Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today we mark Christ the King Sunday which is the last Sunday before Advent. It is a kind of culmination of the Church year in many ways. The Church year begins with the First Sunday of Advent – next Sunday.

So Christ the King Sunday marks the end of the year and, perhaps, the end of the story which begins again next Sunday, with the anticipation of the birth of Our Lord, and anticipation of all that will unfold after that holy night.

It doesn’t really mark the end of the story though.

The story goes on, again and again, told and re-told by countless generations. The story is told and re-told in the hearts and lives of those who follow Christ the King.

Each baptism, confirmation, or reception into the Church is a kind of mini-Advent where we wait to see just how Christ will be born in a newly marked life.

Each Bible study, each act of service, each pastoral care visit, and so much more are bits and pieces of the retelling of the story – of the arc that continues in our lives.

We now close out this Church year with a celebration that marks the crowning not only of Christ but of each and every Christian who is an heir with him of the same Father.

The normal course of our days may feel far from noble but the great gift of the Incarnation is that God crowns the lowly.

God raises up those who were cast down. Christ’s crown is not gold alone, but thorns too. His robes are not ermine alone, but a too stained shroud. His scepter a reed. His accolades once mockery. His throne carried by him to a hill far away.

Christ comes to his glory not by divine right but through very human suffering. This is the path we are all on – walking the royal road of life’s joys and fears. Our years and days and hours are crowned with the whole scope of the pain and pageantry of the human experience.

Christ, becoming human, carries all of that with him and more. He carries it to the throne of grace and welcomes us to lay it all down there too.

We mark the end of the story this Sunday – a story of miracles, and pain, and triumph.

It is no end though for it is being told freshly, again and again, in all of our lives. It is being lived in each of our stories. We who follow Christ the King are called to celebrate his reign this Sunday and to anticipate it next Sunday – for the story is.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert