A Thought For The Week Of December 28, 2015

"For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light ..." (Ephesians 5:8) Transformation is - or at least should be - at the heart of the Christian faith. There is surely no worse witness to Christ than a "disciple" who claims the faith but shows no evidence of the faith in their lives. Every Christian would agree with that. The disagreements would probably arise in identifying what changes are necessary. Ephesians 5:8 mentions one things very specifically - as people who have chosen to be disciples of Jesus we have moved from darkness into light. In some ways it's difficult to identify what's meant by that. Light and darkness seem somewhat vague concepts. But at the very least we can say two things: (1) the shift from darkness to light means being transformed from people who have no knowledge or awareness of God to being people who live with God as the centre of our existence; and (2) the shift from darkness to light means moving from having no real concept of sin to being acutely aware of sin. These two things combined have a huge impact on a person's life. We become aware of our failure to be what God wants us to be and we have to accept responsibility for the ways we turn away from God. We can't lay blame elsewhere. "The devil" didn't make me do it. I chose. So moving from darkness to light means taking responsibility for my life and my choices. This transformation gives us hope. Taking responsibility alone could simply fill us with guilt - but that's not the impact of Christian faith. Christian faith is a constant reminder of the grace of God. And the grace of God - while it doesn't give me license - does give me assurance. I can't just do whatever I want. I have to strive to follow God. But I can have the peace of trying my best to follow God rather than the fear of having to perfectly follow God. The former offers assurance; the latter offers only condemnation, because if I have to be perfect then I'm struck with the fact that I can't be perfect. Ultimately the move from darkness to light must include these two things: knowledge of God and knowledge of sin, both of which then work together to bring assurance to the believer.

December 27, 2015 sermon: Mary Always Understood Best

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

(Luke 2:41-52)

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     When last we gathered, Jesus was a baby lying in a manger, surrounded by angels and shepherds, on a still night - at least according to the unknown author who wrote the words “little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” Since then, Luke’s Gospel has become a sort of time machine, fast forwarding us 12 years to this scene today. Jesus is no longer a baby, and there are neither angels nor shepherds around. Rather than stillness, the scene is chaotic, filled with people. And in the midst of it, Jesus disappears. Not knowing where he was, Joseph and Mary set out to find him, and they discover him in the temple. After being scolded for running off - as 12 year old boys have a tendency to do - Jesus looks at his mother and says “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Which begs the question from me as well: Mary - did you know?

     What a great song! It’s one of the finest examples of contemporary Christian songs out there, and a beautiful addition to the Christmas roster of songs. And the lyrics pose some wonderful questions for us to think about as we reflect on Mary and her experiences as the mother of Jesus:

Mary, did you know

that your Baby Boy would one day walk on water?

that your Baby Boy would save our sons and daughters?

that your Baby Boy will give sight to a blind man?

that your baby boy will calm the storm with His hand?

that when you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?

that the little child you’re holding is the great I Am.

     Good questions, and they do make me wonder: Mary, did you know?

     There are five scenes in the Bible - if I can call them that - where Mary plays a significant role, and in all of them she shows an understanding of what was happening to her or of what had happened to her, depending on when the scenes occur. Mary is a bit of a controversial figure in the church. Actually, even beyond Christianity. You might be surprised, for example, to learn that there’s more written about Mary in the Koran than there is in the Bible. Within Christianity, in Roman Catholic tradition, she’s referred to as the Mother of God, and is an object of veneration herself, as people pray to her for her intercession. Protestants rejected this idea - many leaders of the Reformation were offended by it - and the result was that in many Protestant churches Mary has been largely ignored, except perhaps as a part of a sentimental scene as the holy family gathers in the manger on Christmas Eve. But Mary’s role in the story is huge - because at one and the same time she seems to have understood more than any of us, even though she may not have understood much at all. To understand what I mean, you have to look at the five places where she appears in the Gospel pageant.

     She’s there first, of course, as the angel Gabriel visits her and tells her that - against all the odds - she is going to be the mother of a child conceived by the Holy Spirit. Mary doesn’t understand - “how can this be, since I am a virgin,” is her response, and yet she immediately expresses deep faith and trust in God and says “may it be to me as you have said,” and she goes on with a wonderful expression of faith that’s known today as the Magnificat, starting with the words “My soul glorifies the Lord.” The second scene is at the manger, as the shepherds tell her that they’ve responded to the message from the angels and have arrived to see “this thing that has happened,” as they described it. Mary sees them arrive, and we’re told that she “treasured [their] words and pondered them in her heart.” She “pondered them.” She may not have understood exactly what it meant, but she “pondered them.” The third scene is the one we read today. It’s in Jerusalem and it’s Passover. The city is full of pilgrims. It’s a chaotic scene. As Mary and Joseph are returning home they suddenly realize that Jesus - 12 years old - isn’t with them. Some suggest that they must have been bad parents, but the group would have been travelling as an extended family of sorts, so it wasn’t unreasonable for her to think that Jesus must have been with someone else, and in any event at the age of 12 Jesus was almost a man by Jewish standards. Still, this was concerning. Returning to Jerusalem to find him, they discover him in the temple, having discussions with the religious leaders and amazing even them with his knowledge. Clearly, this boy was not your average boy, and I suspect that at least one of the temple priests must have been muttering under his breath “could someone please get this little brat’s parents and get him out of here!” Again, Mary didn’t understand fully, but her response was to treasure “all these things in her heart.” Scene four is at the wedding in Cana in John’s Gospel, where Mary has pondered and treasured enough to know that Jesus was capable of performing a miracle, and she essentially tells the wedding guests to sit back and watch her son turn water into wine! She had absolute faith by this point that Jesus could do it. And then there was Scene five - clearly the most anguishing one for Mary. Jesus is on the cross, in the last moments of his life - and Mary is there as well, watching, probably weeping, probably horrified. But she’s there. From beginning to end, Mary was there with Jesus, and Jesus, at the end, when he could have been focussed on himself and his own suffering, looked after Mary, and ensured that John would look out for her.

