November 25, 2007
Colossians 1:15-20

The Rev. David A. Davis
“Just Our King” 

The Andrew Wyeth painting is called “Master Bedroom.” It’s a simple picture that shows a sparse room with a window on the wall just on the other side of the bed. It’s a four post bed with a white cabled bedspread and a dog curled up and sleeping right in the nook formed by the pillows and the fold of the spread tucked under. We have a print of the painting in our house and I always thought it was called “Dog on A Bed.” But our tour guide in the Brandywine Museum that day referred to the title “Master Bedroom.” Of course she would know the proper title. She is Andrew Wyeth’s granddaughter and the painting belongs to her.

As she told us about the painting she mentioned that she got a kick out of how critics and scholars and visitors tried to read so much into this simple painting: the location, the symbolism, the painter’s motivation, the theme of the window in Wyeth’s art, the importance of the dog in his life. She laughed and shook her head, “Come on” she said, “It’s just a dog on a bed.” I figured I was half right when it came to the name of the painting. “What I want you to notice” she continued, “is the technique in water color. Notice the brush strokes, the use of color and the use of negative space.”  She directed our eyes toward the fringe of the bedspread. “The dominant light color of the spread comes from the canvas itself. What is painted here in the fringe, is not the light color cords of material hanging off the spread. What is painted is the shadows of darkness. The empty space there in the fringe. Think of the creative mind of the artist who could paint what’s not there” she concluded.

When our tour with Andrew Wyeth’s granddaughter was finished, I went back to took at “Master Bedroom.” I was captivated by what I learned that afternoon. I kept looking at the fringe and I could see it was the dark colors, it was the space that was painted there in the fringe. For twenty years that print has been in our home and I never looked at the fringe. I only looked at the dog on the bed. I learned that no small portion of the painting’s beauty was there in the fringe, in the genius of the painter’s brushstrokes.

Today in the calendar of the Christian Church is Christ the King. It is actually the last day of the year in liturgical terms. Advent next Sunday is a new beginning, a new year in the rhythms of the ecumenical church’s worship life. So on this last Sunday, our eyes are drawn to the heavenly and eternal kingship of Christ. We don’t really talk about it much. We seem to sing about it more. Christ the king. 

“Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne….hail Him as thy matchless King, through all eternity”

“Rejoice ye pure in heart! Rejoice, give thanks and sing! Your festal banners wave on high, the cross of Christ your king.”

“Angels, from the realms of glory, wing your flight o’er all the earth; ye who sang creation’s story now proclaim Messiah’s birth. Come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ the newborn king.”

“Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘glory to the new born king.’”

Christ the King. This day to worship the one who is King of kings and Lord of lords. King of kings and Lord of lords. We seem to sing about it more than we think about it. Christ and his kingship.

In his Letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul was addressing a community that apparently like to sing of Christ and his kingship as well. They would sing with a language of glory, with images of exaltation. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation…He is before all things and in him all things hold together…He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.”  Most New Testament scholars hear an early first century hymn in the rhythms and the poetry of Colossians 1:15ff. They hear Paul quoting a song of the early church. It is a hymn that affirms the cosmic lordship of Christ.

The same Christ who shall reign forever and ever, he was the one present at the very beginning of creation. He is both the beginning and the ultimate fulfillment of creation itself. This one Jesus Christ, in his resurrection he has become the new Adam, the firstborn of the dead. He is the very fullness of God, the epitome of God’s covenant. In his being, he embodies everything that God has done and what God will do with God’s people. The essence of God’s relationship with humanity and with creation itself, the essence of God’s relationship with all things comes to expression, to fullness, to a precise summary in him.  God was pleased to reconcile all things in and through him. Through his reign, all things were made right and brought back and re-introduced in relationship to God. This first century canvas of a hymn used by Paul, it portrays Jesus as quite the ethereal, reigning, and eternal Lord of all. A lot more than just our king.
The primary image here in the first century hymn is of Jesus the Christ, the exalted Lord, high above the heavens, far beyond time, way larger than life, with arms outstretched, with every star of the universe there within his reach, and the orb of the earth somewhere within his vast embrace. King of Kings and Lord of Lords! It is the dominant picture that comes from the hymn of Colossians 1:15ff. But before you get lost in the broad theological symbolism of the Lordship of Christ, before you eye too quickly is capture by the center of the painting, look at the brushstrokes, look at Paul’s technique, look at the fringe.

Right before the Apostle quotes the familiar old song, right before “He is the image of the invisible God;” Paul reminds the reader that in Him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Right after the song, Paul exhorts the church to be steadfast in the faith, never “shifting from the hope promised by the gospel.” And right in the middle of the hymn, Paul can’t seem to help himself when it comes to making editorial comments. It’s not self-evident on the page, especially in English. But scholars who study the Greek and look at the meter of the poetry, point out a few places were Paul adds his own strokes to the text that the church already knew.

