34th Sunday Year B - Christ the King

I hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving.  It was really nice to take a few days to get to see my family and do a little bit of Christmas shopping.  I know at least for me, getting those few  days to see everyone really makes me thankful, especially for those who for one reason or another aren't able to see their family on Thanksgiving.  Of course, one of the wonderful things of getting to see family, is how when family gets together, they all like to share.  They even like to share their germs.  Everybody had a cold.  As I was thinking through that, it reminded me of a story I once heard about a little boy who had to go to the doctor to get a shot.  He wasn't real thrilled about it, but he agreed.  When he got to the Doctor's office, the little boy didn't want to go in.  He asked if they could go to a different doctor.  When his parents asked him why,  He looked up at the sign that said "Medical Practice" and he said, I want somebody who really knows how to do it, not somebody who's still practicing.

If you think about it, isn't it a funny thing that there are a few specific jobs where we say people "practice" what they do?  The two big ones that jump for me are doctors and lawyers.  At the same time, I don't think it's just the fact that it's an old profession.  Engineering is just as old, but we don't generally refer to engineers as practicing. 

The real difference between those two, is at the heart of the feast we celebrate today.  When an engineer sits down to design something, he makes a creation of his own.  He might start with a drawing and plan everything out.  At the end of the day, whether the thing works or not depends on the design of the engineer.  If the design is good and all the parts are built within the specified tolerances, the thing will work the way it's designed.  The Engineer looks at sketches and prints and works from a design.

The way a doctor or a lawyer works is entirely different.  A doctor never really has the full design.  We never completely know everything about the human body.  We're always learning more about it, understanding things we didn't fully understand before.  That's not to say medicine isn't science, of course it is, but it's learning about a reality that's already there, a reality that we're never going to understand completely.  A doctor looks at our symptoms, does tests, gathers information, and makes an educated guess about the diagnosis and the treatment.  We've all heard of cases where a doctor might mistake one condition for something similar, the doctor might refer someone to a specialist who would look for more information, but at a basic level, no matter how good we get, without getting at the original design, all we're doing is making our best guess based on the evidence.  We'll always have more to learn because we can't read the original blueprint.

Similarly with the law, to some degree in our modern understanding, but especially in the ancient understanding of law.  Our laws often have a life of their own.  Every law has the plain text of what it says, but when we go to put it into a real situation, those laws always have to be interpreted.  When a new law passes that isn't legitimate, someone challenges that law and says "it conflicts with the constitution" or "the Government doesn't have power over that."  Then those cases have to go to court for a judgment.  Depending on who hears the case, the results might be different.  So for a lawyer, it's not just following the law, but there's an art to convincing a jury or a judge of how the law really ought to be interpreted.    There will never, really, be a final, permanent interpretation in merely human law.  Look at famous cases that were overturned, things like Brown vs. Board of Education or Dread Scott.  Those judgments weren't permanent because people knew they needed to change.   They didn't conform to what was right and true.

In the ancient world, when it came to law, this was even more the case.  In the ancient world, Laws came from the lawmaker, who went by a different name, the King.  The King made the laws, but he didn't judge every case.  Judges and lawyers had to interpret the king's wishes, just like today, we talk about judges and politicians looking for the "will of the people".  In the ancient world,  Only the king was the true expert on the law, because he wrote it.  The trouble was, an imperfect human being wrote those laws.  That human being sometimes didn't have the power to enforce his laws and the changed,  he didn't know enough, so  his laws didn't match the reality of people's lives.  His laws were imperfect.

But imagine if we had a perfect king.  Imagine if we had someone who would live forever, someone who really did design the world and everything in it.  Now imagine that perfect king had all the power of creation at his disposal and knew perfectly everything about every one of us because he designed us.  That king would be able to give us laws that really would last forever, that really were permanent.  He would be able to give us the master plan we were all deigned from.   Today we celebrate the reality that all that is historical fact.  There IS a king who created the universe.  There is a king who knows everything perfectly.  There is a king who really is the real expert on humanity and all creation because he created it.  His name is Jesus Christ.

Listen to our readings today, they all point to exactly this fact.  In the first reading from Daniel:  the Son of Man received Dominion, glory, and kingship, all peoples, nations, and languages serve him, his dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.

From Revelation.  Jesus is the firstborn of the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth, to him be glory and power forever.  He is the Alpha and the Omega, the one who is, who was, and who is to come.

And from Jesus himself, he said before pilate.  "For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."

Jesus is the real expert, the creator of everything.  He knows how we work and the more we listen to him, the more we can find true and everlasting joy.  He knows us because he created us, he loves us, and he guides us all the time, if we're humble enough to listen.

For the rest of us, We would never say a doctor shouldn't practice medicine because he doesn't know everything yet, but we'd certainly be upset if he didn't use the best information available to him.  A lawyer may work on an untried case and fail, but we'd certainly be upset if he didn't do his homework and know what the law really said.

And we certainly shouldn't begrudge ourselves when we don't have all the answers in our faith, but do we actively look to learn what God has worked to tech us through Scripture, the Saints, and the Church?  If we don't, what would we say when we stand before God on the last day and he asks why we didn't listen to the real teachings he gave us, to scriptures he left us, to the Church he established for us.  As Catholics we really do believe that God left us divine revelation.  The Eternal King who created us, really does teach us.  Of course we're still learning to practice our faith, but do we really make the best use we can of the resources he gave us.  Do we really take the time to listen and obey the one who knows what we need even better than we know ourselves?