     What all five of these scenes tell us is that Mary - while she may not have understood everything - understood from the beginning to the end that there was something about Jesus that was different. Her relationship with Jesus was unlike the relationship any of us can have with Jesus. The author Judy Randoli wrote about things that only a mother can understand. One was “once a person becomes a mother, a piece of her own heart is taken and shared with a love like they will never feel for another human being.” As she put it in commenting on that, the mother simply says “I believe in you. I believe in you with every cell of my being.” Mary believed in Jesus. She may not have understood everything fully, but she believed in Jesus. On that very first night, when Jesus was born, Max Lucado writes about the scene that “she looks into the face of the baby. Her son. Her Lord. His Majesty. At this point in history, the human being who best understands who God is and what he is doing is a teenage girl in a smelly stable.”

     We are never going to understand Jesus as Mary understood Jesus. But we do learn from Mary to constantly treasure and ponder Jesus’ life and words and to trust him, and we learn that Jesus will care for those who care for him.

December 24, 2015 Christmas Eve Communion Sermon: To Be A Child At Christmas

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

(Luke 2:8-20)

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     One of my favourite verses of Scripture is Matthew 18:3. It’s not a Christmas reading. The event it describes takes place long after the birth of Jesus. In the passage, Jesus is gathered with his disciples, who ask him the question, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.” And Jesus’ answer, at least in part, was “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven.” No - it’s not a Christmas reading - but, gathered here on Christmas Eve and gathered with the Communion table set, that verse makes me think of Christmas.

     How often do we hear people say at this time of year that “Christmas is really for children.” When we say that, we’re usually thinking of Christmas in the secular sense. It’s fun to be a child at Christmas, and when you’ve grown up it’s fun to watch children at Christmas. Lynn and I were married for over 13 years before Hannah came into our lives, and although we always enjoyed Christmas and the chance to gather with family and friends, it’s true - without a child to share the day with, something was missing. And now - even at the age of almost 12 - I’ve smiled as I’ve seen Hannah under the Christmas tree a few times over the last little while, shaking gifts and trying to guess what’s in them. She’ll tell you that she knows - but she may not! Children do make Christmas more fun for everyone. But there is another way of looking at the idea of being a child at Christmas, and for me it links with that verse from Matthew 18:3.

     “Become like little children,” Jesus said. It seems that becoming like little children is the key to our entire faith. And what did Jesus mean? He was speaking of course of being child-like and not childish. He was speaking of approaching all of life with a sense of open-ness and wonder. He was speaking of being so dazzled by the creation that one’s attention and curiosity is naturally drawn to the Creator. “Where did it come from? How did it get here?” Questions that come from the lips of a child. Too many of us lose that sense of awe and wonder as the years go by. We’re no longer dazzled. Instead, we take things for granted. We’re no longer awed by mystery. Instead, we simply want answers, and if we can’t understand something we simply dismiss it. It happens a lot to faith as people grow. They lose the essential sense of awe and wonder and the willingness to embrace mystery that’s necessary for a passionate faith in God and in Jesus. It happens with the Christmas story.

     Shepherds and angels and a manger. God as a baby. A virgin birth. How can rational, intelligent, modern people believe any of that? That’s what I hear from lots of people at this time of year. Christmas has been reduced to sentiment, to gift-giving and gift-receiving and to the extent that any spirit at all is involved with Christmas it’s not the Holy Spirit - it’s either in the form of certain beverages or it’s the so-called “spirit of Christmas,” which just means that for a few weeks people seem to become more kind and generous. But I think there has to be more. I think that shepherds and angels and a manger and God as a baby and a virgin birth have to be a part of Christmas - if Christmas is to really be Christmas. And to grasp what really happened at Christmas - to understand it and to believe it and to be transformed by it (so that the spirit of Christmas doesn’t just take possession of us in December but actually takes possession of our lives) - we have to take Jesus’ words to heart: “become like little children.” We have to reclaim the sense of wonder and awe and mystery that should be central to who we are as human beings. Not everything can just be reduced to pure logic and rationality. We’re people of feeling and emotions and intuition. We “know” things we can’t prove; we’re convinced of some things even if we can’t see them; we understand that there’s a difference between truth and fact. Tonight we celebrate truth and mystery - shown to us as a divine baby born of a virgin in a manger as angels and shepherds bear witness; shown to us also in bread and wine as we reflect upon what would happen to the baby some thirty years later. It’s all mystery, to be embraced by people of faith who find themselves able and confident enough to approach God with child-like wonder.

     Charles Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol that “... it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.” And so it is. And - also in the words of Dickens - as we gather together tonight and with family tomorrow - God bless us, everyone.

