Church of the Advent of Christ the King

We were baptized. We experience our own wildernesses where our trust in God is tested. We die on our crosses, giving up our own will. We are resurrected over and over in this life. Then we bring others into this story wherein life begins to make more sense.

Think of all the ways you have been called. Think about all of the ways you have experienced the power of God, the mercy and healing of Christ, and the inspiration and comfort of the Holy Spirit. Think about those manifestations especially if you are not feeling any of them in life right now.

The God who makes all things new is not creating a world where we must finally get everything right, but a world where there is nothing left to hide from. The God who wipes away tears, death, mourning, and pain also wipes away shame. And when we see one another the way God sees us — when we see ourselves the way God sees us — there is no hiding in the garden. There is only being fully known, and fully held.

The totality of our lives is one thing but today we celebrate something even more awesome. We celebrate the totality of life itself. The eternal Word, who existed before anything else existed, enters our reality.

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.

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.

Christ is pointing to the Kingdom of God as the Heavenly Banquet where no one will define their own value by comparing themselves to others. Where the invitation to the feast has no strings attached.

All throughout the scriptural story of redemption there have been easy answers; wide gates offered to people of faith as they follow the Lord. Just say and do the right things and all will be well. But this has never been the road God has called us on

Through grace, Mary knew how to wait on God. She trusted that, in the end, God always lifts up the lowly. Mary died so at peace with God, with others and herself that, we believe, she tasted not death. I hope to come within 100 miles of that kind of peace.

God has not only come to us as a Burning Bush, Three Messengers, a pillar of fire and a cloud. God has come to us as a newborn infant in a barn. God has come to us as a man dying on a cross.

t's hard to see a harvest where we might see fields that have gone fallow or stunted by lack of rain and nutrients. It's hard to see harvest as pews have trended toward empty. But where we might fields whose yield is questionable, Jesus sees crop that can be cultivated. Where we see empty pews, Jesus sees a barn with plenty of room to store the gathering of a plentiful harvest.

In the ministries of Paul and Peter, we are reminded that Christian Shepherding is not about being popular or having all the answers. It is about being faithful to THE Shepherd. The work of the Christian Shepherd, lay or ordained, is about the Eternal Truth of the Gospel. It is not welded to our temporal attitudes and agendas.

each time Jesus casts our legion, we will want to stay right next to him. And he will say, no, go out and tell others. Go into the world in peace to love and serve God with gladness and singleness of heart.

We may experience privilege in some areas of our lives, because of some of our attributes, while living under oppression because of who we are in other ways. No one is free when someone is oppressed.