Sunshine Cathedral Blog

Q&A by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins, Senior Pastor

Question: We say before the Gospel reading, “Glory to you, indwelling Christ!” What exactly does that mean?

Answer: It’s a play on Colossians 1.27, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Very few people have grown up in MCC. People usually come to Metropolitan Community Churches from other traditions (MCC began in California in 1968). So, even as the pastor of the local MCC (in our case, the Sunshine Cathedral) works to cast a theological vision, he or she is always doing so with people who come to MCC with a variety of assumptions, preferences, prejudices, hurts, expectations and demands. Ecumenism isn’t for the faint of heart! Our use of the phrase, “indwelling Christ” is meant to appeal to a broad range of Christological perspectives. For example…

Even though MCC is a Protestant denomination, we have many people who have come out of Catholicism and who still hold some Catholic views. In the Roman Catholic tradition, the bread and wine of Communion is thought to mysteriously become the “Real Presence” of Jesus. Jesus symbolizes “God with us” and the communion elements symbolize Jesus. So, when we take the elements into our body, aren’t we ritually saying, “Christ is in me”?

Evangelicals have a ritual whereby they are invited to have a conversion moment. In that moment, they prayerfully ask Jesus to “come into” their hearts or their lives. Afterward, where is the Christ Presence? Obviously, it is within the converted.

Quakers believe that there is “that of God” in all people, an Inward Light, and that Inward Light is the Christ Presence. New Thought students, likewise, are likely to view Christ as a principle demonstrated by Jesus but that is latent within all human souls. The Christ Nature, then, is already within and is simply waiting to be discovered and expressed.

In MCC, we have people from each of these traditions (and more!). But whether the tradition affirmed the inward Christ Presence through the Sacrament of Holy Communion, through the prayer of conversion, or through the acknowledgment of an inward Light (that of God in everyone), they each agree that somehow Christ is “in” our lives. However we understand Christ, for Christ to be personally experienced, Christ must be indwelling. You’ll work out the what and the how of Christ for yourself, but whatever conclusion you come to, you’ll probably agree, that the presence, by some means, is within you. Glory to the indwelling Christ!