A reflection for Christ-the-King And our AGM Sunday by Canon Dean Fostekew

Today is the feast of Christ-the-King but it is also the end of the church’s liturgical year. We are at the threshold between Advent and the longed for coming of the Christ and this celebration of Christ as our King. Today, we step with from the old to the new year with hope, into a new beginning in the knowledge that Christ goes with us. As we celebrate each year, the round of events which is Jesus’ life, we do so knowing the full story but we always do so afresh because that story always has something to new to tell us and for us to discover. None of us ever holds the full truth about Christ; our lives are a constant exploration into what his life, death and resurrection were all about.

This morning we proclaim that Christ is our king;   not with any sense of fear for our king is one of gentleness and servanthood. He came not for us to bow and scrape to him in terror BUT for him to serve our needs and to lift us out of the darkness of our errors into the joy and light of his kingdom of love. And, this year we also hold for the first time our AGM on this feast day.

An AGM is an opportunity for us as a community to pause and take stock of where we have come from and begin to vision afresh where we might be called by Christ to go. We have continued to tread an unusual path this year, limited as we have been by the Covid19 restrictions. And, who knows what the coming Winter will bring? Life has been different but it has also been familiar in the celebrations we have followed throughout the Church Year and that has been a comfort - something unchanging in a strange world. Christ is our light, our guide and our King, our servant King and it is the pattern of his life that we are called to follow and make our own in the service of all God’s people.

We do not worship the Christ in fear but in joy. In joy that his life, ministry, death and resurrection have won new life for us and given us a way of life to live up to. As we discern what it is that God is calling us as a congregation to be and to become in the coming months, let us pray that we will never lose sight of the King who inspires us, that humble babe born in a stable and gentle man who died on a cross. Proving to us how much we are loved by the God who created us. Let that knowledge always be the guide to all we do as we reach out into God’s world to do God’s will.