I’m an Anglican priest, an Associate Vicar in Diocese of London. I’ve lived across the UK and spent nearly a decade in Vancouver, Canada — places and people who have shaped my heart for welcome, justice, and the boundless love of God. Before ordination, I was a professional musician, voice teacher, and educator — music still threads through my life, alongside liturgy, liberation theologies, and the wisdom of Lady Julian of Norwich. I believe deeply in living a self-compassionate life rooted in the love of God — where all are welcome and no one is left outside. Here you’ll find sermons, thoughts, prayers, and glimpses of my life as a priest, Mum, wife, musician, swimmer, and lover of books, fashion, and rescue animals. This is a space where imperfection is welcome — dyslexia and all — and where my hope is that you might find good news, belonging, and reminders that you, too, are God’s beloved.
O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel; you open and no one can shut; you shut and no one can open: Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house, those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
Keys are small things, but they can carry immense power, hold remarkable memories,
A single key can grant access or deny it. It can unlock a home, a cell, a future or leave someone waiting outside, unheard. To speak of Christ as the Key of David is to name authority, yes, but a particular kind of authority: one that opens rather than hoards, that releases rather than confines.
I remember, at my licensing by the Bishop here in the church earlier this autumn, being handed an enormous bunch of keys. I felt their weight immediately, and they still baffle me on a daily basis, so many doors, so many locks. And yet, without them, I cannot enter our beautiful church building or do the work to which I have been called. Keys carry weight in more ways than one: they hold power and responsibility, and at their best, they are given not to shut people out, but to open doors.
The image comes from Isaiah, where the key is entrusted to one who will open doors no one else can open. In the ancient world, keys were worn across the shoulder – visible signs of responsibility. This was not private power, but public trust. To hold the key was to be accountable for who was let in, and who was set free.
Advent dares to say that this authority belongs to Christ.
Not to emperors, not to systems, not to institutions, not to the loudest voices or the strongest hands, but to the one who comes quietly, born among the poor, laid in a feeding trough. The sceptre of the House of Israel appears not as a weapon, but as a promise: authority exercised for the good of all.
And the antiphon is clear about what this authority is for.
“Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house, those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.” This is not abstract language. Scripture knows that prisons are real, made of stone and iron, but also that captivity takes many forms. Fear, addiction, grief, shame, poverty, injustice, despair. Some prisons are visible; others are carried inside the body and the heart.
To pray O Clavis David is to acknowledge both kinds.
It is to name the places where doors feel firmly shut: in our lives, in our communities, in the world we watch on the news. It is to admit how easily systems become locked, how quickly people are labelled, excluded, forgotten. And it is to ask for a different kind of opening: not naïve optimism, but real release.
There is a sharp edge to this antiphon, too.
“You open and no one can shut; you shut and no one can open.” I believe this is not about control for its own sake. It is about truth. Some doors should be closed: the doors that lead to exploitation, abuse of power, and dehumanisation. Advent hope is not permission for everything to continue as it is. It is the courage to believe that God’s justice will have the final word.
And then comes the deepest image of all: “those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.”
These words echo the psalms – and the long nights of winter. They speak of people who have lived so long without light that darkness feels normal. Who are not just passing through shadows, but dwelling there. Waiting there.
Advent does not rush past this. It lingers long enough to say: God sees you. God comes for you. The key turns even here. Even when you can’t believe for yourself.
In Jesus, the Key of David does not unlock from a distance. He enters the darkness himself. He knows confinement, fear, abandonment, and death – and still opens a way through. His authority is forged not in avoidance of suffering, but in solidarity with it.
So, when we pray this antiphon, we are not simply asking for doors to open. We are asking to be led, out of what confines us, into light we cannot yet imagine.
And we are trusting that the one who holds the key is gentle enough to wait with us as the door opens.
Today I have chosen the beautiful music of Gabriel Jackson. His O Clavis David unfolds with an expansive generosity, as if a door has been flung wide open before us. It then draws back into a place of quiet gentleness, as though God is patiently coaxing those of us who need it through the very doors that long to be opened.
O Key of David, holder of doors and keeper of hope, unlock what binds us and lead us into your light. Free all who dwell in darkness, and open a way where none seems possible. We wait for you, bringer of release. Amen.
O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths; to you the nations will make their prayer: Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.
Roots are usually hidden. They work quietly beneath the surface – anchoring, feeding, holding fast. We tend to notice the visible parts of life: branches heavy with fruit, leaves catching the light, flowers opening in season. But without roots, nothing endures. Nothing grows.
To call Christ the Root of Jesse is a strong and unsettling image. Jesse, the father of King David, represents a royal line that once flourished and then failed. By the time Isaiah speaks of a root emerging, the great tree of David’s kingdom has been cut down to a stump. What remains looks lifeless. Power has been lost. Hope feels unrealistic.
And yet Isaiah insists: from that stump, something new will grow.
This antiphon does not imagine salvation arriving through strength or success, but through what looks small, buried, and overlooked. A root pushing its way through hard soil. Life beginning again where history appears to have ended. This is a wild promise – a God who reveals the kingdom not by erasing loss, but by working within it.
Advent is honest in this way. It does not pretend the world is fine. It acknowledges broken systems, exhausted leaders, and promises that have not been kept. Advent does the messy stuff of life well. We pray O Radix Jesse not from a place of triumph, but from the ache of waiting – waiting for something real to take root again.
For me, the image of the root also echoes my experience of time spent in therapy. Therapy is rarely about quick fixes. It involves slowing down, digging beneath what is visible, and allowing things long buried to be gently – and sometimes painfully -unearthed. There is an inevitable season of disturbance: soil turned over, roots exposed, familiar ground unsettled. It can feel worse before it feels better. And yet, without that unearthing, there can be no deep healing, no lasting growth.
The work happens quietly. Often invisibly to most, only visible to the client, therapist, and of course, God. You perhaps leave a session feeling no immediate change, no dramatic resolution – and yet something is shifting beneath the surface. Strength is being re-formed at the root.
This feels deeply resonant with O Radix Jesse. God’s deliverance does not bypass the hard ground of our lives. It enters it. Redemption grows not despite the disturbance, but through it.
