The more formal churches
among us give this day special recognition: it is Christ the King Sunday.
Other churches, not
wanting to sound too patriarchal, call it Reign of Christ Sunday, or the
Festival of Christ the Cosmic Ruler.
Whatever you call it,
this last Sunday of the Christian year just prior to Advent celebrates the anticipation
of Christ’s completion of God’s work of reconciliation of all things in heaven
and on earth.
Or, to put it another
way: it celebrates the day when all things will be made new in Christ.
In baptism, what is old
is stripped away, and we are made into something new. For some Christians in
the early church, the way they practiced baptism, this was done literally: the
one being baptized would strip off all their clothes before entering the water,
to symbolize the stripping away of all that is old: all the allegiances they
had to this world of darkness.
And then, upon emerging
from the waters of baptism, they were given new clothes to wear, clothes that
were pure white.
All this symbolized what
it says in chapter 3 of Colossians: “You have stripped off your old self with
its practices – its greed, its anger and malice – and have put on the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. So clothe yourselves
with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience,… and above all,
love.”
There are obvious reasons
why we do not practice baptism this way today, but imagine it for a second. If
it could be done without the embarrassment of standing naked in front of
others, and without the sexualization that our society ascribes to almost any
form of nudity, imagine how powerful the symbolism would be.
And, really, it wouldn’t
be the first time you were naked in public. The first time was when you were
born. And baptism is, after all, a new birth… In baptism “we have been buried
with Christ and raised to new life with him through faith…” [2.12].
The purpose of the letter
to the Colossians is to remind the letter’s recipients just how different life
in Christ is from life in the world. They had been baptized! They had stripped
away their old selves, and put on their new identity in Christ. But they – like
us – need to be reminded of the significance and the implications of such a
radical lifestyle change.
We are made new in
Christ! We no longer live in this world. We live in the kingdom of God! We live
under the reign of Christ our king. As some Christians like to say, we are in
the world, but not of the world.
God has rescued us from
the world around us, the world that is ruled by the power of darkness, and God
has transferred us into the kingdom
of his beloved Son.
In other words, even
though our bodies still exist in this present world, our lives are already
oriented to that other world, that other kingdom: the kingdom of God.
I bought the plane ticket
six months before the trip. I went online, found the flight I wanted, entered
my credit card info, then clicked the button that said “submit.” And from that
moment, I began living in Brazil. My
body was still here – the actual trip was still months away – but a part of my
head and a part of my heart was already in Brazil.
I downloaded an app on my
phone and started learning some words and phrases in Portuguese. I started
following some Brazilians on Instagram, so I could learn a little bit about
Brazilian culture and maybe figure out a few things that I wanted to see once I
arrived.
All this, in preparation
for a 15-day trip.
In the same way – but to
an even greater degree – the kingdom of Christ is my home. It is my future
home; and it is my present home, even
though I still live in this world – this world where the powers of darkness
reign.
So what do I do? I start
learning the language of the kingdom of Christ, my new home. I start living the
values of the kingdom of Christ. I start practicing the ways of the kingdom of
Christ.
Because the time to start
practicing those kingdom values is right now. God has already transferred us
there. “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into
the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
The relocation papers
have already been completed, filed, stamped, and whatever else is done to make
relocation papers official. In a way that’s even more real than my experience
of being in Brazil before I actually arrived in Brazil, we are living in the
kingdom of God right now, in the present.
And because of that, our
lives are changed.
In the kingdom of God, we
are made strong with all the strength that comes from the glorious power of
God. We are connected to that power through Christ, who is himself the very
image of the invisible God. In Christ dwells all the fullness of God.
Ancient people once
talked about the fullness of God dwelling in various objects or places. The
fullness of God was once said to dwell on Mt. Sinai. The fullness of God was
once said to dwell in Zion. The fullness of God was once said to dwell in the
Temple.
But now, the fullness of
God dwells in a human form – a human form just like you and me! The fullness of
God dwells in Jesus.
And you and I are the
body of Christ. Just as the various parts of a body are connected to the head,
we are connected to Christ.
In the body of Christ –
in the church – things are different. We practice the language of the kingdom.
We speak it as often as we can.
We practice the customs
and traditions of the kingdom.
Day by day, we learn to
set aside the langauge and the customs and the traditions of the world of
darkness.
In the world of darkness,
we look for power in things that can be handled, tasted, or touched. We look
for power in wealth. We look for power in fame.
But in the kingdom of Christ
to which we have been transferred, power is practiced very differently.
The new clothing that we
have put on after our baptism shows the source of our power. That power is
found in compassion, kindness, humility. We see that power practiced through
bearing with one another, forgiving one another, rather than judging and
ridiculing and belittling others.
We see that power is most
of all expressed through love. Love has the power to bind all things together
in perfect harmony.
It is Christ’s kingdom.
And how does Christ rule? With love. Look at everything he did. Look at how he
treated people, including his enemies. Especially his enemies. And look at how
he had compassion on those who suffered from the prejudice and hatred and fear
of society…
Love guided everything he
did. You never had to question his motives. What was his motive?
Love.
Dick Hamm, former General
Minister and President of our denomination, wrote a book called 2020 Vision, and in that book he says
that many of us in the church could work in an office, sit right next to the
same co-worker for 25 years, and that co-worker probably wouldn’t even notice
anything different about us.
Not a thing!
But don’t you think there
should be something noticeably different about a person who so fully lives in
the kingdom, and so fully practices the kingdom value of love? Don’t you think
that a person who has stripped off the old and put on the new would look at
least a little different? Something
that might even look a little strange
to other people?
In that same book Dick
Hamm tells the story of a church elder “who was sitting in a board meeting one
night while a discussion was going on about some matter of importance in that
congregation. Someone said something that sparked his anger. As the
conversation proceeded, he could feel his anger rising until he could stand it
no more. He jumped to his feet, ready to tell them all what he thought about
their ‘stupid idea.’ But just as he was about to open his mouth, he remembered
something. He slowly sat down and mumbled, ‘I’m sorry, I almost forgot. Dead
men don’t speak.’”
In that moment, he
remembered that he had been buried with Christ, and raised to new life. He
remembered that, in Christ, he was a new person, clothed in compassion, kindness,
humility, patience, and love. The old person that he once was, who was quick to
tell others how stupid they were, had died. And now he had to let it be dead.
But he remembered. He
remembered that he had stripped away that old self and had put on Christ. He
remembered where his heart and his home were. And he was trying, as best as he
could, to live in the kingdom of God, and to practice loving kindness in every
way, with every person.
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