What is your favorite Christmas song?
I know - you think I've lost the plot since Thanksgiving is the next holiday up in the season - but bear with me for a moment.
I have a dear friend and colleague who absolutely loves one song in particular, but was very quiet about sharing that information for the first year or two of our working relationship. Which means that it often did not make it into the lineup of the key services surrounding Christmas Eve where it might have been.
Now, this person bends over backwards to do everything they can to help people, at work and in the world. It is their joy in life to serve their neighbors. And it was my joy to do whatever I could to make their season all the merrier once I learned their favorite: Joy to the World.
A rumpus and gregarious ride of Christmas joy, what most people do not realize about this beloved hymn is that it is, in fact, based upon Psalm 98, which was written about God coming to judge the world as King. Its meaning, like so many prophecies, is far more ancient and yet exceedingly far-reaching.
Which is why we will be looking at this text together this weekend for Christ the King Sunday - the final Sunday in the liturgical year. It is our New Year's Eve of a sort. We end it all by remembering that at the end of time, Christ will return to judge the living and the dead (or for all of us out west, the quick and the dead). Though we know not the day or the hour, it is a promise we live into by fulfilling Christ's work every hour of our lives, here and now.
Just as he taught us.
See you on Sunday.
Blessings,
Rev. Janie
Artwork: "A Choice," by the Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman of A Sanctified Art, LLC
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