I know it doesn’t feel like it but according to the Church calendar, this Sunday is New Year’s Eve, the last Sunday of the year, on the cusp of the season of Advent. So there is plenty of planning and preparing going on at the church for the Advent Festival coming up on November 25th and 26th, and lots of rehearsing and planning for Advent and Christmas services and celebrations.
Traditionally, this is the Sunday known as “Christ the King” Sunday when we try to do what the church has tried to do for hundreds of years and make Jesus royalty.
Yet he never wanted to be royalty. He grew up along the shores of Galilee and called people to follow a path of downward mobility, follow a way of being that involved serving, giving, and laying your life down for others. He lived for the least and the lost. He called the most unlikely of characters to follow and they did, in droves.
The Christian way is not about making Jesus great again. He would never want that. Rather it is about following a path of love, humility, and grace that heals, gives hope when we cannot find it, and changes lives. I hope to see you on Sunday when we celebrate that way of life, and the one who climbs down off every pedestal and throne we place him on and meets us in the midst of our lives.
Blessings, Will
