Friday, December 22 - O Rex Gentium (King of the Nations)

The sixth 'O Antiphon' is 'O Rex Gentium':

O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.

Guite draws attention to the motif of the hidden king, reminding us of how Jesus subverts the normal idea of kingship.  The purple he wore on the cross was a mockery.  The only crown he ever wore was one of thorns.  The Gospel of John puts it this way: "he came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him." (John 1:11)

Guite looks to Shakespeare and Tolkien, and how their stories have featured hidden kings:

"...from King Lear, out on the heath, in the storm, willingly so to feel alongside poor Tom O'Bedlam the worst of life, and calling on other kings to do the same,

"take physic, pomp, expose thyself to feel what wretches feel..."

"through to the story of Henry V, moving in disguise among the campfires of his own soldiers; to its most recent and powerful iteration in the figure of Strider in The Lord of the Rings, the ragged ranger who walks with the Fellowship on the long road, before they eventually discover that he is their true king.  Perhaps we love these stories of the hidden king because we realize that is how God has come to us." (Guite, Waiting on the Word, 85)

There is also a reference to Genesis 2, when man is described as being formed from the dust.  Christ is the one with the authority to save because it is he who formed us from the clay.  Guite likens the ongoing way that Christians are shaped over time to the way clay is shaped in a potter's hands:

"I don't think this making and shaping is over.  We are still being formed by the divine hands, from the dust of the ground.  I remember being at a Christian music festival and wanting to rebuke the teenagers in the tent next to mine for having kept me up all night with their exuberance and music, but then one of them emerged from his tent wearing a T-shirt that read 'Be patient, God hasn't finished with me yet'.  I took the rebuke, and was glad to know that God hasn't finished with me yet either.  Indeed, as Advent calls us to look for the fruition of all things, for the coming of the kingdom that is both here and yet to come, it is good to know that not only we ourselves, but our whole world are clay in the potter's hands." (Guite, 86)