A Thought For The Week Of December 21, 2015

"I am come out from the Father, and came into the world: again I leave the world, and go to the Father." (John 16:28) Linkages are important. Unless we can link together the story of Jesus' life then all we have are short snippets without context. Christmas can fall prey to that especially. I wonder how many people know the basic story of Christmas but have little knowledge of the rest of the story of Jesus' life? And the result of that is that Christmas becomes little more than a story, with little meaning or purpose to it. John 16:28 seems to be a remedy to that problem, in that at the very least it links together Christmas with Good Friday. In a way, this one verse presents to us the span of Jesus' entire life. And it is so full of hope for those who believe in Jesus. Jesus is the perfect human - fully divine but also fully human; human in the way God wishes all of us were! And, in a way, Jesus is what God promises us that we will become. In addition to everything else, Jesus is God's grace given to us and for us, and grace is that divine quality that allows God to look beyond our flaws and to see us as we were meant to be. God, by grace, is able to see us without sin and promises, through Jesus, to return us to that state. And that returns us to John 16:28. Jesus came from the Father and Jesus returns to the Father. The manger and the cross are intertwined. And, ultimately, isn't this to be so for all of us? Did we not all come from God? And is the promise of the Gospel not that we will return to the God from whom we came? I see John 16:28 not just as a statement about Jesus, but as a promise to all of us. Christmas and Good Friday held together, with Easter as the ultimate hope! God is our origin; God is also our destiny. Christmas to Good Friday to Easter.

What Do We Celebrate At Christmas?

Recently I've become involved in a debate on an online discussion board called Wondercafe 2 which has revolved around the following question (the heading for the thread):

Did Jesus Want The Church To Celebrate His Birthday?

I was giving some thought to it as I sat in my office today doing some work preparing for my Christmas Eve services as well as the services for the two Sundays of Christmas.

The appropriate question to me seems to me to be a bit more general than that. Really it should be: What did Jesus want the church to do?

A lot, I suppose. There are the ethical demands of Christian faith. Simply put, living like Jesus and loving like Jesus - which is no easy task. But if we're specifically thinking about Christmas, and whether it's appropriate to set aside a time to celebrate Christ's birth, I guess this is the answer I've come up with.

What Jesus would want us to do would be to worship God, and to celebrate God's works. Would Jesus want us to throw him a birthday party? I doubt it. I think he'd be the type who'd be more interested in having us celebrate his birthday - if we feel we should - by doing something for someone else. Providing for the needy, perhaps. Feeding the hungry. Something like that. Sounds like a good way to celebrate Jesus' birthday to me. But let's aside the word "celebrate." And the word "birthday," for that matter. Would Jesus want us to use the occasion of his birth as a reason for us to approach God - and, to me at least, that seems a no-brainer. Again, Jesus would want us to worship God and to celebrate God's works - all of them. And one of those works is surely God's choice to come to us in Jesus.

If we're in the business of rejoicing in all that God has done - well, surely that's a biggie! Surely, we're not going to ignore what the shepherds of Luke 2 called "this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."

For me, incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection (and everything else about Jesus' life) hang together. But, for me, incarnation may be the defining event. Everything else, for me, revolves around the fact that here was God Incarnate. I think Charles Wesley got it right: "Veiled in flesh the godhead see; hail the incarnate deity." These words, always sung during the Christmas season, don't invite us to celebrate Jesus' birthday, or to be sentimental about a baby's birth - they invite us to reflect again and again about the mystery and the majesty of the incarnation.

That's what I'll do this Christmas. That's what I do every Christmas.

A Thought For The Week Of December 14, 2015

"This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5) The idea that God is light I can easily understand. The concept of darkness (and how it manifests itself even in the natural world) is a little more complicated. There are different kinds of darkness in the natural world, and each affects us in different ways. There's the darkness of night. That's very dark. The sun is literally nowhere to be seen. It can be a frightening place. We don't know what's out there. There's also the darkness of an approaching storm. "The sky looks dark." It's not really dark - there's actually so much light that you can see the darkness! But in a way - because you can see the darkness approaching, and because you know that there's a storm coming with it - it causes apprehension and worry. We choose to barricade ourselves away from the elements if we can. There's the kind of darkness represented by something like dense fog. Again - that's not really "dark" but the light is obscured, and things are hidden from sight. There's perhaps nothing more unnerving than driving in heavy fog - because you just don't know what's ahead of you. Fog hides danger that we should be able to see. There's even the darkness of an eclipse - when the moon hides the sun completely from our sight. All these things have spiritual applications. The darkness of night: when we  feel helpless. The darkness of an approaching storms: when we feel fearful over what might happen. The darkness of fog: when we're puzzled and can't figure out what we should do or where we should turn. The darkness of an eclipse: when sheer evil seems to have overcome our faith in God. But then there's this promise: God is light. God cannot be overcome by darkness. God will always overcome darkness. The sun will rise in the morning, the storm will come again, the fog eventually will lift, and the sun will emerge from behind the moon. In the same way, God always triumphs over any kind of evil or trouble we may face. Maybe not as quickly as we would like - but with God victory truly is just a matter of time!

December 13, 2015 sermon: Speaking Of Joy ... Today

You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

(Isaiah 12:2-6)

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     It was almost three thousand years ago, and for the Jewish people it was not a time of joy. Strange then that this prophecy appears as a reading for the Third Sunday of Advent - which is the Sunday of Joy. There was nothing joyous about the context in which Isaiah wrote. Israel had been conquered years before. The Kingdom of Judah remained, but even as Isaiah wrote, it, too, was under threat. The bleak reality was that the darkness was closing in on God's people. It was a frightening time; a bewildering time; a chaotic time. Our passage from Isaiah was written probably as Judah was about to fall to the Babylonians. As their lives crashed around them and their fear mounted, the people fell into despair. Hope was gone. It seemed that everything they knew was about to be wiped off the face of the earth at the hands of a fearsome enemy. The Babylonian armies were virtually at the gates. And so Isaiah wrote, and he spoke of a better day to come. “You will say in that day: ‘I will give thanks to you, O Lord.’”

