An annual but somewhat questionable publication of The State Newspaper is the quite popular The Best of Columbia (+ year).  This past year some 230,000 peoples’ votes were tallied (representing? about one quarter of the Columbia metro population) in over seventy categories ranging from dentistry to donuts, towing to waitstaff, pizzas, coffee, and tree surgeons.  While not disparaging the first, second, and third prize winners, I wonder how reliable the “best” accolade really is. Invoking BBQ for a moment, there is not one ideal recipe for BBQ, not surprising news for South Carolinians despite regional loyalties. Mustard, ketchup, and pepper-vinegar are as hotly disputed as South Carolina and Clemson fans’ armchair conclusions after a game. The BBQ umbrella also shelters North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, the Orient, and points in between and beyond.  We haven’t even begun to squabble about which protein, mind you!  Therefore, any claim to THE BEST BBQ must be questioned.  Perhaps more accurately, The Best of Columbia applauds popular eateries, services, and individuals remembered by their loyal fans who punch in their favorites on handy smartphones in order to honor a service’s request to remember them before the annual publication’s deadline.  Is it any wonder we’re asked (almost daily, it seems) to answer endless and somewhat pointless questions on how thrilled we are with the services rendered by, for example, the newspaper deliverer whose identity is unknown and arrives to deliver the paper before we’re even awake.  Air system checkup technicians, exterminators of unwelcome life forms, auto dealerships, dentists, grocery stores, and likely any other public service all seem obsessed with the mantra: “tell us how we did!”  “Best” has become confused with “popular” in a culture that is increasingly self-serving and not all that interested in distinguishing between these two very different descriptors.  It should give us pause for thought knowing that even Adolph Hitler was wildly popular in the early 1930s but was only best at inciting unspeakable crimes against the human race.

            Although “royalty” has never been represented among the categories considered in The Best of Columbia, it is not all that likely that Jesus would have ever made the list given our tendency to assume our “likes” are the obvious guarantee of what is “best.”  This Sunday marks the beginning of the final week of the Christian Year crowned by the Festival of Christ the King.  The annual festival is fascinating, partially because it is a late comer to the church calendar, the brainchild of Pope Pius XI at a time when no self-respecting Lutheran still smarting over the Reformation’s aftermath would otherwise have dreamed of taking a handout from the Roman Pontiff of all people.  For those who remember, it was not all that long ago that Lutherans still forbad their children to marry a “cathlick,” or at least incessantly reminding them thereafter of their woeful failing as a daughter or son of the one true (and decidedly Lutheran) church.  Denominational prejudice, overly rehearsed polemics, and a healthy repertoire of theological slander and libel have been practiced over the intervening centuries by all Christians since the 1517 theological explosion.  Universal bickering and rancor constitute one of the most vexing dilemmas facing Christ’s one, holy, and apostolic church.  Thus, Pius XI’s humble hope for all Christians to commemorate Christ’s “kingship” in 1925, the ecumenical community establishing the festival as the last Sunday of the Christian Year in 1969.

            Pius XI was not a “popular” pope (he has never appeared on the “Best of the Popes” list), somewhat lost between the two world wars (he served from 1922 until 1939 upon his death) and overshadowed by his close predecessors Pius IX and Leo XIII or immediate successors Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI.  Nevertheless, Pius XI was significant.  He was neither an idealist nor smugly triumphalist.  He recognized that the world was reeling from a devastating global upheaval which would ultimately transform all social, political, and religious structures.  Pius was deeply saddened that despite the end of WWI, there really was no peace ensured for nations or the Church struggling to recover or imagining new social, political, economic, and even religious structures.  Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church was “one” in name only.  The Church’s scandalous divisions distressed him profoundly. He was neither interested in partisan political nor religious infighting.  His own motto adopted when elevated to the papacy — The Peace of Christ in the Reign of Christ. – embodied his desire to contribute to Christ’s peace: thus, the Festival of Christ the King. Summarizing his hopes for all people, he wrote in one of his first publications as pope: “…Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by his teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one’s life by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example” [December 23, 1922].

            With Pius XI’s encouragement and the wondrous scriptural passages to be proclaimed this Sunday, it is a most fitting way to conclude our own year of joys and sorrows, of disappointments and yet the sure and certain hope in the future God is already crafting. Sunday’s Hymn of the Day ELW 431: O Christ, What Can It Mean for Us? is well able to challenge us to godly action as we conclude a year’s faithfulness (we hope!) and look to the future as the “real” New Year for Christians begins next Sunday on Advent I.  The hymn’s author Benedictine Sister Delores Dufner most appropriately received for her long years of service as author and church musician the Christus Rex (“Christ the King”) Award by that most Lutheran of institutions, Valparaiso University in the arctic region of Indiana.  Her hymn asks us what Christ’s ministry and mission honestly mean for us.  What are our faithful considerations and conclusions as we remember the sacrifices Christ made, the gifts given to us for our own ministries, the hope and the daring conviction Christ gives us to live our lives “…worthy of the calling?”  Hopefully we recognize NOT a celebrity basking in the success of yet another popularity poll or contest, but the One who has called us out of our own “darkness into his marvelous light,” Christ our King, who reigns as “a different kind of king!”  Christ is our king not because of his popularity – he really does ask us to step up to the plate as disciples. He’s also there to work with us. He offers no easy answers or expectations.  Rather, he remains the “mirror of the Father’s heart” (Large Catechism), loving us beyond death into eternal life.  Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown of Christ our King [cf. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Act III, Scene 1] because his path is difficult and his call to us challenging.  Another hymn also comes to mind by early twentieth century author Howard B. Grose, Give of the Best to the Master.  Maybe Jesus does qualify in the Best of Whatever publication after all:

Give of your best to the Master; Naught else is worthy His love;
He gave Himself for your ransom, Gave up His glory above.
Laid down His life without murmur, You from sin’s ruin to save;
Give Him your heart’s adoration, Give Him the best that you have.