Church of the Advent of Christ the King

This is the gift we unwrap each Christmastide. The Wisdom of God is accessible to us now. God went through human life, death and resurrection to deliver this gift to us. It is important that we regularly discern what it is in our lives that we are doing with this gift.

God chose to understand us with great intimacy. God’s judgement is already revealing in our lives that which can stand the light of day.

In the face of oppression, joy is holy. Joy in the face of oppression is holy rebellion. When our queer and trans, BIPOC and immigrant siblings are joyful, even as their rights are being rolled back, it is a holy thing. It is saying that I am the image of God and you cannot take that away

Everyone enters a wilderness at some point. We go there due to illness, emotional stress, or spiritual dryness. Some of us are there for a time. Others live with chronic situations of mind or body. Whatever our wilderness, it is often difficult to find God in the midst of it.

We believe that Jesus has come as one of us, he will come again in glory, and he is still with us. God does not use a calendar or a watch. Christ has come, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, and it is all happening at once. God does not live in time. God is eternal.

But in idolizing the past we keep the present locked in amber, always yearning for something different in the opposite direction of where God is calling us. The Good News for a human condition inclined to idolize the past and sentimentalize the present is that once the Israelites reached their promise to Abraham, the promise didn't stop.

Every time we utter a prayer, every time we sing a hymn, every time we repeat the Eucharistic Prayer, every time we reach out to those in need, we are sustaining the Vigil of the Church. Every baptized disciple of Christ is a minister of the Vigil.

There is this moment when I hold the chalice up and I see myself reflected back in it. In this cup that represents both a memorial of Christ’s death and a foretaste of the Heavenly kin-dom. And I am reminded that in all our grief and all our hopes, Christ is right there with us.

ou are made in the very Image of the Divine. God created humans and proclaimed God’s work “very good.” You are made in goodness and for goodness and are constantly being called back to that goodness. We are called to live in harmony with every other Imago Dei. Walk gently through this world now, for we are all bearers of the Divine.

The Lord has always called his people, whether Israel or the Church, to go beyond the requirements and live abundantly. Take risks. Climb a tree.

Each of us, in one way or another, participates in systems that prize performance over mercy filling forms, meeting targets, curating images, translating our worth into metrics. And that is the human condition revealed in this text: we take God’s truth and intention for us and turn them into instruments of control: our truth, our standard, our measure for others.

Proper 23C: The Final Healing 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19 The Rev. Paul D. Allick, Church of the Advent, October 12, 2025 Whenever I go to Walgreens to pick up my supply of healing agents, I look at the row after row of options. Sometimes I get curious and look at cures for ailments I don’t even have. People actually suffer from all of these things? It occurs to me, none of these products will ultimately heal us. They will mask symptoms of ongoing wo

Just as the angels descended and ascended on the stairway to heaven in Jacob’s dream, Jesus is saying he is the ladder—the link between heaven and earth. Through Jesus, the disciples will come to see the glory of God and experience God’s revelation, a fulfillment of God’s promise to Jacob that we would all be blessed in his offspring by bringing us Jesus.

We are Ambassadors of Christ proclaiming the Kingdom as it is among us now and as it will come in eternal life. In that mission Jesus tells us to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. I think that this is what Jesus is getting at in this puzzling Gospel today: We are to use the gifts God has given us wisely.

Being Lifted up with Christ involves suffering and dying and healing and living. The Crucifixion and Resurrection happen all in one action, Holy Week and Eastertide. This is the mystery and, no, I do not have it all figured out yet.