Sunday, November 24, 2019

Christ the King/Reign of Christ

First Reading: Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm – Luke 1:68-79
Second Reading: Colossians 1:11-20
Gospel Reading: Luke 23:33-34

The liturgical color for the day is: White

From the Leadership Development Bible Study – Unit 4 on Colossians 1:11-20

Good Colossians watched how the world worked, and Paul invites the church to re-align its very understanding of the world, the cosmos, and how they fit into it.  Power is not economic or political, nor is it social – power is lodged and located in Christ.  He is the source of all power.

This truth becomes that which is more real than what is seen in daily life.  Christ’s power was present in creation (verses 15 & 16, and consider John 1:1-4), holds all things together into one body (verses 17 & 18), and reconciles all things (both on earth and in heaven) through the cross (verses 19 & 20).  Such reconciliation restores the original creation that was despoiled by humanity in the Garden of Eden.

To boldly proclaim Christ as our power is a radical move of the Church that robustly confronts all the physical structures and institutions of the day (both for us now and in the day that the Colossians gathered as a community in Christ).

From the Leadership Development Bible Study – Unit 4 on Luke 23:33-34

This is the final Sunday of the liturgical calendar.  Next Sunday begins a new liturgical year.  The story of Advent, Christmas, then on to Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and the great journey of the church in Ordinary Time—it will all begin again next Sunday.

This Sunday is the crowning jewel on the Christian year.  It is the finish line.  It is what we have been building to in a genuine way—this Sunday is Christ the King Sunday.  It is an oddity for the main-line world of Christendom.  We have no concept of king—it is not a system with which we can identify in the same way as those of old.

The text—oh, this text.  It carries us far afield from the gaze into glory.  The text carries us to the place called The Skull.  The text carries us to the cross with our Christ in the throes of agony and death.  We are far afield from the splendor of reigning on high.

But that is the moment we get it.  It is the moment we discover, in order to see who this God of ours is, we do not only look all the way into the splendor of heaven.  Rather we look down—all the way down to the depths of the cross.  In the death of Jesus, we see who this God of ours is.  It is there in the agony of dying where we see the character of God.  Forgiving.  Promising.  Suffering.  Giving over of the self.  Sacrificing.  Not disconnected.  Not removed, but still inviting.  “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Rev. Dr. Daris Bultena
General Presbyter and Stated Clerk