Sunday Toolkit — Reign of Christ, 22nd November 2026

A note before you start: this is the last Sunday of the Women’s Lectionary year. From Advent (29 November) the plan is to go back to the usual lectionary. Huldah’s message in the first reading is a hard one, a word of coming disaster for her city with a word of mercy for the king folded inside it. You don’t need to soften it, and you don’t need to explain it either.

1. Encouragement

This week the most important people in the kingdom have a question they can’t answer, and they walk across town to ask a woman most of us have never heard of. If you have ever felt that you are not the obvious person to be up the front, Huldah is a lovely person to keep you company on Sunday. Nobody in the story asks for her qualifications. They simply trust that she can hear God, and she speaks plainly.

You can lead the same way. You don’t have to be the most experienced person in the room, or the most confident. Being willing to listen, and then say what you heard as honestly as you can, is what the room needs from you. Thank you for saying yes on the last Sunday of a long and rich year.

2. This Week’s Reading

Old Testament: 2 Kings 22:3-20, Huldah. Read on Bible Gateway (NRSVue). During repairs to the temple, the high priest finds “the book of the law”. When it is read to King Josiah, he tears his clothes in grief, and sends five senior officials to ask God what it means. They go to Huldah, a prophet who lives in Jerusalem and is married to the keeper of the wardrobe. She tells them disaster is coming because the people have turned from God, and then adds a private word for the king: because his heart was soft and he wept, he will die in peace before it happens.

New Testament: Revelation 19:4-9 and 22:17, the Bride. Read on Bible Gateway (NRSVue). A huge crowd in heaven shouts “Hallelujah!” because God reigns, and announces a wedding: the Bride has made herself ready and has been given fine linen to wear. Then the reading jumps to the last page of the Bible, where the Bride finally speaks.

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ … And let everyone who is thirsty come.” (Revelation 22:17, abridged)

A few things worth knowing as you prepare. The first reading has a lot of unfamiliar names in a row (Hilkiah, Shaphan, Ahikam, Achbor, Asaiah, Shallum, Tikvah, Harhas), so whoever reads it will be glad of a practice run. Clothing turns up all through both readings: a king tears his robes, Huldah’s husband looks after the wardrobe, and the Bride is given fine linen. The Bride is talked about for several verses and says just one word, “Come”. Huldah, by contrast, does nearly all the talking in her story. The readings don’t tell us why the officials chose Huldah, and you are free to leave that question open for the congregation to wonder about.

It is also Reign of Christ Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year. This community often says “kin-dom” rather than “kingdom”, and the Uniting Church has long felt some discomfort with king language. Revelation 19 says God “reigns”. You might like to let that word sit beside a year of stories about women who were used, ignored, silenced and, now and then, listened to, and let people wonder what kind of reign that could be.

3. What Richard’s Explored Before

Huldah has been here once before, in a prayer rather than a sermon. On 26 November 2023, also Reign of Christ Sunday and also the end of a Women’s Lectionary year, Richard wrote a responsive litany called “Who Was She?” that named Miriam, Deborah and Huldah. The readings that day were different (Ezekiel 34 and Matthew 25), so Huldah came in through the liturgy. The songs that day included “Woman in the Night” and “When I Needed a Neighbour”. Some people in the room may remember the litany, and using it again would turn it into a small end-of-year tradition. Ask Richard for a copy.

Revelation 19 and 22 are new ground. There is nothing in Richard’s sermon records on either passage. On Reign of Christ in 2022, his sermon talked about where the festival came from (it was started in 1925, at a time of rising nationalism), named the discomfort many Uniting Church people feel with “king” language, and held on to the day as a reminder that our deepest loyalty isn’t to any political party. That is a helpful background note for this year. One caution: the sermon logs stop in August 2026, so anything since then isn’t in them.

Past liturgies. Words for Worship has Reign of Christ files from several years, and the one dated 22 November 2020 falls on the same Sunday of the same lectionary year. These match by date and church-calendar label only, not by reading, so expect general prayers for the day rather than anything on Huldah or the Bride. L3 has no Reign of Christ file.

