In His Revelation to Saint John the Divine, the Lord God Almighty declares, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.”  Our Lord God declares to John that He is the beginning and that He is the end.  And to celebrate and rejoice in this great Truth . . . we end our Christian Year as we began it:  we end our Christian Year with a festival which celebrates the kingship of Jesus, Who is the Christ, the One anointed by the Almighty Father to be Lord over all Creation.  . . . There is, however, a distinct difference in the character of the celebration which begins the Christian Year and the one which ends it.  In the beginning of the Church Year we celebrate the thing that God has done and will do for us.  The Season of Advent is a celebration of sacred Hope:  a hope which declares that we are not alone in this world; that God is our friend, and He has sent us a deliverer and a saviour, Who has established and will establish, in its fullness, a peaceable reign which causes everything that is good to flourish . . . and which frustrates and brings to naught everything that’s evil.  . . . But today, the second celebration of Christ’s kingship; . . . today is not a celebration of what God has done; . . . it’s a celebration of what God expects of us because of what He has done.  The second celebration of Christ’s kingship is a celebration of our participation in God’s sacred Love.

    And so, we read in the Book of the Prophet Daniel,

I saw in the night visions, and behold, . . . there came one like a son of man, . . . And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, . . . and his kingdom is one that shall not be destroyed.

Now, in the language of apocalyptic literature (like the Book of Daniel) many individual symbols represent collective realities.  And so, each of the beasts, mentioned in the prophesy, represents a corrupt alliance of nations.  And what Daniel declares in the text read to you today . . . is that the power of the corrupt and evil nations is to be supplanted by a nation which bears the image not of a beast, . . . but which bears the image of humanity; . . . a nation which has not become bestial by it unspeakable sins, . . . but a nation which looks like a descendant -- a son -- of the man who was created in God’s Image; . . . a nation which is truly human because it is uncorrupted by Original Sin.  . . . And in  another Book of Holy Scripture written in apocalyptic idiom -- in the Book of the Revelation to Saint John the Divine -- we are told the identity of this nation which Daniel saw and which bears the uncorrupted Image of God:

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.

The Church, has been foretold by the prophet Daniel to be the nation that is like a son of Man!  All of us are the nation which bears the uncorrupted Image of God.  We have become this uncorrupted Image of God because Jesus, by his blood, has obliterated from us the taint of Original Sin.  We are a kingdom -- one like a son of Man -- because Christ Jesus, Son of the Living God and son of Man, is our King!

    But we are a very peculiar kind of Kingdom.  . . . God never gets it quite right by human reckoning, . . . and so, He makes of us something rather odd.  Listen again to the conversation between our Lord Jesus and Pilate in John’s Gospel:

[Pilate asks Jesus,] “Are you the King of the Jews?”  [But before Jesus can answer He must know who is asking, Pilate-the-governor or Pilate-the-man.  And so, Jesus asks Pilate,] “Do you say this of your own accord . . .?”  [Pilate, the governor, answers Jesus with the contemptuous reply,] “Am I a Jew?”  [And so Jesus says to Pilate-the-governor]:  “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world.”

Our Lord Jesus declares to Pilate that His kingdom is not like anything the world would contrive.  First of all, the Kingdom of Christ has no “subjects.”  Father Raymond Brown shrewdly observes, in his Commentary on John’s Gospel, that   “ ‘subjects’ are mentioned only in the contrary-to-fact part of Jesus’ statement -- if his kingdom were of this world, he would have subjects” (Anchor Bible, Vol. 29A, p. 852).  But, Jesus says, His “kingship is not from the world.”  The kingship of Christ is not from His apostles; it is not from His ancestral lineage; we didn’t elect Jesus to be king-for-life.  The kingship of Christ it is not from anything or anyone of the world.  The Lord Christ’s kingship is from God!  And so, Christ Jesus is two things at once.  He is the son of Man, who has received His kingship from the Ancient of Days -- the Most High God.  And He has freed us from our sins by His blood, so that He is God’s High-Priest as well.  In other words, we’re not “subject” to Christ the King, because we are participants in His glory.  We are the Redeemed of the Great High-Priest, Whose blood offering to God is an expiation for our sin once, for all, and eternally.  And being the Redeemed of Jesus, we also bear the identity of our Redeemer in that we are like one who is a son of Man; hence, we are a kingdom of priests!  We bear the identity of Him Who gave us His identity in order that we might be redeemed!  And so, Saint John the Divine says that we have been made “a kingdom, priests to his God and Father . . .”.

