Today certain parts of the church celebrated what is known as Christ the King Sunday.  It falls each year on the Sunday before Advent.  In his collection of lectionary reflections, Twelve Months of Sundays, N. T. Wright points out some of the origin and “muddle” of the day: invented in 1925 and moved from October to November in 1970, oddly placed in light of the real day of Jesus’ ascension to “the throne,” a reminder of the odd relationship between the kingdom now but not yet.  The readings for the day were from Daniel, John, and Revelation.  Each wonderfully selected and bringing a large part of God’s story into (re)focus: a definite future rooted in a definite past.

For many of us, biblical talk of the future has too long lingered in the timing and language of rapture and tribulation.  Not that those things won’t be a reality, mind you.  But until they happen, they are one more way that we avoid practicing the presence of God’s kingdom in the here-and-now.  We fear getting “left behind” without realizing that we haven’t fully “come together” in the first place.  A reminder of the king whose kingdom is now-but-not-yet is one of the greatest things we can reorient ourselves with.  We have done well to remember Jesus’ first ascension, from the grave to the land of the living.  We too easily pass over his second ascension, from the place of man to the right hand of the Father.  Keeping those two ascensions in place helps us be mindful of his three times descending (two having happened, one on the way).

From John 18:

So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?”  Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?”  Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”  Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”  Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (ESV, from biblegateway.com)