Where the congregation has just been. On 15 November the Queen of Sheba came to test Solomon with hard questions, beside the woman called Babylon in Revelation 17. That makes this the third Sunday in the last month with a woman from Revelation, and Babylon’s purple and scarlet sit in interesting contrast to the Bride’s white linen. As things stand on Drive, 8 November is planned as a Second Sunday Conversation with the NCLS survey, with readings still to be confirmed. After this Sunday comes Advent, so a sentence near the start saying “today we finish a whole year of women’s stories” will help people feel where they are.

4. Resources

The draft liturgy has its bones in place. There is a liturgy – 22.11.26 document in this Sunday’s folder on Drive. The candle words are in, and so is a short blessing before the readings by Gretta Vosper. The Call to Worship, Acknowledgement of Country, Opening Prayer, Prayer of the Day, Centring Meditation, Prayers for Others and Ourselves, Offering and Commissioning are all still marked “to come”, and no songs are chosen yet, so there is plenty of room for your ideas. There is no service bibliography for 22 November yet, so this toolkit has worked from the draft liturgy and the archive.

Spill the Beans has material on Huldah in Issue 48, pages 95 to 102. Those pages haven’t come through as text from the PDF, so they need to be read by eye. Check the shared folder for it rather than looking online, as it is a licensed resource. Nothing in the usual resources covers Revelation 19 or 22, so you’ll be writing fresh for that side of the service.

Something to hold. The story turns on a scroll that was in the house all along and that nobody had read. You could hand everyone a small rolled slip of paper as they arrive and invite them, during the Centring Meditation or the Offering, to write the name of a woman who taught them something about faith, someone the wider world has probably never heard of. The scrolls could be gathered in a basket beside the candle. It is a gentle way to close a year of women’s stories and to honour the Huldahs in people’s own lives.

An idea for the Centring Meditation: Kev Carmody’s “From Little Things Big Things Grow”, the song he wrote with Paul Kelly about Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji walk-off, when people with little official power spoke a truth that the powerful eventually had to hear. It runs nearly six minutes, so it works best played whole with silence after.

A possible Acknowledgement of Country, since that part is still to come. Use it, change it, or ignore it:

In the temple, a book was found that had been there all along, and the people had forgotten how to read it.
We meet on Kaurna Yerta, and we confess that the story of this land was here long before us, and we have not listened well.
The Kaurna people have cared for this place and its waters for countless generations, and they are still here.
Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
Like the king who wept when he heard the truth, may our hearts be soft enough to grieve, and brave enough to change.
We walk towards truth, treaty and justice. Amen.

A gentle care note. Wedding imagery can be tender ground for some people: those whose marriages have ended, those who have been widowed, and queer people who were shut out of marriage for a long time, including in the church. A light touch helps, for example remembering that the Bride in Revelation is a picture of a whole community, made up of people of every gender and every kind of life.

5. Songs

Used before: “Woman in the Night” was sung on 26 November 2023, the last time Huldah came up, so the congregation knows it. No song choices have been made for 22 November yet in the draft liturgy, and none of the suggestions below were sung on 18 or 25 October or are planned for 1 November.

Woman in the Night (Brian Wren, TiS 661). It walks through the women around Jesus, verse by verse, which makes it a natural way to close a year of women’s stories. Familiar, so an easy choice.
There Is a Line of Women (John L. Bell, Iona). A song about the long line of faithful women through history, which is exactly where Huldah stands. It is on the congregation’s song list. I couldn’t find a record of when it was last sung, so check with the musicians.
Table of Plenty (Dan Schutte, listed in the congregation’s songs as “Come to the Feast”, ATAR 665). Revelation 19 ends with everyone invited to a wedding feast, and this song is an open invitation to the table. It would work well near the end of the service.
Spirit, Lead Us (first line “Fire of prophet”). On the congregation’s song list, and the first line suits a week about a prophet. I couldn’t find a reliable link for it online, so check your books for the words and the number.

