Abstract
Christmas is coming! Only one week left before the start of Advent. The present Sunday is the last in the church year, and often passes unnoticed in the rush to prepare for the season ahead. It is traditionally known as ‘Stir Up Sunday’, from the collect for the day that begins: ‘Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people, that richly bearing the fruit of good works, they may be richly rewarded…’ But since the early twentieth century, it has officially been designated as Christ The King Sunday. It should, therefore, be the culminating festival of the ecclesiastical calendar.
However, beyond giving this Sunday a specific title, little has so far been made of its potential theological significance. In fact, the existing collect for the day – apart from serving as a stimulus to those who have not already made their Christmas puddings – may actually be very misleading. It could be interpreted as meaning that those who have already received generously from the Lord’s bounty may expect to receive even more in the forthcoming Christmas season! But there is a whole message here that is in danger of being misinterpreted, if not lost altogether, with such a superficial reading.
For these words, which seem to convey a feeling of material comfort and even complacency, hardly encourage the self denial and concern for others which are the real hallmarks of Christ’s heavenly Kingdom. Maybe it is time to bring a fresh perspective to Christ The King Sunday. Coming as it does the week before Advent, it could be an appropriate day on which to begin to plan for the gifts we intend to place before the crib, rather than under the Christmas tree. For the former, not the latter, are the truer measure of the extent of Christ’s reign in our lives.
By now, many of us will have begun our preparations for Christmas Day. Some well organised people may even have completed them! Lists are made, names ticked off, cards written, gifts secreted in drawers and cupboards. And if we’re expecting family or visitors, we’ll be thinking about the food needed, and possibly deciding what size turkey to order and how many vegetables, side dishes and desserts to prepare.
The lighting of the first candle on the Advent wreath marks the beginning of the countdown to Christmas Day, and the feeling of anticipation that ensues is not always one of unmitigated joy. It is often accompanied by a growing sense of stress, fuelled by media ads for the latest ‘must have’ gifts on the one hand and by the surge in seasonal events – both inside and outside church – on the other. But while Advent Sunday tends to focus our attention on the imminent expectation of Christ’s coming to earth, and everything we think that entails in terms of our preparations for the 25th of December, this was never its original purpose.
Instead, the season of Advent was designated by the early Church as a period of reflection and self-denial in preparation for Jesus’ second coming. The first disciples and early Christians had no need to celebrate His birth, because for them that was already in the past. They were looking forward to His return, which they expected to be soon. They anticipated a release from the oppression and persecution of a cruel occupying regime and from unsympathetic and unbelieving fellow citizens. That coming would be a moment when ‘every eye shall see him, even those who pierced him, and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him’ (Rev. 1: 7) – words which have become so familiar to us through Charles Wesley’s famous Advent hymn ‘Lo, He comes with clouds descending’. This is often sung in churches on Advent Sunday, but it relates more to the Second Coming than to the first appearance of Christ in human form. It could very well, therefore, be sung on Christ The King Sunday as well.
For the church year is, after all, a continuum. Advent Sunday is the first Sunday of the year; Christ The King Sunday is the last. Depending on how we look at it, there are either 51 weeks between the two, or just one week. The Advent wreath, with its candles, marks the weeks to Christmas Day. But the wreath itself is a circle, symbolising both the continuity of the year and the immortality of God: ‘I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty’ (Rev. 1:8).
Like the early Christians, we too live in the belief that the Messiah has already come. And so, in preparing to greet Jesus on Christmas Day, surely we should be preparing to greet Him when He comes again? There is one piece of advice that might help us in those preparations, because it focuses on their true purpose. When John the Baptist disabuses his followers of their belief that he is actually the Christ, he answers their question as to how they should prepare for their eventual encounter with Him thus: ‘the man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one with food should do the same’ (Luke 3:11). And this is exactly the same guidance that Christ himself gives His own followers in preparing for His eventual Second Coming at the end of time (Matthew 25: 31-46), when he returns as King: ‘Whatever you did for the least of these [my people], you did for me’ (v. 40).
This is about much more than merely preparing for Christmas Day by stirring up puddings or finishing off the shopping. As an entire lifestyle change, sharing our own wealth and possessions with those who have nothing, it may be a daunting prospect to many. But in fact, the coming season is a good place to start. Bearing in mind that the Magi (Matthew 2:11) were presenting valuable as well as symbolic gifts to the infant King, God incarnate, and not to each other, the festival of Christ The King would be a good time to take stock of our own preparations. After all, whose birthday are we celebrating: ours, or His?
Every year, in this country alone, we spend tens of billions of pounds at Christmas on ourselves, mostly without even realising it until the bills come in. In 2012, the most conservative estimate of our seasonal high street spending – recession notwithstanding – was over £22 bn, an increase of £2 bn over the previous year. The result, for us, is not always happiness. We often give and receive gifts that are both unwanted and unnecessary. We may incur massive debts in the process. This in turn puts a strain on family relations and can cause untold misery. And we do all this, apparently, in the name of the One who comes ‘to bring good news to the poor’. Meanwhile, in the current economic climate, charities are experiencing cutbacks in their budgets due to a decline in public grants and in private donations, meaning that those in greatest need are suffering even more.
Three years ago, just £1bn would have rebuilt Pakistan’s infrastructure following the devastating floods of 2010 and helped minimise the damage when they recurred later. The following year, despite the generous initial response to the famine in the Horn of Africa, there was a shortfall of a similar amount, meaning that many millions of people continued to suffer needlessly. Just before Christmas 2012, the UN appealed for £900m to alleviate the plight of Syrian refugees, which was not forthcoming: hence the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal in the spring of 2013.
How much are we going to spend on ourselves this Christmas? If we take stock of that spending now, how hard would it be to divert a larger proportion of it to projects and charities working with the neediest in this country and throughout the world, and give correspondingly smaller gifts amongst ourselves? Could we interpret the words of John The Baptist to mean, in the context of our modern Christmases, that we should aspire to give away to projects working with the poor and dispossessed an amount equal to our own spending on ourselves? Last year, that could have raised at least £10bn nationally. What a difference such a sum would make to the gulf between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in our world! And how much more we in turn might enjoy our own Christmas preparations, our celebrations, and our vastly reduced bills afterward, if we reallocate our own budgets, and reorder our gift giving priorities, at the outset!
It may be time to rewrite that collect for ‘Stir Up Sunday’ in words that more closely reflect the challenge of the festival of Christ The King. Such a collect could read as follows:
‘Stir up in us, Lord, the wills of your faithful people, that we who have abundantly benefited from your goodness may feel a compassion that cannot be ignored, until there is no poverty or injustice left to feel uncomfortable about.’*
Amen!
