Weekly News | 11.21.25

This Sunday is the final Sunday of the Church Calendar, Christ the King, a celebration of the reign of Jesus. A week later, 11/30, the year begins afresh. On that Sunday, we inhabit the season of Advent.

Rather than new year’s resolutions, fireworks, and noise, the new year begins in waiting. We consider how we might slow rather than how we will speed up. We light candles rather than set off grand explosions. We set aside party horns - they’ll come in time - and we quiet ourselves.

The Christian new year is not about believing in ourselves and our capacities to get it right this time around. The Christian new year is about believing that the advent (literally, “coming” or “arrival”) of Christ is what we need.

This Advent we will take up the image of pilgrimage through our series “Waiting & Walking.” We journey, even as we wait upon the arrival of Another.

The season holds together three arrivals: 1) the coming of Jesus in history; 2) the future coming of Jesus in glory; and 3) the coming of Jesus in the present, bringing needed life and light to weary hearts in an often dark world.

In Advent, we hold the longings of our spiritual forebearers. We hold the hope of God’s reign to be fully manifested in our bodies, in our world. And we hold the promise that the kingdom is at hand and that God never leaves nor forsakes his people.

This Advent imagination is captured well in this book by Mtr. Tish. It is a compact and compelling guide. Beautiful resources help us engage Scripture. My encouragement is to select one and settle in rather than accumulate all and risk losing the quiet we seek to cultivate. For those of us whose experience of the holidays is marked by grief, I have recently learned of this lovely work.

Our practices in Advent aim at living into our dependence upon the arrivals of Jesus.

There are practices of joyful anticipation, like giving to our neighbors (God cares for you!) or lighting candles on an advent wreath (the Day draws near!). There are practices of prayer and fasting that call us to attend to the hunger in and around us for repentance and restoration. Our Sunday prayers will embrace silence and listening. We will host Wednesday Midday Prayer services. Members of our community will lead a Parish Quiet Day on 12/13.

How is the Lord inviting you to traverse this particular Advent? How might you attend to the assured arrival of Christ? As traveling companions, may we encourage one another with our presence and with the cry of the season: “Come, Lord Jesus!”

Waiting and walking with you,

Sarah+