Sunday is Christ the King Sunday and it can’t come soon enough.
The Christian calendar revolves around the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ and for those Christians who worship in churches that observe the Christian calendar Christ the King Sunday appears just before the beginning of Advent.
Hence there are church holidays such as Pentecost, Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and so on as opposed to national holidays like Independence Day, Veterans Day, Mother’s and Father’s Day, and so on. There is nothing wrong with these national holidays but for Christian worshiping communities the Christian calendar should take priority over the secular calendar.
Christ the King Sunday is strategically placed just before Advent, the four Sundays prior to Christmas, which anticipate the birth of Jesus. And given the shape of our world today we definitely need a reminder of who the supreme authority of this world really is.
You see our world can be an astonishingly frightening place for many people, what with economic and political unrest shaping our global landscape, resulting in terrorism, wars, global climate challenges, disturbing signs of what appear to be an unhinging of Western culture and Democracy as we have known it, not to mention political, social and racial unrest right on our own doorstep.
Let’s be clear, the world has always been a dangerous place but with accelerated population growth and the number of conflicting ideologies tensions seem to be increasing at a rapid pace. All this unrest seems to be exasperated by a social media that provides a contributing platform for anyone who chooses to use it to his or her own assumed advantage.
This past 2016 presidential election reminds us of just how unstable our own society can be and the threats to its stability are not figments of our imagination. But we have been here before historically and it should not surprise us too much. Let us not forget how our own Civil War (1861-65) ripped the fabric of our young nation in two and how the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s divided America along ideological lines. Let’s also not forget the frightening days of the McCarthy era and the fear it inspired in the 1950s.
Yet it just may do us some good to be reminded of who our Sovereign Lord is rather than placing too much confidence in the political ideologies competing for our support today.
Christians today find themselves divided over political allegiances when in fact our true allegiance ought to be to Christ the King. He is and should be our ultimate authority. He is the One whose teachings are meant to provide guiding reference points for how we conduct our lives and to live faithfully as resident aliens in this world.
A lot has been written these past several months about how Evangelical Christians have sold their birthright in order to support their preferred presidential candidate. Some of the criticism has been scathing and unnecessarily unkind to be sure.
We should never be critical of those fellow Christians who vote their convictions no matter how much we disagree with them or how much we believe their support of a given candidate harms their testimony as Jesus followers.
But . . . with that said I think it is important for all Christians to be reminded who the real King is in our lives and whose authority we owe our unconditional allegiance.
Christ the King is our default authority in life.
Back in the late 1930s and during World War II many of the Christians in Germany supported their Nazi government and attended churches (Lutheran and Roman Catholic) that offered (if not by their complicit silence) its endorsement of Nazi polices, which as a political philosophy was based on racism and Arian (white) supremacy.
But there were those Christians led by two courageous leaders, Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who gathered Lutheran congregations together that opposed the Nazi regime and its imperialistic policies. Those congregations became known as the “Confessing Churches” in Germany. They stood in opposition to what they perceived were antichrist policies of their government and they paid a stiff price for noncompliance.
Many of its leaders, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer were imprisoned and/or executed. Bonhoeffer was hanged just days before the Allies entered Berlin to end the war. His crime? His refusal to bend a knee to his own government authority and unfortunately it cost him his life.
His refusal to comply with Nazi policies was clear indication to all who his King was and it wasn’t Hitler or the Nazis regime.
The members of the Confessing Church were living and acting as resident aliens; they embraced the fact that they lived in this world but were not of it. Many lost their lives as a result of their courageous stand against those government policies that had come to be normalized in German society.
Perhaps American Christians might consider what their stance ought to be as part of their witness to their King. Quite frankly it is a stance we should have already decided to embrace long before now: Christ is King and Lord and under his authority alone shall we live.
We need a Confessing Church in America; a church that does not support imperialistic tendencies within our own government; a church that stands publicly against all forms of racism, personal and systemic. A Church that stands upon the inclusivity of the Gospel, an inclusivity that values all people as born in the image of God; a Church that is the voice of all the powerless ones who live among us.
To celebrate Christ the King Sunday is to acknowledge that we will live under the sole authority of the only King that matters in our lives—a King that loves all people, who has a place in his heart for every living soul should they be willing to accept him as the sovereign King whose authority they are willing to embrace.
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