Greetings …

As we gather and worship this Sunday we will celebrate Reign of Christ, the last week in the liturgical cycle.  This is a week that reminds us of the way that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, when held together, disrupt and say ‘no’ to the wordly powers of death.  Christ reigns and our response to that matters.

Next meet we begin a new year with Advent 1 when we prepare ourselves to journey to the manger at Bethlehem.  Before we do that, I think we should remind ourselves of the good work that we have done this past year – a year we have spent much time looking at the Women’s Lectionary.

In many ways this has been a difficult journey.  We have tackled passages of scripture we don’t usually hear, we have had to wrestle with previously held assumptions and in this we have been challenged.

Yet I believe we should celebrate what this journey has offered us too.  We have had the encouragement to question and wonder, to recognise the wonderful gifts of all God’s children, but also mark and call out those parts of our scripture which have caused untold hurt throughout the centuries.  We have been given an opportunity to acknowledge the truth of the Bible, not the fantasist’s notion of it.  We have seen that the Bible is gritty and human, and complicated, just like its readers.  We acknowledge that it must be interpreted and sometimes challenged, but never ignored. 

If we take one lesson from this past year, maybe it should be to come and see, to ask the questions we were always afraid to raise and to seek out the stories we never hear … and as we do this, may we all encounter God again.

Blessings – Heather (she/her).