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

When Ritual Fails

THE PURPOSE OF RITUAL IN OUR LIVES – We are about to enter one of the most ritualized times of the year, Christmas. Take a moment and rejoice and give thanks for some of your family rituals. Let me name a few. Christmas Eve services, holding your candle high during the singing of Silent Night, Christmas Eve family dinner, reading the Christmas story – or any Christmas story for that matter, waiting for Christmas morning – or opening just one present on Christmas Eve in the hopes that the one will lead to many more before bed, ham or turkey or, in one case I know of, even lasagna on Christmas morning, certain ornaments only hung by certain people, the Prange’s box! Oh the list goes on and one. Some of them would make no sense outside of your family, but inside, even the mention of the key word brings back a flood of memories.


Some traditions/rituals seem rather odd to us. It appears that before Santa, the Christmas goat delivered the presents. This goat was apparently a rather angry and grumpy creature who just threw the gifts through the door.

There was no ritual on that first Christmas other than the ritual of childbirth. No Silent Night, no candlelight service, only the light needed to deliver a baby in a less than sterile environment. Ritual is important though. It has a way of telling us what to do when the meaning of the event is so great that we are held motionless in its majesty. Ritual tells us to eat or drink, to stand or sit or even kneel, it tells us to sing and to pray, it reminds us that the perfect gift to give is a gift of ourselves.

There are many rituals which we are clueless about. Why do we raise our candles on Christmas Eve? Are we symbolizing we are the light of the world? The Scripture clearly tells us that Christ is the light of the world. Wouldn’t it make more sense to blow ours out that his may contrast our darkness? Probably not – it just doesn’t seem right, does it? Are we trying to show forth the light of Christ alive in us? That sounds like the best answer.

And all the other things we do, most of them have no basis in what happened on the first night. It probably wasn’t silent and, probably, no one slept very soundly. But, like we said earlier, the main purpose of ritual is to explain a reality which we cannot comprehend. God born in a barn is beyond the ability of our mind to grasp, so we pack in all the rituals we can think of in the hope that we can bring the event to life in our own hearts this season again. It’s what we call “Having the Christmas Spirit.”

We must be careful with our rituals. We must be careful because rituals are powerful things. They can transform themselves from symbolizing the thing we worship into actually becoming the thing we worship. But, rituals also ground us. They bring the eternal into our lives at times when we need it most. The 23rd Psalm may seem so trite until we try to get through a crisis in our life without hearing the comfort of it read for us or to us. The Christmas tree may seem an unnecessary addition to the holiday season until our parents talk about not putting one up this season any more. For all their failings, we need rituals to express who we are and where we stand on the eternal stage of this creation. It is comforting to know that some things never change. So, this season we will light our candles, we will put up our trees, we will unpack our nativity scenes, and, in doing so, we hope to touch a small piece of the eternal.

Pastor Craig