A Season of Kings

We don't really like Kings and Queens. It's not any personal animosity that we have. I'd guess that few of us know or have ever met a real King or Queen. It's just that in our democratic society, we resist notions of class and caste, of privilege and servitude, of royalty and peasantry. Many of our ancestors came from other countries where there were rigid class divisions, even slavery and the buying and selling of persons. Our nation was founded on notions of individual dignity (at first for only white males and later for women and even later for persons of color). We like level playing fields and equality. Even when our society tries to redress wrongs, we don't like notions of tokenism or ethnic quotas. It's an uncomfortable neighbor.
So the era of Israel's life when Kings came on the scene is a little odd for us. Oh we understand it on one level, but on another level we think of it as an historic experiment that had its day and is no longer relevant for our times. We recoil today when our own elected leaders try to claim spedcial entitlements.
But Kingship is so much more than privilege and entitlement. Kingship in Israel was instituted to serve, to lead and to sacrifice. It was set up to insure permanent and stable leadership over long periods. The altar piece for this Sunday (photographed above) depicts the splendor of royalty with the peacock feathers and the King's wealth with the brass container and the brocaded fabrics. But it also tells the story of divinely appointed task with the cruet of oil used to annoint Kings to their sacred function. Annointed means to be marked and set aside for a new identity and a new task. The task for Israel's Kings was to protect the people at all costs and to keep them faithful to the covenant. The annointing act told the people that God chose this person as his instrument, pay attention! It told the King that they were in their position due to God's will.
But Kings, like us, forget their tasks and bask in their privileges. So they were replaced with other, more faithful Kings. But humans being humans, were fragile and susceptible to temptations to privilege and power, until Jesus came as the perfect "annointed one" the "King of the Jews" with his own "kingdom of God" in which he reigned. "Messiah" means annointed one, a new kind of King.