The Reign of Christ
Craig Atwood, HMC November 24, 2025
Colossians 1:11-20
May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, so that you may have all endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
He is the Image of the Invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
INTRODUCTION
It is good to be back from my adventure in Korea. In January, I will give a longer talk about what I did and experienced in Korea – and show you pictures. This morning, I just mention a couple of things. First of all, I had an amazing trip and welcomed warmly by everyone I met. I found that Koreans and Moravians both believe that eating together and laughing together are very important. My hosts were three Korean women who are members of Central Moravian Church, two of whom took my classes at the seminary. I could not have been in better hands.
Last Sunday morning, I preached in worship in a small gathering at the Border Peace School just a few miles from the Demilitarized Zone. They wanted to learn more about the spirituality of the Moravian Church. I talked about John Amos Comenius, the resilience of his faith, and his lifelong quest for peace. We also talked about Moravians today, and they showed me the building that they built for meditation and prayer, which was divided into north and south, with a tower in the middle open to the heavens. The leaders of the school told me that they hope that the Moravians will pray for the reconciliation of North and South and the end of a conflict that has lasted for 75 years. I assured them that we would remember them in prayer and that Moravians have a long history of working for reconciliation.
In all, I gave six long lectures and two sermons to a total of 500 people in four different settings, including a megachurch and two universities. People were eager to hear about Moravian history and theology, especially Zinzendorf’s theology of the heart, but I did have one conservative Presbyterian pastor raise questions about Zinzendorf’s understanding of God the Son. In my answer to him, I quoted the passage from I Colossians that is our assigned lectionary text for today. This text has been on my mind for several days now because it is in many ways a summary of Moravian theology and spirituality.
The Colossians text may have sounded familiar to you from a different context. Much of this passage is found in our liturgy for the sunrise service on Easter. Every year we gather in the gloaming to profess our faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, proclaiming joyfully that in Christ, we are reconciled to God reconciled and that Christ is head of the church. It is one of my favorite parts of the Easter Dawn liturgy. I love meditating on these words on Easter, and I’m glad today to have the opportunity to share some of my thoughts with you.
HYMN OF THE CHURCH
Most biblical scholars today agree that this part of the letter to the Colossians is one of the oldest specifically Christian hymns. It is a song of praise to Christ the Son of God. Even in translation we can feel the beautiful cadence and rhythm of words and the soaring images. It is even more clearly a hymn in Greek, and we can picture this being sung by a choir or a congregation. Moravians have always believed that music and poetry are the best ways to express our faith in God because music opens our hearts to truths that our heads sometimes resist. Early Christian theologians called the Trinity and other divine mysteries doxological truths, meaning they are things that we receive with songs of praise rather than logical debate. We affirm them rather than prove them. Or as it says in our text, we joyfully give thanks to God the Father for the gift of the Son who has rescued us from the power of darkness and enabled us to share in the joy of heaven with the saints.
I always worry about analyzing the meaning and imagery of songs and poetry lest we rob the song of its power by dissecting it into pieces as if it were a specimen under a microscope. There is a world of difference between the butterfly in flight and the butterfly in the lab, but sometimes close study of a poem or butterfly can help us appreciate its beauty more and open our minds to new insights. Today, I want to draw your attention to three things in this hymn: Creation, Incarnation, and Reconciliation. We can’t go into detail on these topics this morning, but I hope we can see how these are related to each other.
CREATION
Verse 15 and 16 say that Christ is the “first born of creation and the image of the invisible God… in him all things were created.” This is one of the clearest statements about the divinity of Christ who existed before the world began. Moravians, like most Christians, believe in that God is a Tri-Unity or Trinity: that Father, Son, and Spirit are all God and that God is one. The Nicene Creed, which is in our Liturgy for Adoration, describes Christ as God of God, Light of Light, begotten, not made, which draws upon this Scripture passage. The Son was born of the Father before the universe began and the universe it was created through the Son. There was no Father before there was Son; Father and Son existed before all things, even time itself, and everything that exists came into being through the Son. I know this is mind-blowing, and that is okay. The key idea for this morning is simply that God the Son was involved in creation itself. This same idea appears in the first chapter of the Gospel of John and a couple of other places.
