Monday, November 15, 2021

Looking Ahead to November 21, 2021 -- Reign of Christ Sunday

 This Sunday is the last Sunday of the Church year. On November 28th we will begin a new Church Year with the first Sunday of Advent. Many people follow the example of our Roman Catholic siblings and refer to this last Sunday of the year as either Reign of Christ Sunday or Christ the King Sunday.

The Scripture Readings we will hear this week are:

  • Mark 1:9-15
  • Luke 4:14-17
  • Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
  • Luke 4:20-22

The Sermon title is Jubilee, Shalom, Reign of God

Early Thoughts: Jesus was all about the Kingdom of God. In both Mark and Luke he starts his public ministry with proclamations about it.

In Mark Jesus is quite explicit. The Kingdom of God is near now. In Luke it is not quite so explicit but at the beginning of his public ministry Jesus reads in synagogue. The passage he reads describes what life will be like in the time of God's favour. Then he closes the scroll and says that these words have been fulfilled. The time of God's favour is now. The Reign of God has begun.

I have often wondered if we tend to get the idea of the Reign of Christ or the Kingdom of God wrong. I suspect that we hear that monarchical language and we think of a society sort of similar to what we know, just with God in charge (remembering that as part of Christian faith Christ is God, so we are not talking about two different rulers here). And the fact that the festival of Christ the King was first declared by the Pope in part as a response to the dwindling of political power for the Papacy does not help that percerption.

But what if the Kingdom of God, the Reign of Christ, is more of a time for us to say "and now for something completely different"?

This fall I have been reading a book called Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision. In this book Randy Woodley talks about something he has encountered in North American Indigenous peoples called "The Harmony Way". Woodley suggest that this resemble the way of Shalom that we meet in the Hebrew Scriptures. The short form translation of Shalom is peace, but the term is much deeper than that. It is a peace based on justice and abundant life for all. The English mystic Julian of Norwich spoke of a time when "all matter of things be well". A society living out Shalom is that very time.

What would that deep peace and justice and abundant life for all look like? What might it look like when the Reign of God becomes fully real around us? That is what I think we are invited to explore on Reign of Christ Sunday.

Jesus begins his ministry proclaiming that the Kingdom is near, or even here. We also know that it is not really her in full power and wonder. We live in what is traditionally called the "now and the not yet". And so we wait for the fullness of time, the fullness of God's Realm. Are we ready to imagine what it might look like?
--Gord

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