I am not a huge cricket fan but the metaphor of having served an innings of 45 years for the C of E, retiring from paid ministry but continuing to serve as priest – retired but not out – seems an apt description. But the question which I am now wrestling with is this: do I return my licence to my bishop since the leadership of the church I have loved to serve has finally lost my respect and support. Let me explore this further.

There’s a pivotal moment in Victor Hugo’s classic tale Les Miserables in which the main protagonist, Jean Valjean, is released from prison but finds it difficult to reintegrate into society due to his criminal record. A pretty accurate description of an every day phenomenon.

The second Advent gospel reading is this one from Luke’s story about the the birth of John the baptiser - the context is that like Mary and Joseph, Zechariah and Elizabeth also experience a ‘miracle birth’. Further, though, Zechariah is struck dumb for the nine months of the pregnancy and upon finding his voice again he sings the song often known as the Benedictus or ‘the canticle’ of Zechariah.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I’m Annette Kaye, a southern hemisphere girl who finds herself in the far north-east of the UK, mother to two adult daughters, and tow teenage step daughters, all of whom, along with my partner, keep me challenged, and happy to be alive! In addition, I am a ceramic and mixed media artist, an Ignatian-trained spiritual director, supervisor, and trainer, a transpersonal psychotherapist, and a facilitator of eco-spirituality, as well as psychedelic, retreats. Faith-wise, I have travelled through many rooms of Christianity - conservative Evangelical, charismatic, liturgical, contemplative, and would now, with my interest in, and concern for, the natural world, call myself something of a Christian Animist.

It’s the first Sunday of the church calendar, for anyone who cares about such things, so we enter ‘Year C’ in the revised common lectionary, the third of three years worth of set readings with this reading from Luke’s gospel. This time next year we’ll be back at the start of ‘Year A’ again - if, that is, the world doesn’t end first.

I’m drawing, somewhat, on a book by Laura Hunt for this week’s reflection. Hunt has written perhaps the only book which explains in detail how one can read John’s portrayal of Jesus as a picture of an ‘ideal type’ Roman emperor. She uses sophisticated methodologies to develop this idea and her book is worth a read if you have a taste for academic work and a library copy available to you (it’s somewhat expensive to purchase).

The gospels are full of parables. Parables of Jesus, and parables about Jesus. The kind of writing we find there, invented long before the enlightenment understanding of ‘fact’ is, to modern and post-modern readers confusing and elliptical.

Among the host of familiar stories in Mark’s gospel is the story of the widow’s mite - where Jesus and his disciples watch people paying the temple tax and Jesus notes how a poor widow pays more than anyone.

This week’s venture into the lectionary is suitably spooky for the time of year - as we hit ‘John’ telling the spoooooooky tale of the very dead ‘Lazarus’ being resuscitated.

There are tonnes of interesting things in this passage, the story of ‘blind’ Bartimaeus, and several mysteries to ponder. It begins with a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ visit to Jericho, the world’s oldest city, followed by a remarkable encounter between Mark’s Jesus and a blind beggar with a strange name. The story is revisited by the other synoptic evangelists - but without the repetition of that strange name which I think is important for Mark.

On the 28th of October 312CE, The Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. He believed, or said he did, that Christ had helped him triumph over his rival Maxentius, as a result he was about to make Christianity the religion of empire.

There are some wonderful, eye-opening, mind-expanding curiosities to get your teeth into in this week’s passage which is all about Jesus’ encounter with a rich young man. Trouble is, most people seem to get caught up in the eye-catching ‘easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle’ phrase, trying to decode it for hidden meaning. Could there have been a gate known as the ‘eye of the needle’?

There are key moments in the gospel according to ‘Mark’ where Jesus’ “mission” becomes quite clear. He was creating a new system in the shell of the old one, a network of ‘households’ where a different way of living was put into place. Many of us rail against the injustices and evils of exploitation, prejudice and hierarchy, part of the genius of Jesus as a man was that he demonstrated a genuine alternative.

In the reading this week John asks Jesus about someone who is ‘casting out demons’ - but isn’t ‘following us’. Someone, in other words, who isn’t part of the in-crowd. The reading follows on from the previous week’s discourse about ‘greatness’ and the link shouldn’t be lost.

The lectionary is spooling through the greatest hits of the Gospel of Mark at the moment, and this week’s passage is another stone cold classic - Jesus notes his disciples arguing, asks what they were fighting about and finds them strangely silent on the matter. “For on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.”

There’s a huge amount we could say about the gospel passage set for this week by the common lectionary. Not only does it contain one of the most famous phrases in the Bible - certainly a ‘top forty’ entrant, if perhaps not quite a ‘top ten’ - but it functions as the key pivot point for the Gospel, packed full of symbolism.

Today’s brief write up is a reflection on the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, which forms part of the gospel reading set for this week.

One of the main differences between the gospel of John, where we’ve been for the last few weeks, and the gospel of Mark to which we now return, is the way that the book is written. ‘John’ is highly schematic, it has styles and themes, and uses clever storytelling techniques.

The several weeks that the lectionary readings have spent in John’s gospel is nearly over, and with that, in the UK at least, the summer holiday season also draws to a conclusion. Soon we’ll be back to Mark’s breathless prose and to school too.

The gospel reading this week is part of the ‘bread of life discourse’ which is a continuation of the last couple of weeks readings from the gospel of John. The discourse follows directly after the ‘sign’ of the feeding of the 5000, and this part of the passage has at its heart one of the famous 'misunderstandings’ that are so characteristic of the writing found in ‘John.’