November 21, 2021 – Reign of Christ (Last Sunday after Pentecost)
The reality of the reign of Christ should impact every part of our lives. Celebrating that reign must being with us!
Let us pray. Holy and reigning God, we give you thanks for your presence in this time and place, and within each one of us. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day. And may the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Today we celebrate the Reign of Christ. What is it that we’re actually celebrating? It could be his resurrection – his victory over death. Or maybe we’re celebrating his triumphing over evil power. Or maybe we see it as the ultimate “good guy wins in the end.” In the reign of Christ everything that might block our access to God has been overcome – now – not just in the future. So that’s the idea we have to wrap our heads around. The triumphant Jesus Christ will now positively impact our lives – in fact everyone’s’ lives!
Look at today’s Collect Prayer. We prayed “Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, our Lord and King …” Clearly the presence and the active work of Jesus Christ, including his sacrificial death, is to have impact on us all – all of us! And in the second part of the Collect we pray for exactly that kind of impact. “ … grant that the peoples of the earth, now divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his gentle and loving rule.”
This sounds very good doesn’t it, but what’s it all mean in our reality? What kind of impact will it have in our lives today … tomorrow … and into the future? Today’s Scripture readings really don’t provide much direct help in discovering the answer. The First Reading is from the last part of the second Book of Samuel. It praises the attributes of the image of the “ideal king” – making references to King David as an example. It reads, “ … One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of the morning …” and the author continues my expounding how that “light” brings about growth and flourishing. The Psalm is an expression of praise to God while also recalling King David’s reign. The Second Reading is from the opening verses of the Book of Revelation. It paints a glorious picture of Christ the King – “ … Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” It continues to refer to Jesus as the Alpha and the Omega – the beginning and the end – who will return in triumph.
But then, the Gospel Reading is from the Gospel of John and is one of the “scenes” out of Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate. It doesn’t seem to fit at all with the glorious nature of the other two readings. In this scene, Pilate is trying to get Jesus to admit that He is a king. And Jesus keeps throwing a wrench into Pilate’s attempt to classify him as a king. Pilate asks him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replies, “My kingdom is not from this world.” Pilate tries again, “So you are a king?” But Jesus deflects Pilate again and says, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”
But this Gospel Reading does give us a kind of “negative” learning in this sense. Jesus is basically saying that ‘me as king, and my Kingdom are completely different from your earthly examples of monarchs.’ So what is the effect of this Kingdom of Christ’s? It is not like the kingdoms that we know about around our world. And this king is not like monarchs that we’re aware of in our present-day reality.
As a result, both of these “pictures” – the glorious one of Christ returning in the future as King as described in the Second Reading, and the “my Kingdom is completely different from earthly Kingdoms” as described in the Gospel Reading, can cause us to distance ourselves from the Reign of Christ – to affirm it – even rejoice in it – but to then see it as removed from us. We might view it in the same way we would the description of a present-day monarch and their territory that has little contact with Canada and has little direct influence on us – like a description from Luxembourg or Malta in the European Union. Or we might see it as analogous to how we would respond when our favourite sports team wins their championship. We are really happy about it – we celebrate it - but it doesn’t have much impact on how we live. When we do interpret the reign of Christ in these ways we are effectively dismissing the reign of Christ. We are negating its importance in our lives.
Today’s Prayer Over the Gifts is helpful – it sows a seed for a much deeper and more dynamic appreciation of Christ’s reign.
In a few minutes we’ll pray this: “Eternal God, by your grace you have raised us up and enthroned us with Christ in the heavenly realms.” What is this prayer getting at? What does this notion of us being “enthroned with Christ” come from – now – not in the Parousia, not in the end times? Well, it comes from a very important section in the 2nd chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians. I’m going to read to you a few of those verses. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” That’s the passage that the Prayer Over the Gifts is trying to reflect on. God, in a sense, has made us spiritual royalty in Jesus Christ. But it’s totally a gift! It is nothing that we can take credit for.
So what does it mean to be born into a royal family? Well, as far as we can tell, it means first and foremost that your life is ordered – with a particular purpose and focus; and with certain benefits and certain responsibilities. Now sadly, some of our earthly examples of living in royalty are not always good or healthy. But of course, God’s family is completely good and whole.
So the reign of Christ doesn’t begin with thinking about something that happened “over there” and to “those people” somewhere else. It starts right here with you and me. It starts with embracing the fact that we have been joined to Christ – and to each other in this reign – “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” This reality has the potential to change everything in our lives. It means the decisions we make, the relationships we nurture – or neglect; how we use our time, our abilities, our resources, and how we treat ourselves – how we care for our bodies, our mind and our soul – all need to come into, and recognize, Christ’s reign.
So our celebration of the reign of Christ starts, actually, with looking at ourselves – how much we are living in, and living out of, our place in Christ. And then, the second part of this recognition of Christ’s reign involves each other. In the Collect Prayer we prayed that we would be “freed from sin and brought together under his gentle and loving rule.” Do you know what this means? There can be no selfish competition among us – there can be no “I win – you lose”. There can be healthy competition to bring out the best in us – but nothing that raises us up and lowers another.
It is all given to us as a gift. We have been placed under the reign of Christ by the gift of God’s love. We witness to the reign of Christ and allow it to shape who we are as people by living under it ourselves and allowing it to shape who we are as people and how we treat other human beings – in fact how we treat the whole created order.
So the celebration of the reign of Christ starts with us – bringing our lives under Christ’s reign. By the gift of God’s love we have been planted – we have been rooted – with Christ in his reign: “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Thanks be to God.
Amen.
