"So are you the King of the Jews?"
"It is you who say it!"
How strange the way that language evolves! Tomorrow is the last Sunday of the Church's year: the Feast of Christ the Universal King. The concept of Jesus being a king may be hard to take seriously. What meaning does the word have or what model do we use to explain the quality we are attributing to Jesus in this feast? Is he like a modern constitutional monarch? Or maybe like Henry VIII? or Ferdinand and Isabella? None too inspiring or enlightening, really!
The little combinations of sound and letters that make words can be the vehicles of many strong emotions as easily as they can be meaningless. It is a constant problem for the modern preacher to find words and images that will capture a concept beyond the banal. Try explaining the concept of "table fellowship" to a person reared on pizza in front of the television; try explaining God as "Father" to the child who has never met the man; try explaining the "forgiveness of sins" to the beneficiaries of our economic miracle - all told, it is not easy. Yet it would be sad to gloss over this particular feast without trying to explore the poetry that underlies it.
An area that is proving popular in modern spirituality is the misty Celtic one which we suppose one existed on this island. Beyond the bizarre mixture of Saint Coumban and Wicca that is presented to us as our heritage, there is a source in our ancient prayers that sheds some light on tomorrow's feast.
The word king does not feature heavily in early Irish writings. The fact that the tribal system of Tuatha had chosen Taoisigh as their leaders tells us that our early society did not have kings as we normally see them. It was the monks and later the Normans who named the Taoiseach as Ri, and tied the word to the Irish experience in spirituality. For the Irish, the king was the one who had succeeded; he wasn't as intrinsically linked to dynasty and rule as he was for our neighbours in Europe. The Irish king celebrated the triumph of a person against the odds.
R an Domhnaigh, the King of Sunday, is one of few references in Irish to Christ as King. It is the title given to the Risen Christ who has overcome death, but it is the untranslatable Ri na nDuil that is the key to this feast. A duil is a living being that is worthy of being loved. We may not have a single word for that in English, but the definition says it clearly. This title that the Irish monks afforded to Christ catches the essence of the feast. The Feast of Christ the Universal King is the Feast of Ri na nDuil, the celebration of the fact that the man Jesus has succeeded by overcoming death on behalf of us, the living beings that were worthy of being loved by God. (Ri na Cruinne, the King of the Universe, was a title reserved for the Creator, the God beyond and above all other gods.)
So when we learn to abandon the imagery of Frederick the Great and lean towards the monastic king, we will understand what Christ's answer to Pilate meant: "Mine is not a kingdom of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my men would have fought to prevent my being surrendered. But my kingdom is not of this kind." (John, 18:36)