The Feast of the Reign of Christ concludes the liturgical year, and is an ideal time to reflect on the wheel of time. The ending of one cycle and start of another naturally causes us to look back and forward, in the same way that we begin a calendar year by recalling the experiences, achievements, and foibles of the past one. We do this hoping we might use the wisdom we’ve acquired to plan for the new year, the new cycle.
In the spirit of that invitation, let’s take a moment to consider this past year. How have you manifested the kingdom of God in your life? How have you used it to help transform the lives of others, your neighbourhood, and our world? One thing is for certain: we can’t do it alone. We need community – both our small circles and society writ large – in order to have the support we need to have an impact.
In a time of crisis, community is a subversive idea. Matthew Crawford’s book, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, is an intriguing critique of modern capitalist society, which sees community as an obstacle to exploiting individual desires and fears. Crawford writes that our society vainly tries to distinguish between the individual and the group; between conforming and setting one’s own path. He claims that individuality cannot properly exist, much less reach its full potential, without community – a co-creation that begins from birth.
We were born into our society, for better or worse, and – as Christians – we can’t help but be struck by its dissonance with the egalitarian message of Jesus, in which the kingdom of God levels all relationships: every valley shall be exalted; and every hill and mountain made low.
Like New Year’s Eve, the eve of a new liturgical year is an ambivalent, ambiguous time – as a time of reflection and taking stock often is. Humanity is at a tipping point in history – a time of both unprecedented threat and unprecedented opportunity. A turning of the wheel on the cycle of time. As people who proclaim the advent of the reign of Christ, we do well to decide on which side of that history to stand – the winter of death or the spring of new birth.
Revd. Neil Fernyhough