!” (Sl 96:10). Your kingship is revealed as pure love, shining in the wounds of your tortured body. Truly, Lord Jesus, you are a most strange King!