John the Baptist's question from prison is really the question for listeners of every age.  “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  It is the question.

It jumps off the page.  Is Jesus the one or is there someone else?  What are we to make of this Jesus for whom we wait?  Is he real?  Could he really be ‘God with me?’ 

When John preached ‘Repent!  For the Kingdom of God is nigh,’ what are we to repent of, and how will we know that the Kingdom of God is here?

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pray “Your kingdom come,” but what are we praying when we say this?  Jesus himself says “the kingdom of God is very close to you.”

Jesus is talking about himself.  In him is the Kingdom of God

For all the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and for the early Church, John the Baptist was the start of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t just arise out of a vacuum but is the continuation of what God had already been doing through the Jewish people.  

John the Baptist is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ.  He begins by prophesying that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.

The phrase Kingdom of God or Kingdom of heaven is itself an Old Testament phrase used to describe the breaking in of God’s kingly rule into the world.  John is prophesying that the coming Messiah is the embodiment of God’s kingly rule over the world.

Then Matthew tells us in v.3 of today’s gospel, that the coming of the prophet John is itself a fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophesy:  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

Until around 150 years ago, Advent was not so much a time of a time of waiting for the great joy of the promised Christ Child, but rather the time for ‘pious meditation’ on what are called the Four Last Things.

Not hope, peace, joy, and love, but rather the four last stages of the soul in this life and in eternity:  Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell.  Which is why Advent is a penitential season (like Lent).

Today is the last Sunday of our deep dive into Luke’s gospel, which we have been looking at for the last five months.  Today is the day we celebrate Christ the King and the end of the church year.

And how does Luke portray our King of Kings?  In his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, or his coming again with the whole host of heaven to judge the earth?  No.  Crucified between two common criminals.  His body broken and bleeding.

We end this season of the Church - the Body of Christ, by gazing on the crucified and violated body of Jesus the Christ, Son of Man.

We are in the last fortnight of the Church Year.  And the focus of the readings in these last weeks is always what we call the ‘end times.’  So this year, the year of Luke, we look at Luke’s account of Jesus’ words on the last days, the end of times.

Last week we looked at the certainty of the resurrection, the very heart of our faith.  Today we will look at the things that point to the end of the world as we know it.

And next week, the feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday after Pentecost, we will look at what is means when we say Christ is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. 

And so to the end times.  Probably no other question puzzles and vexes the minds of believers (and non-believers for that matter) as what will happen just before what we call time changes, in some way, forever.

This morning, we are looking at nothing less than the resurrection of our souls, and what it means to be called by Jesus the “children of the resurrection.”

Our gospel begins with a question/riddle to Jesus from the Sadducees while he is teaching in the Temple courts.  This is part of a long line of escalating questions directed at Jesus by various Jewish leaders and teachers of the law.

Luke tells us earlier, (11:53-54), that the “Pharisees and teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say.”

From there on the interactions the Jewish temple leaders and the teachers of the law have with Jesus are acrimonious.  The motivation behind the questioning is not to learn from Jesus, but rather to try and catch him out. 

It is arrogance and pride, dressed up as sort of banter.

Today we celebrate All Saints’ Day, the day we remember all those who love, and have loved God; those the New Testament calls saints.  All the gathered people of God who have ever lived, the quick and the dead.

‘All Saints,’ is the most popular name in the entire worldwide Anglican Communion for a parish church.  So it is for us in our parish too, a time to remember all the saints who have worshipped and continue to worship at All Saints, Cambooya.

And finally, it’s a day to pray for and thank God for all us saints everywhere, who worship the living God.  It is a day to re-proclaim pure and simple truths that Jesus is Lord of all the earth and the Lord of life.

Over the last month or so, we’ve twice briefly dipped our feet into Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy, his son-in-Christ, and Paul his great Godfather.

As I’ve said before, this is Paul’s last letter, written from a Roman jail shortly before he was beheaded. He writes in v.6, “the time of my departure has come.”

In some ways this is an immensely sad letter. He writes in v.16, “At my first defence no one came to my support, but all deserted me.” Alone and knowing he is about to be put to death by the imaginative-if-insane Emperor, Nero.

But it is also an immensely hopeful letter. He fully knows that the Lord will defend him from the ultimate evil of death, and on that day he, and all who long for the Lord’s coming, will be crowned with the crown of righteousness.

Our Old Testament readings for the last couple of months have been from the prophet Jeremiah, the great prophet of the downfall of Jerusalem and Judah’s exile to Babylon.  A book vast in its prophetic scope and the longest book in the bible.

It can be difficult to follow because it’s not necessarily chronological!

God’s prophecy through Jeremiah shifts or transitions from a message of repentance to a message of the promise of salvation; of future hope and blessing.  Jeremiah 30 and 31 are the tipping point of this transition.

Now for us as post-Pentecost believers baptised in the Holy Spirit, we read passages like this (and much of the prophets) as very clearly pointing to Christ Jesus as the one, true fulfiller of all prophesy.  To us it speaks so clearly of Jesus.

For the last three weeks we have listened to Jesus’ intense teachings on money, forgiveness, and living with a servant mind-set. It is absolute and it is simple-in-a-difficult-way.

We cannot grasp for material gain alone.   We can either serve God or Money.

It is also about the absolute mercy of God, (consider Lazarus and the Rich man), which is where we are heading today, but in a different context. Jesus and his disciples are back on the road to Jerusalem.

Our gospel this morning is I think, centrally concerned with mercy and also thanksgiving or gratitude.  

