King of Joy

Christ the King, by attomanen

Children’s Sermon: Christ the King
24 November 2024

Hey, guys. Happy almost-Thanksgiving. Are you looking forward more to the turkey, or to the pie? I’m a pie guy, myself.

Did you know that this is the end of the year? Yeah, for the Church it is. This is our last Sunday. Next week we get to start over with a new year, and a new season: Advent. But first, we want to go out with a bang.

See, about a hundred years ago—give or take a decade—scary things were happening all over the world. New powers were rising, and they didn’t much care for things like democracy, or freedom, or rights, or peace. They thought that the strong should be able to do whatever they liked.

It was a dark time. People thought it might never get better. We were afraid that the bad guys would win, and that once they won, that was it.

So the Church declared that, from now on, the last Sunday of the Church year would be Christ the King Sunday. Because we wanted everyone to know, especially the bad guys, that Jesus is in charge, that Jesus is our King—the only true King.

Jesus was the strongest of any of us. He could’ve done anything He wanted. And what He chose to do was to love people: to heal us and teach us and set us all free. He did that for good people, and for bad people, and even for the same people who killed Him.

Nothing could stop Him from loving us. Not even hell. Not even death. That’s what real power is: it’s love. It’s loving people even when it hurts, loving people even—and especially—when it would be a whole lot easier to hate them.

Jesus is our King. Thank God. He’s everybody’s King, really, even if we don’t all know it as of yet. Everything good comes from Him; and everything, good and bad, goes back to Him, so that He can fix it, He can make it right.

When we say that Christ is King, we don’t mean that He makes bad things happen. He can’t. God can’t do evil; if He could, then He wouldn’t be God. What we mean is that Jesus has the final say. His love outlasts everything, even hatred, and war, and death.

Christ is King. And because He is King, we know that evil can never have the final word. Jesus is the final Word. Everything will be all right in the end. If it isn’t all right, then it isn’t the end. That’s the whole Gospel in a nutshell. And that is why our King brings us joy.

Sound good? Let’s pray.