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We find ourselves, this week, sitting between two significant liturgical events. This past Sunday was Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday. Instituted in 1925, this feast day was a response to the rising fascism of 1920s Europe--fascism being an idolatry that privileges one people while dehumanizing and caricaturing another. Like all idolatry, fascism was demanding human sacrifice and genocide in the name of progress and the greater good.
Reign of Christ Sunday serves to remind people of faith that their allegiance is to no “supreme leader” on earth–and to no earthly nation with its oppressions, marginalizations, human sacrificial systems, and wars.
In Christ, in contrast, borders dissolve. The “last” of our world, we learn, the Crucified People of our day (as they have been called by Ignacio Ellacuría, Jon Sobrino, and so many other theologians), are the embodiment, flesh and blood, of Christ. “I was hungry and you gave me a feast.” When Christ rules our hearts, those who once were disposable become the center of our concern and striving toward love and justice.
Advent, which begins this coming Sunday, is a season of longing and aspiration. In it, we remember Jesus’ dream of what is yet to come: the hungry fed, the lowly lifted, the Crucified arisen, and tyrants torn from thrones. We fall in love with Jesus' dream all over again and dedicate our hearts and bodies to working toward it, even as we eagerly pray and wait for that dream to more fully bloom and realize among us. It is worth reflecting this week: Who are the Crucified among us today? Who do we dehumanize and sacrifice in the name of progress? Or is it "democracy?" What must we do to turn away from all of that and, instead, live into Jesus’ dream of the Reign of justice and love?
One way we can do that is to demand justice for Palestine, to demand an end to the ongoing occupation and genocide, and to demand a real and lasting Ceasefire Now.
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