Happy New Year!  And I forgot my bells and whistles.  You might think I’m a month early.  Well, at least I didn’t do this the first week of February; then I’d be a month late, right?  Thanksgiving just was last weekend and here I am celebrating the new year.  A little education moment—it is the end of the Christian year.  The majority of the Christian church recognizes by way of the Lectionary and the church year that it is “Christ the King” Sunday.  Next Sunday is the beginning of Advent; it is the first of the Christian year.  For four Sundays, starting next Sunday, we will prepare for the birth of Jesus Christ.  The birth is the beginning; but you have to end that which begins and so today is the end of the life of Jesus Christ.  At least that’s the way the Bible shares with us.  And what it is declared is that Christ is King of all.  Those are the words that are the foundation of this Sunday and its meaning.  One of the powerful ways to look at it is the Gospel message itself and in a moment we will reflect upon three of the Gospel messages and how they bring different aspects and understanding to Jesus Christ as King. 

            But first, let’s read Paul’s word.  Paul was trying to build a foundation of understanding in the Letter of Colossians, in particular the first chapter, 11-20 verses.  I’m going to read those to you in just a moment.  And as I do, listen carefully to the well-crafted words of what Paul is trying to put in a foundational way that people could read, listen to, hear, and remember who Jesus Christ is.  That’s a foundational understanding of our Christian faith and for all brothers and sisters in Christ.  So let us start with Paul’s words in Colossians 1: 

            “…be strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you might have great endurance of patience and joyfully giving thanks to the father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of life.”  Remember the “kingdom of life” as a phrase for in verse 13 Paul says, “For He, Jesus Christ, has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption and forgiveness of sins.”  That’s a very powerful statement important to our understanding of our faith.  Let me read that to you again.  “For He, Jesus Christ, has rescued us from the dominion of darkness (remember, in opposition to the kingdom of life) and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sin.”  And then what Paul goes into in the next versus is to continue to express the supremacy of Christ.   Not as just someone brought by God but one who is God and is with God in all things and all times.  So Paul says in Verse 15, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by Him all things were created—things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by Him and for Him.  He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.  And He is the head of the body, the church.  He is the beginning and the firstborn from whom among the dead so that in everything He might have supremacy.  God is pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Him and prove Him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross.” 

The kingdom of life and the cross—seemingly contradictory but very important in understanding who Jesus is as Christ the King.  This last weekend of the church year as you heard reflected in the powerful words of Zachariah’s prayer quoted earlier in the service as an expression of preparation for this way.  You see, we have kind of set aside in our understanding and our thinking and our vernacular.  We use the word “king” but we haven’t had one, of course, obviously this country since its beginning.  We abandoned that process; we call it democracy.  Nothing wrong with that; but there are still kings and queens today.  We do have to understand that kings or queens in their position, in most countries and in most parts of history, had absolute power.  They obtained that power by gathering power around them through armies, through other resources.  Now Jesus is the king of his kingdom and he gathers the power around him, but not in an earthly way; not like a country does, not like a kingdom on this earth.  But it is a kingdom against sin, death, the power of evil.  And by the death of Jesus Christ, not the conquering of the worlds, but by the death of Jesus Christ, His resurrection and ascension, Jesus won the war against evil.   

That’s the kingdom mentality and framework in which we declare Jesus Christ the king today.  All Christians are asked to do is to accept that Jesus fought and won that war, that heavenly and earthly war for all time without challenge and without end.  But our culture hulled out a different way of interpreting the way the world is. Our society tells us that at this end of the Christian year, the most important thing this weekend is it’s the most wonderful time of the year to go shopping!  In fact, to save our country, we should shop.  Think about that.  It’s the season, and once again challenges Christians if we understand the foundational piece of our faith that God gives to us.  And we need to start right now to reflect upon, yes, the catchphrase that we use, “the reason for the season”.  But the reason for the season is not shopping, it’s not green Friday or black Friday, it’s that we are reminded not just that Advent is a time of getting ready to give gifts, but Advent is the time for us to remember the foundation of who we are and whose we are.  For Christians it is not part of a weekend of a great set of sales, it’s not looking how many days we have left to shop.  For Christians it is a spiritual, emotional, and yes, even a physical preparation for the celebration of the birth of Jesus.  It’s the last weekend of the church year; next weekend is the beginning of the church year.  It’s a time to turn our spiritual calendars—not wait until January 1, but to begin in our own hearts to prepare to receive anew Jesus Christ, the king born in a stable. 

