Christ the King!

Christ the King – We are celebrating Christ the King Sunday. It is the end of the liturgical year. This day we celebrate the culmination of the work of Christ. We think about his coming again at the end of all things to establish his throne forever and ever. We have completed another liturgical cycle.

The passage from Colossians we often read this time of year is one of my favorites.

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 the 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.


The description is an awesome one! That which you have never seen or comprehended, Christ has come to make known clearly. We are the ones who will confuse his depiction later. The text leaves no possibility of there being anything separated from his rule and power. Everything in all creation finds it purpose of existence in him. It is Christ, who pulls all the diverse strands of the universe together and brings meaning and order to it all. Without him every sound is simply noise and every action simply chaos.

When the forerunner of Jesus, John the Baptist, is born, his father, Zechariah, proclaims the great things Yahweh God is about to do through the coming Messiah. God, himself, has decided to show mercy, to remember his holy covenant. The time has come. That day for which every Israelite hoped, was today. The distant horizon had come near. God had come, not only to rescue us and our ancestors from our enemies, especially the enemy of death, but he was going to enable us to serve him without fear. The fear of God distant and awesome, the one who had covered the face of Moses lest the wonder of the glory of the face of God strike him dead, was coming to put on a body, much like the one Moses had himself. He was coming to feel, to see, to listen, to taste, and, especially, to speak his words to us with his own mouth.

His coming would not be as a conquering sovereign, though he certainly was the sovereign of any place he would place his foot. He was coming, not to see what tribute he could take away, but to see what salvation he could give. For those whose life had been gloom and suffering and hopelessness, his coming would be like a light piercing through the gloom to give hope where none had existed before. This same light would be a light of guidance to those who had lost their way along life’s path and need to find their way back home. Ain’t God Good!

Pastor Craig