Christ the King Sunday

John 18:37, "Yes, I am a king."

 
Christmas is coming. It's been twenty-eight weeks of "ordinary time" since the church celebrated Pentecost on May 19, and next Sunday December 1 we pivot to a new liturgical year with the sacred season of Advent. But not yet. We have one more piece of business on this last Sunday of the old year.
 
In the wake of the American presidential election, this week we celebrate "Christ the King." Such explicitly political language makes many Christians understandably nervous. Nonetheless, the language of kingship is deeply embedded in the New Testament. Jesus himself, his first followers, and most notably his detractors, all used the language of kingship to describe who he was and what he did. People remembered Jesus in various ways. He was a carpenter. He was a healer and a miracle worker. A teacher. A renegade rabbi who broke purity laws. He was a prophet who defended the vulnerable and the outcasts. He was a shepherd, as we see in the earliest Christian art. He also claimed to be a king with a kingdom.
 
When we begin Advent next week, lowly Mary's Magnificat will celebrate how the birth of Jesus signaled that God would "bring down rulers from their thrones." In Mark's gospel, the very first words spoken by Jesus announced that "the kingdom of God is at hand." In Matthew, the Persian magi inquire about "the king of the Jews." In Luke, Jesus was dragged before Pilate for three political charges: "We found this fellow subverting the nation, opposing payment of taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King."
 
A POEM FOR THE FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING
 
See how this infant boy
lifted himself down
into his humble crèche
and laid his tender glove of skin
against splintered wood—
found refuge in a rack
of straw—home
that chilly dawn,
in sweetest silage,
those shriven stalks.
This outcast king lifted
himself high upon his savage cross,
extended the regal banner
of his bones, draping himself
upon his throne—his battered feet,
his wounded hands not fastened
there by nails but sewn
by the strictest thorn of love
 
Pamela Cranston

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation