"CROWN HIM WITH MANY CROWNS"
 
CHRIST THE KING SUNDAY
Nov. 26, 2006
 
Colossians 1: 15-20
 
 
    Please allow me two brief preliminary statements.
 
    Last Sunday evening at the Session meeting, I made an off the cuff observation which created a bit of laughter, and several elders suggested I share it with you this morning. I said at the meeting, following my first Sunday with you here at WPC, "You know, I've been thinking. If a friend from Florida called me on that Sunday afternoon and asked me how my first service went, I would probably respond, 'Well, pretty good I guess, except that 3/4 of the staff told me they would be gone by mid-week (they didn't tell me for Thanksgiving), and a retired General named Norm Gaddis got up in the service and said on Monday they were taking out all the pews! Not an auspicious start on the face of it!"
 
    I'd like to take a personal moment to say something which may not seem related to the Christ the King theme of the day, but I think is connected. And that word, from Pat and me, is "thank you." We have been the object of your gracious hospitality, your generosity, your magnanimous spirit in being willing to help in the process of a major move, (which has its own delights), and the recipients of your "pounding!" When I first heard that word I wondered what exactly was going to be pounded. Everything you have done has simply astounded us. For example, there have been members of the church who have:
        provided lunch and dinners during the move-in process
        sent us hundreds of little yellow welcoming cards
        hung blinds in the pastor's office
        programmed the office computer
        invited us out to dinner
        spent hours in the garage unpacking boxes
        arranged the contents of unpacked boxes in the house
        provided soup in the kitchen and frozen meat balls in the refrigerator
        and in the "pounding," offered a magnificent array of household articles.
My point here is to say, yes, thank you. But the real point is you all as a congregation, and to say thank you for who you are, a loving, giving, sharing church. I don't want to just single out Pat and myself here, but identify ourselves with the people in our community and indeed, around the world, who are on the receiving end of your giving nature! I think I speak here for hundreds if not thousands of folk who have been blessed by your Christian love. On behalf of them, and with them, we say thanks. In short, thank you for who you are, or, to put it in the words of the theme of the day, thanks for being a congregation in which Christ is truly King.
 
    Now, more to the point of this Sunday's theme.
 
    If you enjoy visiting the many churches and cathedrals in England, Scotland, Europe, and through the Slavic countries to Russia, you will notice that most all have at the top of their steeples or spires a cross. There is one notable exception to this, the great St. Giles church in Edinburgh, Scotland, where none other than John Knox himself thundered forth. The church holds up not a cross, but a crown. In a land where people know what it is to have a king, St. Giles church points by way of the crown to the kingship of Jesus Christ, to his lordship, to his sovereign reign.
 
    Both the cross and the crown point to Jesus, but we are much more inclined to think of Jesus on the cross, rather than Jesus who is crowned king of kings and lord of lords. We are much more inclined to think back to the historic Jesus, rather than to think up to the cosmic Christ. That's the theme, really, of this Sunday; an invitation to think up to the Christ.
 
    Christ the King Sunday is one of my most favorite Sundays in the Christian Year. This Sunday brings to an end the liturgical year, when we next Sunday begin a new cycle with the First Sunday of Advent.
 
    The epistle lesson for Christ the King Sunday in some years is a small portion of Paul's letter to the Colossians, verses 9-20 of chapter 1. No where else in all of Paul's letters does his thought soar higher. I thought the best think I could do for us on this Sunday is to allow Paul's stupendous, breath-taking burst of enthusiasm have its way with us. So, let's see what Paul is saying in just five verses, 15-20, in what some have called a hymn to the cosmic Christ.
 
    In vs. 15, Paul calls Christ "THE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD" The word "image" in Greek is icon, which of course all we computers users are now familiar with. But I learned what an icon means to folks of the Greek or Russian Orthodox church when I was writing my dissertation at the University of Pittsburgh. That work focused on John Calvin, but had to do with the influence of John Chrysostom on Calvin, hence requiring me to steep myself in the Byzantine world where icons played a major role. For those in this tradition, and icon can be a representation of something, or, if it is perfect enough, the representation can become a manifestation of something. To bring this back to what Paul is saying, if you want to know what God is like, we must look at Jesus, the icon of God. He is the perfect manifestation of the living God.
 
    In this connection, do you remember the Genesis story, where God says, "Let us make humankind in our image?" Humankind was created that we might be the icon of God, the image of God. So, by using the word icon, image, Paul is saying, "Look at this Jesus. He shows you not only what God is, but he is showing you what humankind was meant to be. Here is the human being as God intended it. There is a kind of double revelation in Jesus Christ. He shows us who God is, but also shows us what human kind was meant to be.  It is to this Jesus that we must look up!
 
