Proverbs 8:22-31, Colossians 1:11-20
Christ the King Sunday 2013
I’m already getting
excited to follow the 2014 Winter Olympics.
The games will begin seventy five days from today in the Black Sea
coastal city of Sochi, Russia. Do you
have a favorite event? Freestyle
skiing? Luge? Figureskating? Oh, I know!
Given that Presbyterianism has some Scottish roots and this game
originated in the frozen ponds, lochs and marshes of Scotland back in the 16th
century … your favorite is most likely Curling!
I usually most enjoy the Short Track Speed
Skating. A good reason for this is
because this is the event of the most decorated American Winter Olympic athlete
of all time,[i] Apolo
Ohno. While I’m sure I’ll have more to
say about the Olympics in months to come, today I’m wondering -- do you know what Ohno is up to these days? [ii] Well, he’s currently hosting the cable
television game show “Minute to Win It.”
Yes, this great global victor is
now cheering and coaching contestants to compete in a variety of silly, fun
party games that are a speedy one-minute in length – games like stacking cups
in a certain order or way, strategically shaking your body to get the jingle
bells inside a tissue box attached to your back to all fall out, and using only
your face muscles to guide and Oreo down from your forehead and into your
mouth.
During Camp Johnsonburg
youth and family retreats, it’s always a crowd favorite when we play our unglitzy
version of “Minute to Win It.” Campers play the games I just mentioned, among
others. I haven’t ever played the host and wouldn’t dare try to step into
Ohno’s shoes!
Our contestants, of
course, don’t play for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nor do they play to gain or increase their fame. As
with all of our other Presbyterian camp activities, our focus is having building
up the Body of Christ. Winning is
about just spending time together in fun fellowship and encouraging one another
to faithfully accept challenges.
There sure is a lot of social pressure to be a
winner in this world, to be the best, to take first place in all kinds of
real-life contests. As Christians, how have you faithfully
responded to this? From the high level
of becoming an elite athlete, on down to becoming a master at moving a cookie
across your face, and through all the ideas of winning in-between, here’s the
Gospel -- first place in everything belongs to Jesus Christ alone. And what’s really wonderful about this
biblical truth is that we have every minute now and all throughout eternity to
share in our Lord’s winning power. The
crown of victory is His, but it’s for us!
It’s for our everyday values, attitudes, and priorities to the glory of
God.
For deeper insight into
this Good News, we turn today to our New Testament lesson, which was originally
a letter written to a first century church located near what is now the modern
town of Honaz, Turkey. In case you’re
wondering, I didn’t choose to preach from this passage right before
Thanksgiving because of this turkey connection! I chose it because Colossians reminds us of
the following three Gospel truths worth briefly speaking about – Christ has been in first place since the
beginning of Creation, Christ is first to rescue us from the darkness of sin, and
Christ is first in all we do as the Church.
I.
So first and foremost
let’s understand that Jesus has always been first in everything. I mean, from the very beginning of
everything, of all Creation. I know this is more than a bit of a mindbender
because when we read the story of creation in Genesis, there isn’t any mention
of the name Jesus. But keep in mind the
Bible as a whole teaches that we have only one God. This one God is revealed to us in three ways,
as the Holy Trinity. I think most of
us are taught to think in a progressive straight line, so when reading the
Bible we seem to first meet God as the Creator, then as the Savior, Jesus, and
then as the Holy Spirit. But truly, we
are meeting all three at once in every page of the Greatest Story Ever
Told.
And so Colossians
reminds us that Jesus, the Son of God, is the “firstborn” of heaven and earth,
and that “all things have been created through him and for him.” Especially each one of us! We were created through Jesus Christ and …
here’s a really big point … for Jesus
Christ. We have the faithful
obligation of placing Him first in the center of our lives.
II.
When we center ourselves
in the Lord as the first priority of every day, we stay focused and live according
to our belief that He has rescued from all the darkness of sin in this world,
and fully forgiven us for our participation in it. We
keep aware that long ago worldly powers entrenched in this darkness worked
together to push Jesus of Nazareth into very last place behind them. They did so by executing Him on a Roman cross. Well they sure didn’t get the victory on
that score! His resurrection fully demonstrated
that His powerful holy love, forgiveness, justice and peace prevails in first
place.
This was not a one-time
win. Through the power of the Holy
Spirit, Christ’s glorious power continues to rescue and forgive all God’s
children from the sufferings of sin. By
grace and through faith, it strengthens us and empowers us to endure everything
we go through in this life with patience and joyful thanksgiving. That powerful Christ light of Easter
morning eternally keeps shining upon and through us. Generation to generation of believers
inherit it and pass it on as great, global torch of hope. This is the first and sole source of all our truly
holy transformations and new beginnings.
In 2012, Cy Young Award
winning baseball pitcher Barry Zito played a pivotal role in helping the San
Francisco Giants win the World Series.
But he has told the world about how he’d been mentally and physically
very broken down in the two years before this great victory. It had really showed in his performance. As he
endured lots of pain and struggle, he also took a deep personal inventory. He considered his reputation as sort of a
Zen surfer dude. He reviewed how he’d
grown up “testing and reading and trying all different religious things and
kinds of philosophical approaches.”[iii] He came to face to face with his
narcissism, his living for attention. He
realized that for far too long he had been relying on his own strength. He
came to confess how many things he’d been putting before God.
In the middle of 2011, he
found himself fully accepting and placing Jesus Christ first in his life. So much more than just his career was strengthened
and turned around for the better as a result.
And a key part of all this is how the Christian faith provided something
he hadn’t known he’d spiritually needed – structure.
III.
When we think and talk
about structure and Jesus Christ, we find ourselves considering church. Not just buildings, but what happens through faithfully
structured community. And just as our
human bodies have only one head, so too does the human institution of the
church. Colossians 1, verse 17 reminds
us that this is Christ. Christ, who
has been ahead of all since the beginning of Creation, who is first to rescue all
from the darkness of sin, is always to be turned to first in all things we choose
to do as an organized gathering of those who believe and find salvation in
Him. When making decisions on every
level of faithful life together, we need to first prayerfully pause and ask
whether or not our priority is to shine the crown of Christ.
“The Christ whom we follow,” writes a pastor
and professor who lives on the other side of the world whose writings I like to
read, “is not just a founder of a religion, nor even a religious figure who was
raised from the dead to delight and encourage a religious sect … He embodies
both what humanity was made to be as the image of God and …the very wisdom
which makes sense of the universe and helped set it in motion.”[iv] This is the wisdom speaking to us in
Proverbs 8, the wisdom that rejoices in this world and delights in the human
race. As those who have inherited
Christ’s wise and wonderful kingdom of light, we shine His crown as we make it both
our personal and collective priority to make the time to pray and to worship
and to study and to serve together in His name. To
quote this same professor again, William Loader of Murdoch University in
Australia, “In the best sense church is where the reconciling compassion of God
is making some headway and is recognized and valued as such. Our joy is then not the power of influence
and control, but that love flows and change happens. It’s when destructive powers … lose their
deity and people see that what matters is love because love lies at the heart
of the universe and is God’s wisdom and will.”[v]
IV.
In
a few moments, we will share in the sacrament set before us. We partake of this holy supper because
Christ our King commanded us to do so.
We do so as humble, grateful, rescued and ready servants of His kingdom
of light. We do so to ardently remember
what he has done for the whole world since the beginning of everything and first
and foremost through the saving grace of the Cross. We do so to receive the cup and the bread as
a physical reminder that we are “made strong with all the strength that comes
from His glorious power” and so we may be further “prepared to endure
everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks.” Amen!
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