This Sunday, the last Sunday in the liturgical year, is known as Christ the King Sunday, the day set aside by the Church to celebrate the Realm of Christ. Take time to read the collect for the day where we recognize Christ as “King of kings and Lord of lords” and acknowledge “his most gracious rule.” What sort of picture does that bring to mind? For some reason, the pomp and circumstance of Elizabethan England rises up for me, with strains of Handel’s Royal Fireworks music in the background—no doubt because that is the most grandiose picture of royalty I can imagine. That’s quite different from our picture of Christ the King in today’s gospel where Jesus shows us the way into the kingdom of God, a realm to be reached through love, forgiveness, and sacrifice. It is a reality beyond our wildest dreams that is both now and not yet, available to the knowing of our hearts rather than our minds.

When we read the passage from our epistle appointed for today, we find a high Christology perfect for our celebration: “He is the image [icon] of the invisible God . . . For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” What an affirmation of Christ’s lordship, kingship! As I look across the room, however, and focus my attention on Kristin Anderson’s icon of Christ the Pantocrator, I see a more accessible Christ than one lifted up with royal regalia, one with whom I can have an intimate relationship, imminent as well as transcendent. Christ Jesus is our Savior and healer, our King and friend, our Lord and lover who is not resting on his laurels on a throne in heaven, but is busy at work in our lives transforming us into the imago Dei God created us to be. “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord.” (II Cor. 3:18)