When I see some of the choices I find myself shuddering and wonder what on earth people can see in such a person. But I suppose the choice is usually based on good looks and charm, which is probably reasonable if you only have one evening out with a celebrity. But I often wonder which celebrity people would choose if they had to spend the rest of their life with that person and what they would base their choice on.
Just for a moment, suppose you couldn't actually meet the person of your choice physically, but could receive a message from him or her. What message would set you on fire? What would you want to hear? Or conversely, what would you not want to hear? What would you want kept very quiet indeed?
In today's reading from the book of Revelation, we are given a message from Jesus Christ. How fascinating it would be to spend an evening in the company of Jesus Christ. In today's passage he's equated with God as "who is and who was and who is to come". The phrase has echoes of God's description of himself to Moses at the burning bush, as "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14), so perhaps this phrase immediately suggests that Jesus has equality with God.
It also suggests that the Christ existed before time began, continues to exist now and will exist in the future. This picks up on the early Christian hymn quoted by Paul in his epistle to the Colossians (1:15-20), which sees Christ as pre-existent and present at the Creation of the universe. Imagine having a quiet, candlelit dinner with someone who was pre-existent as well as living forever! Perhaps we would all be tongue-tied in such an awesome presence.
But perhaps our dumbfoundedness wouldn't matter, for Jesus Christ brings a message for us. He brings us grace and peace and he reminds us that he loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood. It may not sound a particularly startling message to those of us who are steeped in church and have heard it all before, but it sounds a lot more startling if you go back in imagination to that candlelit dinner and see yourself sitting across the table from Jesus Christ on your special evening out and hearing those words. You might even want to spend the rest of your life with this particular celebrity.
What exactly is he saying? He's bringing a message full of reassurance and comfort. He's brining us the peace of God to flood our minds and bodies and souls, and the grace of God to enable us to reach those heights which we think we're incapable of reaching. He brings us his love - present tense - and reassures us that he has freed us from our sins - past tense - so he's telling us that our sins are forgiven and forgotten. They are put behind us. And since Jesus Christ exists now and in the future, it follows that all future sins are put behind us and forgiven too. Therefore we have nothing to worry about and we can get on with the business of Living, with a capital L. During his human lifetime on this earth, Jesus referred to that kind of living as "eternal life".
In that kind of living, by being ourselves and holding firm to those promises of Jesus about grace and love and peace and the forgiveness of sins, we become a kingdom of priests serving God. This doesn't mean that we're all expected to lead services of worship and to preach. It means that by allowing the God within us to fill our inner being, we can't help but reveal God's love to other people as it shines from us. Peter, in his first letter, calls this "the priesthood of all believers" (1 Peter 2:5, 9).
But how do we become the sort of people who shine with the light of Christ? Perhaps all we need to do is to have a candlelit dinner with Jesus Christ every day. The more we're with him, the more confident we feel to speak to him and the better we get at listening to him. He takes care of everything else. The more the God within fills us, the more we're able to deal with our fears, and once we can face our fears, then our integrity becomes stronger and we're able to do all that we could do, without worrying about the consequences. We gradually grow into the people we were always meant to be. And once that happens, the light of Christ will shine from us, whether we know it ourselves or not. Then, just by being rather than by doing anything, we'll be a priest for Christ, part of his kingdom.
Today is the feast day of Christ the King. We have a king who was poor with none of the special privileges of wealth, who was humiliated and despised by the religious authorities, who must have lived in fear of those authorities but who didn't allow that fear to dictate his life, and who was eventually beaten, tortured and killed by them. A strange sort of kingship by our standards, but one which raised Jesus to the supreme heights of Christ, the Messiah, the Chosen One, the one through whom sins were forgiven and eternal life could be experienced.
This King invites us all to be priests in his kingdom. He doesn't invite us to be warriors or servants or diplomats, but priests. People who allow his light to shine through their lives so that others may see and believe and may bask in his love as we bask in his love. He who was and is and is to be offers us himself as part of our inner being. On this last Sunday of the Church's year, let us receive him with overwhelming gratitude.