When I was in Seoul last week, I got to go up to the observation deck near the top of Namsan Tower on a hill overlooking the city. The tower is over 1500 ft above sea level and in clear weather you can see about 150 miles away. We went up at night and the whole metropolis stretched out before us with millions of homes and businesses brightly lit. I bet that most of us at some point in our life, maybe now, think that this is the way God looks down on creation. Certainly, this is how the Creator is depicted in great art and bad cartoons. Seeing everything at once, but from a great distance. Perhaps the Creator has a telescope to focus in on individuals from time to time, but is still too far away to intervene. The word invented by philosophers to describe this is transcendence. And some of my favorite hymns describe this transcend, awesome deity who creates all things and keeps the universe running.
INCARNATION
The beautiful thing about this passage in Colossians is that it moves quickly from the transcendence of the Creator to the Incarnation of the Savior. Incarnation is a fancy word for becoming human, taking on human flesh and blood. Next Sunday we begin the season of Advent as we prepare for the festival of the Incarnation of Christ at Christmas. Colossians says that Christ is the Image of the Invisible God.
You probably remember from Sunday School that Genesis says that God made the first humans, male and female, in God’s own image. All people are made in the image of God. Sin, malice, and wickedness may obscure the image of God the way that dirt obscures the face of a child playing in the mud, but the image is still there. But as the first born of Creation, Christ is the perfect image of the Invisible Father. God the Father is invisible, but God the Son appeared on earth in human form. People saw the perfect image of God, they touched him, caressed him, kissed him, slapped him, pierced him, and buried him.
The Old Testament forbid people from making images of God the Father because God is invisible and any image would be a fiction and idol. But the Son appeared on earth in the person of Jesus. Zinzendorf said that is why should make pictures of Jesus. Even though he was one man, a Jew born in Galilee two thousand years ago, he became everyman, every human when he took human form. So, it is okay that different cultures picture Jesus as part of their culture. All humans are blessed by the incarnation of Christ because in him the fullness of God dwelled. Even on the cross, we see the image of our Creator who came down from the heights to be with us.
RECONCILIATION
Our last word is reconciliation. Colossians tells us that Christ reconciled us to God through the blood of the cross. For countless millennia humans had tried to appease gods with animal and sometimes human sacrifices. Every ancient civilization had a sacred place, a temple or altar, where animals were slaughtered to appease wrathful deities. Even the Israelites who had the laws of Moses and the prophets to guide them had a temple where they killed sheep and other animals as sacrifices to the invisible God. For thousands of years, humans assumed that they were in the hands of an angry God who would destroy them unless they did something dramatic and bloody.
But then the Son assumed human form and showed us who God is. God is love, not wrath. The Son put an end to the bloody business of animal sacrifices by letting his own creation, his dearly beloved children, abuse him and lift him on a cross to die. This is our Savior, our God, our beloved, our Bridegroom. Heaven and earth are reconciled because Christ came to earth to share our lives and experience mortality. And in his resurrection, he lifts us all up to himself so that we may one day be in his more immediate presence. He was not only the first born of creation; he was also first born of the dead. And this is why he is and will always be the head of the church.
The Reign of Christ is not some day in the far distant future when signs and wonders shake the foundations of the earth and society crumbles into chaos before Christ takes up the throne. Colossians tells us that the reign of Christ is now. Christ, the incarnate Son of God, has already reconciled us to God and is already the head of the church. We are living in the Kingdom of God already, if we could only believe it and live into that reality. God is not in some distant heaven beyond the stars; God is here. Immanual, God with us. We do not need to fear God’s wrath because the Son hung on the cross and overthrew the kingdom of hell. He has rescued us from the powers of darkness and makes us saints in light.
CONCLUSION
I know this is some heavy theology on a beautiful Sunday morning, and we don’t have to understand everything to love Christ, praise Christ, serve Christ, and live in his kingdom on earth. Just remember that Christ loves you with infinite love and that the true king does not need golden crowns. He wears the crown of thorns that we put on his head. He needs no golden hall, he has the cross that we gave him. He needs no armies or guards to protect him. He only needs us to fall into his arms and be filled with his peace. Day after day. The Lamb has Conquered, let us follow him today, tomorrow, to eternity. Amen.