The antiphon continues: “standing as a sign among the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths.” This is not the language of domination, but of truth. Kings fall silent not because they are crushed, but because their authority is revealed as limited. The Root of Jesse does not shout louder than the powerful; it renders them speechless by unveiling a different kind of power altogether. What an image for our loud world.
And this sign is not only for Israel. “To you the nations will make their prayer.” From the beginning, this hope is expansive. What grows from Jesse’s root is not a private salvation, but a gathering place — where diverse peoples find safety, meaning, and belonging.
This matters deeply in Advent.
We are waiting for a child born into a particular story – Jewish, rooted, specific – and yet whose life reaches far beyond any one people. Paul will later echo Isaiah, naming Christ as the hope of the Gentiles. The root holds together memory and promise, heritage and future, local story and global longing.
The final plea of the antiphon is urgent: “Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.” There is impatience here, even desperation. This is not polite prayer. It is the cry of those who know the ground is fragile and time matters — those who cannot afford for justice to be postponed yet again.
And perhaps this is where the antiphon meets us most honestly.
We long for things to change – in our world, our communities, our own lives – and we grow weary of waiting. We want transformation now, not eventually. Yet Advent teaches us to look for deliverance that begins underground: unseen, slow, and therefore resilient.
I remember an Advent not so long ago, a season of darkness no one should have to endure. Praying the Office on this day, I wept over the words “Come and deliver me, and delay no longer.” My roots felt exposed; I wanted justice and hope immediately. What I did not yet know was that the roots of who I am today were already being strengthened. Growth was happening quietly, patiently, beneath the surface.
Like the Root of Jesse, flourishing came not from escape. Instead from the roots of hope deep within me and within those who prayed for me.
The Root of Jesse does not arrive with spectacle. It grows. It holds. It endures.
To pray this antiphon is to place our hope not in quick fixes or loud saviours, but in the deep, patient work of God – life rising where we thought only stumps remained.
And so, we pray, not because everything is ready, but because God is already at work beneath our feet.
Today I share with you a piece quite new to me, by the composer Miškinis – O Radix Jesse from his setting of the 7 antiphons. It’s a deeply peaceful and hope-filled piece of music. It allows one to breathe and root ourselves in the midst of this busy season.
Closing Prayer
O Root of Jesse, hidden source of life and hope, take root again in our world. Grow where all seems cut back or worn down. Gather the nations in justice and peace, and bring your deliverance without delay.
We wait for you, Lord of deep and faithful promise. Amen.
O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.
Adonai is not a word we use lightly. Hence, my translation might appear clumsy as “O Lord”.
In the Hebrew scriptures it is the reverent substitute for the unutterable name of God – I AM. A name so holy it is not spoken aloud. To cry O Adonai is not to use a title casually, but to address the Holy One with awe, trembling, and trust. It is to stand, barefoot, on holy ground. How absolutely incredible, and beautiful, I love that language can have such power and inspire such awe in us.
This antiphon draws us back into the foundational story of liberation. Moses, tending sheep, notices a bush that burns but is not consumed. God speaks not from a palace or temple, but from fire in the wilderness – calling Moses by name, revealing divine compassion, and sending him back into danger for the sake of enslaved people. This is not a distant God, but one who hears the cry of the oppressed and acts. This is so much a God who reveals themselves in the power of – I AM.
And yet this God is also lawgiver. Adonai appears again on Sinai, amidst thunder and cloud, giving the law, not as a burden, but as a gift. The law is given after liberation, not before. And I think that is so important – Laws that are given not to burden but to aid our Liberation. Israel is freed first, then taught how to live as a people shaped by freedom. This matters. God’s commands are not about control, but about forming a community that reflects justice, mercy, and care for the vulnerable.
When we pray O Adonai, we are calling on a God who is both tender and demanding. A God who rescues – and then asks something of us. A God who says: I have set you free; now learn how to live freely.
The final line of the antiphon is bold and expressed in an embodied way: “Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.” This is the language used in Exodus to describe God’s decisive, public action – visible, forceful, unmistakable. Not a quiet spiritual rescue, but a real one, involving bodies, borders, and broken systems.
Advent invites us to ask uncomfortable questions here and I ask these as someone who finds the answers from within myself deeply uncomfortable, but I believe they are important.
What do we still need redeeming from – personally, communally, and structurally? Where do we long not just for comfort, but for liberation? What chains have become so familiar that we hardly notice them anymore?
To pray this antiphon honestly is to risk being changed. Because if God redeems with an outstretched arm, that arm may stretch through human action too. Moses did not part the sea alone. He showed up, spoke up, stood his ground. Redemption, in scripture, is always both divine and participatory.
But what is faith without risk? We pray these antiphons around the words of Mother Mary, who risks everything in her “yes” to God. The Magnificat everyday invites us to embrace the work of God that liberates and redeems, redeems us all. It is no accident that these O Antiphons are prayed alongside the Magnificat.
And this is where Advent sharpens our vision. The Church waits for Christ not as a gentle idea, but as the embodiment of Adonai – the Holy One made flesh. Jesus stands in continuity with the burning bush and Sinai, yet reframes them. In him, the fire does not consume. In him, the law is fulfilled in love. In him, God’s outstretched arm becomes a crucified body – exposed, vulnerable, and utterly committed to human freedom.
O Adonai reminds us that the child we await is also Lord. Not a cosy symbol, but the God who disrupts unjust systems and calls us into courageous faithfulness.
As we pray this antiphon today, perhaps we do so with open hands – ready not only to be redeemed, but to be sent.
The music expression of the O Adonai I have chosen is from one of my favourite composers Arvo Part. The text has been translated into German. The music has such depth and mysterious wonder. The drone that underpins it steadies and secures the music – much like God who steadies and secures all that we are. The music is intense and mysterious, reflecting that sense of redemption rooted in our liberation.
O Adonai, Holy One who hears the cry of your people, draw near to us in the fire and the cloud. Free us from what binds us, teach us the way of justice and compassion, and stretch out your arm again in our world. We wait for you, Lord of liberation. Amen.
