Family Communion for the Sunday next before Advent (Christ the King): celebrant the Rev Tola Badejo.

First reading: Colossians 1. 11-20
Gospel: Luke 23. 33-43

'In him all things hold together', or in older versions, 'all things cohere'. Paul presents an extraordinarily focused argument for the absolute centrality of Christ, not only as the first-born of the Father but also as the underlying principle through which the entire material creation came into being and continues to exist. The implications are immense: Paul argues that literally the whole of the universe is sustained in Christ, which must mean that the whole of creation - including ourselves - is to be revered as something to which God is irrevocably committed.

The depth of God's involvement in the created world is underlined in the crucifixion, through which God shares in the worst things human life can bring. Because we are so familiar with the narrative and imagery of the crucifixion, we can easily miss the impact of the Christian belief that this had happened to God at a time when the pagan gods were imagined as engaging in human life only so far as they found it entertaining. The contrast, that Christ stands beside us whatever happens, was expressed in plain and simple language in the seventeenth century by the clergyman Richard Baxter:

Christ leads me through no darker room
Than he went through before;
He who into God's kingdom comes
Must enter by this door

My knowledge of that life is small;
The eye of faith is dim,
But it's enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with him.