#CHRISTUS REX

This essay was originally published in the December 2016/January 2017 issue of SEEDS, the newsletter of Augustine United Church in Edinburgh.

One of my earliest memories of expressing a conviction – of taking a stand that was my very own -- involved my stomping on a Lebanese flag. I don’t remember how it came about; all I know is that one day in 1990 or 1991, I threw a flag on the floor in the middle of our living room and proceeded to stamp and spit on it, screaming at the top of my voice. What details I miss about my motivations are compensated for by the vividness of my mother’s response at the sight of me. “Bism-i-saleeb! In the name of the Cross! You’ve been entered by the Devil!” she exclaimed.

I remember how I stopped and stared at that red and white fabric beneath my feet, pausing to digest her serious accusation. “Is the Devil really inside me?” I asked myself. A few moments later I reached a firm conclusion: “No! I’m actually angry! This is how I really feel.” I’d lived through the tail-end of the Lebanese Civil War, and even as a wee bairn, I could sense what I would later learn more directly: flags, anthems and nation-states are symbols that evoke contradictory emotions, to say the least.

I write these words on the day after Christ the King Sunday, and one day before Lebanon’s Independence Day. Tomorrow, this young republic of ours turns 73. There are flags and political slogans throughout the capital, but not quite as many soldiers and military vehicles lining the streets as there had been on Sunday, when the armed forces seemed to be rehearsing for tomorrow’s massive parade.

This will be our first proper celebration of Independence Day in two years, with all the pomp and circumstance that one would expect from a national holiday. We’ve finally filled our vacant presidential seat after much horse-trading, bluff-calling and back-peddling among our various political factions. This is a big deal for investors, we are told, but also, for the Christians among us, in this mixed-faith society.

Ours is the only Christian head of state, we are often reminded, and the Christian presence in this embattled region – this place we call a “mosaic” on good days, and “fragmented” on the bad – has been made much more secure now with a strong, war-time figure on the seat of symbolic power. For many, this administration means we have finally put the Civil War behind us. For others, the wounds are rapidly being re-opened.

I’ll admit that I’d never heard of the Feast of Christ the King before this year, but I looked forward to the sermon I’d hear on Sunday. It was to be at the only Anglican church in Beirut. The service was to be presided over by the Bishop of Jerusalem with several priests and canons from Jordan and the Holy Lands. I wondered what they would have to say about Christ’s Kingship in this country, and as servants of the very land in which He was enthroned -- this holy land scarred by the violence of Empire for millennia.

Alas, the sermon was forgettable, but I was not disappointed. I had already been given the opportunity, as I made my way to church, to reflect on what it actually meant to confess Christ as King. It was a hectic morning, and I was running late and growing increasingly grumpy as I walked past soldier after soldier through street after street. One of them, slouched on a car, eventually called to me, saying:

“Show me your ID, and unbutton your jacket.” Annoyance fell off my tongue faster than my fingers could fiddle with my wallet, and my anger rose with every annoying comment he made:

“So you’re stopping every guy you see?” I spat.

“No, not everyone,” he oozed.

“Oh, so just people who look like me,” I barked.

Every single brush with authority in every single city I’ve ever lived in seemed to collide into one angry moment, and very quickly, the soldier lost his temper: “Respect my uniform,” he yelled, and my mind was already preparing a retort when he went on to say: “I’m here for you, not me, and my father thinks the world of me, so I don’t need to take your disrespect…”

I fell silent as he continued to vent his frustrations with me. I caught a northern Lebanese accent in his voice, and my mind flashed images of a Tripolitan father proudly sending his boy to serve this country that gave us so little. In my silence, I realised that my disappointment with the flag his son had pledged to serve was only half the story. I saw myself reflected quite starkly in this young man’s eyes, standing there defiantly, in my smart blazer, with my smart ideas and smart-alecy retorts, on my way to church.

When he was done, all I could muster up by way of reply was: “I’ve gone quiet.”

I thought about telling the soldier how difficult it was for me to respect his uniform and his flag – any uniform and any flag – but as I walked away and let his righteous indignation sink in and calm mine down, I began to see through the regalia and ostentation, and recognise the Image of God we both carried inside of ourselves.

God’s love and mercy is imprinted in our hearts, and in our rage and frustration with injustices big and small, we express something of our deepest, God-given nature as human beings. And yet, it is only through Christ that we can learn what it means to be truly loving and merciful, to empty and give of ourselves to God and His creation. This is what Christ’s Kingdom ultimately means to me: not political leaders with Christian names, nor armies and militias that ‘conquer in His sign,’ but a simple pledge of allegiance that confesses Christ as sovereign over my heart. That’s all: one broken heart in healing fellowship with many others, all of us together set equally free.