The lectionary readings that rotate every three years, brings forth on this Sunday the reflection of who Jesus is that’s found in the Gospel readings.  Last week, is the servant role of Jesus and the declaration from Matthew when Jesus Christ, the King, blesses those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, but also on the safe side of the page, curses those who are so caught up in their own need for comfort that they don’t pay attention to the need of others.  For Jesus Christ, the King, declares what are the rules for his kingdom.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus is Christ, the King, after having gone through a terrible night of being beaten and humiliated and yet stands before the royal official and simply states by his presence there what is true and what is power in this life and in all of eternity.  In Luke’s Gospel, we read indeed that Jesus Christ hung on the cross dying a horrible death.  Because he couldn’t help it?  No, because he had every power to come down himself.  But he had a greater reason, a greater alternative, a greater purpose for that day.  And that’s what we need to look back upon this time of year.   

All of the stories that we’ve heard, all of the accounts of Scripture of the last 52 Sundays, to be clear that Christ has more important work than just to save himself.  For he 1) forgave them, those who had plotted against him.  While he was dying on the cross, he forgave them. He also speaks the promise of salvation to one who admitted his own wrongdoing and was hanging on a cross by him.  He said, “You are forgiven and on this day you will enter in to salvation.”  And clearly, as he was dying upon the cross, the hope is already being put together for us, that through his resurrection in three days, Christ the King would bring healing and new life to all who believe in him.   

Throughout this third gospel, the gospel of Luke, Jesus Christ in his words and actions, usher in a new kingdom. Jesus Christ was king of this kingdom and we are to be the subjects, the citizens, the members of that kingdom.  It is a kingdom that welcomes those who maybe even the church itself declares are outcasts.  But the kingdom is even greater than the church.  It is greater than the organization we call the church upon this earth.  The kingdom of God says the outcast will be brought in to the center of this kingdom.  And we best listen to that instead of deciding that all those who are in the church are the most loved and special of God’s people.  And if you are not in the church, you haven’t made it.  But Jesus said, “I’ll even bring in those off of the streets, those who are the outcasts and the downtrodden, because I will fill my banquet hall with them.”  A kingdom in which forgiveness doesn’t just change relationships, it changes lives for this life and the life to come. 

Even the church, at times, has become politically correct.  There is nothing wrong with the phrase, “the reign of Christ”.  But remember what that is connected with. Reign is connected with being a king, being the one who is the King of Kings as we hear in Isaiah and hear also, of course, in song in the next few weeks.  But the other part is to know that this reign and this kingdom is in counter to the culture of our society.  Sometimes even the church is wanting to further change it until it becomes the “culture of Christ” Sunday not the “Christ King” Sunday.  When we set aside the cross, when we set aside the purpose of the cross, the suffering and the death so that others will know of God’s great love, when we set that aside we also set aside the kingdom of Christ.

How different are these two categories of culture—the divine and the human?  They will always be and have always been in opposition.  For we as human beings want to play God and to be God and to set our own culture and our own rule and decide who God is rather than accepting who God is.  Our human culture conceives of no other way to respond to violence than with future violence.  We experience an attitude in this world that is now beset upon us by other faiths who are doing the same thing, building their faith upon expounding that others who are different than us do not even deserve to live and we will kill them even if we kill ourselves in the process.  It is not terrorism that we are fighting as a separate issue.  It is the desire to be dominant of someone else.  Because as a whole, our culture promotes that we are to be dominant.  In fact, we live to triumph in spreading our culture instead of the faith of Jesus Christ.  Our culture is not what needs to be exported.  It is we, who are the faithful of the church, that need to export the Kingdom of Christ and offer it and the understanding as simply as the world still does not understand why an Amish father can forgive the man who kills his daughter on the day of her funeral.  That is the kingdom thinking and it is hard for us, even at times, as Christians, to admit that our human heart says that vengeance would be better.  Bring him to justice!  Overcome and destroy that which destroyed that which I love.  But the kingdom of heaven says, “No, that is not my way.” 

