Jeremiah 23.1-6
Song of Zechariah
Colossians 1.11-20
Luke 23.33-43
Sunday 23 November 2025
Reign of Christ Sunday
©Suzanne Grimmett
One century ago, the world was still taking in the scale of loss of not only human life, but meaning and certainty in the wake of World War I. The Spanish Flu had claimed the lives of 40 million people across the globe. Industrial and technological change in the form of radio, television, cars and aeroplanes were changing the way people saw the world and perhaps even more critically, the things they desired and consumed. Politically, leaders were arising who would bring great destruction in their wake; Stalin in Russia and Mussolini in Italy. It was 1925 when Hitler published Mein Kampf. Against this backdrop of ambition, turmoil, the rise of violent ideologies and what could be understood as a spiritual disorientation, Pope Pius the XI in December 1925 declared a universal observance of the Feast of Christ the King. He sought to remind a world through this new observance of the true power of humility, love and grace in an era that seemed preoccupied with ruling through forms of power that were violent, dominant and coercive. Some things have not changed, and this Feast Day in its one hundredth anniversary year reminds us just as powerfully today that the reign of Christ is characterised by sacrificial love, justice and peace.
Sometimes it is difficult to believe in the reign of God in any present sense when evil seems to triumph and despair wins over hope. Last week we were reminded that even though there are so many cataclysmic events- wars and rumours of wars – the promise endures of Christ with us now and always coming again. If this is to be more than hopeful words, then where are we to look for this present reign of Christ? What are the signs of its emergence?
Today we are concluding a year spent in the Gospel of Luke, which is, it turns out, one of the best places to look for clues about the kingdom of God. For a start, it is Luke’s Gospel that poses the question about this reign and an answer from Jesus most clearly.
Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’ (Luke 17:20-21)
Jesus takes a ‘when’ question and seems to answer it with a ‘where’. The kingdom of God is ‘among’ or some translations say ‘within’ you. We are not to try to predict any one moment of Christ’s coming because although the kingdom is coming, it is also already present. The reign of God is to be understood in terms of Jesus’ own mission and message and the life of Christ within and amongst us.
And what is that mission? For that we need to look back on some key texts and stories which together in Luke’s Gospel provide a clear picture of the revealing of the reign of God. The first clue we hear today in the Song of Zechariah who is praising God for the birth of his son John, prophesying that this child will prepare the way for the one who comes;
To give God’s people knowledge of salvation:
by the forgiveness of their sins….
To shine on those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death:
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
After hearing these words, we might be reminded of the song of the angels who at Jesus’ birth sing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace among those whom he favours!” Peace used here is not just a nice word to paint on a Christmas bauble but is in Luke’s Gospel inextricably tied to the salvation which encompasses material, political and spiritual well-being. The Greek word for peace used here is eirēnē and conveys more than just an absence of conflict but means a relational state of harmony with God, others and creation. In Luke’s Gospel, eirēnē occurs 14 times, compared to only once in Matthew and in Mark.[1] Luke can justifiably be considered the Gospel of Peace, and offers therefore many narratives that help us understand better what it might mean to prepare for, celebrate and live into the Reign of Christ. The other theme that appears in Luke’s Gospel is the central place of justice- in the reign of Christ there is peace with justice.
Many of Jesus’ miracles and parables point us to the way of peace with justice, but on this day where our reading takes us suddenly to the foot of the cross, we have to look for the revealing of the reign of God in this most unlikely of places. The crucifixion if taken on its own is only a witness to the triumph of evil and the power of violence to destroy what is good and true. But moving through the witness of Jesus’ life, trial and crucifixion to resurrection and ascension, we begin to see the victory and power of this way. David Neville writes;
We learn from Luke’s distinctive conception of Jesus’ mission that the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem and thence to God is a way of peace that disciples of Jesus are to emulate….The mission of Jesus is not only his peaceable seeking out and recovery of the lost but also God’s intentional determination to wage peace in an unreceptive, violent and often cruel world.[2]
It is this ‘intentional determination to wage peace’ that we are called to emulate. We may feel powerless in the face of geopolitical change and wars raging across the globe, but we can strive to follow Jesus in the way of the cross each day, making choices to wage peace.
And what does it look like for us, so far away from the event of the cross in both space and time, to follow this way? And doesn’t it really sound a bit too much like either a false martyrdom or a very real but very unhealthy self-negation?
Such concerns have led many to turn away from the abhorrence of the cross and seek more positive aspects of religion to guide us. But to miss this is to miss the heart of what it means to live as a Christian daily, and the possibility of making present the reign of God through the practice of peace. Just as Christ did not grasp equality with God but became a servant for love of humanity and all creation, so we are called daily to take up our cross- which means dying to our need to be right or perceived as righteous- and the corresponding need for the other person to be wrong. To usher in peace is to let die our need for vengeance or retribution and embrace a way of forgiveness that has the power to heal relationships. Stanley Hauerwas describes the reign of God, saying that Jesus;
…proclaims that the kingdom is present in so far as his life reveals the effective power of God to create a transformed people capable of living peacefully in a violent world. [3]
And how do we find the path to such transformation? While we remain invested in being good and doing good, our ego consciousness will be working to deny our own darkness, making us potentially dangerous to others in all our relationships. The Christian community has inbuilt mechanisms for disabling this common danger of any religious ideological system by recognising that our posture before God is not to say, “Look at the good and upright moral citizen I am” but rather, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”[4]
In today’s Gospel it is this same posture that is evident in the conversation recorded only in Luke’s Gospel between the criminals crucified either side of Jesus;
“We indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds.“
Luke is once again telling the story of the peace of the reign of God, a way made, as we hear in the letter to the Colossians, because through Jesus, “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”
This peace through the blood is not Jesus taking a punishment upon himself that rightly belongs to us, but rather dying as a victim of injustice who, instead of violently retaliating, sets relations right through healing and forgiveness. The reign of God is found wherever those with open hearts and empty hands gather to share peace and break bread together as one people, no longer rivals or subject to the seductions and violence of coercive power. The reign of God is found amongst us whenever we, like Christ, empty ourselves to make space for another, discovering that in humility, mercy and forgiveness there is not only peace, but life abundant.
+Amen.
[1] David J. Neville, A Peaceable Hope: Contesting Violent Eschatology in New Testament Narratives, Baker Academic: 2013, 92
[2] David J. Neville, A Peaceable Hope: Contesting Violent Eschatology in New Testament Narratives, Baker Academic: 2013, 107
[3] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics, SCM, London: :2009, 129.
[4] Michael Wood, Practicing Peace: Theology, Contemplation and Action, Wipf and Stock, Oregon: 2022,146