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“Christ Reigns!”
John 18:33-37;
Psalms 24, 132; Revelation 1:4-8; 2 Samuel 23:1-7
Rev. Sandy Nuernberg
Oakland-Cambridge Presbyterian Church, Cambridge, WI
Christ the King Sunday - Reign of
Christ
November 26, 2006
For better or for worse, the
Christian calendar year has come to an end today; the end of our church
liturgical year. Today’s Christ the King Sunday is the climax of the seasonal
year. It’s like New Year’s Eve!! We celebrate and rejoice in the reign of
Christ, that finality in all that God has provided for us; I find it is a kind
of an “Amen” to our church’s year. “Amen” pronounced ‘and let it be so’ ends
many of our Psalms, prayers and songs. As Christ reigns this day, in Handel’s
“Hallelujah Chorus” I am reminded of singing this joyous Easter hymn, ‘King of
Kings, and Lord of Lords’, as we shout out with praises, ‘and He shall reign
forever and ever!’
For better or worse, next Sunday
marks another year in our church, Advent, or ‘to come’–the start of a new
liturgical year. We will follow texts in the next year (Year C) in our
scriptures; each focuses on Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Holy Week to Easter,
and Christ’s ascension to God’s throne. After Pentecost comes the longest,
perhaps most ordinary times of our church year and continual spiritual growth
from May into November celebrating God’s kingdom forever. God’s reign was/is the
major focus of Jesus’ teaching; the kingdom of God, its fullness, its future; it
has come in the person of Jesus Christ. So today’s texts, in John and in
Revelations, are seemingly appropriate, and yet they are not. We haven’t been a
part of these scripture studies lately, like we have in the N.T. of Mark and
Hebrews. In John we are approaching Christ’ death in the text, as Jesus is
brought before Pontius Pilate. In Revelation, it is the end of time where the
seven churches are addressed about the future. For me, I pondered long and hard
on God’s Word for us before I realized the depth, and the magnitude of them for
our understanding today.
For better or for worse, these
texts finalize Christ’s reign, a reign of love, a reign of Christ as King, the
kingdom of Christ as emphasizing God’s power and kingdom. Yes, Christ’s reign of
God’s kingdom forever and ever. They tell us that now is the time for living our
faith with Christ reigning in our hearts. We may sing of Christ’s truth, grace
and love in all that we are, say, and do; Christ is here among us and we can
rejoice! Christ reigns as truth and love!
For better or worse, in late
October, besides our celebrating ‘Miss Polly’s 100th birthday, and
besides our three baptisms, all of these on the same Sunday, Bill Hanson, the
organist and Polly’s cousin, gave me a thick packet of sermons from one of his
mentors in Dallas, TX., Dr. W.A. Criswell. He said, ‘read and use them as you
find a purpose, Pastor Sandy.’ DR. Criswell’s sermons were on Revelation, and I
gleefully accepted them from Bill, not knowing of this sermon on Revelation in
late November. He has a wealth of knowledge and history in each sermon,
averaging eight pages each! Yes, Dr. Criswell was a Baptist preacher at First
Baptist Church in Dallas, an author, historian, and evangelist. In his papers
for this text today I learned about the author of Revelation, the symbolic
meaning of numbers (7), praise, and visions, to name a few topics. There are ten
sermons on our four verses of the text! But there is meat and meaning in each
sermon, of which I will share with you as I can.
In our gospel text, we are in a
scene before Jesus’ arrest and death. Jesus is before Pilate’s headquarters; a
Roman governor of Judea, a most powerful area of the world at this time in
history. Dr. Criswell relates that historically the great antagonist of the
churches of Christ was the Roman Empire, and that the Roman soldier was looked
upon as invincible. We know though, too, Christianity was flourishing in the
late first century, persecution was rampant, and along with this the Roman
Empire reached its highest zenith. We can understand the setting, can’t we? The
wealth of the upper middle classes of Rome was beyond imagination, says
Criswell. And three of every five slaves were waiting upon the Romans day and
night. In our text, Pilate was interrogating Jesus, is interested in peace at
all costs; they are discussing kingship. Jesus is on trial for his kingship of
this conventional world, the Roman world, not Jesus’ nation that is not a
part of this world. Carefully, Jesus does not imply any power except that from
God; Jesus belongs to the truth, and not to any military edict Pilate thinks
Jesus belongs. Jesus represents love and not hate, and not brutal riots and
death that Pilate represents and advocates in gaining power.
We know the rest of the story,
including Pilate’s soldiers dressing Jesus in a purple robe and thorns on his
head for his trial towards death. Jesus’ kingship is attested to by his reign of
love. Christians were persecuted because Jesus was the King of the Jews, the
King of heaven, and Christians didn’t bow to idols or patron saints; they were
recruited among the poor, the slaves, and as such were looked down upon by the
rich and respectable (nobility). Scripture attests Pilate admits finding no case
against Jesus. Yet Jesus was crucified and died a horrible, visible
death.
In Christ’s reign as a reign of
love in Revelation, Christ was called Lord, a title given to Jesus as an
expression of complete commitment and obedience to God. The apostle Paul, told
his favorite church in Philippi, ‘though he was in the form of God, being human,
and given the name Jesus...every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and
under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father (Philip. 2:6-11). Christians of the first century
were given to allegiance, loyalty, and worship to Christ as King as Lord!
Because God has acted in Jesus Christ to redeem and reconcile the world to God’s
self ( II Corin.5:18-19), we have today the basis for hope and love in a message
of good news.
It seems that in God knowing our
every need, God also knows that our congregations, our members need a kind of
hope for what is to come. As we approach Advent, four Sundays before Christmas
Day, it is appropriate to provide us with hope, love, peace, and joy; about the
idea, the believable message of, and the experience of all of these needs. We
hope and wait for the Messiah, the One who will come and shine in our darkness
with peace. Our next four weeks will be engrossed in the hope that is rooted in
the love, the will of God; the hope and joy to make all things new in a
promising God for today and for evermore. The good news of the gospel is that
Christ reigns and represents truth and love. From the gospel of Jesus’ life, to
the end of time and the time to come in Revelation, God’s Son, Jesus Christ, is
the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, as the reigning King of the universe
forever and ever. Christ reigns, in truth and in love.
AMEN.
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