Dispelling Disney

Reign of Christ A-2014

Music is floating through the air – something catchy, that brims with happiness, and swells in volume and rhythm – it is enhanced by an animated dust; sparkles and stars wisping across the screen drawing our attention to the destination. The destination is a greyish castle on a hill. It looks kind of sad.  As we are taken inside the fortress, the story is unraveled – it’s not always the same story – but it is one that involves a kingdom where the royal family has come on hard times.  It could be that the king or queen has died, that there has been a spell cast or an evil stepmother has been brought into the house.  The story usually consists of a prince needing to find a girl, or trying to win a girl, or a princess in desperate need of being rescued by some prince. As the story works itself through there is darkness to be conquered, nasty people or places to be bested, judgements to be made of right and wrong, good and evil. As the story comes to an end everything works out.

The catchy happy music swells through the air, accompanied by trumpets and bells, and the scene is now one where a multi-coloured castle on a very tall hill replaces that which was grey.  The castle is shown in its glory. With its bridge and ornamental gate decorated with festoons of flowers, turrets wear bright flags.  One can hear laughter, music, and dancing.  In the courts the peasants hardly look like peasants, all decked out in their best. Even the animals are dancing. Everyone is happy because there is a prince and princess in the castle who come out and wave to the people, and benevolently share, after all it is their wedding day – all is as it should be. So the stories end...and everyone lived happily-ever-after.

I grew up with this Disney fairytale told and re-told through my childhood.  Disney has described, for a number of generations –starting in 1923, what kingdom means, what kingdom looks like, what a king is.

This is Christ the King or “reign of Christ” Sunday. If you imagine Christ as King, does the image include crowns, thrones, specters, castles, everyone happy, a wedding, basking in the kings presense the peasants don’t look like peasants? With Christ as King do the evil characters in the story face punishment and everyone else in the kingdom live happily-ever-after?

I learned this week that Christ the King Sunday is not an ancient observance in the church.  It was

instituted two years after Disney started to spin their version of kingdom.  In 1925 it began at the behest of Pope Pius XI; Lutherans and Anglicans began celebrating the Feast in the 1970’s.

Pius XI instituted the feast in response to growing Italian nationalism and secularism. At the time the Italian government and the papacy were fighting – it started when Rome was declared the capital of Italy, and the church was relegated to the Vatican – the church hierarchy said they felt like prisoners.

The creation of the feast was to say to the Italian government and secular rule, Christ is King – ie. better than you; and only in Christ can one live happily-ever-after.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden would have none of the happily-ever-after focus, so this day is referred to as the Sunday of Doom.  Prior to 1983 the focus was the final judgement, now the topic of the day is the Return of Christ. So what happens with Christ’s return?

There is no denying that the texts read today have a component of separating one from another, of judgment, a winnowing and that the king exercises this task – goats from sheep. I prefer Ezekiel’s version where he allows room for the Lord God to seek the lost, to bring back the strayed, to bind up the injured, and to strengthen the weak.  And those who are fat or strong – in other words those who have been unjust  - God will feed them with justice. Everyone has had a chance, beyond that, God has pursued all people.  The focus is not about the other, it is about sheep and sheep.

Matthew goes there in a different way: look at the amount of sound-bites Jesus uses in the passage that are not focused on the separation of sheep and goats. The focus is on Jesus’ interpretation on the law being lived out in his day... taking care of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner. Is Jesus revolutionizing the idea of Kingdom?  Is Jesus dispelling the Disney of his day?

Pius XI, in instituting Christ the King Sunday was trying, if you will, to dispel the Disney of his day. He was trying to redeem Kingdom away from the power he saw in the politics around him. He was reminding people of the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world – a kingdom outside of human control.  Pius also had a heart for the laity, the sheep - through the celebration of the Feast, the liturgy, the texts, the sermon, he wanted people to:   in his own words-

"The faithful, moreover, by meditating upon these truths [truths about Christ as King], will gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal. If to Christ our Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth; if all men [and women], purchased by his precious blood, are by a new right subjected to his dominion; if this power embraces all men [and women], it must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire. He must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God."

Are we also to be about dispelling the Disney of our day? To live as Pope Pius commends, with Christ being the centre of our being, reigning in us and thus through us as instruments of justice in a hurting world?

While wrestling with the thought of sheep and goats being separated, sheep from sheep, some form of accounting for things done and left undone; considering what hell or eternal punishment might be; a hope of kingdom, heaven, eternal life; not to dismiss these or sanitize the text...I need to ask what would Jesus’ have us focus on. Could it be describing kingdom and kingship in a counter-cultural way?

The counter to Happily-ever-after in the Disney fairy tale, is a gospel of less, a gospel that is not about accumulating castle, riches, princesses; its  not about purchasing or chasing after happiness. Happily-ever-after is more of a contentment and a joy that grows out of service, as in giving ourselves away as bread for the hungry.  In this we concentrate on the service, the offering of the gospel, Good News and the kingdom comes near; Christ reigns in and through our hearts.  Could this be the growth of righteousness – living from the abundance of Christ’s reign – into eternal life?

In my former parish there was a gentleman who truly was by all appearances and actions a Godly and faithful believer. He shared with me that if the time came that I was to do his funeral he didn’t want me to talk about him, other than to say that his only desire was to have a small spot in the corner of the mouse hole that was in the kingdom of God. To him the mouse hole would be room enough, a space from which he could eat the scraps from God’s table, that there would be enough warmth and light that it could be felt from the darkest corner. –no crowns, no jewels, no castle-

-just a place where there is enough room for the tiniest of creature, to be sheltered, warm, and fed.

What an image of the kingdom, the corner of a mouse hole. And in that corner there would be more than enough grace and love.

Albert Einstein said:

Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. ...The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.

So too we cannot grasp the mysterious nature of Christ the King and the marvellously arranged kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world. We can, however, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, visit the sick and imprisoned. And perhaps in the giving away of ourselves as bread for the hungry we will experience a small piece of the kingdom – warmth and light, grace and love – not in a castle but in everyday living, in the dusty corners of the mouse hole in God’s house.

Amen.