The Good King
If humanity cannot be trusted with anything other than democracy, but is, in its best moments, desirous of a king, what then can be done? Men have had years of laughter, valor, and honor under good kings, but just as many years of sorrow under bad ones. Even if there was some man that might be capable of executing the office, kings without lineage have no claim to foreign lands. What king, even if he were heir elsewhere, could possibly command a knee to bend on American soil? Before an American could even begin to imagine kneeling to a king, he would need to imagine loving the king in the same way he loves the home of his parents, or his most sacred childhood haunts. He would have to see the king as the very embodiment of his homeland. This sort of thinking is not a regression from democracy, but the fulfillment of it. It is the patria become flesh, and dwelling among us. Consider this passage from Lowis Lowry’s Number the Stars:
Annemarie’s thoughts turned to the real king, Christian X, and the real palace, Amalienborg, where he lived, in the center of Copenhagen. How the people of Denmark loved King Christian! He was not like the fairy tale kings, who seemed to stand on balconies giving orders to subjects, or who sat on golden thrones demanding to be entertained and looking for suitable husbands for their daughters. King Christian was a real human being, a man with a serious, kind face. She had seen him often, when she was younger. Each morning, he had ridden alone through the streets of Copenhagen, greeting his people. Sometimes, when Annemarie was a little girl, her older sister Lise, had taken her to stand on the sidewalk so that she could wave to King Christian. Sometimes he had waved back to the two of them, and smiled. “Now you are special forever,” Lise had told her once, “because you have been greeted by a king.” …So she turned her thoughts again to the king…she remembered a story that Papa had told her, shortly after the war began, shortly after Denmark had surrendered and the soldiers had moved in overnight to take their places on the corners. One evening, Papa had told her that earlier he was on an errand near his office, standing on the corner waiting to cross the street, when King Christian came by on his morning ride. One of the German soldiers had turned, suddenly, and asked a question of a teenage boy nearby. “Who is that man who rides past here every morning on his horse?” the German soldier had asked. Papa said he had smiled to himself, amused that the German soldier did not know. He listened while the boy answered. “He is our king,” the boy told the soldier. “He is the King of Denmark.” “Where is his bodyguard?” the soldier had asked. “And do you know what the boy said?” Papa had asked Annemarie. She was sitting on his lap. She was little then, only seven years old. She shook her head, waiting to hear the answer. “The boy looked right at soldier, and he said, ‘All of Denmark is his bodyguard.’” Annemarie had shivered. It sounded like a very brave answer. “Is it true, Papa?” she asked. “What the boy said?” Papa thought for a moment. He always considered questions very carefully before he answered them. “Yes,” he said at last. “It is true. Any Danish citizen would die for King Christian, to protect him.” “You too, Papa?” “Yes.” “And Mama?” “Mama too.” Annemarie shivered again. “Then I would too, Papa.”
In this sense, the people possess their king as much as they are possessed by him. One cannot say about the spirit of democracy that it wore a red bow-tie on Thursday or that it is spending the week on the west coast. A king, however, can be seen in the square, greeted, and sung to. A good king’s greeting makes you special forever. A good king is worth dying for.
One of the curious and marvelous proofs of Christianity is that, despite being unprecedented, it was wholly familiar. Despite its weird and seemingly arbitrary shape, it is a shape that completes a puzzle. The incarnation of the Christ was nothing like what it was expected to be by those who were looking for it, and it met the nearly forgotten expectations of those pagans which had long ago despaired of looking for it. The Jews knew that the Messiah would come; the Pagans knew he would be the child of God, and that like the corn-king, he would replenish all things.
When he was walking the empty country of Palestine, he was an infuriation. Here was a man with no education that understood the entire Jewish law, a man which swore everyone around him to strict secrecy, but told parables in which he called himself a king. He couldn’t be trapped into a trick question by all the cunning in Judea, and he seemed simultaneously bent on destroying and defending all things. He was a man no one expected, because he was the right man—the most familiar of men, the son of man. Any talk of his being a “good teacher” is evidence that the person talking hasn’t actually read any of his teachings. To those that Jesus did teach, he identified himself unmistakably as a king…one greater than the Sabbath. He called himself Lord. (kurios) He spoke constantly of his kingdom, and this kingdom was not some metaphysical “state” with harps, clouds, and golden gates…it was a kingdom already present, a kingdom to be unleashed upon the soil he walked upon and over the waters that he commanded. His disciples say that he was such a king that bread, wine, stones, trees, and even death itself submitted to him. The final debt of all previous kings knelt (and was broken) before this one. He was, in fact, the man in whom and for whom all things were created.
The best and most beloved Presidents of the United States have spoken (need examples here) as stewards of an office they were entrusted. It is because they are stewards that they are called leaders, and not rulers. The semantic difference is enormous. It may be similar to the difference between a mother and a mother-in-law. When a foreigner calls the American President the “ruler of America,” someone hastily explains to him that we have no ruler. Even the highest office is not lofty enough for a crown in this land. Yet the constitution, when it speaks of things “endowed by [men’s] Creator,” affirms that the election of leaders is only a right because it was given. There is an original ruler, whether he is acknowledged or not, who is older than memory. He is like a landlord who returns to his estate after many generations of servants have passed through it, some even forgetting there ever was a Lord of the house. Some others say that the story of the Landlord was only invented to keep the children and weak-minded in line. Some others say that the Landlord was the only reasonable explanation before biological evidence solved all the questions of ownership. It is our job, as the faithful servants, to remember that the Lord of the house is good, and to make it ready, unfaithful servants and all, for the Master’s coming, which is said will be like a thief in the night.
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