Christ the King Sunday 2021 (2)

Today the church celebrates the Feast of Christ the King. It is actually a relatively new addition to the church calendar. Pope Pius XI instituted this feast day in 1925. He looked around at the world after World War I and saw the rise of secularism, the decline of the church, and the tragic way Christians had supported fascist dictators. In short, he saw a Church that had lost its way. A church that was overwhelmed by a hostile culture and tempted to compromise and support non-Christian movements in order to gain power or ensure its survival. He saw people leaving the church in droves, and so he called the church back to its first love and its foundational truth - that Christ is King.

He had three main goals: first, that nations would see that the church has the right to freedom. Second, that leaders would see that they are bound to give their respect to Christ. and Third, that the faithful would gain strength and courage as they remembered the kingship of Christ, and that they’d seek to serve him in their hearts, minds, and bodies.

While the global church is called it celebrate the kingship of Christ, it is worked out in millions of local churches like ours - these outposts of the kingdom of God. The great missionary Leslie Newbigin once said that

“if the gospel is to challenge the public life of our society... it will not be by forming a Christian political party or by aggresssive propoganda campaigns…it will only be by movements that begin with the local congregations, in which the reality of the New Creation is present, known and experience and from which men and women would go into every sector of public life to claim it for Christ…but that will only happen as and when local congregations renounce an introverted concern for their own life and recognzie that they exist for the sake of those who are not members, as signs instruments and forteaste of God’s redeeming grace for the whole life of society.”

To that end, today we’re going to look at Christ’s teaching about the last judgment in Matthew 25:31-46.

In this passage, Jesus claims an ancient title for himself, the Son of Man. In fact, this was the most common way Jesus referred to himself and his mission. Now, Jesus is not talking about his humanity here. It’s not the counterpart to him being the Son of God. No, he’s actually assuming a regal, kingly title from the Old Testament, from Daniel 7 - where the Ancient of Days, one of the many names of GOd in the OT, commissions this divine figure called the son of man, as the chosen one of God who would reign over the nations. This is who Jesus claimed to be - the royal chosen one of God who would reign over all the earth.