Christ the King
A Sermon by
Colossians 1
11May
you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power,
and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12giving
thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the
saints in the light. 13He has rescued us from the power of darkness
and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14in whom we
have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15He is the
image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16for in
him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have
been created through him and for him. 17He himself is before all
things, and in him all things hold together. 18He is the head of the
body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he
might come to have first place in everything. 19For in him all the
fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20and through him God was
pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by
making peace through the blood of his cross.
I have a quick question for you,
how many of you are either the first born or only children, middle child,
youngest? Raise your Hands, do no t be
shy, own your birth place.
I do not know about you, but being
the youngest of three, there were many times that I wish I was the firstborn,
the one that got a driver’s license first, the one that got to set the bar for
curfew, the one that went to college first, the one that went on a date
first. I was always a little jealous of
what my oldest brother was allowed to do, then came the day that I received my
license, got to set a time for curfew, went to college, went on my first date,
and realized that a lot of what I was allowed to do was because my oldest
brother did it first and allowed my parent’s to trust him. I also realized that my parent’s were not as
strict on me, as they were on my older brothers, because they had already set
the bar and all I had to do was live up to that expectation and the bar could
change. For me being the youngest was a
blessing in disguise for the path was blazed and all I had to do was follow behind
and I could explore some different paths always knowing the original path was
waiting for me.
This morning the path for us, has already been
set and the bar is waiting for us to grab a hold and push it to a new
level. For us here, in this place my
friends, we have a special day that is calling out to us to try something new,
without losing the vision of our cherished past.
Today we have a day that is unique,
yet is ordinary. A day that is one of a
kind yet it comes year after year. Today
we lift up the fact that we are at the end of a year and waiting at the apex
for the next year to come.
For today is that day that we hold
in a different light, this day is not Thanksgiving Sunday filled with joyful
thanks, and the feeling of a turkey induced sleepiness; Yet we are not quite on
the home stretch for Christmas to arrive.
Even though decorations are going up and the sales have started, we are
not quite into the season of Advent, that time of waiting with quickened
anticipation at the prospect of something new and exciting to arrive.
We sit hovered on this Sunday, Christ the King
Sunday, the day that ends the Church Calendar and gives us the last chance to
see Christ in all of his glory before we start the waiting game all over again. Today is the day, that we see Jesus as the
one, true King of the world that moves us to be something different, something
powerful, yet humble. Today is the day
that we look back at the year and remember the previous 51 weeks as a testament
to the hope, grace and love given to us by God in the form of a Human and in
the form of one, whose is divine.
For you
see, today is the Day that Paul envisioned when he wrote this short letter to
the Colossians. For Paul understood the power of Christ, yet also the humanity
of Jesus. Paul is the one that could
have named this Sunday for us to remember and to be a part of. For Paul was writing to the
church to rebuke the teachings of one in the church who did not give Christ his
due by limiting his greatness, limiting his authority and limiting his
redemptive qualities.
Paul gives us the first major
thesis on where Christ stands and sets him up as the 2nd Adam, the
one coming to give us a new start, a new history. Paul gives Jesus the place of honor as the
new Head of the body, as the Firstborn, the new Head of the Church that gives
empowerment or as William Loader says to “live in a way that both produces
fruit and nurtures the empowering nourishment which makes fruit possible.” In short, Jesus Christ is the human and divine
wrapped up into one being that is first in all things.
To
acknowledge this fact of being a both, means that as Paul wrote this letter
he sets Christ apart from us while also moving Jesus closer to us as a form of
Freedom for our lives.
Yet what does all of this mean to us?
Why is this important in our world?
For we know Christ is important and the one that moves us,
yet at times we forgot the freedom given to us through Christ.
I believe that Freedom is an
interesting concept, for a child, freedom is the ability to ride your bike down
the street or to walk to a friends house a few houses down without your mom
watching you from the front porch, yet then you have to obey bike safety rules and
be home when you are called.
As a teenager, Freedom is the
ability to get a driver’s license and to have the opportunity to get away from
the house whenever you want, yet with that Freedom comes
great responsibility to be a careful driver and to observe what is going on
around you to be considerate.
As a young adult Freedom is expressed by going to College, finishing
school and getting out into the “Real World” for that first job, yet then
reality strikes when you have to buy your own groceries, live with a budget and
pay back the Credit Cards and student loans that helped get you freedom in
College.