    In vs. 16, Paul says, "IN HIM ALL THINGS WERE CREATED. ALL THINGS WERE CREATED IN HIM AND FOR HIM." "In him!" Doesn't your mind leap to the prologue of John's gospel here? "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." That is, Christ is the agent through whom creation came into being. But more than that, Paul says, "all things were created not only through him but for him. Paul is saying that Christ is not only the agent in creation, but the goal of creation, the goal to which God is shaping the great purposes of creation. Do you want to know where this whole story of our world is headed? If you look at Jesus Christ, you will discover the answer. And when you look at things like Auschwitz and Dachau, you will agree that there may be many crucifixions along the way, but it is all going somewhere. "All things were created by him and for him." It is to this Jesus that we must look up!
 
    In vs. 17, Paul says, "HE IS BEFORE ALL THINGS, AND IN HIM ALL THINGS HOLD TOGETHER." All things hold together! What I hear Paul saying is, the Son of God is not only the agent of creation in the beginning, and the goal of creation in the end, but in between the beginning and the end, during time as we know it, is the Son who, as it were, holds the world together.
    I've been re-reading recently The Coming of the Cosmic Christ by Matthew Fox, who sites a statement by Gregory Bateson who had been wrestling for ten years wit this most pressing question. "What is the pattern that connects? What connects the crab nebula in the sky with the genus of crawfish on earth? I have concluded that the Cosmic Christ is the pattern that connects." He holds all things together.
    I had a professor of Chemistry at Hope College back when I was a Chemistry major, who, in a quiet moment over a cup of coffee, said, "You know, what holds an atom together is not the nucleus, but an invisible force between the protons and the electrons. I think that has something to do with religion, but I don't know how to express it."
What Paul is saying here is that the unity and order of the universe owes its coherence to- the Son of God! Isn't that a wild thought? Would it not be something if the law of gravity and all the so-called scientific laws are not only scientific laws, but participate in the divine laws. Would it not be something if every law of science and of nature is in fact, an expression of the thought of God. Jesus, says Paul, in the one in whom all things hold together. It is to this Jesus that we must look up!
 
    In the last three verses, 18,19,20, Paul moves from Christ the Lord of the universe to Christ the Lord of the church.
 
    In vs. 18, Paul says, "HE IS THE HEAD OF THE BODY, THE CHURCH." Do we really believe that the church is, as Paul says so often, the body of Christ? Or is that just a metaphor? Remember when Saul, later to become Paul, had been terrifying the followers of Jesus with persecution, and he was on the Damascus Road, and a voice from heaven came to him, the voice of the risen Christ, who said, "Saul,, why do you persecute me? Who is the "me" here? Saul was persecuting the church, and the voice said, "why are you persecuting ME?" Could there be any more clear connection, any more closeness, between the risen Christ and his followers? To injure his followers is to injure Christ himself. Together Christ, and his people, make up on body. Did not Jesus say virtually the same thing, when he said, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst." Paul saw the church as a social organism indwelt by Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, and called to continue the work of Christ in the world. It is to this Jesus that we must look up!
 
    In vs. 19, Paul says, "IN HIM ALL THE FULLNESS OF GOD WAS PLEASED TO DWELL."  For Paul, Christ is full deity. For Paul, God was in Christ, not in some partial way, but in God's own completeness. It is to this Jesus that we must look up!
 
    Finally, in verse 20, Paul says the purpose of this fullness dwelling in Christ was TO RECONCILE TO GOD'S OWN SELF ALL THINGS, WHETHER ON EARTH OR IN HEAVEN. That is, the goal and purpose of the whole Christ event was reconciliation. Christ came to heal the breach and to bridge the chasm between God and humankind. Jesus didn't come to change the attitude of God. The attitude of God was and always is love. Jesus came to change the attitude of humankind. That's important to underscore. Sometimes a theology is preached in which it is implied that something that Jesus did changed the mind of God. It is implied that God would have condemned humankind had it not been for the action of Jesus. It is implied that Jesus changed the wrath of God into the love of God. It is suggested that Jesus died as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of God.  Friends, I just can't swallow that! There is very little in the New Testament supporting such a view. It was because God so loved the world that God sent the only Son. It is as if God said, "I love you this much, that I send my son to die for you." God's one object in sending God's son was to attract humankind back to God's own self (the image of God), or, as Paul put it, to reconcile all things to God.
    This last point Paul makes in verse 20 is that reconciliation, this peace, was by means of the cross. What does Paul mean by that? Beyond all the theories of atonement and satisfaction, said most simply, I think Paul means that in the death of Jesus, God is saying to us, "This is how much I love you. I love you enough to see my own son suffer and die. I love you enough to bear the cross on my own heart, if only it will bring you back to myself.  The cross is the proof that there is no length to which the love of God will refuse to go, in order to win the hearts of humankind. It is to this Jesus that we must look up!
 
    Here the, we have not only a cosmic Christ, but a cosmic cross, and the goal of cosmic reconciliation. We can only marvel at the range and grandeur of Paul's thought, of Paul's hymn to the cosmic Christ.
 
    Let the horizon of your life include both the cross and the crown, for both point to Him whom we crown with many crowns. Look back to historic Christ, and look up to the cosmic Christ, Christ the King of King and Lord of Lords.