Reign of Christ - He is and Always was
Happy end of the Year!
Happy end of the Year?
That doesn’t sound right - that doesn’t have a good ring to it… Let try something else
“Grace and peace to you from the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come”
Much better!
Today we celebrate the “Reign of Christ”
and that greeting is the opening verse from our reading from John’s Revelation
and What a powerful greeting that is
Powerful - yet in the culture of the day and in today’s culture extremely subversive
Let’s explore it a bit
It is an apostolic benediction
A message or blessing from the early followers of Christ.
The salutation combines both Greek (“grace”) and Hebrew (“peace”)
Grace, that is, the good-will of God towards us and his good work in us;
and peace, that is, the sweet evidence and assurance of this grace.
It is message to not only one group of people - but all people
Subversive
And then “the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come”
Since before Abraham He “was” and “is” the "I am"
and He “is” and "always was", the eternal Logos or Word;
From the beginning of John’s gospel
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
and "who is still to come" - the promise of the Return of Christ
God from everlasting to everlasting
Subversive
Consider the world in which this is written - where the state religion is worship to the emperor - who was understood to be a deity
And consider our own culture today where everything is acceptable relative to the eye of the beholder
‘What’s true for you is fine and as long as you respect what is true for me’
To further dig into this culturally challenging statement - it falls on the day that we celebrate the Reign of Christ
The liturgical year concludes with this relatively new feast,
instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 - to celebrate the jubilee year and the 16th centenary of the Council of Nicea. (from which we get our Nicene creed)
It also was intended to affirmed the primacy of Christ in the face of rising nationalism and fascism
This inclusive greeting (Grace and Peace) YET a greeting which states the primacy of Christ - This is truly challenging to the any worldly culture - at any time.
In that message of Christ in the past, present and future - everlasting to everlasting
there is a message of completeness
And in fact the entire reading from Revelation today is a message of completeness
From the seven spirits
Where the Holy Spirit, called the seven spirits, not seven in number, but the infinite perfect Spirit of God, in whom there is a diversity of gifts and operations.
Number seven in Revelations is used 52 times,
- symbolically seven in Hebrew writing stands for completeness or wholeness
we see it twice in today passage
the second time is where it speaks of the seven churches in Asia
there were more then seven churches in Asia (although they were the most noteworthy) but the number seven is to mean ALL the churches in Asia
The message of completeness continues with the mention of Christ as the “firstborn of the dead, and ruler of the kings of the earth”
Also “to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever”
And finally Christ affirms this message by saying “I am the Alpha and the Omega,”
The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet indicate that God is all encompassing.
And Christ continues by saying what John said “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty”
In this short passage from Revelations John opens the stage to a limitless image
The Book of Revelation provides an incredible vision.
It is the product of the marriage of hope and despair, of promise and pain.
It is a book/dream/vision/poem/letter written in all probability toward the end of the first century by a banished Jewish Christian leader named John who was in prison for his faith on the Isle of Patmos.
From elsewhere in Revelations
That - he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more…
“See, I am making all things new.”
…“It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”
God through the words of Revelation offers us a vision of a brand new life;
A life lived in a brand new order in a brand new way.
The results of the Reign of Christ are all around us - if we have eyes to see them
Last week, I watched as Jackson, my son, going on the ice for skating lessons
He stopped skating just after he got on the ice to stoop down and say a few words of encouragement to a girl in his class
Now this girl is small for her age, she has big thick glasses and hearing aids, many physical challenges
This is her first sport that she has tried and her parents are somewhat nervous of this new venture
Jackson is only just turned six - he does know all of what is going on
He didn’t do it because I was looking, he didn’t look up at me at all in the stands
And he didn’t do it for anything is return
He simply got up and continued skating - not looking back at the beautiful smile on the girl’s face
This is not merely the moment of a proud father - this is a moment where I saw a vision Christ’s servant love, of the new creation - working through another
Maybe some the images in Revelation are frightening and confusing to you,
Serpents and lakes of fire, and demented creatures
- but don’t be distracted by that
What God has to say in this letter is that:
no matter what comes against you in this life;
no matter if all of the power of pain and chaos of the universe seems to overtake you all at once;
no matter if you can not control one single thing or fix one single thing in your life,
the worst is over, the healing has already begun.
The lamb is on the throne.
In the midst of this message today of Christ’s dominion over all things
God immutable power
Is the message that He “freed us from our sins - by his blood”
To understand Revelations for our day,
We have to understand the nature of hope.
For Christians hope is not a wish.
It is not a tooth under a pillow,
Or fingers crossed
Or just one more 649 lottery try.
Hope for a Christian is an assurance,
A firm and binding promise.
It is a sure thing.
Hope is not a feeling - It is a fact.
It is a fact rooted in the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
And assured by the amazing, steadfast, unshakable love of God for God's people.
God will not be shaken.
Hope is independent of circumstances and it will never be conquered by evil. Even if hurt seems to be winning,
The battle by God - has already been won.
The clearest I have ever seen faith in God’s promise was when I was working at St Joseph hospital a few years ago during my CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education)
A man, lets call him John, who had been diagnosed with some obscure disease of the an obscure gland which made him incredibly sleepy
So sleepy that he mostly could not keep his eyes open while awake and was awake for only a few half hour periods over the day
this disease was so rare that his 60 year old doctor had only heard of it once distantly and this was the first case that he had come across it
That if he had not recognized it, it would have put John in Coma
The disease was so rarely treated that treatment was mostly guess work
Remove the gland and then daily administer a drug that replaced the function of the gland
Even still the process to stabilization would take two years until John could get back to functioning even at 50%
John who was a farmer and worked 45 years of his life in physical labour
Would never be able to return to work
Yet John loved it when I visited
and with his wife beside him he told me slowly over what seemed like several minutes filled with long periods of silence because he was so overcome with sleepiness - not able to open his eyes for but a few seconds to make eye contact Told me that Jesus had truly blessed him
That God was truly good to him
In his physically, pain filled slow words - there was such strength
John who was so week - made me who was strong: see the power of Christ
God paints a sustaining vision,
A vision wholeness,
A vision of things the way God intended.
A vision, in the midst of struggle and pain - there is the promise of glory.
The liturgical year is a kind of journey through the mysteries of salvation.
The end of the year, which we mark today, brings us to the end of the journey,
and here we find the victorious Christ enthroned in glory.
In faith we believe that he has indeed conquered the forces of sin and death,
and he is already enthroned with God.
In anticipation, we look forward to his final glorious appearance.
We are living in the ‘here and now’ with the God that “is” “always was” and “is to come”
Today as we celebrate the “Reign of Christ” the end of Christian calendar year
We celebrate the triumph that is Christ’s dominion over all
Celebrate because the victory is offered to all of us
Let us pray - Christ was in the beginning, all things were made through him, He is here now and He is the promise, the hope on which our faith is rooted. Jesus, be the beginning and the goal of our lives, Come Lord Jesus, come - Amen