CHRIST THE KING? : The unexpected power of a symbol.

In my office at home, to the left of my desk, straight up against the wall, hangs a bronze corpus without a cross behind it. The arms are outstretched wide. Nail holes in the hands show where a cross, the instrument of suffering and salvation, would usually be.

On first seeing this corpus ten years ago, I was drawn to it in a way that I could not quite explain. A decade later, it continues to draw me with no less power and immediacy. It is a museum reproduction of a Romanesque crucifix. On his head, this Christ figure wears a thick, banded crown-not elaborate, but an unmistakable sign of kingship. I had never before seen a crucifix depicting Christ with a temporal crown, and had never thought I'd want to. Yet this image was by no means triumphalistic. Quite the contrary, it told a story which made the image powerfully paradoxical. His body was emaciated-ribs showing, eyes cast down, belly distended like a child's ravished by famine, wrapped only by a remnant of kingly robes that covered his loins.

The corpus always quiets me when I look up to it from my work. The suffering eyes and face call forth a sense of longing. The crown speaks to me of strength and opportunity, glory perceived and promised. The torso and limbs speak of surrender and loss.

Strength and loss at the same time. This crown on this body has a power over me that I never could have expected. I would expect to be deeply bothered that a symbol of earthly power had replaced the crown of thorns. Images of Christ the King have long been used by monarchs and would-be kings to dominate and oppress. But on the body of this wasted king, this crown signifies cause for trust. Its kingship over my heart could never be twisted to oppress.

Over time, other works of art have spoken to me similarly. A few years ago I found a recording of several poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, set to song by Benjamin Britten. The one which stood out with the most power was Hopkins's poetic translation, O Deus, ego amo te:

O God, I love thee, I love thee -

Not out of hope of heaven for me

Nor fearing not to love and be

In the everlasting burning.

Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me

Didst reach thine arms out dying.

For my sake sufferedst nails and lance,

Mocked and marred countenance,

Sorrows passing number,

Sweat and care and cumber,

Yea and death, and this for me,

And thou couldst see me sinning:

Then I, why should not I love thee,

Jesu so much in love with me?

Not for heaven's sake; not to be

Out of hell by loving thee:

Not for any gains I see;

But just the way that thou didst me

I do love and I will love thee:

What must I love thee, Lord, for then?-

For being my king and God. Amen.

I loved the whole poem, and its setting, but found special resonance in the last two lines. The notion of kingship was not simply triumphal. Jesus was shown to be king through his "nails and lance," "Sweat and care and cumber."

Feminist theologians have rejected kingly images of God as distant and patriarchal, misplaced at best, distorting at worst. Those critiques make sense in terms of most of the ways I had seen Christ's kingship depicted. But those images never appealed to me; I never put energy into overthrowing them. The feast of Christ the King is built on scriptural references and an interesting history, but it never occupied much of my religious imagination. In contrast, I found these newly encountered images of Jesus to be deeply compelling, drawing me into the reality of Jesus' Passion.

More recently I came across two other images of Christ as king that brought tellingly different responses. The first was a lullaby-the most gorgeous of lullabies-an early Samuel Barber song that was recently rediscovered and recorded. Set to a poem by Alfred Noyes, "A Slumber Song of the Madonna," it surprised me by its power to draw me into a paradox that had not quite fit my own Christology:

Sleep, little baby, I love thee;

Sleep, little king, I am bending above thee!

How should I know what to sing

Here in my arms as I sing thee to sleep?

Hushaby low,

Rockaby so.

Kings may have wonderful jewels to bring,

Mother has only a kiss for her king!

Why should my singing so make me to weep?

Only to know that I love thee, I love thee,

Love thee, my little one, sleep.

Whenever I'd seen images of an infant king in the past, I was always put off a little. Their messages of power or prescience-in an infant, no less-showed no signs of human vulnerability. Most puzzling were statues of the Infant of Prague. One of them stood on my mother's dresser as long as I can remember. It was a taken-for-granted part of my religious world, but not one to which I related. Years later, traveling in Prague, I saw in a store window a large poster depicting at least a hundred regal outfits that could be purchased to dress the statue. Impiously, I saw it as a comical "Jesus-as-Barbie" sort of religiosity. A joke I heard later: "What did Mary say when she first saw Jesus dressed as the Infant of Prague?" "You're not going out of this house dressed like that!"

I know that some people still hold the image of the Infant of Prague dear, but it remains difficult for me to grasp what it communicates about the mystery of Christ. If this had remained my primary religious image of divine kingship, I'd never have been drawn to the same level of reflection, in the way my corpus of the emaciated king has drawn me. The Gospel of John tells us of the inscription on Jesus' cross: I.N.R.I., Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum. The crucified Jesus is the king of the Jews, and of us all. Barber and Noyes's song of a mother, so moved by the gift of her son, embraces paradox and promise straightforwardly. The Infant of Prague stands on his own and apart; the kingship of the "Slumber Song" is grounded in relationship, made real in the love of a mother who cradles him and who sings out of hope at such new promise, and out of sorrow at her knowledge of life's difficulty and her own poverty. This is a real baby and, as such, in the eyes of a mother, a king.

hortly after I heard the "Slumber Song" I encountered one more image of Christ the King that stood out, precisely because it was so different from the previous three. Driving past an imposing red-brick church in Boston, I noticed what I'd probably seen many times before, a life-size statue of Christ the King. Painted white and gold, it depicts a strong, healthy Christ wearing a crown and kingly robes, holding an orb in his left hand and raising his right hand in a sign of blessing and peace, his expression pure wisdom, knowledge, and reassurance. It's not a great piece of art, but my indifferent response was not a matter of aesthetics. Had I not been puzzling over my attraction to these other kingly images, I don't know that this statue would have even penetrated beneath the surface of my consciousness. I had a sense that it too was a piece of my own religious tradition, not to be scorned; I knew that it communicated something of value, although it simply did not say enough.

I've increasingly come to believe that capturing the mystery of God, including the mystery of Jesus, takes an ability to recover and honor a wide variety of the images of God that we are heir to. Any image of God yields only limited insight about who God is. Yet at different moments in our lives we all probably need to call upon one single face of God-as Protector, as Wisdom, as Rabbi, as foe of injustice, as the resurrected One. Jane Redmont, writing of her struggle with depression and mental illness, has recounted how it was-to her great surprise-the overwhelming Old Testament image of God as shield that got her through it. Sometimes our hearts cannot absorb any more complexity or paradox. What we need then is to see God in God's utter simplicity.

Over the long haul, I believe the images that will resonate most fully and deeply in us will probably be those that embody the deepest paradoxes, seeming contradictions, truths that overwhelm logic, probability, experience: The vulnerable infant who is almighty God. The just one who is rejected, betrayed, tortured, slain; who was then and is now our worthy king, who conquered death and is our hope. The crown on the corpus in my room is no mistake.

Thomas M. Landy, lecturer and assistant to the dean at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, is the founder and director of Collegium.