Summary: "My kingdom is not from this world." These are the words of Jesus, on the Sunday in the liturgical year that we mark as Christ the King, or the reign of God. Jesus says, "My kingdom is not from this world." I did not grow up in a church or a culture that marked time liturgically. We lived from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year's, or from the College Bowl games to March Madness to the opening day of baseball. In church we focused mostly on Jesus as our redeemer, with a bit of a break at Christmas. Only later would I appreciate the profound way of marking time by trying to closely follow the life of Jesus. Next Sunday the year begins for us, as we anticipate the promised coming of the Messiah, as we await his birth. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. On Christ the King Sunday the year comes to a conclusion, but more so, to a culmination. All things move toward the reign of God, the realized kingdom, where we will crown him with many crowns, the lamb upon his throne, where he will judge, in the language of the creed, the quick and the dead, the living and the dead, in other words, all things. On this day, on this last Sunday of the year, we reflect on the kingdom of God, which is Jesus. Christians claim him as Lord, which means in political language, that we are his subjects, citizens of a territory that he oversees which has no east or west. He is Lord, having risen from the dead, and every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord.