    So, you are priests.  You are priests of the Great High Priest.  And what does God expect of you?  Well, we have a hint of it in the Book of the Prophet Malachi wherein we hear that:

the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.  (Malachi 2:7)

The lips of a priest guard knowledge and give instruction.  A priest speaks knowledge of God on God’s behalf . . . in order that the nations might know the Lord God of hosts.  And if the lips of a priest guard knowledge and give instruction, then the head of a priest must be filled with contemplations of the Lord, and the eyes of a priest must be ever looking to see the presence of the Lord in all things, and the heart of a priest must ever be full of a devout and tenacious love for the Lord, and the body of a priest must always be manifesting what is learned and loved and seen and heard and prayed with all the other faculties.  . . . Over the centuries we have developed many different ways of describing this tremendous privilege and ministry that is our heritage.  But it all amounts to three things:  to know the Truth Who is Jesus; to love the Truth Who is Jesus; and to manifest Jesus with our very lives, even unto death.  That is what God expects of you, . . . because you are His priest.

    A moment ago I suggested that in the Gospel appointed for today Pontius Pilate has the option of being one kind of person or another:  . . . he can either be himself or an indifferent official of the Roman Empire.  And so, after the Lord Jesus declares that His kingship is not from the world, there is a wonderfully intimate moment when Pilate asks Jesus, “So you are a king?”  To which Jesus triumphantly and joyfully responds to Pilate-the-man, who bears God’s precious Image, “You say that I am a king.  For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.  Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.”  Pontius Pilate is a fraction of an inch from becoming one of the Faithful; . . . Pontius Pilate is a fraction of an inch from becoming one of us!  . . . But Pilate, loathing the Jews, is suddenly very much afraid of Jesus; . . . Pilate is afraid of Jesus because he is on the verge of loving Him.  . . . And so, Pilate chooses to be Pilate-the-governor; Pilate chooses to close himself off to both compassion and love.  Looking out for himself alone, Pilate says to Jesus, “What is truth?”  . . . It is the saddest moment in all the Bible; for here is Pilate, one whom Jesus came to save, . . . here is Pilate . . . refusing to know God; refusing to be instructed by Him.  Here is Pilate looking into the beautiful eyes of God . . . and choosing to go into damnation because he is afraid of God’s invincible love.

    There’s a lot of that going around right now.  You need look no further than the commentary section of the current weekend edition of The Daily Star, in which there is what amounts to a book review setting forth humanist philosophy as a desirable alternative to a life founded upon faith in God.  The columnist observes that “Nonbelievers . . . can live ethical lives without the framework of religion because it is the practical and right thing to do” (The Daily Star, Nov 21-22, 2009, p. D2).  . . . Unwilling to look into the beautiful eyes of God, . . . nonbelievers can avoid His invincible love . . . by living ethically.  . . . But Jesus doesn’t declare that He has come into the world to teach it ethics!  Pontius Pilate is already an ethical man.  His choice to allow the crucifixion of Jesus was both practical and the right thing to do:  it was the right thing to do because it served his beloved nation by preserving the Pax Romana of his district.  . . . Jesus does not need to teach ethics to Pontius Pilate.  Instead, Jesus has come into the world to liberate us from having to make ethical choices in the service of practical masters.  Jesus has come into the world to make us a sacred people; . . . a kingdom of priests who have the imprint of the Lord God Almighty Himself stamped upon our souls . . . so that each one of us might know the Truth Who is Jesus . . . and love the Truth Who is Jesus . . . and manifest His sacred nature with our very lives . . . even unto death.

    The columnist I mentioned a moment ago characterizes people of faith as either “frightened by the threat of hellfire [or] blissed out by the promise of heaven” (Ibid.).  Such an assertion is a parody of the Christian Life.  It is an expression of contempt disguised within a costume of humor.  . . . It is a lie.  . . . And because there’s a lot of that going around, . . . today we celebrate what is true  about Jesus and about this Christian Family, His Church, . . . by ending our Christian Year as we began it:  . . . with a celebration of the kingship of Jesus, Who has ordained us to be a sacred people; priests of the Living God, Who is, for us, the Alpha and the Omega:  the beginning of our sacred humanity . . . and its completion.