Political elections are always a time when people feel hope. Whether it’s state wide or country wide, new leaders tout themselves as solving all our ills and making a new start. Campaign promises are not always kept, and the hope doesn’t always pan out. But we still feel hopeful when new leadership emerges.

And the people of Jesus’ time were no different. No one needed new leadership more than they did; and their faith promised that a King would come to save them from all their ills – that this King would do something new. Hence when Jesus emerges as the savior and messiah, the people waited for His kingship to arrive in fulfillment of the prophesies of old.

How disappointed they must have been when this king did not gather the troops and lead a rebellion against the Roman authorities. Instead as the gospel points out today, their king is crucified on a cross and dies a humiliating death. What kind of King can this one be? Certainly nothing they were used to.

We have a key to understanding this type of King in today’s first reading from the Second Book of Samuel. Here David is anointed King of Israel and the Lord says to Him: You shall shepherd my people Israel and be their leader. God does not command him to be a warrior but a shepherd – one who gathers and cares for the flock.

In the Gospel, even as Jesus dies, He continues his shepherding as He assures the thief hanging by his side will be with him in paradise that day.

Each year as we conclude our liturgical year, we are reminded clearly who our King is: He is not a warrior but a shepherd; He is not caught up in his own power, but uses that power for the good of us all; He is a king who gave and gave until all He had left to give was his very life on a cross.

A king who conquered the Roman would have gone down in history as powerful force of His time; A king who conquers sin and death lives on as the shepherding savior of all people.