Must Leaders Always Disappoint?

Christ the King 2023

I have pretty strong memories of the Feast of Christ the King during my elementary years at a Catholic boys’ school. My parents would see me dressed up in my school uniform, which was styled like a U.S. Army class A uniform from WW2, but with maroon dyes, and the whole school would go to the Southside Mission Stadium. Many other Catholic schools and organizations were arrayed there, and we would march in front of the Blessed Sacrament in procession to our destination. That was one of the Baroque era Spanish missions, Mission Conception, where we were blessed, prayed, and were dismissed. Back in the 1950s, this was done on the last Sunday of October. The Feast dated from 1925, and is celebrated on the last Sunday of the liturgical year since 1970. The Feast is actually common to many Christian churches, because Jesus Christ, Son of God and son of Mary, is the King of the Universe.

But what a King is Jesus Christ! Ezekiel, the prophet who was dragged off into exile with much of the Israelite elite in the first exile to Babylon, knew the stories of the foundation of the Israelite kingdom, later known as the Jewish kingdom. The stories he grew up with contrasted the shepherd-king, David, whose songs Ezekiel knew by heart from the Temple liturgies, with the long series of disappointing leaders who followed him. He may have thought of the prophet-priest Samuel, who was forced by the people to find them a king. He had spoken inspired words to warn them about kings: “he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your menservants and maidservants, and the best of your cattle and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.” But they hadn’t listened so he found Saul “hidden among the baggage.” He stood head and shoulders taller than the average Israelite, and so the people acclaimed him King. The first big disappointment.

Of all the kings of Israel, only David, Hezekiah and Josiah measured up in any way to the task, though David was an adulterer, liar and murderer, Hezekiah bragged to foreign diplomats about all his treasure, and Josiah fought a stupid, losing battle against the Assyrians that cost him his life and ultimately the freedom of his people.

Ezekiel was pretty fed up with the secular leadership of his people. The religious leaders, too. He knew the whole history and heard from the Holy Spirit that an entirely new kind of leadership was in the mind of God for His people. The needed leader would be the shepherd that the people had only had for a couple of generations, one who would gather them into one flock, protect them, heal their wounds and “feed them in justice.” In fact, the promise Ezekiel made for God is that He Himself would be that shepherd. What a radical promise! What an inspired vision! A shepherd-king who would never disappoint. It was the image of the twenty-third psalm many of us learned in grade school catechism. The Lord is our shepherd.

Jesus came at an historic juncture. All Israel seethed under the imposed leadership of turncoats like Herod Antipas, or direct rule of tyrants like Pontius Pilate. Pax Romana, humbug they said. It was the peace of an enslaved people, grubbing for food while the rich oppressed them and helped Rome tax them to death. This boiling cauldron would explode less than four decades later in a full-blown revolt with a horribly tragic end in 70 AD. But in the favored time, Jesus appeared in Galilee, teaching in public and healing quietly as He gathered a community around Himself. He would model the human God wanted us all to be like, humble, poor in spirit, merciful, sensitive to injustice but forgiving of sinners, strong in conscience but non-violent. And He foretold the tragic consequences of selfishness that would fall upon the nation, but looked forward joyfully to the Day of the Lord. On that day there would be a separation of the genus capra. The sheep, who were the good disciples living by the law of love, on one side, and the goats, the bad guys living selfishly, on the other. They were both confused–as many of us easily become–confused by the criteria. It appears from Matthew’s parable that the sheep didn’t realize that by feeding the hungry and visiting the sick they were ministering to Jesus the Messiah. They get the reward of life in God’s presence forever. The goats look just as dumbfounded, and imply that if only. . .If only they had known the homeless guy at the intersection was actually Jesus, of course they’d have given him a bag of food and water and maybe directions to a nearby haven. If only they’d recognized the people in prison were the Christ, certainly they would have visited. But they didn’t do any of those things and now they get to spend eternity kicking themselves for being self-centered and stupid.