Advent Sunday: Today is New Year’s Day in the life of the church. We begin the year by looking to the end; the end of all years and all time. We look to the promise that we have been given that the world will be made afresh; that all that is broken will be healed; all that is crushed will flourish. It is a season of hope and expectation.

Our gospel reading this morning, Luke 21:25-36, may not seem that hopeful at first glance; it speaks of distress, confusion and fear. Whether we are at the beginning, at the end or somewhere in between, no life is free of distress, confusion or fear. But our hopefulness, our belief in what is possible, shapes how we respond. Christ tells us we are to stand up, raise our heads, and look for the signs of the kingdom that are surely springing up around us.

Today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King.

The focus of this festival is not on Christ, king of the universe in heavenly glory as shown to us in the reading from Daniel, but on how we follow Christ here on earth and use the power he has given to us.

If Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 gives us a vision of Christ, the human one, being given all power and authority, the gospel, John 18:33b-37, uncovers a little of the nature of this power.

Pilate has earthly power, economic, political, social, military. When he questions Christ’s kingship he is pointing out that Christ has no power in this court.

Christ replies that he was born to testify to the truth. And the truth he seeks to tell is the truth of those without power. This truth is always at odds with how the powerful see the world.

We too are called to share in Christ’s “kingship”; God’s power is available to us too. It is the power to speak truth and live truth even when it challenges those with earthly power.

War feels like the end of the world. It ends lives but it also destroys communities, homes, livelihoods and futures.

In Scripture war and conflict are often presented in an apocalyptic light as a sign of the end of all things, but in our readings today they are also presented as birth pangs.

It is easy to misread today’s scriptures as a justification, or at least an acceptance, of war as redemptive violence, but this is never the case with a God of love. Violence can never birth peace. The challenge for us is to see what needs to be torn down in order that peace can be born among us. Can we bear to let go of things we held dear to bring into being justice and peace?

As we begin the countdown to Advent our readings call us to repent:

In Jonah 3:1-5,10, God threatens the people of Nineveh with destruction which results in a communal change of heart. In the gospel, Mark 1:14-20, Jesus begins his ministry in the shadow of John the Baptiser’s execution with a call to repent.

What makes these readings more than stern hectoring is the call to believe in the good news: salvation is possible, disaster can be avoided. In the week of COP26 this is a message we need to hear: salvation IS POSSIBLE. All we need to do is repent. Literally turn around, change direction, return home. Home to God, home to a sustainable way of life, home to a world of justice and equity.

As ever with our beautiful non-coercive God, no one is forcing us, we have a choice, but there is a time frame.

The kingdom of God is near. Will we choose it?

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints, marking the beginning of the season of remembrance. As the year draws to its end we turn our minds towards endings, and so both our readings today ponder the mystery of death.

In Isaiah 25:6-9 God describes the feast that he will give for his people, a feast at which they will eat the finest food and wine and God will eat death. Surrounding cultures believed in a god of death called Mot who swallowed people when they died. God is bigger than death, big enough to utterly consume death, and so set his people free to live, for to be part of God is to be part of life. We celebrate this in our baptism when we are called to die to a way of life bound by the fear of death and be given a part in the divine life, reborn as creatures who are unafraid of death and so can be fully alive.

In our gospel (John 11:32-44) Jesus again shows that the life of God is bigger than death. Here the community are called upon to unbind Lazarus from his grave clothes and set him free. We too are called to unbind one another from fear of death and to set one another free to live life abundantly.

Do we know what we want?

For several weeks we have heard Jesus asking those who come to him what they want: the rich young ruler wants eternal life, James and John want glory and honour. Today (in Mark 10:46-52) it is blind Bartimaeus’ turn and he wants mercy. He wants it so badly that he is prepared to throw away his cloak, his only possession, to get it. Where the rich young ruler and the earnest disciples hold on to what they have, Bartimaeus let’s go.

Our Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 31:7-9) looks forward to a time when the kingdom of God, a reign of justice and peace, is restored by putting those who have nothing (the lame and the blind, the women and children), those who are on the margins, in the centre. When their needs are met, the whole community flourishes.

In the well-off West we are often blind to what it is that we really need and to what is required of us if we are to receive it.

As we approach COP26 we may also need our eyes opening to what it we must let go of if we are to receive what we need: a world in which resources and responsibilities are shared.

Today’s readings go to the heart of the human experience: What are we here for? Does our life have meaning and purpose?

In our Old Testament reading Job is railing at God for his suffering. What has he done to deserve this?

In the Gospel this week James and John are arguing over their status; they want to be important; they want to be significant.

In each reading their lives are put in perspective. They are shown, on the one hand, how tiny and insignificant their lives are in the sweep of the universal history and, on the other hand, how this broad view gives them back a different kind of significance. What they achieve and acquire is ultimately worthless, yet their own individual being is part of the great and beautiful sweep of universal history and salvation. When we let go of our egos and accept our innate God-given godliness, we can inhabit our lives as a tiny, yet unique and particular, facet of God’s glorious story.

Today we celebrate Harvest Festival, traditionally a time to give thanks for all we have and to recall that we are creatures who depend upon our creator for sustenance. Yet our readings do not highlight thanksgiving. Instead they emphasise fear; the anxiety that we experience around our material needs and security. The prophet Joel, 2:21-27, tells even the land and the animals not to fear; they are made and sustained by God and will be blessed with abundance and fruitfulness. In our gospel, Matthew 6:25-33, it is we who are reassured. Jesus goes further than the prophet Joel; yes, yes, the necessities of life will be provided, but more than this our security and well-being, our flourishing, is not dependent upon material prosperity. If we are to experience fruitfulness and abundance it is by understanding that we need more than physical sustenance and that our truest identity is found by participating in God’s reign.

It is tempting to skip to the end of today’s Gospel reading (Mark 10:2-16) and focus on the image of Jesus with the child in his arms whilst missing out all the difficult talk of divorce and adultery. The hard talk, however, gets to the heart of Jesus’ message: it is not that Jesus is fixated on rules and laws; what he is concerned about is our hearts. Do we have a heart for those who are vulnerable?