(704) 599-9810 | Worship Sundays @ 10:55 a.m.
(704) 599-9810 | Worship Sundays @ 10:55 a.m.
🕊️ “Kingdom vs. Kin-dom” — Trading fear-based empire for a kinship of mercy, solidarity, and liberating love in the shadow of the cross.
Worship Service – November 23, 2025 | Reign of Christ Sunday
Gospel: Luke 23:33–43 (CEB) | Modern Lesson: Valarie Kaur, Revolutionary Love
This Sunday at Holy Covenant United Church of Christ, we marked Reign of Christ Sunday not with images of royal crowns and distant thrones, but with a powerful meditation on “Kingdom vs. Kin-dom.” Pastor Christopher Czarnecki invited us to consider what kind of reign Jesus truly embodies — not empire and domination, but a kinship of compassion, courage, and shared liberation.
The morning opened with a Centering Prayer that named our mixed realities in this season: gratitude for abundance, but also the fear and grief hovering over our city. We prayed for neighbors afraid to leave their homes, for families bearing the trauma of separation, and for those whose daily lives are shaped by the presence of unmarked vehicles and armed agents in our streets. At the same time, we confessed the privileges that shelter many of us from dangers others face. Pastor Chris asked God to root us in a compassion that doesn’t look away, but listens, learns, and stands beside those most harmed. “Center us now in your peace, your truth, and your Kin-dom that is breaking in,” we prayed together.
In the Call to the Heart, Jeffery Edwards-Knight gave language to that tension. He named the fear of a city on edge — businesses closing early, neighbors trading warnings — and placed it alongside the world Jesus knew: a land patrolled by imperial soldiers, where people moved carefully under the constant threat of Rome. Into both worlds, Jeffery reminded us, Christ proclaims another kind of reign: not fear but love, not domination but compassion, not empire but the Kin-dom of God. We were invited to gather not in hopelessness, but in holy defiance of the fear meant to divide and silence, and to worship the Christ who reigns in love and calls us “kindred.”
Our worship was framed with gratitude and beauty. The service began with a Prelude of “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” offered by Mary Tarr on violin, while later the Handbell Choir surrounded us with thanksgiving hymns — “For the Beauty of the Earth” and “We Gather Together” — ringing out a gentle insistence that gratitude and justice belong together. Through Stories for All People, Jo Ann Jellison helped us see that God’s kin-dom holds room for every story at the table, especially those often pushed to the edges.
Our Modern Lesson, read by Alice Phelan-Young from Valarie Kaur’s book Revolutionary Love, asked a piercing question: When faced with injustice, do we let fear harden us, or do we let love expand us? Kaur describes revolutionary love as a labor that sees those most harmed by our systems as part of our own family, disrupting the machinery of empire by showing up, listening, and refusing to dehumanize. Her words set the table for the Gospel and sermon to follow.
The Gospel reading from Luke 23:33–43 placed us at the foot of the cross: Jesus crucified between two criminals, mocked by leaders and soldiers, with a sign above his head reading, “This is the king of the Jews.” One criminal joins the insults, but the other sees something different — a king whose power looks like mercy. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” he pleads. Jesus responds not with condemnation, but with startling intimacy: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
In his message, “Kingdom vs. Kin-dom,” Pastor Chris explored how Jesus’ reign looks nothing like the empires we know. Kingdoms and empires depend on hierarchies: insiders and outsiders, protected citizens and expendable lives. They move through the world with unmarked power, enforcing order through fear. But on the cross, Jesus reveals a different kind of sovereignty — a Kin-dom in which the condemned are seen and addressed by name, enemies are forgiven, and even in his final breaths Christ is drawing people into relationship, not control.
Pastor Chris connected this to our own moment in Charlotte and beyond: to migrants and families living under threat; to communities that have always felt the weight of surveillance and state violence; to those whose identities or immigration status make them vulnerable to the machinery of empire. He reminded us that the Kin-dom of God is not abstract — it looks like showing up for those most at risk, listening to their stories, and refusing to categorize any human being as disposable. “Where empire says, ‘You are a problem to be managed,’” he said, “Jesus says, ‘You are kin. You belong to me.’”
The sermon invited us to consider where we locate ourselves in this story. Are we living like citizens of a kingdom rooted in fear and scarcity, or like kin in a community rooted in mercy and courage? Small actions — advocating for humane policies, supporting immigrant neighbors, giving generously, praying for those targeted by violence — become ways we practice the Kin-dom in real time. As Reign of Christ Sunday closed the church year, we were reminded that Christ’s kingship is not about control over us, but solidarity with us and with all who suffer.
The service moved toward sending with the hymn “Fight the Good Fight” and a charge to let our lives bear witness to hope in the face of fear. The Postlude, “We Have Come into This House,” sent us back into the world with a simple truth ringing in our ears: we gather around Christ not as subjects of an empire, but as kin at a shared table of grace.
🕊️ “Christ’s reign does not come riding a warhorse, but hanging on a cross, calling us kin and inviting us into a love that empire cannot cancel.”
“Where empire says, ‘You are expendable,’ Jesus says, ‘You are kin.’ That is the Kin-dom we’re called to live into.” — Rev. Christopher Czarnecki
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