We have just lived through an election campaign fought on the issue of change. Even the Government which has been returned to power, in the very composition of the Cabinet, has announced change.

It remains to be seen however whether we, i.e. Government, Opposition and citizens, have the will to effect the changes which are needed. Many of us would like to think that we have given the power to the Government and it is their responsibility to effect change.

That way of thinking is an abdication of our responsibility because change will not come about unless every citizen of this country exercises his/her power in a certain way.

The Feast of Christ the King, which we celebrate today, is therefore of utmost importance because it tells us how power is to be exercised to effect change.

We must understand, first of all, that kings in Gospel times were not constitutional monarchs. They were absolute monarchs with all that being an absolute monarch implied. They literally had power over the lives of all their subjects.

This Feast, however, shows us a king who proclaims himself king in the middle of his passion, when he had been stripped of all power. Moreover, he relates his kingship to witnessing to Truth.

We also see a man with absolute mastery over himself being jeered at by all and sundry, yet standing and then hanging with total dignity and not letting himself be bowed by the abuse heaped upon him.

The power of relationship

Here we do not see a man cringing in fear, or begging for mercy or cursing his tormentors. Rather, we see a man who in his moment of agony still had it in him to pastor someone who was undergoing the same suffering. He tells the thief crucified with him, “Indeed, I promise you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Jesus could pastor the repentant thief because his witness to the truth made him see the repentant thief for what he truly was – a child of God.

History is full of examples of people who died for their ideals. The thousands of Vietnamese who gave their lives on either side of the ideological divide attest to this.

In Jesus however, what we see is not only the power of an ideal, but the power of a relationship. Jesus could stand with absolute mastery over himself and, indeed, over those who tormented him, because of his relationship with God, his Father.

It is this relationship which allowed Jesus to use his power over nature, over demons, over sickness, not for himself but for others, so that even in his agony he could still pastor the repentant thief. This power never crushes; it always builds up, because it is essentially the power of love.

As disciples of Jesus, we cannot see power as a commodity to be accumulated. When power is accumulated it becomes totalitarian.

Unless each one of us uses power as Jesus did, not to crush but to build up so that our use of power witnesses to the truth that every one of us is a child of God – equal in dignity to all others, heir not only to the riches of our land but heir also of heaven, we will never escape from the situation in which we find ourselves.