     I’m all in favour of approaching even the bleakest of times by looking ahead to something better, so I understand the prophet’s desire to comfort the people with the promise of a better future. We today may not be facing exile, but still Isaiah’s words resonate during the Season of Advent, which forces us to wait - and patience is, of course, a virtue. But on the other hand, there’s also a principle that asks why we should wait until tomorrow for something we can have now, and by that principle the prophet’s words “in that day” grate on me a bit. Why “that day”? Why not today? As Christians, we live in the light which is Jesus - the light who cannot be extinguished by the darkness. As Christians, we have reason to be joyful today, and not just in some future “that day.” Even Isaiah, I think - while looking ahead - gives us reason to be joyful today. If, as the prophet says, “God is my salvation,” then as disciples of Jesus we’re able to see that salvation which first appeared in a manger in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. We can get into a lot of debates about what “salvation” actually is - put three Christians together and you’ll probably come up with about five different ideas on the subject - but we can all agree, I think, that salvation means being saved from that which in some ways destroys us - in body, mind and soul - and being brought into a new reality, a new way of life, a new way of seeing the world; one that tells us not to fear, not to worry, not to fret, not to be bothered, but to live life abundantly - and with joy.

     I suspect that we would normally think of sadness as the opposite of joy, but I’m not sure about that. Perhaps more than anything the opposite of joy is fear. Fear is what saps joy out of our life - and we seem to be fearing a lot of things in today’s world. If God is truly our salvation, then at least one of the things God must be saving us from is fear - and one of the things that God must be saving us for is joy. During Advent, we look ahead to the coming of God’s reign on earth. For Isaiah, this was a future promise, so “in that day” made sense. But for us, while it’s still something we look ahead to, we’ve also seen it and experienced it. As John wrote in his Gospel, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” I might also add - full of joy. For Isaiah, living in a bleak time, this was something only to look ahead to hopefully. For us, in times that sometimes also seem bleak, things are also different - because for us: today is the day. For us, today is always the day! Paul wrote, “now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” We’re joyful now because in Jesus God has come to us, to be with us; to be one of us! He is light and life and truth to us.  This salvation that Isaiah spoke of is what Jesus brought to us in the flesh. While Isaiah said that “in that day … I will trust, and will not be afraid,” we can say that today we will trust and not be afraid. What are we trusting in? Obviously, we’re trusting in Jesus, and in the impact Jesus has on our lives. The great Bible commentator Matthew Henry wrote that “I will trust him to prepare me for his salvation, and preserve me to it. I will trust him with all my concerns, not doubting but he will make all to work for good. Faith in God is a sovereign remedy against tormenting fears.” Or, in the word of Isaiah, “I will trust, and will not be afraid.”

     This absence of fear is a hallmark of a life of faith. “Do not be afraid.” Over and over and over again, Jesus said those words. “Do not be afraid.” He wasn’t talking about normal fear. Normal fear is a good thing. It’s called the “flight or fight mechanism.” There are times when logical fear takes over. I don’t go into the woods across the street from my house because neighbours have told me that people have seen bears and wolves in there. I’m kind of scared of bears and wolves! But when Jesus and Isaiah speak about not being afraid, they’re speaking of fear as a spiritual problem. They’re speaking of being afraid that just maybe God isn’t in control; that just maybe our faith isn’t real; that just maybe eternity isn’t a certainty; that just maybe my salvation isn’t secure; that just maybe I haven’t done enough to make God happy. This is the kind of fear that saps joy from us - and that fear gets taken away by faith. Faith tells us that God is always with us and will never abandon us. Jesus came as Emmanuel;  his birth represents the sign that God is here. We do not fear, because we have faith in Jesus, whom God sent. We live in joy, because we have faith in Jesus, whom God sent.

     Earlier in our service we sang “Joy To The World.” In spite of the fact that it’s in the “Christmas” section of the hymn book, it’s not a Christmas carol. Isaac Watts wrote it as an Advent hymn. It speaks not of the birth of Jesus, whose life offered us only a glimpse - albeit a glorious one - of what God’s reign would look like, but rather of his final victory. The victory isn’t here yet - but we’ve seen what it will look like through the life of Jesus, which is why we don’t have to wait for what Isaiah called “that day” - we can sing today, in the perhaps prophetic words of Isaac Watts:

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;

…

Repeat the sounding joy,

Repeat the sound joy,

Repeat, repeat the sounding joy!

A Thought For The Week Of December 7, 2015

"As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things." (Ecclesiastes 11:5) There's such an intimate biblical connection between "wind" and "spirit." In both Greek and Hebrew the words are the same. In the case of Ecclesiastes, the word for wind is "ruach," the same word used in Hebrew for "spirit." Wind, and even air in general, is for me a very meaningful analogy for God.  Air is all around us, and within us. Air is what gives us life. If we're separated from our air supply, we can't live for very long. Air, when put under pressure, results in wind - an invisible force that we can't see, but whose effects are obvious. It's no wonder that the biblical authors over the centuries saw such a close connection between God and wind. The word can also mean "breath." Once formed in a mother's womb, and finally born, the baby takes the breath of life. The baby's life is already a gift of God - who formed the baby in the mother's womb - now God fills the baby's lungs with air. The air, the wind, breath - all are ever-present realities that should keep us mindful of God every moment of every day. And, of course, this verse reminds us that there's mystery to wind and to the formation of a baby. Oh, yes, we can understand both from a scientific perspective - but both are still wondrous things that remind us of the mysteries that take place in the mind of God, who created all. Advent is a time of expectant hope; a time of mystery, as we contemplate the work of God that eventually itself became the birth of a baby who would give life to others. We do not understand the work of God; we do not understand the incarnation fully. There is mystery. But we are both grateful and blessed.

December 6, 2015 sermon: Packaging The Message And The Messenger

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’” John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

(Luke 3:1-9)

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     He’s one of the more intriguing characters in the Bible. John the Baptist. A messenger. The new Elijah, as Jesus called him. And a fascinating figure. He was a relative of Jesus - a cousin, apparently, and six months older than Jesus (according to Luke’s Gospel) - but we don’t really know if they had spent any of their boyhoods together, although they may have known of each other. As Jesus grew in wisdom, John the Baptist felt a calling to be a messenger to God’s people - bringing a message of repentance and forgiveness through baptism. John’s relationship with Jesus was a complex one. When Jesus appeared at the Jordan, John recognized him as Messiah - “behold - the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” - and he claimed to be unworthy not only to baptize Jesus, but to even untie his sandals. On the other hand, a little later, John began to have doubts. He sent his own disciples to Jesus to ask “are you the one? Or is someone else coming?” It was a complicated, somewhat cautious relationship, characterized on John’s part by both great faith and nagging doubt. Doesn’t that make John the Baptist just a little bit like the rest of us? We’re similar in other ways too. Just like John the Baptist, we’re called to be messengers for God, preparing the way for whatever work it is that God will choose to do, even though we may not fully understand what that is! So John the Baptist is an example for us. How do we bring the message God gives us to the world?

     The strange thing is that if you were to meet John the Baptist on the street today, you probably wouldn’t expect him to be God’s messenger. We have so tamed God’s message that any messenger who seems out of the ordinary is probably summarily dismissed. We’d dismiss John the Baptist. We wouldn’t give him a second thought. The Gospel of Luke doesn’t really do John the Baptist justice. To get the full picture you have to dive into Mark’s Gospel. Mark tells us that John wore a coat of camel hair. Camel hair is hard and sharp and tough. A shirt made of camel hair wouldn’t just be uncomfortable to wear - it would be downright painful! Mark tells us that John had a rather unusual diet - among other things, he ate locusts. Now I know that insects are supposed to be almost all protein and that incorporating insects into your diet (as many cultures do) isn’t actually a bad thing - but, still, I’ll pass. John the Baptist dressed differently and ate differently. He preached differently, too. As he spoke to the crowds in today’s passage, the first words out of his mouth were, “You brood of vipers!” Preachers don’t usually begin their sermons by comparing their congregations to a bunch of snakes! And yet, in spite of the fact that John the Baptist wore strange clothes and ate strange food and insulted those who came to hear him preach - the crowds did, in fact, come. Did they come for the show? Was he a first century version of Donald Trump? Somebody that no one took especially seriously but who everyone was strangely drawn to? Well, many people accepted his baptism, so they must have taken him seriously. How do we explain this strange phenomenon? And I wonder - if John the Baptist were to appear in our midst today, how would we react to him? If John the Baptist had turned up outside the church this morning wearing a camel hair shirt, eating locusts and calling all of us snakes as we walked inside - we’d think he was crazy, and we might call the police, no matter how much he talked about God. But we would notice him. We couldn’t ignore him. And people noticed John the Baptist. They didn’t ignore him.

     People kept coming to him. It’s fascinating. When God needed a messenger, God didn’t choose a powerbroker or a king or a millionaire or a political leader. God sent John the Baptist, who was about as far removed from society’s elite as you could possibly get. And let’s face it - a person who just blends in wouldn’t make a very good messenger for God. Whatever else you might say about him - John the Baptist did not blend in. You might agree or disagree with his message about repentance - and you might even think he was crazy - but you couldn’t ignore him. Maybe the most important thing John the Baptist teaches us is that we should be prepared to hear the word of God coming from the most unexpected people. And the word of God (according to John the Baptist) began with “you brood of vipers!”

     I don’t think John was talking specifically about the people who were gathered around him. I think he was talking about the entire society of which they were a part. John was attacking the moral and ethical decay that the world around him was suffering from. He was attacking the religious practices of his day, which had become so formalized that they had long since ceased to have any real meaning in the lives of most of the people who took part in them. Do moral decadence and religious emptiness sound suspiciously familiar? Our world is very different from that of John the Baptist, but are we really any more moral? We may be more moralistic, but that’s not the same thing. Our religion is very different from that of John’s time, but is it really any more vibrant and alive and passionate, or have we allowed religious duty to become more important than a deeply felt spirituality and a transforming relationship with God? To be blunt, I’m not sure that John’s message to us would be much different than his message to those gathered on the banks of the Jordan River so long ago. Having John the Baptist preach to us might actually be a good thing. He would certainly awaken us from our slumber and jar us out of our respectable religious practices and moralistic sensibilities into something new and different - into a new and vibrant and living relationship with God.

