Message from Archdeacon Hilary, 2 December 2025

(The following message was written prior to Advent Sunday)

What kind of a New Year’s Eve person are you? Parties, fireworks and staying up late? Hitting the night spots of Gloucester and dancing the night away? Or an early night with a good book.  However we mark it outwardly, New Year’s Eve generates all kinds of feelings inwardly.  For some, relief that the year is over. For others, quiet appreciation of a year of good health and happy events. For some, deep lament. For others, keen anticipation of the year ahead. If we’re honest, for most of us it’s often a mix of all the above.

I ask the question because we’ve reached the liturgical equivalent of New Year’s Eve. The feast of Christ the King marks the end of the Christian calendar with a celebration of the reign of Christ.  Next Sunday is Advent Sunday, and so begins the telling and the living of that great story of faith in which our individual stories are located. As we look into a new year, we’re conscious of a number of changes here in Gloucester. Our diocesan offices will be moving to their new home, rather wonderfully the building in which church house was located a century ago. Our diocesan/cathedral relationship will be lived out in new ways, no longer geographically contingent, but with the same deep sense of joyful partnership. One Archdeacon of Gloucester is leaving, and, hopefully, another soon arriving.

As I look back and look forward I’m conscious of those mixed, turn of the year, feelings. I’m filled with gratitude for everything I’ve received here – friendship, the privilege of a role I’ve loved, being part of this wonderful diocese, archdeaconry and Cathedral, learning, community, extraordinary support in the hardest of times.  I’m also deeply conscious, in the words of the prayer book confession, of the things I have done which I ought not to have done, and the things I’ve not done which I ought to have done!  Please forgive me for those.  And I look forward with quite a high degree of apprehension but with hope and expectation as well.

In times of stability and rootedness, in endings and beginnings, what do we understand by the kingdom that Jesus Christ ushers in and embodies?  What kind of kingdom to we preach and, more importantly, what kind of kingdom do we live? In our New Testament reading we find Pilate checking his own understanding.  His fear, based on experience of the world around him, is that Jesus is a political, even military threat.  Jesus’ response, that his kingdom is not of this world, evidenced by the fact that his followers have not used violence to free him, confounds Pilate.  This kingdom does not play by rules that Pilate understands. Instead, Jesus tells Pilate that he has come into the world to testify to the truth, an echo at the end of this gospel of words from its beginning. The word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

This is the kingdom we preach.  The kingdom we seek.  The kingdom we’re called to make known. The kingdom of grace and truth.  We will be reminded of the character of this kingdom throughout the year that’s about to begin.  A kingdom shaped through the silence and waiting of Advent.  A kingdom hidden in a womb and manifested as a baby.  A kingdom that draws an entourage of ordinary people.  A kingdom marked by inclusion, healing, courage, gentleness and love. A kingdom whose king has a garland of thorns for a crown, a cross for a throne, a tomb for a palace.  A kingdom of resurrection, life and hope.

This is the kingdom of Jesus Christ, a king who sees into the heart of Pilate, just as he sees into the heart of all those he encounters.  A king who draws close to us in love that our hearts may be enlarged by his.  This is the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the word who was in the beginning with God, through whom all things came into being, the life that was the light of all people, the light that shines in the darkness, that the darkness will never extinguish.  And this is the kingdom of Jesus Christ that we seek to live out in stability and rootedness, in our endings and beginnings.

It’s a kingdom that feels perilously far from a world that so often conspires to build walls not bridges.  Where human beings allow difference to harden rather than searching for a common root.  Where forgiveness can feel like an alien concept. Where life can feel like the turning of a wheel, rather than the cradle of creativity, understanding and hope.  So how do we live now?  What does it mean to have our wills stirred up, that we might perfectly love and serve God and neighbour?  Last week I found a poem new to me.  It’s by Waldo Williams, one of the finest 20th Welsh poets, and it’s translated by Rowan Williams.  It follows the form of a catechism and is filled with treasure about how to live and, in places, how not to live.  At this turning of the year, in our endings and beginnings, I leave this kingdom gift with you.

What is Man – Waldo Williams

What is living?  The broad hall found between narrow walls.

What is acknowledging? Finding the one root under the branches’ tangle.

What is believing?  Watching at home till the time arrives for welcome.

What is forgiving? Pushing your way through thorns to stand alongside your old enemy.

What is singing? The ancient gifted breath drawn in creating.

What is labour, but making songs from the wood and the wheat.

What is it to govern kingdoms?  A skill still crawling on all fours.

And arming Kingdoms? A knife placed in a baby’s fist.

What is it to be a people? A gift lodged in the heart’s deep folds.

What is love of country? Keeping house among a cloud of witnesses.

What is the world to the wealthy and strong? A wheel, turning and turning.

What is the world to earth’s little ones? A cradle, rocking and rocking.

Let us pray:

Come Lord Jesus, come as king. Come as love.  Come as peace. Come as gentleness.  Come as joy.  Come as light.  Come as courage.  Come as hope.  May thy Kingdom come, among us, in the cradle of this world. Amen.

The Venerable Hilary Dawson, Archdeacon of Gloucester.