The One True King

34th Sunday of Ordinary Time - 2 Samuel 5:1-3

In those days, all the tribes of Israel came to David in Hebron and said:

"Here we are, your bone and your flesh.

In days past, when Saul was our king,

it was you who led the Israelites out and brought them back.

And the LORD said to you,

'You shall shepherd my people Israel

and shall be commander of Israel.'"

When all the elders of Israel came to David in Hebron,

King David made an agreement with them there before the LORD,

and they anointed him king of Israel.

King David, the man after God’s own heart (see 1 Samuel 13:14) who once slew the giant Goliath, was anointed king three different times in the Bible. On the first occasion, he was very young, and the Prophet Samuel chose him instead of any of his seven older brothers (see 1 Samuel 16:1-13). The second occasion was several years later when David was a military commander and the men of the tribe of Judah anointed him as the king of their tribe (see 2 Samuel 2:1-4). The third occasion is recounted in our reading this week when all twelve tribes of Israel gathered at Hebron to anoint him as king over all twelve tribes. 

David is an immensely important figure in the biblical narrative serving as the greatest king of the United Monarchy and therefore as the measurement by which every future king would be evaluated. Much of this stems from the Lord’s covenant with David, recorded in 2 Samuel 7:4-17, which promised an everlasting dynasty in which David’s each of his descendants to sit upon the throne would be considered a son of God. The kingdom that David built up was the Kingdom of God on earth into which Jesus would breathe new life. This kingdom also featured two important offices: the Prime Minister who was given the keys of the kingdom as a sign of his authority from the king to bind and loose (see Isaiah 22:15-25) and the Queen Mother who was an advocate with the king on behalf of the people (see 1 Kings 1:15–17). The Temple, the destruction of which Jesus describes in this week’s Gospel, was planned out and paid for in part by King David, and the Davidic liturgy focused heavily on the Todah or Thank Offering, translated into Greek as Eucharist. The Wisdom Literature of the Bible, much of which comes from David, was to be a new law for the nations that does not distinguish between Jews and Gentiles. In so many ways, King David points ahead to his most famous descendant to be authoritatively declared the King of the Jews: Jesus of Nazareth. 

On this Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, the Spirit invites us to consider the many in which Jesus is similar to King David. We are very used to considering how he is not an earthly king like David because Jesus himself says, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). But while that remains true, Jesus also intentionally set up a Church with striking similarities to the previous Kingdom of God. Those similarities present us with great fodder for mediation this week.