Each year, in the final days of Advent, the Church slows its breathing and begins to pray differently. From 17–23 December, we sing or speak the ancient O Antiphons before and after the Magnificat at Evening Prayer, names addressed to Christ, drawn from the deep well of the Old Testament scriptures. The names are not explanations, but invocations. Not arguments about who God is, but longings.
Today, we begin with O Sapientia – O Wisdom:
O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other mightily, and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.
Wisdom, in the biblical imagination, is much more than intelligence or knowledge. Wisdom is God’s way of being present in the world – shaping, sustaining, and gently holding all of creation together. In Isaiah’s vision, which we lean into so deeply during Advent, the one who is too come will be marked by this divine gift of wisdom:
“The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding” (Isaiah 11:2).
Wisdom is as God wills it: given breath – not man-made or manufactured. It comes “from the mouth of the Most High”, a reminder that the world itself is called into being by God’s voice, and continually sustained by it.
What always strikes me about this antiphon is its tenderness. Wisdom reaches “mightily” from one end of creation to the other, and yet it orders all things “sweetly”. God’s wisdom is not coercive or dominant. It does not shout or rush. It persuades, harmonises, and draws things into relationship.
As a musician, I can’t help but hear that word “ordering” in a musical way. Sapientia is not about control or uniformity, but about a holy attentiveness, a way of holding many voices together before God. Each voice remains distinct, each is honoured, each is given space to sound. Divine Wisdom does not silence difference; she listens for how it might belong.
I think of composers and conductors who can hold complexity with patience and trust: the uneasy beauty of twentieth-century dissonance that stretches our ears and hearts; the shimmering grace of polyphony, where independent lines are woven into prayer; the quiet, mathematical faithfulness of Bach’s chorales, where scripture is ordered not to constrain it, but to let it speak. When Sapientia is present, voices begin to resonate rather than compete, and sound becomes communion.
That ability to be at ease with difference, or at least open to it, allowing it to weave into the depth of our lives and relationships, is key to holy wisdom. But that feels like a quiet challenge in our world currently. We live amid noise, urgency, and certainty. We are encouraged to speak quickly, react instantly, and choose sides decisively. Advent invites a different way, one of attentiveness, which in our world is a rare thing. Wisdom, scripture tells us, does not judge by appearances or snap conclusions (Isaiah 11:3). It listens deeply. We need more of this: sitting in the uncomfortable, working through and working with difference, and finding common ground and respect.
We can pray this antiphon knowing that Wisdom does not remain abstract. In Jesus, Wisdom takes flesh, not as a distant idea or a powerful ruler, but as one who walks alongside us, noticing those others overlook, and refusing to be hurried into easy answers. Jesus teaches wisdom not by winning arguments, but by showing us how to live – faithfully, compassionately, and attentively before God.
The final plea of today’s antiphon is striking:
“Come and teach us the way of prudence.”
Prudence, a word we don’t use often. It encourages us to be wise, and to live faithfully – knowing when to act and when to wait – when to speak and when silence is the truest response. Prudence recognises that not everything is ours to control, and that God’s wisdom is already at work, often beyond our noticing.
To pray O Sapientia is to ask for teachability – and I have to say, this can be one of the hardest things: to be open to something new, to admit that we do not see the whole picture, to trust that even in a disordered world God is gently, patiently, sweetly at work, drawing all things toward life.
Today, I have chosen a simple plainchant setting of O Sapientia. You may want to listen to it, then gently recite the words of Mary’s Magnificat, and return again to the chant. I find that when I hear the chant a second time, the words have often been transformed by Mary’s song and hear and receive things differently.
O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High and ordering all things sweetly: teach us the way of prudence, that in attentive living and faithful waiting we may learn to dwell within your life, through Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God. Amen.
Every year I get to about this point in the Advent season and I feel exhausted, almost as though the “reason for the season” is slipping by. Before I was a priest, I was a professional musician, and the old adage that December pays for January and February’s rent is not really an adage at all, it is a lived reality. December, and Advent with it, has always been the busiest season.
And yet, the Church has always given me a gift at this point in Advent, often wrapped in music.
Since my late teens, I have prayed the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer (and, on a good day, Compline). These rhythms have carried me through much of my life. It was here that I first came to know the O Antiphons. For me, they are one of those treasured places of stillness as we approach the final, shimmering days of Advent.
Each year, from 17–23 December, the Church sings these ancient prayers: seven days, seven names, seven windows into who Christ is, and who Christ will be for the world.
Over the coming week, I thought I would reflect each day on the O Antiphon appointed for that day. But first: what exactly are they, and why do they matter?
The “O…” what?
The Great O Antiphons date back to at least the sixth or seventh century. Rooted in the monastic tradition, they were sung at the beginning and end of the Magnificat during Evening Prayer, as the Church counted down the final days before Christmas. While melodies and practices have varied across time and tradition, these seven antiphons are remarkably universal.
Each antiphon begins with “O…” and then names Christ using a title drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures: Wisdom of God, Root of Jesse, Key of David. These are not names invented by the early Church, but inherited, the longings, metaphors, and hopes of Israel carried forward into Christian prayer.
And beautifully, in Latin, the first letters of the seven titles, read backwards, form an acrostic: ERO CRAS – Tomorrow I will come.
Whether this was intentional or a grace discovered later, it perfectly captures the ache of Advent, where longing is stretched toward promise.
Many of us have encountered the antiphons through the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, which paraphrases them. Others know them through plainchant in religious communities, through Evensong, or through modern choral settings that shimmer with their own interpretations of these ancient words.
Why This Matters to Me
Much of my life has been spent in rehearsal rooms, concert halls, choir stalls, and at sanctuary steps as a cantor. I have been a musician for as long as I can remember, first as a young choral singer, then as a trained professional, and now as a priest.
Throughout Advent and Christmas, I have sung many versions of the O Antiphons. In parish churches, wrapped inside the familiar longing of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. In masses, where I am most at home singing Marty Haugen’s My Soul in Stillness Waits, threading the antiphons through the eucharistic liturgy. In cathedrals and concert halls, ringing out James MacMillan’s O Radiant Dawn, an explosion of light in musical form. And in the haunting stillness of the plainsong O Radix Jesse, where the air seems to thin and deepen at the same time.
These antiphons lived in my body long before I ever studied their history or understood their theological depth. They taught me how to pray before I knew I was praying.
And, of course, they sit alongside the Magnificat – Mary’s great song of reversal and hope that the Church sings daily. How powerful it is that, each day, we are called as the Church to sing this radical hymn of praise and subversion. The O Antiphons frame her words: the voice of a young woman naming a kingdom not yet fully seen, but deeply trusted.
Music has allowed me to enter that hope again and again.
Perhaps that is why these seven names still feel so alive to me.
They are not abstract titles; they are voices I have sung, places I have prayed, and longings I have breathed in harmony with others.
Why Names Matter
In Scripture, names reveal calling, character, and promise. To name is not merely to label, but to recognise.
The O Antiphons invite us to do just that, to behold the fullness of Jesus, not only as the child of Bethlehem, but as the one whispered about through centuries of prophecy and desire.
These titles are like facets of a diamond, turning the light so that we glimpse Christ from different angles.
They allow us to pray with the Church of the Old Testament: waiting, yearning.
They allow us to pray with the Church of the New Testament: recognising the One who fulfils ancient promises not in abstraction, but in flesh and vulnerability.
Each “O…” is a plea. Each is a cry of the heart. Each ends with the imperative: Come.
A Practice of Yearning
To pray the antiphons is to invite Christ into our need. To call upon his names is to remember who he is. And to hear “Tomorrow I will come” whispered back to us – here, now – is to rest again in the promise at the heart of Advent.
17–23 December…
So, this is an invitation, if you would like to join me on this journey through the O Antiphons. Each day I’ll be posting a short reflection on one of these ancient names of Christ.
I hope you’ll journey with me.
Come, Lord Jesus. Come to us in wisdom, in freedom, in light, in peace. Come, Emmanuel.
I will try to post a musical version of the O Antiphons to go alongside what I have written each day. Today I share something that reflects the O Antiphons. It is called “My Soul in Stillness Waits” by Marty Haugen, an American Composer of Liturgical music. Here, the O Antiphons are woven alongside Psalm 95.
The Third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete means Rejoice! A moment of rose-coloured light in the deep purples of waiting. A day when the Church invites us to loosen our shoulders just a little, to breathe, to notice joy even when the candles are still surrounded by night.
Joy here is not forced cheerfulness or Christmas-card sentimentality. It is the kind of joy that glimmers like a small flame in the wind: real, fragile, stubborn. Joy as resistance. Joy that says: even in this world, even now, God is coming.
Because joy is not always easy to grasp. For some, this season is difficult: the cost-of-living crisis biting, the ache of absence at Christmas tables, conflict and uncertainty across nations, and perhaps even within our own hearts. It can feel like walking through desert places, dry ground where hope seems thin.
And yet, into this reality, Isaiah speaks a word of astonishing audacity: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom.”
Not might, but shall. Not if things improve, not if we sort our lives out, not if the world becomes peaceful – but because God is coming, and therefore joy will blossom in the most unlikely places. Isaiah’s vision is not set in a garden but in a wasteland. God’s promise is not that life will always be easy, but that even where life feels barren, God can bring forth new shoots.
He speaks of weak hands strengthened, fearful hearts told, “Do not be afraid.” He speaks of eyes opened, the lame leaping like deer, water bursting from thirsty ground. Joy in scripture is never something we must conjure up. Joy is what happens when God arrives. It is gift, not performance. It comes to us like a green shoot through cracked earth.
Each of us knows areas of life that feel desert-like; a strained relationship, an unexpected health diagnosis, a grief we carry, a world weary with injustice. Isaiah invites us to imagine that even there, God might be planting something tender and alive.
And then we turn to Mary – a young woman in an occupied land, from an unremarkable village, newly pregnant under circumstances that could have ruined her. And she sings. She sings not because everything is simple but because she trusts that God is doing something new.
“My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.”
Mary’s joy is subversive. It is joy that confronts the powerful, lifts the lowly, fills the hungry with good things. She sings of a God who overturns the world as we know it. Her joy is not escapism; it is courage wrapped up in song, a daring declaration that God is turning the world the right way up.
And her courage reminds me of a spiritual that has long stayed with me. “There Is a Balm in Gilead.” I first heard this Spiritual back in the late two thousands whilst studying singing in Canada, I worked for a short while with a black African American singing teacher. She introduced me to many spirituals as part of my training, and this one stayed with me in a way that has encouraged me in moments of finding subversive joy. “There is a balm in Gilead” emerged from the African-American tradition, shaped in a world marked by enslavement, violence, and profound loss. I do not pretend to fully grasp the weight of that history, nor to speak on behalf of those who lived it. But what moves me is the way the song holds sorrow and joy together without diminishing either.
It begins in painful honesty: “Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain.” No pretence. No hiding the exhaustion of life in hard places. And then, into this discouragement, comes the refrain: “But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.”
That word revives is pure Advent – joy as breath returning to weary lungs, strength flowing into weak hands, hope rising where hope had thinned. Joy not born of circumstances improving, but born of God drawing near because we are loved beyond measure by God. A joy received, not manufactured.
The refrain speaks of a healing balm – God’s tenderness meeting human wounds. Somehow, communities who had every reason to despair sang it with fierce hope, clinging to the belief that God’s Spirit could still restore and revive. That is subversive joy. Joy that refuses to let suffering have the final word. Joy that blossoms in barren places – not because the world is gentle, but because God is good.
In its quiet courage, this spiritual stands close to Mary’s Magnificat. Both are songs sung in the shadows of oppression. Both proclaim a God who lifts the lowly and restores the broken. Both insist that joy can rise even in the hardest places.
Notice again: joy in scripture is never shallow. It is birthed in risk, in waiting, in uncertainty. Joy is not glitter sprinkled onto life – joy is what breaks through when we trust the promise of God’s future more than the fear of the present.
Which is why the Gospel today is so striking. While Mary sings, John the Baptist sits in prison – in a dark cell, hearing rumours about Jesus, wondering if he got it wrong. “Are you the one who is to come,” he asks, “or are we to wait for another?” Even prophets have doubts. Even saints have days where joy feels distant.
And Jesus does not scold him. Instead, he sends back evidence of joy in action: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news.”
In other words, look for the signs of life. Even if John cannot see them from prison, joy is already moving like water beneath the sand.
Perhaps this is our invitation too: when joy feels elusive, look for the small signs of God at work – a meal shared, a kindness offered when you least expected it, volunteers like at our food bank handing out food with dignity, a candle lit faithfully in memory and love like we so many of us do at our church. Kingdom-joy often begins quietly. A blossom in the desert.
Gaudete Sunday tells us that joy is not pretending everything is fine – no one needs toxic positivity. Instead, joy is the confidence that God is breaking in – even now, even here. Joy is the brave decision to keep watch for light. To keep singing with Mary. To keep trusting with Isaiah. To keep seeking signs with John.
So perhaps this week as we spend time in prayer or in wondering we might ask: • Where is something beginning to blossom in me? • Where might God be planting hope? • What small joy can I tend?
And maybe you need to borrow joy from someone else for a while – and that is holy too. That is why the Church gathers. When one of us cannot sing, another carries the tune. When someone’s candle flickers, we share the flame.
In some churches on Gaudete Sunday, they wear rose vestments – not the full gold of Christmas, not yet, nor the more sombre purple, but a blush of rose joy. A sign that the night is not all there is. That the Light is coming. That God is drawing near with healing and restoration.
For joy is not the absence of sorrow. Joy is the presence of God.
And like a desert in bloom, like Mary’s song in the dark, like a spiritual sung in hard places, like good news spoken to a prisoner – joy can surprise us. Tender shoots can break through hard earth. Water can spring up in wilderness places. Hearts once fearful can find strength again.
This Advent, may God give us eyes to see joy, courage to welcome it, and grace to share it. Amen.
I want to share with you my favourite recording of ‘There is a Balm in Gilead’ sung by the mighty Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman. I hope you enjoy it.
If you’ve ever walked the Hadrian’s Wall path in Northumberland, you’ll know the Sycamore Gap tree – an iconic, solitary sycamore tree standing in a dramatic dip in the landscape. For decades it was one of the most photographed trees in Britain. Strong, rooted, quietly majestic. Bizarrely, my first memory of it was from watching Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves a classic of 1991, now I’m showing my age.
And then last year it was felled. Deliberately.
You probably heard about it on the news. A senseless act of vandalism that left people across the country shocked and grieving. A beautiful, living thing reduced to a stump.
I think the reaction was so strong because the tree represented more than itself. It stood for endurance, beauty, rootedness – the idea that amid all that changes of this world, something can remain steady. Its felling felt like a small symbol of the fragility we all feel in the world right now.
But the story didn’t end there. Forestry experts discovered something remarkable. The tree is trying to grow again. In fact according to the National Trist there are 25 new shoots are emerging from the stump – small, tender signs of stubborn life. And more: hundreds of cuttings were taken from the fallen tree, many of which have rooted successfully. These new saplings are being nurtured across the UK to be planted in the years to come. What looked like an ending has become the beginning of a much wider legacy.
When I heard that, I thought: this is exactly what Isaiah is talking about. This is Advent.
“A shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse.”
Isaiah speaks into a landscape of despair. The royal line of David, Jesse’s family, had been cut down by war, exile, and failure. The tree of Israel’s hope had been reduced to a stump.
And yet Isaiah dares to say:
“From here, from what looks dead, God will begin again.”
God’s peace grows not in ideal circumstances but in places that look ruined: Where life has felt cut down, Where hope seems thin, Where the world feels violent or fractured, Where we ourselves feel weary or overwhelmed.
Isaiah doesn’t deny the damage. He names it. But he also names God’s tenacious life breaking through.
The peace God promises is not fragile or sentimental. It is resilient. It grows out of stumps.
Peace as Transformation, Not Quietness
Isaiah’s vision of the peaceable kingdom – the wolf with the lamb, the child safe by the snake’s den – is not a picture of nature behaving itself. It is a vision of the world reordered. A reversal of domination, a healing of fear, a transformation of relationships.
And it rests on justice:
“He will judge the poor with righteousness.” “With equity for the meek of the earth.”
Biblical peace – shalom – is not the absence of conflict. It is the presence of justice, wholeness, in being in right relationship.
Which is why, on this second Sunday of Advent, the Church gives us John the Baptist.
John the Baptist: The Disturber of False Peace
When we become complacent and think Advent is just about our gentle, candle-lit moments, John strides out of the wilderness with a voice that shakes the air:
“Repent! Prepare the way of the Lord!”
It can feel jarring. But John is not trying to shame people; he is trying to wake them.
You cannot enter God’s peace while clinging to the things that destroy peace. You cannot receive Christ’s kingdom without letting something in you change.
Spiritual transformation in Greek the word is metanoiais simply turning around, reorienting, allowing God to reshape us from within.
John’s fierce imagery, the axe at the root, the winnowing fork, can sound frightening. But it is the imagery of clearing ground, of removing what is dead or harmful so something better can grow.
John is the gardener preparing the soil for the Prince of Peace.
Advent peace, then, begins not with calmness but with courage … the courage to let God work on the places in us that are tangled or hardened, the courage to face what we’d rather ignore, the courage to make room.
Peace in Our Time and Lives
In our world right now, peace can feel impossibly distant. Wars rage. Communities fracture. Public life feels angry and brittle. Many of us carry our own private anxieties, griefs, and burdens.
And it’s tempting to think peace is a kind of dream; beautiful, but unrealistic. A wolf and a lamb? A child safe by a snake’s hole? Really?
Isaiah would say: Yes – because God is involved. John would say: Yes – if you’re willing to prepare.
Peace begins in the smallest shoots of change: in acts of forgiveness, in refusing to speak with cruelty, in choosing justice over comfort, in softening a hardened heart, in letting go of resentment, in making room for God’s newness.
