Knowing What I Know, I Should Probably Be King

Solemnity of Christ the King

I want to share with you a fact about me that you might not know and maybe what I tell you is also true about you and then we will have learned something new about each other.

Here is what you need to know about me: I am probably the most intelligent person in the world; I really am. The reason I am so passionate about politics is because I simply know more than anyone else alive. I possess a comprehensive understanding of nuclear non-proliferation theory; the workings of the international market economy are like reading comic books for me, nothing more than stories for children; people talk about how difficult it is to make sense of tax codes or immigration policy, and that makes no sense to me because when you know as much as I do, these matters are so easy to understand. I know more about war than most generals; about health and medicine than most doctors; more about the law than most lawyers; more about the natural world than most scientists.

I do not want you to get the wrong idea about me: my intelligence is not limited to matters of politics and science and economics. I also know more about religion than anyone else alive in the world today. I know more about the history of religion than most university professors; my understanding of sacramental theology, the theology of salvation, and the nature of Christ is greater than most doctors of the Church; my knowledge of good and evil would make Adam and Eve jealous. And the liturgy? My goodness, I promise you that no person who has ever lived knows more about the liturgy than I do; sometimes I think that as an act of charity I should start up a website to share with people what I know about the liturgy; keeping so much knowledge to myself seems like a crime.

There are two problems that come along with being the most intelligent person in the world: (1) you have a lot of enemies because basically everyone who is not as smart as you just gets in the way and (2) it is very difficult to find good leadership out there in the world because no leader ends up knowing as much as you do about how the world works or what is good for the Church.

I want good leadership; I really do. I want a good leader because he or she will help vanquish some of my enemies (all those people who do not agree with me), and if there is one thing I know, it is that vanquishing my enemies would be great for the world. But I also want a good leader because I am not really interested in serving or leading myself. I have other projects that interest me more: football on the weekends, getting to the beach whenever I can, and as I mentioned, building that website so I can tell people who do not know as much as I know a little bit more of what I know. Sometimes to me it seems like knowing as much about the truth as I do means that my life ought to look very different than it does—more service, more leadership of my own, maybe—but at the end of the day I am more comfortable letting other people do that kind of work while I hang back at home and let them know how they are getting things wrong.

You can imagine how exhausting election cycles are for me; no politician gets policy exactly right. I do not want you to think that I am not a political person because I know so much; I am a very political person. I even get excited during elections even though I know my preferred candidate will never know as much as I do about how the world works. The best part of a democracy is that every two and four years there is a chance your team might be able to vanquish some more enemies, get some more power and control, and get to work helping other people to think like you think. I love politics and elections at each level of government. The exhaustion comes from watching these elected leaders almost immediately fail to do the work of government to my standards.

The reality of leadership and religion is also exhausting when you know as much as I do. I know we are celebrating the Solemnity of Christ the King today, and for the most part, I do not have a problem calling Christ ‘my king.’ I have read the Gospels enough times in my life to know that Christ also knows at least as much about the world as I do; I am actually comfortable saying that Christ knows more about the world than I do. Sometimes I get the idea that Christ is not as focused on vanquishing enemies as I am, but then I remind myself that there is no reason to let the beatitudes ruin what seems like a pretty good deal: I let Christ live as my king, he tells me what to do, I do it, and my reward is eternal life; it is a pretty good offer coming from someone who knows at least as much about the world as I do, and probably knows even more than I do.

Except for the fact that there are two problems. The first problem is a little childish, and I want you to know I am working on it. Sometimes I am almost certain that Christ my king tells me to do something that I do not want to do, and, well—I just do not want to do it. The problem is childish, I know, and I really am working on it. I promise you that I am way ahead of the rich young man who walked away sad, or the disciples at the end of the bread of life discourse who abandoned Jesus because some of his teachings are hard. I am not going anywhere, and I will never abandon Jesus; sometimes I just am not going to listen to him right away, and like I said, I am working on it.

The second problem is more serious: Christ my king decided to leave power and authority to leaders in the Church, and, I mean, you see the problem, right? I might not know as much about the world as Jesus, but I absolutely know more about the world than popes and bishops and monks and religious sisters and theologians. I would say that in the history of kings, the worst decision a king has ever made is to leave power and authority to people who do not know as much about the world as I do.

I find life in the Church pretty exhausting. There are these seasons when you must wait years for a pope to go away who does not know as much as you do. Most of you probably understand how tedious it is to not only ignore your own bishop when he is not your kind of guy but also go out there in the world to find a bishop who does a better job of knowing what you know and follow his directions and teaching even though you basically have no functional relationship with him because you live where you live and he lives where he lives but you need to make it work because what you know is more important than whatever plan Jesus put in place. And then there are the smaller crosses you get like when your community fails to meet your expectations because, again, no one else knows as much as you do and you cannot possibly be expected to sit through a liturgy impoverished by the poverty of what other people do not understand but you do. Life in the Church really is exhausting.

Here is what I am trying to tell you: I am simply not a fan of Christ’s last words in the Gospel today. He tells Pilate: everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. I love the ‘belonging to the truth’ part of what Jesus says. You cannot know as much as I do about the world without belonging to the truth, I promise. I am a big ‘belong to the truth’ kind of guy. The problem is the ‘listens to my voice’ part because sometimes I am pretty sure that voice tells me something that I do not want to hear and always that voice is bound up with the Church and the Church is filled with leaders who do not know as much as I know. You see my problem? I like the idea of having a king who is God, and I love the idea of God having a kingdom—the issue is how Jesus decides to make it all work. I would say that in the history of kings, the worst decision a king has ever made is to leave power and authority to people who do not know as much about the world as I do.

I know there is another alternative, a word that gets kicked around a lot in the prayers of the liturgy to which I usually do not pay attention: obedience. I have even read books about how when you are obedient to commands that come from God, even when they come through the Church, and those commands are not what you want or fail to conform to what you think is best, when you follow those commands, you might even become more holy. Someone even told me once that when you follow a command that comes from God that you do not want to follow and you bend your will and you let go of what you want or think is best and simply do what is asked of you, you conform yourself to Christ who in the garden of Gethsemane let go of what he wanted and followed even where he did not want to go.

My gut tells me that obedience is actually a pretty important part of life because obedience maybe more than any other part of life helps us to become like Christ. There is something about bending the will and not doing what you want to do and letting go of what you think you know that seems like a really good way to become a holy person. Sometimes I think about obedience and wonder if maybe I do not know as much as I think I know, and sometimes I think about obedience and think that maybe what I know simply does not matter as much as I want it to matter.

I am not sure sometimes what to think. But there is a prayer at the end of the liturgy today that says: Having received the food of immortality, we ask, O Lord, that, glorying in obedience to the commands of Christ, the King of the universe, we may live with him eternally in his heavenly Kingdom.

I am going to pray about that prayer for a while today.

Homily preached on Sunday, November 24th at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary