King

The Collect

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

What frankly comes to mind every time someone deigns to pronounce the will of God … One of, if not The, most foolish things I have ever heard spoken is “Everything that happens is God’s will”. The first time I specifically remember hearing it, I was standing at the rear of a hearse as pallbearers lifted, pushed and then rolled into it the casket of a young man who had committed suicide. She said it to me as a corrective. We had just finished his funeral during which, in my homily as officiant, I had assured the boy’s parents, in their desolating grief, that the death of their son was not God’s will for the life of this beautiful, gifted, promising young man whom they loved so dearly. 

The person had rushed up to me as immediately as she could get to me to correct me: “Everything that happens is God’s will.” I turned to her and responded, “Almost nothing that happens in human life is the will of God.”

Our collect, prayer of the day, for tomorrow seems a good expression of God’s will, to restore all things in his beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Seems right and good to us Christians. A Jew may hear it otherwise. Or a Muslim, Hindu or Other. Do we care? Does it matter? Does it matter what a Jew thinks? Or feels? It only matters if - - over against the raw, mindless arrogance of absolute certitude that is so common to human religions - - if we are committed to ἀγάπη, agapē, lovingkindness, thoughtfulness, courtesy, consideration, generosity of spirit, charity.

Whoever composed our collect for tomorrow, the Feast of Christ the King, Christ the King Sunday, meant it positively, to pray a good thing to God about God. I’ll take it positively too, though in fact s/he does not, nor do I know the will of God beyond what I sense revealed in creation, in nature, in things beyond human ruin.

But, "the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin" is true beyond measure, perceptive beyond all imagining, such that one feels God to whom the collect petition is addressed has left it entirely to the peoples, who do not in the least share what the author of the collect perceives to be God’s will, that we be freed and brought together. And even so, how might God who has left us in charge bring it about except through us who do not want it.

King of kings and Lord of lords: a benign relationship, it is no absolute monarchy, but one that we let be so, or not.

T+