Vicars letter - 22nd November 2024

Rev Summer Benton

 Kia ora All Saints Whānau,
 
I have felt so proud of All Saints this past week. Led by Ian, Ginny, and Diana we put our hands up to respond to a need for love and hospitality for people coming into Wellington for the Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti.
 
We didn’t know how many people we might need to accommodate, who they would be, or even if they would come. Nonetheless, we gathered mattresses, prepared our space, discussed how to be loving hosts, and we waited. At one point it seemed some people might come in quite late Monday night and need a place to sleep, but we still didn’t know for sure. Diana gathered food just in case (for an unknown number of people) and we waited. We thought maybe somebody would need to open up the church in the middle of the night but we still weren’t sure. We said yes, and we waited. In the end nobody ended up sleeping at All Saints. Yet that lack of certainty and absence of a clear plan didn’t stop us from preparing and waiting.
 
This Sunday is what’s celebrated in the church calendar as the Feast of Christ the King. This is a day where we remember that Jesus lived, not by brute force like the rulers of his day, but by gentleness, peace, and in caring for those who needed him. The following Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, where we enter into a season of waiting for Jesus, that gentle ruler of the world who came to be with us as a tiny and vulnerable baby, born in the humblest of circumstances.
 
As God’s people, we are asked to live much of our lives in a season of waiting on the Lord. We wait in the small moments of our individual lives. We wait collectively as a people yearning for the return of our King and Saviour to bring about a new heaven and a new earth in the final moment of redemption for our broken world. As a church we are also called to wait. We must live together in a hopeful waiting for the moments the Holy Spirit stirs us to act, to love, to share the hope of the gospel with our hurt and broken world.
 
Family, we are not meant to boast in the things that we do for the Lord, but I want to draw our attention to what I witnessed happening among us this past week so that we can learn together how to exist in this space of waiting; ready to love, care and serve even when we don’t know when or how or even if we will be called upon. So well done whānau. There is a culture of readiness for the gospel that God is bringing about at All Saints. Let us keep praying that God would use us in any way necessary for the Glory of the Kingdom God.
 
Ngā mihi nui,
Summer