Peace is not something we wait for passively. It’s something we lean towards, prepare for, and practice.
Just like the Sycamore Gap tree, peace grows slowly, sometimes invisibly, but with a strength deeper than destruction.
Lighting the Peace Candle
On the second Sunday in Advent we light the candle of Peace, and we do so not pretending the world is peaceful. Instead we are declaring our hope in the God who brings peace even here, even now, even from the stumps.
The candle’s light is small, but it pushes back the dark. It is an act of defiant hope. It says:
“The One who brings peace is coming.” “New life can grow again.” “This is not the end of the story.”
The Sycamore Gap tree will never look the same as it once did – but its life isn’t finished. In fact, its legacy will now be scattered in hundreds of places, where new trees will rise from what was destroyed.
Perhaps that is a parable for us. For our churches. For our communities. For our wounded world. For our own hearts.
Where something has been cut down, God can bring new life. Where peace seems impossible, Christ can begin again. Where all we can see is a stump, God sees a future forest.
So, this Advent, let us pray for peace but let us also prepare for peace.
Let us open our hands. Let us soften our hearts. Let us make room for Christ.
For the One who brings peace is already drawing near. And even the stumps of our lives are not the end of the story.
On the eve of Advent Sunday – our “New Year’s Eve” in the Church – I often find myself in a place of deep gratitude for the year that has been, pondering the things that have been painful or challenging, reflecting quietly, and also with a growing excitement for the year that is coming. Tonight in our home in north London, the first of our seasonal decorations is up: a simple wooden tree made from driftwood. Wood washed and worn by the ocean now stands in our living room, warmed by soft lights.
We’re big into hygge as a family – a Scandinavian practice of warm light, and a cosy home as the winter draws in. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been pulling out the cosiest blankets, adding warm lamps, and inviting a sense of comfort and gentleness into the house. While the world outside grows colder and the trees become dormant, we are choosing warm light – but also choosing to welcome the darkness. Darkness as a place to ponder, to give thanks, to process the year, and to make space in head and heart so that, come spring, new ideas and new energy can take root.
And tonight, the gentle glow of those lights settles on the driftwood tree that will help us mark first Advent and later Christmas. It strikes me how fitting this is: the Light we will soon welcome at Christmas is the same Light who will one day encounter the wood of another tree – the cross.
But for now, in this season of beginnings, Jesus’ words call us simply to watch and wait. To be ready. Not with frantic activity or perfectly polished plans, but with an open, spacious attentiveness.
December seems to invite us to speed up, to fill our calendars, our tables, our shopping baskets. Yet creation itself, God’s first testimony, whispers a different invitation: to rest, to become dormant for a little while, to make room, to quieten our spirits enough to notice the first flicker of approaching light.
In her book Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey writes of rest as a quiet, holy act of rebellion, a refusal to believe that our worth is tied to our productivity or our pace. She speaks of rest as a way of reclaiming our humanity, of remembering that we are not machines but beloved creatures. And I can’t help thinking how profoundly Advent echoes that call. At the very moment the world urges us to do more, buy more, be more, Advent invites us to step out of that rhythm and into God’s own slower, deeper rhythm of watching and waiting. To resist the myth that busyness is blessing, and instead to wonder, to listen, to let ourselves be renewed by stillness.
So I find myself wondering:
What might watching and waiting look like for us this Advent?
What might it mean to make room, not just in our homes, but in our inner life – for the Light of the World to come?
As Isaiah envisioned the nations streaming to the mountain of the Lord, walking in His ways and learning the pathways of peace, so Advent invites us to walk in the light of the Lord even before the fullness of the dawn arrives.
May this be a season of gentle light, spacious rest, and hopeful waiting – a season where, quietly and almost imperceptibly, the Light draws near, and where like our little driftwood tree – shaped by waters, lit by warmth – we too can become simple signs of the greater Light that is coming, and the new year that begins in hope.
God of gentle light, in this season of waiting, quiet our hearts, slow our steps, and teach us the holy resistance of rest. May your light find us attentive and unhurried, ready to welcome the One who comes. Amen.
The liturgucal year is drawing to a close, and these last few weeks we have turned our thoughts to the season the Church calls Kingdom Season, and this final Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King.
This season born out of the turmoil of the last century in a time when nationalism, fascism and secularism were demanding total loyalty from human hearts, the Church across the world responded by saying: No. No earthly power, no ruler, no ideology can claim our souls. Christ alone reigns – the one who rules, not with fear or domination, but with mercy, peace and justice.
And yet, the word Kingdom itself sits uneasily for some of us. It’s a word weighted with monarchy, empire and patriarchy. It conjures crowns, armies, hierarchies – images far removed from the carpenter from Nazareth hanging on a cross between two criminals.
I have been spending some time recently revisiting the work Abba Amma by Nicola Slee, the feminist theologian andpoet,where she explores aspects of the Lord’s Prayer. In her chapter on “Your Kingdom come” She explores the risk of re-inscribing exactly the sort of domination Jesus came to overturn. She says when Jesus spoke of God’s Kingdom, he wasn’t dreaming of a palace. He was announcing a revolution. A political, spiritual, and relational upheaval in which the poor are lifted up, the captives set free, and the mighty are humbled.
To pray “Your Kingdom come” is to say: The world belongs to God, not to Caesar. Power belongs to love, not to empire.
Nicola Slee and the Cuban theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz both invite us to take a small but seismic step and to pray instead for the coming of God’s Kindom: K-I-N-D-O-M.
It’s a tiny shift in spelling but a vast shift in imagination. From Kingdom to Kindom – from hierarchy to kinship, from rule to relationship, from domination to solidarity.
As Isasi-Díaz puts it, the Kindom is the community of kindred persons, people bound together by mutual care and shared struggle. It’s less like a throne room and more like a family kitchen, or maybe a small mixed farm – messy, interdependent, alive. Slee says that image of the household or the farm may in fact be truer to what Jesus meant: a place of daily labour, where every creature is tended, where survival depends on cooperation and care, and where flourishing happens only when everyone has enough.
