The King Shall Come
“The King shall come when morning dawns
and light triumphant breaks,
when beauty gilds the eastern hills
and life to joy awakes—
not as of old a little child
to bear, and fight, and die,
but crowned with glory like the sun
that lights the morning sky.”
Psalm 145 always stands out to me when it comes up in the lectionary because a portion of it forms an older version of the prayer for grace before a meal: “The eyes of all wait upon Thee, O Lord, and Thou givest them their meat in due season; Thou openest Thy hand and fillest all things living with plenteousness.” I love the image of everyone waiting to receive their meal--that’s a familiar image and it’s awe-inspiring to think of everything and everyone in the world doing that at once. It’s significant in the context of the Psalm, though, because it proceeds from the logic of kingship. The Psalmist repeatedly extols the permanence of God’s kingship and how the provision that all expect follows from their reliance on this permanence.
It’s kind of hard for Westerners to get how central this idea of kingship really is. We often think of kings as a kind of synonym for our own elected sovereigns. We seem to think of kingdoms as contractually agreed upon parcels of land governed by a monarch--the guy or gal who was savvy enough to end up with the power. But in the ancient sense, there was an understanding of a symbiotic relationship between monarch and kingdom. Shakespeare notably depicts this sense in his historical dramas: when the king gets assassinated, the natural world starts going wild. Kingship and the political realm, though, are not isolatable from the rest of the fabric of reality. In a kingdom, the wellbeing and continuity of the kingdom was connected to the monarchy. The Psalmist is thence able to call all creation and humanity to eagerly expect provision seeing as it is the Lord Himself who is king--you can have a stable hope that you’ll be taken care of.
It’s for these reasons that we also have to see Pentecost in its proper place as emerging from Ascension. These are not disparate events. The enthronement of King Jesus over the new heavens and earth establishes the eternal continuity of that Kingdom. The one who has trampled down death now sits as King of a deathless kingdom. There will never be a time when His kingship or the stability of His kingdom will be shaken. In the logic of the Psalm, all may look to Him for provision as He fills “all things living with plenteousness.” Pentecost, the sending of the Holy Spirit, is the provision of vitality and stability to the entire kingdom and those who have been made partakers of it. To receive the Spirit is to receive the most essential and fundamental nourishment and provision possible. In sending the Spirit, the whole kingdom is united to the King at its center.
But humanity has a unique place in the kingdom, and so its experience of the Spirit’s provision is tailored to that purpose. We’ll recall that, in the beginning, God appointed humanity as the steward lords over the Creation--to rule as the image-bearers of the Creator and to serve God as a priestly, kingly people. We see this reflected in Exodus 24 and Numbers 11, in the anointing of the seventy elders who will share with Moses the burden of governing Israel. The text says that God “takes of the spirit of Moses” and gives it to them so that they will govern together in the same spirit. Moses perceives, in the Spirit, that this is the truest form of things. It is the extension of the Spirit to others. God works through His chosen few to reach the many. The many, becoming part of the chosen few, then reach many more.
We then see in Acts how the apostles and the others who had come to believe through them are united by that one Spirit. The same action we see in the case of Moses has been applied in its fullest form through Christ in the Church His Body. The Spirit of Christ has been given to the Twelve, who then are made to share with Christ in the governing of His people the Church. Yet they immediately begin to lay hands on others and pray for the Spirit to anoint them as well. They echo Moses’ prayer that all would be made prophets--that all would become the priestly-kingly race they were created to become. We see this destiny confirmed in Revelation, which depicts the kingdom as an immense throne room at the center of which is God surrounded by those anointed to share His government and then the countless many who are brought in by their administration and their sharing of Christ’s ministry. In the words of Revelation: “To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
As Christians, we are obliged through our Confirmations to carry out a part of the ministry of Christ to the world. Because King Jesus is on His throne, the Spirit has filled the Church to make ministers of us all through the imparting of various gifts by which we experience the provision and stability of the King and carry out our ministry as His stewards in the world. This must always temper our reaction to the events of the world around us. The nations may rage and swell horribly. But Christ is King and we are His citizens even as we sojourn through the cities of the world. No offers of worldly power can surpass the inheritance we have in Christ through His Spirit. Our integrity in Him exalts us into the heavenly places, and is worth preserving even at the expense of all tempting extensions to share in this world’s vain sense of control. May we return daily to the King in our midst bearing the fruit of our labor in His Name, that when He shall come again in glory we shall hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”