Jesus Christ is our king. That means that we have a good king, one who can do the job, actually the only one who can do the job. This king is there to protect us from the incursions and demands of those who want to exercise power without authority and who may be able to start doing us good but cannot keep it up. A king is simply a political leader. All leaders get their political authority from God, and God is the control and limit on them all. The world is full of undeclared chiefs, who want to make themselves our kings, without admitting as much, without allowing their power to become explicit or becoming accountable to us through the normal political channels. We Christians are here to remind all leaders that God commands them to act well for the people they have authority for, and that they will have to give an account of themselves, and will stand before that judge. All our political representatives are ‘kings’, ‘chiefs’: we don’t call them that, but that is how the bible regards them. Part of our job is to tell people and institutions who have effective power that with it they have authority to use it well, for the nation as a whole.
So now what about our own political classes? How are they doing? They exercise a form of kingly authority for us. Our government, from the smallest council employee to the prime minster, is the hand of God for us. We have to encourage them to govern, and tell them that they have a good and honourable task. We have to invite them to judge for themselves whether they are doing a good job. Each of them may and must carry out their office. They may do their job, at whatever point, high or low, in their particular institutional hierarchy, in the knowledge that they do it for us, for our good. This is their share in the kingly office of representative rule. They govern for the common good and so we encourage them to do this well, and we give them our thanks. We can remind them that we are here, and are watching, and that they will present their work to God, the only fair judge and true king.
Christ the King St George the Martyr 22 November 2009
