Take Heart: Christ is King #LectioCast

Christ is king. That’s the week on the liturgical calendar, it’s the promise of God. And it’s our hope in a time when we have figured out that our earthly shepherds are not going to fulfill God’s visions of justice and righteousness. 

Jeremiah 23:1-6 God will shepherd God’s people. God will raise up a faithful shepherd to do it through. And God will see to it that humanity gets to flourish, free from fear, as God created us to do.

Luke 1:68-79 Zechariah prophesies over the ministry of John and anticipates the work of Jesus. It’s a vision of grand, earthy salvation, realized in the forgiveness of sins. God’s promise to work through a human king is coming to pass.

Colossians 1:11-20 Forgiveness leads to a kingdom in which Christ is king. Christ is king as humanity was supposed to be at the beginning: God’s image-bearing rulers of the earth. And God’s reconciling work bursts beyond the boundaries of God’s people to include the entire cosmos. This happens on the cross.

Luke 23:33-43 The shocking culmination of Reign of Christ week: we end with Jesus on the cross. But here, paradoxically, we discover the salvation that Jesus brings as king and messiah. 

 Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, and blogger who lives in San Francisco, CA where he is currently Pastoral
Director for the Newbigin House of Studies. His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is hot off the presses. Daniel holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.