     God has given us a message to share: that this time of year is about more than shopping, shopping, and more shopping. It’s not about glitter; it’s not about who has the biggest light display or the tallest Christmas tree. It’s about being humble, and serving others. Followers of Jesus should be challenging the orgy of consumerism that breaks out every December. Perhaps we’re not called to wear camel hair shirts or to eat locusts - but we are called to stand up and to stand out; to hold up a vision that most people would probably resist at this time of year - obsessed as they are with getting just the right gift. That may not make us popular - but it just might get us noticed.

A Thought For The Week Of November 30, 2015

"Then they said, 'Let’s call the young woman and ask her about it.'" (Genesis 24:57) Over the last few days I've been reading some of the stories in the Book of Genesis. They're fascinating glimpses of a different culture whose stories continue to impact Christian faith today. Genesis 24 - the story of Isaac and Rebekah - struck me as especially interesting. We don't often think of that culture or that era as being particularly respectful of women, but I was struck in this chapter by the respect that gets shown to Rebekah. All the decisions were hers. If she didn't want to travel to Canaan to marry Isaac, she didn't have to. After she made the decision, her family wanted her to delay the journey by spending ten more days with them - but the decision was hers. We tend to think of women in that era and culture being treated as possessions to be bought and sold and traded away for various reasons - to bring wealth or to cement alliances. But not here. Everything is left up to Rebekah. She's not a possession to be passed on as her brothers desire. She's got the right to decide her future. Quite apart from the fact that Rebekah may be striking a blow for women's rights here, it strikes me that there's an important theological point being made here. You can't be forced to do God's will or to be God's servant. God just doesn't operate that way. Our willingness to be faithful to God has to come from within. It has to be a choice. I find this meaningful as we stand at the beginning of the Advent season and reflect upon the call of God to a young woman named Mary. She - like Rebekah - made the choice to devote her life to God's will, whatever that might bring her. Perhaps that's one of the challenges for us to reflect upon as we progress through Advent toward Christmas.

November 29, 2015 sermon: The Beginning Times

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

(Luke 21:25-36)

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     It occurs to me today that I’ve never in my life heard Bing Crosby sing “I’m Dreaming Of A White Advent.” When I see Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer on TV I don’t notice Burl Ives singing “Have A Holly, Jolly Advent.” Nor was there ever a movie called “National Lampoon’s Advent Vacation.” Advent is perhaps the only “season” of the Christian year that people - even Christians - prefer to just ignore. Lent may not be fun, but there are all sorts of traditions around Lent that people get involved with. Christmas and Easter are times of great joy. Pentecost only lasts a single day - but it’s a party, at least in church, where it’s a celebration of the birthday of the church. And then there’s Advent. Poor, little noticed and barely remembered Advent. There are some Advent songs, but they really haven’t entered the popular imagination like Christmas carols have, there are no Advent TV specials, and nobody makes Advent themed movies. It’s the forgotten season. In the world - out there, that scary place beyond these walls - people call this the Christmas season. And we’d kind of like it to be that way, too. Actually, there have been signs of Christmas around us for a while - Costco usually puts its Christmas trees and assorted other Christmas items out around August or so. About the only Advent themed item you see in stores are the ever-present Advent calendars, which most people associate with chocolate and a countdown to what really counts - Christmas!

     But Advent is about more than just getting ready for Christmas. Christmas, after all, wasn’t the end - it was only the beginning. It was the appearance of grace in Jesus Christ, as we’re told in the letter to Titus; it was the incarnation of God in human flesh. But not everything was accomplished with the birth of Jesus. Much is left  to be done; much remains to happen. If I can be forgiven for paraphrasing Winston Churchill, who spoke these words in obviously very different circumstances, Christmas is not the end, and it’s not even the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning. And if that’s Christmas - then what’s Advent?

     The birth of Jesus didn’t happen out of the blue. The coming of Messiah had been prophesied for centuries. Every generation was looked to as the generation from which Messiah would spring forth. People watched and waited with great expectation and hope. People read the prophecies. As the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will fulfil the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. ‘In those days and at that time I will make a righteous branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.’”

     The days are coming, surely - but they haven’t yet arrived. The birth of Jesus was yet another foreshadowing; the life of Jesus was yet another foreshadowing; the resurrection of Jesus was yet another foreshadowing. Much remains to be accomplished. And so Advent not only directs our attention to Christmas - it directs us far beyond Christmas.

      Advent isn’t supposed to focus our attention on what we already know - that Christ was born, that Christ is “God in flesh made manifest,” as one hymn tells us. Advent pushes us yet farther. Advent pushes us to consider the ultimate and complete fulfilment of God’s promises to us. Advent pushes us to recognize God’s coming reign as one in which perfect hope, complete joy, unconditional love and unending peace will be the ever-present realities. What we see in Jesus is a taste - a mere hint of what it will look like when all things are completed. The example of Jesus - that sample of God’s reign lived out in one brief life so long ago - pushes us to say with the author of Psalm 25 that “you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.”