So, what does that mean for us as we celebrate – Christ the King – when we proclaim that Jesus reigns?
It means that Christ’s kingship looks utterly different from every model of power we’ve ever known. In the all too familiar scene in Saint Luke’s Gospel 23:33-43 , Jesus is enthroned not on a seat of gold but on a cross of wood. His crown is made of thorns. His proclamation reads not “Glory and Empire,” but “This is the King of the Jews.”
The soldiers mock him. The leaders sneer. And yet in that moment; humiliated, wounded, dying he reveals the deepest truth about God’s rule: that real power is love poured out, real authority is reconciliation, real glory is solidarity with the suffering.
One of the men crucified beside him sees it. In desperation, he whispers, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus replies, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
The first citizen of the Kingdom – the Kindom – is a condemned man on a cross. That is the shape of Christ’s divine rule.
Saint Paul’s letter to the Colossians 1:11-20 he gives us the theology behind that moment. He writes that in Christ “all things hold together,” and that God was pleased “through him to reconcile to himself all things – things on earth and things in heaven – making peace through the blood of his cross.”
Notice those words: all things. Not just souls, not just the righteous, not just the human. All creation. The whole household of God. That’s the Kindom – the web of life bound together in Christ’s reconciling love.
It is as though Saint Paul is saying: This world, in all its brokenness and beauty, already belongs to God. The work of Christ is to mend the fractures, to bring everything back into right relationship with God, with one another, with the earth itself.
And that, friends, is what Kingdom Season teaches us. To be Kingdom People – or perhaps Kindom People – is to live here and now as if that reconciliation were already true. It means resisting the powers of domination and fear. It means building communities where justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit are not slogans but lived realities. It means safeguarding one another, caring for the vulnerable, refusing to worship anything or anyone but Christ.
In that sense, every small act of care is an act of Kindom-building. Every choice for truth over comfort, for listening over silencing, for repair over reputation – these are the politics of the Kindom.
So when we gather around the altar, we come not as subjects of a distant monarch, but as kin – siblings in the household of God. We come to the table, not the throne. We share food, not fear. And we hear again the words of our crucified King: “This is my body, given for you.”
That is what divine rule looks like: self-giving, life-sharing love.
As this Kingdom Season closes and Advent begins, perhaps we can hold the old word and the new together – Kingdom and Kindom.
The first reminds us that Christ’s authority is ultimate: no ruler, party, or ideology can claim what belongs to God. The second reminds us what that authority feels like: not domination, but belonging; not control, but communion; not empire, but family.
So today we dare to proclaim both truths: Christ is King – and Christ makes us kin. Christ reigns – by reconciling, not by conquering. Christ’s Kingdom is the Kindom – a household of justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
And our calling, as ever, is to live like it’s true. To be people of the Kindom: honest, compassionate, courageous, hopeful – working and praying for the day when every tear is wiped away, and every creature can say, with joy, “Christ reigns – and all creation is home.”
Here are some reflections adapted from my sermon this week.
This is the week we find ourselves in our liturgical year standing in two places at once.
On the one hand, we are deep in Kingdom Season – those final Sundays before Advent when we lift our eyes and ask: What does it look like when Christ reigns? Where is the Kingdom taking root among us?
At the same time, we mark Safeguarding Sunday, when churches across the UK hold themselves to the light, speak honestly about what has gone wrong, and recommit to what must be made right.
These two things are not an awkward pairing. They belong together.
Because the Kingdom Christ speaks of is not vague or sentimental. It has shape and substance:
“The Kingdom of God is justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
They’re beautiful words, and bold ones and we’ve been singing them in our church each week of Kingdom Season. Because we believe that if we dare to proclaim justice, peace, and joy, then we must also be honest about where they are painfully absent.
And the truth is this: for too many, especially survivors of abuse, the Church has not felt like the Kingdom of God. It has not felt like justice, or peace, or joy.
And Safeguarding Sunday asks us not to look away. It asks us to choose truth, because the Kingdom has no fear of truth.
Jesus and Power
Our gospel reading in the lectionary this week from St. Luke’s gospel chapter 21, reminds us that Jesus does not protect institutions. Instead, Jesus speaks truth to power.
And whenever power is present; in a structure, in a person, in a community – the Gospel invites us to examine it carefully.
This week I was at some training with the Centre for Theology and Community with one of my parishioners, and we were talking about Power. And it was interesting how some of us found Power and our own Power a really difficult conversation. And it reminded me about the five questions the late Tony Benn, would ask of any person or institution holding power. Here is what he asked:
What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?
They may sound like political questions, but I believe they are deeply theological too. They are Kingdom questions.
They echo the questions Jesus asks of the Temple. They echo the questions survivors ask of the Church. And they are questions we must have the courage to ask of ourselves.
The institutional Church holds real power. So, the only Christ-shaped way to use it is this:
Not to control, not to silence, not to protect reputation, but to serve, to liberate, to heal, and to choose accountability.
Those questions are not a threat to the Church. Avoiding them is.
Jesus and the Temple
In St. Luke’s account in chapter 21, people marvel at the beauty of the Temple – the stones, the structure, the authority it represented. And Jesus says:
“Not one stone will be left upon another.”
Not because God despises holy places, but because when a holy place stops revealing the life of God, God will not defend it.
For generations, the Church has said:
“We are a place of holiness. We are a place of safety.”
And Jesus asks us as individuals and as a Church, as he asked them:
Are you? Do you protect the vulnerable or yourselves? Are you truth or silence?
It is not criticism that threatens the Church. It is the refusal to listen.
Naming Failure
It is no secret that the wider Church has failed survivors of abuse. We know painfully well that the Church has doubted them, delayed justice, protected abusers, and prioritised image over truth.
Even today, survivors are retraumatised by the way safeguarding can be handled: process instead of compassion, silence instead of support.
This is not the Kingdom of God.
Beyond the Church: A National Failure to Act
It is also important to remember that it is now three years since the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) released its final report and gave its recommendations to the government. Three years have passed and not one of those national recommendations has yet been implemented. These reforms were designed to protect children, adults, and communities across the whole of society; schools, local authorities, social care, sports clubs, charities, and yes, churches too.
