It is Christ the King Sunday this Sunday, and I am struck by my reaction to it especially as we are moving towards Advent. It is so easy to enter the season of Advent focusing on calenders and candles and ultimately the babe in the manger who we celebrate as God with us, and yet in doing this exclusively we forget that Advent also calls us to look towards the Second Coming of Christ, an event we have no date for, but one we are warned in Scripture to be prepared for.
The Second coming calls us to lift our eyes from the comforting manger scene (even unsentimentalised it is in many ways safe) and to focus upon Christ the King who WILL come again in power. Now I have a suspicion that this makes us uncomfortable, because truth be known we are not prepared to meet this Jesus. Just think on this description from Revelation 1:
12 I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lamp-stands, 13 and among the lamp stands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.
An awesome sight to be sure, far from the babe in the manger, or the crucified vulnerable Christ, this Jesus demands our attention in a new way, and yet he is the same as the next verse reveals for he speaks those familiar words "Do not be afraid!"
Do not be afraid- I am the Alpha and the Omega- the first and the last! In this Christ all things hold together. In him there is power and great glory, and now none of that power of glory is shielded from our eyes. It is no longer contained in human form, and yet he speaks those familiar words to us, "Do not be afraid"...
And we need not be afraid, for this is the one whose voice spoke not only worlds into being, but knit us carefully together in our mothers wombs, this is the one whose thoughts towards us out number the grains of sand on the shore, this is the one who gave everything for us:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
(Philipians 2)
But the resurrection changed all of this, and now we can dare to chose to see him and to receive him as he is, the one we caught glimpses of through the Scriptures, calming the storm, feeding the 5,000, raising the dead, and bringing sight to the blind. Christ is King, and it is in this transfigured, glorious powerful and awesome Christ that we can place our hope. And he comes to us with words of peace, lifting us to our feet and speaking with compassion, " DO NOT BE AFRAID!"