     “For you I wait.” That’s Advent. We wait; we watch; we make ourselves ready - not for Christmas, but for God! Not for the birth of Christ, but for the coming of Christ again! Jesus said in today’s Gospel reading that “... when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.” A couple of weeks ago I pointed out that such words in one sense don’t mean a lot . The things described by Jesus don’t help us set a time, because these things have always been happening. Maybe the point Jesus is making is that even as these things are happening, you shouldn’t doubt that the Kingdom of God is near. And maybe the nearness isn’t necessarily in time - but in space. Maybe Jesus’ point is that the Kingdom of God is all around us - even within us - and that we just have to reach out and grasp it and commit ourselves to living in it. Maybe that’s the point, and maybe that’s what Advent is to remind us of. Many people read passages like today’s and think of “the end times.” But Advent is really about “the beginning times,” as we look ahead constantly with hope about what God is going to do, and our passage really tells us not to be afraid. Don’t be “weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life …” Don’t let it get to you in other words. The hope God gives is right there with you, and will always be there. Advent reminds us of all that.

A Thought For The Week Of November 23, 2015

"God doesn't favour princes. God treats rich people and poor people the same. God's hands created all of them." (Job 34:19) The point of this verse is clear: God doesn't play favourites. Rich and poor are the same in the eyes of God - all are created by God. If one were to read this improperly, mind you, it could be a troubling verse. It could be taken to mean that God created certain people TO BE rich or poor. In other words, that God assigned to each their station in life. Perhaps even that God desires that some people be rich and that some people be poor. That I don't believe is the case. Rich and poor are human creations. Socio-economic status is the result of human choices - not that people choose to be poor, but that humans have created a system that creates the two categories. And it's very tempting to place the blame for that on God. (Or, I suppose, to give the credit for that to God, if you're among the rich.) So it becomes an opportunity to declare the rich to be blessed and the poor to be cursed, or at least to suggest that the poor are to blame for their own poverty. That's not the case, of course. That's "prosperity gospel" thinking - a line of thought you can detect in some Old Testament writings, including the Book of Job. This verse to me, however, actually seems to be a counter to such thinking. Here we see that the rich  are neither more loved nor more blessed than the poor, and the poor are neither cursed nor unloved by God. Both groups are created by God and loved by God equally. God shows no partiality. Neither should we allow the distinctions of rich vs. poor to affect how we treat people.

A Thought For The Week Of November 16, 2015

"Jesus said to them, 'Watch out that no one deceives you.'" (Mark 13:5) This is a part of the passage I preached on in church yesterday, and I thought these words deserved a little more reflection. There are many within the Christian community who unfortunately choose to trade on fear and to send those who pay attention to them into fear. And yet, from a Christian perspective, is fear not always a deception? Over and over again in the Gospels, Jesus says the words "do not be afraid," or variations on them. Faith is supposed to fill us with assurance, not consume us with fear - and yet filling people with fear seems to be a part of the strategy for some preachers, and you can't deny that in some ways, unfortunately - it works. Most recently I think of someone like John Hagee, who made ridiculous predictions about the so-called "blood moon" - but nothing has happened since the blood moon that wasn't already happening before the blood moon. And what astounds me is that many will still listen to him and pack his church. It's kind of like Halloween or any good horror movie - we like being scared! The difference with Halloween or a horror movie is that the fear goes away, but some preachers just keep piling it on as if it's actually what the gospel is all about. If you look at the first part of Mark 13, you see an apocalyptic passage that's tailor made to instill fear into the hearts of Christians.  But is "fear" really what Jesus was going for? Did he actually want his followers to cower as bad things happened? I find it interesting that Jesus describes the events of Mark 13 not as signs of the end, but only as the beginning. That can also sound ominous, but ... he also describes them as the beginning of birth pains. I have no personal experience of birth pains to call upon, but while I assume that they're difficult to bear I've never talked to a mother who regretted them. Birth pains, after all, lead to something wonderful and not something frightening. They lead to life and not death; to hope and not despair. I want to hold on to Jesus' repeated words that we shouldn't be afraid or alarmed. I choose to trust Jesus - who offers peace and not fear. And where I see fear being offered and promoted, I see deception rather than gospel.

November 15, 2015 sermon: Hoping Mechanisms

As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. Everyone will hate you because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

(Mark 13:1-8)

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     I don't know about the rest of you, but I find that the warnings Jesus gives his disciples about the future in today's reading from Mark's Gospel have an unfortunate resonance right now. Jesus talks about destruction and wars and various human tragedies that are going to occur over the course of time. Last week was a disheartening example of the sorts of things he may have been talking about. The week began with a ridiculous example of a few silly Christians - because there's no other word for it - proclaiming that there's a renewal of the so-called "war on Christmas" because - heaven forbid - Starbucks redesigned their Christmas coffee cups (which was surely what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of his followers being flogged.) But then a couple of things brought us crashing back to ugly reality. For some reason it didn't get much notice in the western media, but on Thursday, 43 people died and over 200 were wounded in a terrorist attack in Beirut, Lebanon. I guess the media thought, "well. It's Beirut. It's Lebanon. It's the Middle East. These things happen." And some people still worried about Starbucks. And then - the very next day - came Paris. We paid attention to that. Wall to wall by the hour coverage. It was sickly reminiscent of 9/11 and New York City; perhaps not as much destruction and death and perhaps not quite so close to home, but shocking enough and close enough to bring forth a feeling of deja vu. And I don't know about you - but I found myself in need of some hope. How do you find hope in a crazy, violent world like this? Well, I guess you turn to Jesus.