6. Weblinks

Neither reading is in the standard Sunday lectionary, so most lectionary sites have nothing written for these exact verses. These are the most useful of Richard’s regular stops for this week:

Working Preacher, Vanessa Lovelace on Josiah’s reform. A short, readable commentary on this very story, including Huldah’s message. It doesn’t say much about Huldah herself, which is interesting in its own right.
Rex Hunt’s liturgies. An Australian progressive liturgist whose prayers sit well with this congregation’s style. Look in the Year A pages for the end of the church year.
Laughing Bird. Weekly prayers and liturgies from a Melbourne congregation, free to use in worship with acknowledgement. Good for the Prayers for Others and Ourselves.
Howard Wallace. A Uniting Church Old Testament scholar’s notes, useful for background on the kings of Judah.
Progressive Christianity. Short reflections arranged by theme rather than reading, useful for the language of power and how it is used.

If you want to go a bit deeper, Richard’s own Monday Prep notes for this week list several articles on Huldah, including feminist readings.

7. Pop Culture

Five songs for the lead-up to the service:

Hozier, “Nina Cried Power” (with Mavis Staples). A thank-you to the singers and speakers who told hard truths out loud. It sits nicely beside a prophet who didn’t water down her message for the king.
Kev Carmody, “From Little Things Big Things Grow”. Also suggested for the Centring Meditation above. A story-song about a voice that the people in charge didn’t want to hear, and the change that came when they finally did.
Mavis Staples, “You Are Not Alone”. A warm, open invitation, much like the Bride’s one word: come.
Big Thief, “Change”. A gentle song about things ending and beginning, for the last Sunday of the church year and the end of the Women’s Lectionary.
Ólafur Arnalds and Lavinia Meijer, “Saman”. A short, quiet piece for harp with no words. Good for sitting still with the question of why they went to Huldah.

From the library: Ashley M. Wilcox, The Women’s Lectionary: Preaching the Women of the Bible throughout the Year. This is the book the congregation has been following all year, so it feels right to name it on the last Sunday. Wilcox has a short reflection on each week’s readings, written for preachers but very readable, and it is a lovely thing to flick back through and see how many women this year has met.

On screen: Hidden Figures (2016, directed by Theodore Melfi, with Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe). The true story of three Black women mathematicians at NASA in the early 1960s whose expertise the men in charge could not do without, and who were left out of the story for a long time afterwards. It pairs beautifully with Huldah, the expert nobody remembers. It is rated PG and is a good film to watch with family. Things to know: it shows segregation and racism openly (separate bathrooms, being shut out of meetings), and there is some mild language.

8. Notable Dates

22 November: C. S. Lewis, remembered in the Uniting Church’s Calendar of Commemorations on the very day of your service. He gave up his childhood faith as a young man and came back to it after a long conversation with two friends, one of them J. R. R. Tolkien. His Narnia books are full of a very different kind of king, which might be a friendly way into Reign of Christ for children and adults alike.
24 November: John Knox, the Scottish reformer. The Calendar notes that he wrote a tract called The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), arguing that it was against nature and God for a woman to govern. Two days after a Sunday when a king’s officials go to a woman for God’s word, he makes an interesting contrast, and perhaps a wry line in the notices.
25 November: International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which also begins the 16 Days of Activism running through to Human Rights Day on 10 December. After a year of stories in which many women were harmed, a line in the Prayers for Others and Ourselves would fit very naturally.
25 November: Isaac Watts, G. F. Handel and J. S. Bach, remembered together for their music. Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus borrows its words partly from Revelation 19:6, this week’s reading, so a recording before or after the service would make a lovely link.
26 November: Sojourner Truth, who died on this day in 1883. Born into slavery in New York, she walked to freedom, chose her own name, and spent her life preaching and speaking for the end of slavery and for women’s rights. A prophet in the line of Huldah, and a good name to add to your basket of scrolls.

9. Final Word

Here is a practical one for this week. Sit down with your Bible reader a few days before Sunday and read the first reading aloud together, names and all. Hilkiah, Shaphan, Ahikam, Achbor and Asaiah are much less frightening the second time, and a reader who isn’t worried about tripping over names is free to let Huldah’s voice come through clearly. It is also a kind thing to do for each other, and a good reminder that nobody leads worship on their own.

May you go into Sunday knowing you have been chosen, even if you can’t quite see why. May you hear what is true and say it with a soft heart, and may the people you lead hear an invitation in your voice: come.