Christ the King Sunday and Julian of Norwich

 We are at the end of the Liturgical year in the Christian Church. Next Sunday is Advent 1, which is the beginning of the Church Year, aka New Year’s Day. The church calendar offers many new beginnings throughout the year with the start of each new church season, just as the secular calendar offers new starts with the seasons. In the secular calendar we also have starting points with birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and the remembrance of special occasions or even memorials of historical facts (Pearl Harbor Day or Veteran’s Day, for instance).

This Sunday is called Christ the King Sunday and the readings tell of God coming to seek the sheep and judge the world. God says, I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice. (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24) The Gospel talks of justice as well. In Matthew 25:31-46 we hear Jesus say, All the nations will be gathered before [the Son of Man], and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Jesus adds, just as you did [or did not] do it to one of the least of these, you did [or did not] do it to me.

The Epistle (Ephesians 1:15-23) notes, [God] has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Christ is King and we are the sheep for whom God provides justice and we are also those who must work for that justice on behalf of the Kingdom. An awe-some and fear-full responsibility, for sure.

Last weekend I was at a retreat focusing on Dame Julian of Norwich, a 14^th century saint who is most famous for her visions of Christ who promised “all will be well and all manner of things shall be well.” The truth is she had many other insights into our Lord. She talks, in her Revelations of Divine Love, of a God who “ever was and is and shall be all mighty, all wisdom, and all Love.”

One of Julian’s most powerful revelations was the idea that “our savior is our very mother, in who we are endlessly born…and we be all in him [en]closed.” The Motherhood of Christ is not a metaphor but rather the idea that by being Incarnate, Christ was in fact, motherhood in action. Christ is the self-giving love of a mother who is willing to say, “I suffered my passion for thee. And if I might suffer more, I would suffer more.” Just as a mother will fill her plate last so that her child has the best food, so Christ provides the best for us.

Truly, as Julian says, “Know it well, Love was his meaning. Who showed it to thee? Love. What showed he to thee? Love. Wherefore showed it to thee? For love…Love is our Lord’s meaning.” Julian’s revelations give us insight into the God who though King and Lord, is all LOVE and we are held in that Love even (especially) in trials and uncertainties as well as in our joys and celebrations. (Read more about the retreat here.)

Psalm 100 for this Sunday calls us to be joyful in the Lord…serve the Lord with gladness and come before his presence with a song. We are reminded the Lord himself is God; he himself has made us, and we are his. Therefore, we can Enter his gates with thanksgiving…give thanks to him and call upon his Name. With Julian, the Psalmist points out the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his faithfulness endures from age to age.

As the song says, Our God is an Awesome God who does reign and judge. Yet this reign is not as a punitive despot. Our God reigns in Love, with Love, and by Love. We are called to the same response to God and to one another. Pray that it may be so.

As I noted at the beginning, this church year is coming to an end. Our journey through the Psalms of the lectionary this year is also coming to an end. Where will we go in the new year? I’m not sure what I will talk about in Advent. Perhaps explorations of the Love of God as made visible in the Incarnation….

God in our Interrupted Routines

There are many things that interrupt our routines. Some are delightful-like a family visit, some not so much-like pain or bad news. This month has been filled with interruptions for me. There was the visit from our daughter and her family, including 3 grandchildren, another grandbaby due to be born any day (different daughter), and preparations for the consecration of a bishop. All nice things, but they have kept me from my normal routines.


John Keble says,
The trivial round, the common task,
will furnish all we ought to ask:
room to deny ourselves; a road
to bring us daily nearer God

It is true that the daily routine can and does lead us closer to God. It is comforting to have a nice, set routine to follow. We don’t like to have our well organized lives interrupted and do our best to cling to the ‘trivial round, the common task’. However, sometimes it is the interruptions that present us with the opportunity to find an even more intimate experience of the Holy One.

The visit from our daughter reminded me of how enthusiastic children are. They visited during Balloon Fiesta and were delighted every time a hot air balloon was sighted near our house. A trip to the zoo was also a full of eager exploration. As noted in previous posts, the routines of life can numb us to that sort of delight. Sometimes an interruption reminds us, as adults, of the need to be passionate about our relationship with God.
Sometimes it is in the uncomfortable and even painful interruptions that God finds us. As CS Lewis points out, in The Problem of Pain, “[when my house of cards tumbles down] for a day or two [I] become a creature consciously dependent on God’s grace…Let Him but sheathe that sword…and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over-I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness.”

Barbara Brown Taylor notes that many of the world’s great religions grew out of an experience of suffering. She says, “Pain makes theologians of us all. If you have spent even one night in real physical pain, then you know what that can do to your faith in God, not to mention your faith in your own ability to manage your life.”

We look for the reason for our pain when something goes wrong and often blame God. However, if we embrace the suffering, we discover something astonishing and even miraculous-God is with us in the agony. In our pain we discover common ground with others because all of us does experience some sort of sorrow or pain or grief. Like the hummingbird hovering over this flower, there is beauty even in the hurt.

Our culture often makes us believe that life is meant to be a bed of roses and that obtaining just the ‘right’ car, house, dress, etc. will make us happy. Lewis shines a different light on the reason for difficulties. He notes that trials and tribulations are a way of reminding us that our “modest prosperity and happiness…[is] not enough to make [us] blessed…all this must fall from [us] in the end, and if [we] have not learned to know Him [we] will be wretched.”

Madeline L’Engle tells of the time when her 9 year old granddaughter was hit by a truck. She says that all she could do was “say with Lady Julian of Norwich, ‘all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well,’ and then to add, ‘No matter what.’ That was the important part, the ‘no matter what’…It made me affirm to myself that God is in control no matter what, that ultimately all shall be well, no matter what.”

Problems have a way of leveling the playing field, too. Think of the way communities suddenly pull together in the face of a natural disaster and families often come together around the bed of a sick member. In the commonality with each other, we find communion and ultimately healing.


Disruptions of routines can be blessings if embraced as gifts from God. They can turn into times when we encounter God. Over the next couple of weeks, I will try to look at the ‘interruptions of routine’ as opportunities to find God not distractions from God.

Next week we’ll look at how Getting Lost—an interruption of routine, too, can help us find God.

* Quotations from Walking on Water, L’Engle and An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor, unless otherwise noted.