There are times in the Christian year when God seems to arrive with trumpets.
Christmas has angels filling the sky. Easter has earthquakes, rolled stones, and bewildered disciples running about before breakfast. Pentecost has wind and fire and people suddenly speaking languages they did not know five minutes earlier.
And then there is November.
November tends to arrive wearing sensible shoes.
The saints have had their procession. All Saints and All Souls have reminded us of that great communion stretching across time and eternity. We have remembered apostles and martyrs, reformers and mystics, teachers and troublemakers, along with the quieter saints whose names will never appear on a church calendar but whose love changed the landscape of our lives.
And now we are walking toward Christ the King.
But we are not there yet.
We are still in this peculiar little stretch of road between remembering the saints and proclaiming the reign of Christ. The days are shorter. The leaves have mostly finished their spectacular annual performance and are now lying in damp heaps waiting for someone with a rake and sufficient moral courage.
The Church year is growing old.
And perhaps that is precisely why this season has something important to teach us.
Because as we move toward Christ the King, we might naturally expect the Kingdom of God to become increasingly obvious.
Surely, if Christ is King, there ought to be some evidence.
A trumpet would be useful.
A banner would help.
Perhaps even a small committee with matching shirts.
Instead, Jesus keeps telling us that the Kingdom of God tends to arrive in ways that are remarkably easy to miss.
Like a mustard seed.
Like yeast hidden in flour.
Like treasure buried in a field.
Like someone giving a cup of cold water.
Like a shepherd looking for one sheep who has wandered off.
Like a stranger being welcomed.
Like bread being broken.
Which is slightly inconvenient for those of us who would prefer the Kingdom to arrive with a press release.
We like things we can measure.
Attendance.
Budgets.
Buildings.
Programs.
Followers.
Views.
Committees successfully formed and, in extraordinary cases, successfully concluded.
But Jesus seems rather less interested in impressive statistics than we are.
The Kingdom he announces is often hidden inside ordinary acts of grace.
It happens when someone sits beside a person who is grieving and does not try to explain the grief away.
It happens when a meal is shared with someone who might otherwise eat alone.
It happens when forgiveness is offered even though resentment would have been easier.
It happens when someone notices the person everyone else has overlooked.
It happens when we choose compassion over convenience.
None of these things will make the evening news.
Most of them will not even make the parish announcements.
But heaven notices.
That may be one of the great lessons of this in-between season.
The reign of Christ is already among us, but much of it is happening quietly.
God has always seemed rather fond of working this way.
Bethlehem was not Rome.
Nazareth was not Jerusalem.
Twelve disciples were not an impressive strategic launch team.
And the cross certainly did not look like a throne.
Yet Christianity insists upon the astonishing claim that this is precisely where God was most deeply at work.
Which means we must learn to look differently.
We spend much of our lives waiting for something dramatic to happen.
We imagine that faith will become easier once God provides unmistakable evidence.
A miracle.
A sign.
A clear answer.
Preferably laminated.
But most of the time, God gives us something smaller.
A conversation.
An interruption.
A neighbour.
A meal.
A chance to begin again.
The Kingdom often arrives disguised as an ordinary Tuesday.
And that is where the saints become important again.
Because saints are not simply people who believed remarkable things about God.
They were people who learned to recognize God in ordinary places.
They discovered Christ among the poor.
They discovered Christ in prayer.
They discovered Christ in community.
They discovered Christ in suffering.
They discovered Christ in the stranger.
And occasionally, I suspect, they discovered Christ in the person sitting beside them at a church meeting who had been speaking for considerably longer than seemed strictly necessary.
Holiness sometimes requires endurance.
The saints learned that the Kingdom of God is not merely something waiting for us beyond death.
It is something breaking into the world now.
Quietly.
Persistently.
Sometimes almost invisibly.
Every act of mercy makes it visible.
Every act of reconciliation gives it flesh.
Every act of generosity opens another little window through which the light gets in.
Every time someone chooses love when something smaller would have been easier, the reign of Christ becomes just a little easier to see.
And perhaps that is our calling in these November days.
Not to wait for the Kingdom.
But to notice it.
To recognize the small places where Christ is already reigning.
At a kitchen table.
In a hospital room.
Around a church altar.
At a community supper.
In a phone call made to someone who has been lonely.
In vegetables shared from a garden.
In bread broken between people who once thought they had nothing in common.
The Kingdom is nearer than we imagine.
And perhaps that is why Jesus so often says, in one way or another:
Pay attention.
Look again.
Do not miss this.
Because God is here.
We are walking toward Christ the King Sunday, when the Church will make its great declaration that Jesus Christ reigns over all creation.
But perhaps the best preparation for that feast is not learning to shout the proclamation more loudly.
Perhaps it is learning to recognize his reign more clearly.
The King we are approaching is already among us.
Not seated comfortably behind palace walls.
But walking the roads.
Touching the wounded.
Eating with outsiders.
Forgiving sinners.
Welcoming children.
Washing feet.
Breaking bread.
And inviting us to follow.
The Kingdom of God is coming.
The Kingdom of God is already here.
And somewhere today, almost certainly without trumpets, someone will choose kindness over cruelty, mercy over judgment, generosity over fear, reconciliation over division.
When that happens, look carefully.
The King has just passed by.
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Companion Prayer
God of the quiet Kingdom,
Open our eyes to recognize your presence
in the ordinary places of this day.
When we are looking for trumpets,
teach us to notice kindness.
When we are waiting for miracles,
teach us to recognize mercy.
When we imagine your Kingdom somewhere far away,
show us Christ in the neighbour beside us.
Make our hands generous,
our words gentle,
our tables welcoming,
and our hearts attentive,
so that through the small choices we make today,
someone else might glimpse the reign of Christ.
And when your Kingdom passes quietly among us,
give us grace enough to notice.
Amen.