"Power Through Grace" | Charissa Simmons | November 23, 2025

So, we have finally reached the last Sunday after Pentecost—the last day of the liturgical year, the last in the long season of the green growing Sundays. Next week, we begin a new year with the season of Advent.

Now, this Sunday is known as Christ the King Sunday, or sometimes the Reign of Christ Sunday. This is a fairly new commemoration in the history of the church. It's only 100 years old. It was started by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as a reaction against the rise of secularism and fascism in Europe after the First World War. The Pope was trying to refocus Christians’ worship and allegiance to Jesus, and away from the secular leaders who were dominating the political and social discourse of the time.

Now, this language of Christ the King is a little uncomfortable for many of us. We don’t want a king. We’ve seen the response against that kind of rule play out in recent months at protests all around the country—indeed, all around the world. And I’m sure you’ve seen images of signs at those protests declaring, “No king but Jesus.”

Christ the King. Christians are quick to qualify the kingship of Jesus. To state the obvious, Jesus is not that kind of king—not a king who rules through power or force or fear. Jesus is different. Jesus, in fact, rejected the notion of his own kingship. He wouldn’t have it. He was clear that that’s not what he was about. And that sign we just heard about, placed on Jesus’ cross—“This is the King of the Jews”—was put there to mock him. The Romans thought it was a good joke.

But the reign of Christ is about mercy and compassion, about peace and servanthood and justice. And Jesus shows us clearly what that looks like in today’s gospel. In this moment of brutal pain and humiliation on the cross, Jesus reaches out in love to those around him. He asks forgiveness even for the ones hurting him. He comforts those who are dying with him.

And we witness in this passage what the reign of Christ looks like—and it’s a little difficult. Jesus reaching out to forgive and heal, reaching out to those who have condemned him to death and to the criminals at his side. It’s a powerful image—power, not through domination or control, but through grace, God’s love and favor freely given to us, to all of us.

And as Christians, we are called to participate in the reign of Christ—in this kind of a kingdom. We are actually called to be part of bringing about this kingdom, to be co-creators with Christ of this reign here on earth, working through God and alongside each other to create a world of compassion and justice and inclusion—working together as the living body of Christ.

And so, here we are on the cusp of Advent. Throughout the last church year, we have remembered Jesus’ birth and his ministry, his teachings, death, and resurrection—and today, the reign of the living Christ. And next week, we’ll shift to preparing for Jesus’ birth—for the incarnation of God into this world again. But we’re not starting over. We are continuing the story. We are continuing to live in this great epic Christian story.

Our story doesn’t follow the normal pattern of beginning and middle and end. It kind of does—but there’s really no end, right? It flows. It flows in a different kind of time—a time that isn’t necessarily linear.

So, there is a Godly Play lesson about the liturgical year that we teach to our children. It’s called The Circle of the Church Year. The beginning of that lesson is about time.

There are all kinds of time. There’s a time to get up in the morning. There’s a time to go to school or go to work. There’s a time to eat, a time to go home, a time to rest—all kinds of time.

But what is time?

Some people say that time goes in a line. I wonder what that would look like. It might look like this—this string. Here’s time. And it’s just started—brand new time. And as I pull out more, time is getting longer. And this part, this beginning part that was so new—it’s not new anymore. Now it’s kind of old. And there’s a different new part. And it just keeps going. I wonder how long time is. I wonder if time will ever stop.

Oh—well, it did stop. It ended. And now we have this ending part, but it’s the new part. So, it’s really kind of like the beginning. And this beginning part is the old part, and it’s really kind of now like the end. So, we have an ending that’s like a beginning, and a beginning that’s like an ending.

So, what the church did was to tie the ending that’s like a beginning and the beginning that’s like an ending together. And so now we have this kind of time—in a circle.

So, theologically speaking, there are two kinds of time. They’re different, and they have different names. Time in a line—the kind of time we normally think about—is called chronos, like chronology. The time we measure with clocks and the progression of days and weeks and years. And the other kind of time is called kairos.

Kairos is sometimes defined as an appointed time or an opportune moment when God’s purpose breaks into human experience. Sometimes it’s referred to as an intersection with eternity that we experience. It’s not a specific amount of time, but maybe a moment or a season. In scripture, it’s often referred to as the fullness of time. In the fullness of time.

And we’re familiar with this kind of time when we celebrate communion. We enter this kind of time with a feast that includes all of humanity and history—and all of God—right here at this altar. So you can listen for these words today: So this day we join with saints and angels in the chorus of praise that rings through eternity.

So this is the kind of time of our liturgy, of our liturgical year, of our liturgical time together.

Jesus is constantly breaking into our lives—coming as a baby, living, dying, being resurrected—over and over and over again, and all at the same time. There is no way to separate one part of this story from another.

And so, just as we are people who follow a different kind of time in our faith, we follow a different kind of leader—one who manifests power through mercy, forgiveness, and love.

And I believe this is the way that we act as co-creators with God, with God’s help and in God’s time. We are always surrounded by the tyrant’s reign. But we are called to be a glimpse of Christ’s reign of love—a kingdom not of domination but of servanthood, not of mockery but of kindness, not of cruelty but of mercy, not of fear but of courage—working together as the living body of Christ to establish a reign of compassion and justice and love.