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Sentence

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing. Revelation 5:12                               

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Collect 

Everlasting God, 

whose will is to restore all things in your 

well-beloved Son, our Lord and King: 

grant that the people of earth, 

now divided and enslaved by sin, 

may be freed and brought together under 

his gentle and loving rule;

who lives and reigns with you and the 

Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

Readings

• Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
• Psalm 93
• Revelation 1:4b-8
• John 18:33-37

next week

• Jeremiah 33:14-16
• Psalm 25:1-10
• 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
• Luke 21:25-38

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A Thought to Ponder

Christ the King – John 18:33-37

“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

We celebrate the kingship of Jesus with John’s Gospel account of what is perhaps Jesus’ most humiliating moment: his appearance before Pilate. It is a strange exchange: Pilate has been blackmailed by the Jewish establishment into executing Jesus for their ends; it is the accused who dominates the meeting and takes on the role of inquisitor; Pilate has no idea what Jesus is talking about when speaks about “the truth.”

Pilate, a man of no great talent or exceptional competence, was under a great deal of political pressure. He had needlessly alienated the Jews of Palestine by his cruelty, his insensitivity to their religious customs and his clumsy appropriation of funds from the temple treasury for public projects. Reports of his undistinguished performance had reached his superiors in Rome. Jesus proclaims himself ruler of a kingdom built of compassion, humility, love and truth – power that Pilate cannot comprehend in his small, narrow view of the world.

We cannot be Christians by default but only by choice; we cannot respond passively to the call to discipleship, only actively can we embrace the spirit of the “kingdom” of God, a kingdom built on compassion, justice, and truth.

The kingdom of Jesus is not found in the world’s centres of power but within human hearts; it is built not by deals among the power elite but by compassionate hands; Christ reigns neither by influence nor wealth but by selfless charity and justice.

To be faithful disciples of Christ is to be servants of truth: truth that liberates and renews, truth that gives and sustains life and hope, truth that transcends rationalisations, half-truths and delusions, truth that serves as a looking glass for seeing the world in the intended design of God.

Christ’s reign is realised only in our embracing a vision of humankind as a family made in the image of God, a vision of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, a vision of the world centred in the spirit of hope and compassion taught by Christ.                                   

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Sermon

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