For instance: when the church is wanting to sing about how all things in heaven and on earth were created in him, things visible and invisible, Paul affirms that Christ’s power to create includes “thrones or dominions or rulers or powers.” When the ancient hymn writer looks to praise Christ the King as the head of the body, Paul paints in the church. Christ is the head of the body, which is the church Paul adds for emphasis. And as the faithful were apt to sing in one voice of the one in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, as together they conclude that God was pleased to reconcile to Godself all things, where on earth or in heaven by making peace, Paul adds one more brush stroke. Paul puts his finishing touch on the fringe; Paul adds his own signature to the hymn. Peace comes through the blood of his cross.

Paul doesn’t let Christ the King stay up there in the heavens far away from it all, far away from the church at Colossae, far away from you and me. Peace and reconciliation come through his death on the cross. That cosmic, almost other worldly Christ, that Christ is still head of the church, the center of the congregation, the foundation of our life together. Christ’s creative power is at work, not simply back in the vast darkness and chaos of Creation, but amid the thrones and dominions of the day, the rulers and leaders and powers of the moment. According to Paul, the appropriate response to a vision of the Divine King is not simply to bow in adoration, but it is to live with hope and be steadfast in faith. This song, this hymn of praise to Christ the Eternal King, for Paul it begins with a single solitary voice that give thanks for the forgiveness of sins!  The eternal and glorious reign of Christ the King, it plays out not just on the majestic theological, philosophical, intellectual canvas that is at the very center of the universe. Christ’s reign is ultimately fulfilled in the fringe of creation where forgiveness and reconciliation and peace pour into the empty, aching spaces of your life and mine.
When John Calvin invites his readers to think about Christ the King, the invitation comes with a warning label. “It would be pointless to speak about [kingship] without first warning my readers that it is spiritual in nature.” (II.xv.3)  We can “perceive the force and usefulness of Christ’s kingship”, Calvin argues, only “when we recognize it to be spiritual.” (II.xv.4) The emphasis on spiritual is to convince the reader that this kind of kingship is not of this world. Spiritual kingship for Calvin was in contrast to a worldly understanding of what it means to be king (power, military might, violence, extravagance, wealth).  The emphasis on the spiritual and the eternal was intended to “prevent those otherwise too much inclined to things earthly from indulging in foolish dreams of pomp.”

Of course the danger of such a strong spiritual twist to Christ the King is that it has little earthly meaning, that its all about the life to come. Christ’s eternal dominion. In Calvin’s own words, “that we would simply be waiting for the full fruit of Christ’s grace in the age to come.”  But given the historical context of the Reformation, one can perceive Calvin setting himself against the Roman Church, and railing against any sense of the reign of Christ that would justify earthly power or wealth or opulence. As we “patiently pass through this life with its misery, hunger, cold, contempt….and other troubles” we shall be content knowing that our King shall never leave us destitute…that we shall be equipped with his power, adorned with his beauty and magnificence, enriched with his wealth, and clothed with his righteousness (II.xv.4). Christ the King and you and I clothed with his righteousness.

The book The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House tells a fascinating story of power, influence, leadership, politics, and religion. The authors trace Billy Graham’s relationship with every President beginning with Harry Truman. It is both chilling and reassuring, I guess, to know that the awkward and uncomfortable dance of religion and politics didn’t just start a few presidential elections ago. At the very end of the book, the authors tell of going back to visit Billy Graham in Montreat in January of this year. After talking about the current election and the candidates, they came to the one last question. In their words, “How did he manage it? How did he handle the enormous cross-pressures of politics and faith, without sacrificing principal, cutting corners, being thrown off balance?”

“I didn’t try sit down and try to manage it or think it through” Graham said matter-of-factly. And he went on to tell of his five children and how different they were and how they had their own ideas and their own points of view, but he accepted them. He loved them. Then he went on in a moment of reflection that seemed appropriate for a man of his age, “I haven’t hated people. I haven’t felt that I need to take revenge on somebody. I never was jealous of people that I can remember….That was a gift from the Lord, Jesus spent a great deal of his ministry talking about the need for love and working together and that’s why he died on the cross---because of love. He loved sinners, all people who didn’t deserve it, that’s what grace is. It means God gives us forgiveness that we don’t deserve. And to me that’s a wonderful thing.”

And somewhere the choirs of heaven, that church choir that reaches back to the first century, they started to sing. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation….” Funny, the writers of the Graham book don’t mention hearing the angel choir right then and there. But the witness was to Christ the King whose lordship and reign reaches into our lives with every act of reconciliation, every taste of forgiveness, and every effort, every demand, every glimpse of peace.

 

 

          

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