When we celebrate the rule of Christ, we celebrate a majesty revealed not in power, but in grace.
Here’s a transcript:
This coming Sunday concludes the traditional church worship year. That year begins with Advent, with the preparation for the birth of Jesus, which makes a kind of sense. But the year doesn’t have an obvious close, so the last Sunday before Advent is known as the Reign of Christ. It celebrates not just the divinity, what the authority, the rulership if you like, of Jesus.
And so I am thinking about the twenty-third chapter of Luke: the crucifixion of Christ.
Jesus did two things in this passage from Luke, and there was one thing he didn’t do. He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” He prayed that from of the cross, from that instrument of deadly torture.
He told a fearful, tortured thief that he, too, would see paradise. Those were the two things he did.
What he didn’t do was to follow the taunts of those who said, “If you are the king, come down. If you are the king, exercise your power. If you are the king, show us in the only way that we recognize.”
In Christ’s crucifixion we learn what true majesty is. It is not gold fixtures or crowns. It is not triumphant leadership of armies or the direction of people against other people. It is forgiveness, and assurance, and the restraint of power.
That is what we celebrate when we call Jesus Christ a monarch, a ruler, a king. That is what we rejoice in when we rejoice in the reign of Christ.
We Christians have emulated the more traditional notions of monarchy time after time after time over the centuries, and it is not to our credit. But Jesus on the cross showed us once and for all what true majesty is, what true power is, what it means to reign.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