How can we possibly find escape in this world to be developed upon the cross of Christ?  I don’t believe it is possible.  We have tried in the past to develop countries to be Christian countries.  But the truth is, we can not make a country Christian.  It is only God’s Spirit that makes individuals Christian.  And then we must live in that kingdom.  And if God could, and God can, and God eventually will, will bring the reign of God, as it should, upon this world.  

Just this last week I happened to catch, I saw on the TV, “The Attic of Anne Frank”.  And it brought to my mind the very simple truth of some people who stood up, at the risk of their own lives, in WWII, to protect those who were being destroyed by Nazis—the Jewish people.  To hide them in their attic, even if sometimes losing the battle, but willing to risk everything to save a few against such evil. That’s what the Kingdom is about.  We also have the sort of life that the King of Kings who says we are to give away who we are and what we have more than we are to accumulate and keep for ourselves.  Our culture and society is at times in direct opposition to the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. 

But we have hope!  For on this Christ the King Sunday, as we transition into the new year, we must always see, even though our path has been speckled with the wrong choices and mistakes, there is a new hope.  And I’m going to read to you the words of a song by Bryan Sirchio.  As he sings this, or gives us these words that I’ll read to you, I want you to think of the fact that he has just finished a mission work in one of the poorest countries of Haiti.  He is leaving to go back to his comfortable way in the United States.  Listen to his words as he tells the story and sets the tone for what the kingdom of Jesus Christ is to be. 

“On the last night of a trip I took to Haiti, I was driving down this crowded city street. I can still see the diesel fumes lingering in the headlight.  I can still see that little girl’s bare feet.  She was wearing a tattered yellow dress; she was four or five years old I would guess; another orphan street kid working hard to just survive.  To be honest, I was hoping to drive right by.  But the traffic was gridlocked to a standstill.  And when she noticed my white skin, she came real quick.  She leaned up against my window and then with one little hand she pointed back and forth from belly to mouth.  At first she seemed a little bit too practiced at pulling strings of guilt and sympathy.  And then, I’m not sure why, but I looked right in to her eyes.  As I did these words washed over me, “I see you.  I see you.  Hey little girl.  I don’t pretend that you are not there.  I see you.  I see you.  Little girl Christ, I see you.”  People tell me, “Please don’t give these street kids money, it just perpetuates that cruel dependency.”  And to be honest, I didn’t like the thought of taking out my wallet.  You never know who else is working those crowded streets.  Compassion sure was feeling complicated.  Mother Theresa called these kids “Christ in disguise”.  But there was nothing that seemed right to try to do for her that night except to try to tell her with my eyes, “I see you.  I see you.  Hey little girl, I won’t pretend that you are not there.  I see you.  I see you little girl Christ.  I do see you.”   And how often I have quoted that familiar cold statistic—32,000 children starve to death each day.  A few more years, some high-heeled shoes and lipstick, and little girls will do what they must do just to fill those hunger pains one more day.  I could see the traffic up ahead was moving, but she and I kept looking eye to eye.  And when the moment finally came to take my foot off the brake, she shrugged her shoulders, then she cracked this little smile.  And as I drove away I made a promise, “Little girl, I will not forget your face and I’ll do what’s mine to do to change the world for kids like you.  And when I hear 32,000, I’ll remember you and say, “I see you.  I see you.  Hey little girl, I won’t forget or pretend that you are not there.  I see you little girl Christ.  I do see you.”   

Today we recognize Christ the King of the cross suffering and dying for all of creation—for you and for me.  To whom we give thanks for our salvation by the grace of God.  Yes, today we recognize Christ, the King, the servant king who said, “As you have done this (or not done it) to the least of these, you have done it (or not done it) to me.”  We end this Christian year with the fitting declaration of Christ the King in preparation for advent of his birth so that we might see and know the full story from beginning to end and beginning again. During December we will have a variety of ways for us to help the children of the world in the way that Jesus, the Christ, the King would help children.  We are ending Thanksgiving weekend one of the best in our country, with the heart of this expression, to give thanks by giving.  What better way to end the year than with a meal, a banquet, a feast that the King of Kings provides for us, the best Thanksgiving feast ever—communion, where we are served in the spiritual kingdom by the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Jesus, the Christ.

E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman

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