Today is the Feast of Christ the King!
If you know me, you know I LOVE the liturgical calendar. It is such a rich way to live out the rhythms of the life and ministry of Jesus, our Lord and our God.
Today, we celebrate one of my favorite feast days. It is officially the last Sunday of the Liturgical year - so Happy New Year! As I entered church today the worship guide proclaimed in bold letters is, The 24th Sunday After Pentecost, Christ the King Sunday. It was wonderful!
We sang ‘All Hail the Power of Jesus Name’ and ‘Crown Him with Many Crowns’. We read from Colossians 1: “For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation…”
I love it! But did you know that this feast day was actually officially put on the calendar to minister to our modern world? The Feast of Christ the King was inaugurated in 1925 just after that great and terrible war, WWI. With live memories of the Great War’s incomprehensible human fatalities (the bloodiest conflict so far in human history, with more than 8.5 million military casualties) and global political upheaval, the idea was to pull people’s hearts and minds back to the Truth. Then, as now, modern people were pulled in competing directions about where their loyalties lay… political parties, nationalism, social ideologies… But all these are temporary.
Only the Kingdom of God is eternal and only one King, Jesus, rules forever!
Exactly what is the Kingdom of God?
My favorite definition comes from the NIV study Bible note on Matt. 3:2 (When Jesus proclaims: “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near”):
The Kingdom of heaven/God in the preaching of Jesus as recounted in the gospels is the reign of God that He brings about through Jesus Christ - i.e., the establishment of God's rule in the hearts and lives of His people, the overcoming of all forces of evil, the removal from the world of all consequences of sin – including death and all that diminishes life – and the creation of a new order of righteousness and peace. The idea of God’s Kingdom is central to Jesus’ teaching and is mentioned 50 times and Matthew alone.
So today, let us sing together with all the choirs of angels. And remember as Advent begins next Sunday, the first coming of Jesus points to the second coming of Jesus when the Kingdom of God will come in it’s fullness and King Jesus’s eternal Lordship and reign will be acknowledged by all temporary powers and principalities:
All hail the power of Jesus' name!
Let angels prostrate fall.
Bring forth the royal diadem,
and crown him Lord of all.
Bring forth the royal diadem,
and crown him Lord of all!
