Christ the King Sunday – November 24, 2019

Luke 23:33-43

Today is Christ the King Sunday, the youngest of the high holy days on our liturgical calendar. Founded in 1925 by Pope Pious XI, it was moved to the last Sunday of the liturgical calendar before the new year begins at Advent in 1969 by Pope Paul VI. It is a day set aside for Christians to consider and celebrate what it means for this itinerant rabbi from the ancient Near East to be our king and for people like us to be subjects of that king.

In this spirit let’s think a minute about monarchs. In her book Henry VIII: The King and His Court, historian Alison Weir writes the following:

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The Quiet Mind: No Condemnation (Part two of a two-part series. Part one is here:

23^rd Sunday After Pentecost – November 17, 2019

Romans 8:1-17 

Under the old system of ordination in the United Methodist Church, one could be ordained while still a seminarian, and then be appointed by the bishop to return to seminary for the third and final year to complete one’s degree. This is how I came to be an ordained United Methodist pastor at the ripe old age of twenty-five. I was ordained in 1996 and then returned to Duke University Divinity School, which is when I completed my clinical work which I did as a hospital chaplain at Duke University Medical Center.

Up to that point, my pastoral care experience was limited to visiting members of my field education church in rural western North Carolina, either in their homes or occasionally in the hospital. Yet none of it could have prepared me for my Clinical Pastoral Education course: the life, the death, the grief, the profound hope, the diversity of people and experiences that would permanently shape my future ministry, and in so doing, would shape me.

The pager would sound and I would respond by reporting to the physician who had called me and given instructions as to what I needed to do. The patient is a woman whose heart keeps stopping. She is not going to survive, and I need you to go to the waiting room and support her mother and son until I can join you and speak to her.

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