As an adult, Freedom is the chance
to attend concerts, sporting events, go to a movie, get married, start a family
and choose what career path to follow for the rest of your life or at least for
a few years, yet then the multitude of possibilities of what that freedom
entails can give you a headache trying to figure out how to make all of the
choices.
As an older adult, Freedom is
retirement, choosing where you want to live, what you want to do and finally
being able to look at your life and know that something good has come out of
it, yet it is also the time that many realize that freedom comes with some
limitations of body.
So you see Freedom comes to us with
a lot of hope, yet there are limitations.
It is an interesting juxtaposition that everyone has to go through in
life. It is one that As the youngest
comes naturally to us, for I saw Freedom on the Horizon as my two older
brothers graduated High School and moved onto College, I knew at that point
that I was going to be able to choose which room I wanted and that I no longer
could be picked on for being the youngest, then reality struck home, the
freedom I was looking for was tempered by the fact that my two brothers, the
ones that I looked up to and imitated, were no longer around.
I could not bother them, annoy
them, or even just be in the same room with them because they were not around. My freedom of choice meant that I also lost
some of that ability to look up and mold myself after my older and sometimes wiser
brothers. Regretfully, it also meant
that I could no longer blame them for doing something that I did and get away
with it.
Freedom does not always look like
we expect it, sometimes it comes in a form that is hard to see or grasp.
For Paul this freedom took a
different form, it did not release him from responsibilities, it did not give
him the ability to sit back and not worry, the Freedom given to us by Christ
had to be embraced and then worked at to be shared with the entire world. For Paul, the freedom gave him endurance to
see that the connection to God is something that is a growing process, worked
at over time, and also the patience, to deal with relationships and to deal
with situations that are not always easy, but are situations that God equips us
to deal with all life long.
For on this Christ the King Sunday,
Paul is giving us the tools to deal with that freedom that washes over us in
baptism, that quenches our thirst at communion, and that burns brightly when
the candle of Christ leads us out into the world.
The freedom of Christ as the
Firstborn over all of creation, the firstborn over death- resurrected for new
life, and the firstborn heir to all the pain and suffering and love and
mystery. For God’s son, the one who
comes as King, came quietly as a lamb to shower the
world with a freedom that is everlasting, yet a freedom that comes with a
price.
The price of
living in a way that sets us apart as ones who are needed to speak for the
voiceless, to serve the hungry, protect the innocent, and to be the hands of
Christ’s body preserving the world for all living creatures. For the
redemption of ourselves through the waters of baptism, we have been given a
freedom with stipulations, a freedom that pushes us to leave the comfort of our
pews and step into a world that is sometimes cold and unforgiving and at other
times colorful and loving, to be agents of change. We have been called and equipped by God to
carry out that call of the first born.
We not only do that as humans, but we do that with the divine. We share our gifts, talents and time to
better those around us, yet we also share those deep ing
In
This
dazzling beauty of the divine, however, is not just found in the world around
us, but also in the hearts of those that we least expect to see it from. The questions of a child that seem beyond
their years, that make us stop and think. The feeling of a new born child held
in your arms for the first time. The smell of the first blooms of the spring or the first snow of
the winter. The
generosity of those willing to give from their resources to help those in need
of clothes, food, heat, living wages, dignity and toys. All of these things show us God in our
hearts, yet it does not stop there.
For us, the acts of Jesus as the king
of Creation, as the one that grants us peace and serenity, the one that gives
us Freedom, yells at us to get up and use our freedom to show others the
path.
For us sitting back and giving
thanks is important, however we also need to move beyond sitting back and see
Christ as the redemptive, authoritative Head of the church, which Paul reminds
us in this letter.
For each of us no matter where we
are, what is going on, and in what situation we are in, the Freedom given to us
as both a human act and with divine love, shows us that Christ moves in the
world today, tomorrow, and forever more, and for that, we are thankful. For that we are free. For that we are called to endurance and
patience, and for that we celebrate the call of firstborn and the bar being set
so high.
May we reach for the bar and grasp
it with both hands and push it down the path tread so long ago for each of
us. As new trails open in our lives, let
us know that God walks with us step by step.
God Of wonder and mystery, fill us, move us, use us and let
us know that freedom that is offered here this morning is at our fingertips for
us to grasp. May we find the peace that
passes all understanding filling our lives with your hope for the world. In all of this
we ask in your divine name, Amen.