The lion is considered the “King of Beasts”. On the plains of Africa, the lion is the top of the food chain. He is the predator who sets the order of hunting for food and all the other species fall in line behind. The lion is muscular with sharp eyesight, speed and dexterity. It overwhelms its prey and kills quickly. It takes the choice pieces of flesh first and leaves the left-overs to those down the pecking line, first in the pride and then among the other carnivorous plain animals. The lion’s kingship is held by brute force and physical prowess. When age or sickness weakens his strength, another lion takes this particular king’s place, and the former head is soon forgotten, often left to die because it is no longer strong enough to hunt.
Baxter is no lion. When he was younger, he was a feisty kitten, and he would like to wrestle and bite at all kinds of objects, including my finger or leg at times. He thought himself king of the roost, and unless he got out of control, I never disillusioned him of his self-image. Once in a while, life would do that to him. He would encounter a BIG cat or dog on the other side of the window, and quickly his lion heart would sink to hiding under the bed or in the crook of my arm until the beast passed. When courage is based on physical strength or force of will, it only takes another with a little more strength or greater position to drain it. My cat quickly chickened out when faced with uneven odds.
“Christ is King!” we proclaim on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. But the Lion of Judah is no beast. The power of Christ is not a physical force imposed on others or the will of the ruler intimidating His subjects into submission and conformity. The power of Christ is the force of the divine-human character to influence others to respond to its self-sacrificing love and generous grace. Christ’s power comes from within Himself as God made human in perfect integrity. All that is of God and all that is truly human is brought together in a perfect identity we call in theology the hypostatic union. No one else has this kind of perfect integrity between the divine and human, but everyone else is invited to draw on Christ’s integrity to find harmony and communion in their lives. Christ’s power is a shared power from its one source in God-become-incarnate. It will not intimidate or force itself into our lives because it respects itself and us too much. God gave us free will, and in Christ there is perfect freedom of the will to unite with God. These will not be compromised, even if people turn away from Christ’s call to follow Him as disciples.
The power of Christ the King is the power of a greater vision of the truth of life, the power of genuine love, the power to offer hope in the face of any darkness. It is the power to lift others up rather than put them down. It is the power to persuade and encourage rather than force and intimidate. If we live in Christ, we have this power available to us to do God’s work in the world by feeding our souls on the Body and Blood of Christ at the Eucharist.
Baxter is a real pussycat, lots of bluster but a softy in the crunch. Christ is a powerful predator, but He conquers by offering Himself for the ones He loves and enticing them to Him by this selfless sacrifice. What a strange and wonderful God we have!