The failure to act is a failure of political will. It is a failure of collective responsibility. If taken seriously, these recommendations would make the UK a safer place for all. Safeguarding is not only an internal matter for Christian communities; it is a call to hold our wider society, including our government, to account.
Holy Accountability
Far too often, the voices of survivors are still overshadowed by institutional reputation and procedures that almost inevitably favour the perpetrator over the wounded. Reporting abuse is one of the hardest things any person will ever do, and yet the systems we have can make that experience almost as retraumatising as the original harm.
We see senior people in institutions often deeply kind, dedicated people – asked to deliberate on situations they are woefully under-trained and under-supported to handle. They end up caught between pastoral responsibility and institutional expectation. The outcome is almost always messy, painful, and unjust, particularly for survivors.
This does not reflect the Kingdom of God. And it is why deeper change is still so necessary.
Signs of Grace – and Work Still to Do
And yet there is real grace.
At the parish level, I see week in week out people working faithfully and quietly to make the church safer – safeguarding officers throughout the land, clergy, PCC members, volunteers, diocesan staff. Their work is unseen and often heavy, and I am grateful for it.
Things are better than they once were. Thanks be to God.
But we are not finished.
We still need transparency, independence, survivor-centred systems, real support, and a culture of safeguarding – not merely policies.
Policies do not heal people. Culture does. Courage does. Truth does. Compassion does.
Holy Determination
Saint Paul writes, “Do not grow weary in doing what is right.”
That little line carries so much of what safeguarding really is. It is training, boundaries, noticing, speaking up. It is refusing to look away. It is choosing the harder path because it is the right one.
This is love – practical, rolled-up-sleeves love.
And Jesus’ promise, “By your endurance you will gain your souls,” reminds us that endurance is not passive suffering. It is holy determination – the refusal to accept harm as inevitable, and the choice to keep building something better.
A Word to Survivors
To survivors: You should never have had to endure what you did. Your courage and truth matter profoundly, and you are held in the heart of God.
A Word to Those Working in Safeguarding
To those who carry safeguarding responsibilities: Your endurance is holy. Every time you insist on safe practice, every time you carry burdens faithfully, you are doing Kingdom work.
Why Safeguarding Matters to Faith
So why talk about safeguarding? Because Tony Benn’s question still presses us:
What power do I have?
All of us hold some kind of power.
Much of mine is formal as a priest. But most power in the Church should be shared and is everyday:
Noticing when something feels off. Trusting intuition. Reporting concerns. Holding one another – including leaders – to holy account. Praying for survivors, truth, justice, and fairness.
If every person bears the image of God, then safeguarding is not an optional extra. It is discipleship. It is worship.
Safeguarding is tending the image of God. Believing survivors is worship. Truth is worship. Accountability is worship. This is Gospel work.
Where We Go From Here
We are not here to protect an institution. We are here to protect people.
We are not here to avoid discomfort. We are here to move toward truth.
We are not here to say, “We tried.” We are here to say, “Harm was done, and it must not happen again.”
We are here to build a Church where justice, peace, and joy are not slogans but lived reality.
Because if the Church is not safe, it is not the Church.
“The Kingdom of God is justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” for every child, every adult, every survivor, every neighbour.
May we have courage. May we have humility. May we have endurance. And may the Holy Spirit make us more like Christ – who stands with the vulnerable, brings truth into the open, and heals what has been harmed.
A Liturgical Response – Lament and Hope
After naming so much truth; the failures, the harm, the courage, the endurance, the call to change – I find myself needing to turn to prayer.
Safeguarding isn’t only procedural work; it is spiritual work, emotional work, communal work. And whenever the Church faces its deepest wounds, we need space to lament, to speak honestly to God, and to ask for courage and healing.
So, I offer this litany – written by me for Safeguarding Sunday – as a way for anyone who wants to pray what we must face together. A way to bring before God the grief, the failures, the survivors, the work, and the hope for something better.
A Litany for Safeguarding Sunday – A Prayer of Lament and Hope
O Christ, who entered the world as a helpless child, who knew what it was to be held and to be hurt, and to be betrayed: Have mercy upon us.
O Holy Spirit, who broods over the waters of chaos, who breathes life into what is broken, who comforts the silenced and the afraid: Have mercy upon us.
O God, whose image is found in every person, whose light no darkness can extinguish: Have mercy upon us.
From silence that hides the truth, from fear that keeps us from hearing, from the hardness of heart that cannot bear to see: Deliver us, O God.
From words that wound and systems that crush, from misuse of power and the blindness of privilege, from the sins of the Church and the indifference of your people: Deliver us, O God.
From easy words of apology without repentance, from the temptation to turn away, from the weariness that gives up on change: Deliver us, O God.
For all who carry pain in body or spirit, for all who still wake in fear, for all whose stories have been doubted or denied: Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
For those who have spoken truth at great cost, and for those who long to speak but cannot: Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
For those who have failed to protect, and those who seek to do better; for all who bear the heavy work of safeguarding: Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Christ of the wounds, you took upon yourself the violence of the world; you carried its shame and its betrayal; you rose still bearing your scars. Teach us never to look away. Christ, have mercy.
Spirit of truth, breathe courage into our weakness, steadiness into our outrage, and tenderness into our care. Christ, have mercy.
God of justice and mercy, we long for your Church to be a place of safety and belonging, where all may find rest, and none need hide their pain. Christ, have mercy.
Gather us into your healing, O God: those who have been harmed, those who have harmed, and those who have stood by in silence. Make us one people, redeemed and remade by love. Kyrie eleison.
Let truth be spoken, let power be humbled, let compassion be our law. Christe eleison.
Let the stones cry out until justice is done, and your kingdom comes among us a kingdom of safety, honesty, and peace. Kyrie eleison.
God of light and shadow, you hold the stories too painful to tell, the memories too heavy to bear. Hold us in your mercy. Teach us to listen with reverence, to act with courage, and to live as people who make your love real. Through Jesus Christ, wounded and risen, our healer and our hope. Amen.
Ruth Greenaway-Robbins 