Honouring Christ the King

Rowena Worthington

Church Engagement Manager, Embrace the Middle East

https://embraceme.org/

Christ the King Sunday (23 November 2025)

St Bene’t’s, Cambridge

Christ the King Sunday stands at the threshold of Advent. It’s a day that invites us to look beyond the familiar images of kingship; crowns, thrones, and power and to see what kingship means in the light Christ.  

We begin with Jeremiah who speaks with passion “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” These are not gentle words. They are a rebuke to leaders who have failed in their calling. Those entrusted with responsibility and care have chosen power over justice and control over compassion. In Jeremiah’s day, kings were meant to shepherd their people, to guard the vulnerable, to reflect the justice of God. Instead, they exploited and no doubt in their desire to divide and rule, scattered the people., actions that echo in our own time. And so God promises a different kind of king: “I will raise up for David a righteous Branch… and he shall reign wisely and execute justice and righteousness in the land.” 

This is the heartbeat of Christ the King Sunday: a vision of kingship completely unlike the world’s. Not domination, but service. Not coercion, but reconciliation. A reign marked by justice and peace. 

Psalm 46 gives us the soundscape of that reign: “God is our refuge and strength… therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved.” Nations rage, kingdoms totter, but God is in the midst of the city. The psalm does not deny chaos, rather it locates hope within it. “Be still and know that I am God.” Stillness here is not passive resignation. It’s radical trust in the God who breaks the bow and snaps the spear. The God who dismantles violence and calls the nations to peace. 

And then the letter to the Colossians lifts our gaze to the cosmic scale: Christ is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation… in him all things hold together.” This is kingship beyond borders and beyond time. The one who reconciles all things whether on earth or in heaven through the blood of the cross. These readings take us on a journey from a promise, a ruler who will reign wisely and execute judgement, to a paradox, a King enthroned on a cross, whose blood sacrifice makes peace possible.

So what does this mean for us living in a world where violence, avarice and the scattering of people through an unprecedented refugee crisis, populate our newsfeeds on a daily basis?

Where fear and injustice fracture communities? Where power is too often exercised at the expense of the weak? 

It means that Christ’s kingship is not an abstract doctrine; it is a summons. If his reign is justice and peace, then his followers cannot be indifferent to injustice. If his throne is the cross, then his people must stand where suffering is real.

This is where the mission of Embrace the Middle East speaks so powerfully. In the lands that form the cradle of our faith, the people who call this fractured yet beautiful part of our world home, live in constant fear of the ‘other’. Atrocities are committed, hostages taken, children detained, sometimes without charge and without trial. Millions of people live under occupation and millions more with the consequences of enforcing it. Embrace works with local partners to bring hope: legal aid for the vulnerable, food and warmth for the homeless and the refugee, education for those denied opportunity, healthcare for those on the margins. These are not acts of charity alone; they are signs of the kingdom. They say, in practical ways, that Christ’s reign is breaking in.

Christ’s kingship does not look like the world expects. It is easy to miss. In Colossians, Paul prays that we may be “strengthened with all power… for endurance and patience.” We are called to resist the seduction of unredeemed powers – the powers of control and empire that lead to cynicism, apathy, and despair. It means staying alert to the places where God’s justice is absent and daring to act. 

Walter Wink, in his work “Naming the Powers”, helps us see that this is not just a spiritual truth, but a radical claim about the structures of our world. Wink argues that every system – political, economic, social – has both an outer, visible form and an inner, spiritual reality. These “powers” were created good, but they become fallen when they serve domination instead of life.

When Paul says Christ disarmed the powers and made a public spectacle of them, he is declaring that the cross exposes and defeats systems of injustice. The powers are not destroyed; they are unmasked and called back to their divine vocation to serve human flourishing under God’s reign.

Why does this matter for us today? Because when we look at oppression, discrimination, antisemitism, Islamophobia, children held without charge or trial, we are seeing the visible form of a fallen power: a system that claims to offer security but ends up crushing the vulnerable. Wink would say that our task is not only to resist these systems but to redeem them and to call them back to justice. That means advocacy, prayer, and action that confronts the spiritual reality behind the visible injustice. 

So when we stay alert, as Jesus commands, we are not just waiting for a future kingdom; we are discerning the powers at work now and joining Christ in the work of exposing and transforming them. This is what it means to walk in the light: to live as if the powers have already been reclaimed by Christ, and to act in ways that anticipate that reality.

So what does it look like to honour Christ as King? It looks like prayer that refuses to be sentimental, prayer that wrestles with God for justice. It looks like advocacy: calling out injustice in places where it thrives. It looks like generosity: supporting those who work for peace on the ground. And it looks like hope, not naïve optimism, but stubborn, defiant hope rooted in God’s promise. 

Honouring Christ as King also calls us to slow down. “Be still, and know that I am God.”

Stillness here is not withdrawal; it’s an opportunity for us to gain clarity. To get our priorities in order and the refusal to let fear dictate our choices. It is the courage to act even in the midst of chaos. 

The kings of this world still scatter and exploit. But the righteous Branch has come. The cosmic Christ holds all things together. And his kingdom is breaking in through acts of justice and peace, through healing the wounds of history and lives that bear witness to his love. 

We are each offered the invitation to honour the King with our lives. Working and praying for the day when all of creation is reconciled to God’s self and can live in safety.  

Amen.