In the gospel we heard last week, Jesus has just told the disciples the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, poor beggar and servant of any and everybody’s.  Yet the servant/beggar is raised up and the rich man is tormented in the great reversal of death.

Today’s passage follows directly on from last week and Jesus now teaches his disciples what this servanthood means.  It means that we seek to look at things, and think, and act, in ways that won’t cause the ‘little ones’ of God, so very, very precious to our Father, to stumble.

We can’t be the church, the people of God, if we cause others to stumble because that destroys the sacred community of Christ Jesus.  The sacred oneness between Jesus and his bride the church.

It can seem at first glance that today’s gospel is just several disconnected sayings strung together rather loosely, but on a closer look, Jesus is speaking to us about faith for living in this sacred community.

This morning’s gospel reading can be seen as part two of last week’s gospel about the dishonest manager.  Both last week’s and this week’s gospel parables begin with “There was a rich man!” 

Last week’s gospel ended with the phrase “You cannot serve both God and money,” and this morning’s gospel is a story illustrating the fate of one who served God and one who served money.

But this morning we are going to see a way in which Paul brings all these things together in today’s reading to his letter to his spiritual son, Timothy, written towards the end of his tumultuous life.

Jesus said that if “the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.” In today’s reading Paul tells us exactly what this freedom means, and how we are to live in this freedom in the full confidence of faith, in the bright and sheer light of the future.

Many of the parables Jesus told are perplexing, but none more so that today’s reading from Luke.  What an unpleasant character this manager sounds!  So what would Jesus have to say to us today in this parable?

As always, let’s begin by putting this parable in context.  This parable of the dishonest manager acts as a bridge between the stories of the Prodigal Son (15:11-32) and the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31), which we’ll look at next week.

Like the prodigal in the preceding story, our dishonest manager has “squandered” what was entrusted to him (15:13; 16:1).  And, like the story that follows, this parable begins with the phrase, “There was a rich man” (16:1).

We join Luke again as he continues his record of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and we arrive at the magnificent and unique chapter 15.

We could call this chapter the ‘gospel of lost things.’  It is a series of three parables beginning with today’s passage on the lost sheep, and the lost coin, and concludes with the parable of the lost (or prodigal) son which we spoke about in Lent.

So today we are looking at the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin and they have much in common.

It is easy to shy away from the tough teachings of Jesus, but every part of the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news, which is what the word ‘gospel means or course.

If we dig a little deeper, the tough teachings are also very good news! And here in Drayton Parish we truly want to be disciples of Jesus, and so we tackle uncomfortable and difficult readings head on … and we see amazing things.

Today’s gospel is uncomfortable reading, to be sure.  It is all about trust, discipleship and allegiance. To whom do we belong?

Jesus is really interested in mealtimes.  In Luke, these meals Jesus attends are often marked by some social faux pas, or breach of etiquette, out of which he draws a truth about the Kingdom of God.

In Luke especially, Jesus causes much to happen and has much happen to him over meals.  From defending eating with sinners (5:30), to encouraging a woman who gate-crashed a men-only dinner for Pharisees and had the audacity to pour oil on his head (7:36-50).

Being invited to a festive occasion, all of which had an official dinner, and where you were seated, were important in the honour and shame culture of Jesus’ Day.  Last week, we looked at how a shame-filled woman had her head lifted high by Jesus in the synagogue.

In a parallel vein, this week we return to a topic we have looked at frequently, the most beautiful of all character traits - humility.  It is to the humble and lowly, that the best seats at the heavenly banquet have been reserved.

All our readings today concern real encounters with the Living God doing very real things in lives.

Both Jeremiah and the bent-over woman were physically touched by God - Father and Son.

The Psalmist is crying out to God for refuge and help, in the full hope and expectation that it will be provided, because he has seen God’s faithfulness already when he looks back on his life.  They have all been seen by God, just as we have.

When the Kingdom of God comes so close to us and we find ourselves suddenly aware that we are seen by God exactly the way we are, and, for a moment, encounter heaven.

Last week we looked at how, by our faith alone, our sins are forgiven, and we are judged in Christ himself; who presents us without blemish before the Father.

Today’s reading from Hebrews gives us examples of living the faithful life and how to persevere and mature in our faith.

Now the beginning of this chapter in Hebrews tells us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1).  Our faith is the basis of our hope, and the writer of Hebrews tells us that our hope is assured or guaranteed by Christ himself. 

In today’s reading from Hebrews, we see a list of many faithful saints of the Old Testament who, just like us, are commended for their faith and nothing else. They ran the race that was set before them, just are we are to do.

Today we are going to look at a very unfashionable aspect of this Christian life, judgement.

As a minister of Christ, I am obliged to be faithful in all I teach, yet to avoid speaking on Judgement is to avid speaking on love and justice.

What is seen as judgement for one will be justice and consolation for someone else.  And if God loves all of us equally, then judgment of an injustice is as much part of the character of God as love is.

It is the flip side of the same coin.  There is no love without judgement.

I sometimes hear people talk of the “God of the Old Testament”, as if he were a different God to the God found in the New Testament. 

As if one was a God of wrath and the other the God of love.  Yet the Old Testament is full of passages that show is great and powerful creator God loves us like a doting mother.

Today’s reading from Colossians is all about becoming real. As citizens of the Kingdom of God, we live a new life in the fullness of Christ and today’s message is a very practical look at what behaviours we display in our lives that show this reality.

There is a quite famous old English Christmas story that I read when I was very young, called The Velveteen Rabbit.

Some of you will almost certainly know it, and I have mentioned it before but in a whole different context – that of being real with ourselves - and relating to a different passage of scripture.