     Hope was at the centre of virtually everything that Jesus taught and if the Bible tells us that “perfect love casts out fear,” then it’s also valid to suggest that hope makes fear disappear. Generally speaking, when we’re afraid, what we fear is the future. Whatever we’re afraid of, it’s something that hasn’t happened; it’s something that might happen. Jesus addresses fear of the future in a variety of different contexts. In the Sermon on the Mount he told his disciples not to worry about tomorrow. That’s good advice, because some people get so caught up with worrying about tomorrow that they forget to live today! Jesus didn’t tell us to ignore either the future or its challenges. In fact, he discussed the future at length with his disciples in today’s passage from the Gospel of Mark. Here, Jesus looks ahead to the culmination of history; the fulfilment of God’s plan for the world’s redemption. “The end times” some people call them. On the surface, it doesn’t sound especially promising - and passages like this are often co-opted by so called “doomsday prophets” who like to predict the end of the world in ominous, threatening tones. And yet - wars, famines, persecutions and earthquakes - none of these things have ever been absent, so it’s not likely that Jesus was offering his disciples a sort of code for them to predict the end of the world, the imminent arrival of God’s Kingdom or the pending collapse of human civilization (whether by nuclear war, terrorism or zombie plague.) I think Jesus was just saying that we have to be prepared for whatever might happen on any given day - in Ajax or Pickering, in New York or Ottawa, in Paris or in Beirut. And for Jesus, even the end was a thing of hope, not fear. Today, people speak of coping mechanisms - things they do to get themselves through stressful or frightening times. In today’s passage, Jesus told his disciples about three hoping mechanisms that I hope all of us might find valuable.

     Jesus first offers a caution that his followers are not to become enchanted with human achievements. As this passage opens, the disciples are awestruck by the magnificence of the temple buildings in Jerusalem. “Look teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” The temple was built on a massive scale. It was the second temple. The temple built during Solomon’s reign had been destroyed centuries before. This one was built by Herod the Great about twenty years before Jesus was born. Herod’s plan was to build something that would match and even exceed the magnificence of Solomon’s table, and he succeeded. The Jewish historian Josephus described the stones as massive - 45 cubits by 45 cubits by 8 cubits, Josephus said. I confess that I’m not 100% sure how big a cubit is - but that sounds pretty big! There were 162 columns in Herod’s temple - they were each 50 feet high and had a circumference the equivalent of three men with outstretched arms. This temple was massive - anyone who saw it would assume that it was going to last forever, but actually it lasted for less than a hundred years. About 40 years after Jesus died, Herod’s temple was reduced to rubble by the Romans. Jesus understood the danger of placing your hopes in anything built by human hands - because no matter how huge, it’s going to be fragile. Sometimes Christians become enchanted with the potential for human achievement. We think we’re going to change the world - we think we’re going to create God’s Kingdom on earth, but the truth is that - while we should try hard to do the best we can - only God is going to create God’s Kingdom on earth. That, I think, was Jesus’ point - not that we shouldn’t be impressed with human achievement, and not that we shouldn’t strive to achieve more, but simply that we shouldn’t put our faith in human achievement to solve every problem. Our faith is placed in the one who continues to stand even as everything else fades away: Jesus himself - our ultimate hope, and our new beginning. Our faith has to be placed in God and not in ourselves, no matter how impressive we may sometimes think ourselves to be.

     The second hoping mechanism Jesus offered was a reminder that we should keep our eyes fixed firmly on God’s Word. Jesus tells us that while we can’t take the word of God and use it to predict exact dates and times, we should pay attention to God’s Word. Jesus tells us to keep our eyes open, and to be especially prepared for whatever might come by truly knowing the word of God. We can discern between falsehood and truth by keeping our eyes fixed on what God has revealed - in Scripture and through Jesus. “Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many.” How do false teachers lead people astray? There are two ways: they either tell people exactly what they want to hear, knowing that they’ll attract followers by doing that, or they take advantage of those who don’t know Scripture well enough to see the contradictions between what it says and what they teach. That's how ISIS manages to convince people that Allah - described repeatedly in the Koran as "the merciful" - actually thinks that the wholesale slaughter of innocent people is a good and holy thing. So Jesus teaches his followers to be attentive to God’s word. Don’t just believe what people tell you about God’s word - be attentive to God’s word yourself. Test everything anyone says about God’s word - test it not against your own likes and dislikes, not against your own wants or needs, not against your own understanding of right and wrong. Test what others say about God’s word by truly knowing God’s word. That’s the second hoping mechanism for any person of faith: knowing God’s word; being immersed in it; being captivated by it; always wanting to know it better. Because God is a god who gives hope, and if you truly know the word of God, you’ll always have hope and you'll always live in love.

     The final hoping mechanism Jesus taught (maybe the most important for us today) was that while we should be alert to events around us, we shouldn’t be alarmed by events around us. People who get easily alarmed also give up easily, and they start to cower for safety - and they look for that safety in all the wrong places, so that they’re easily manipulated - sometimes by the doomsday preachers, sometimes by the government. Since the Paris attacks some have called him naive for saying it and suggest that he probably wishes he hadn't said it, but just hours before the attacks in Paris our new Defence Minister - Harjit Sajjan - said that while we should be prepared, we shouldn't fear ISIS. I hope he doesn't regret those words. I hope he clings to them. I hope we cling to them. Because living in fear isn't really living. And, of course, they're called "terrorists"for a reason. If you choose to live in fear - well, the terrorists win, no matter how many bombs we drop on them; no matter how many of them we kill. To be alert but not alarmed is to follow the example set by Peter, James, John and Andrew in today’s passage: they sat at the feet of Jesus and they learned all that they could learn from him. They asked questions, and they listened to his answers. And the answers of Jesus are always answers which give hope.

     Today is a day of hope. Nothing should be able to take away Christian hope, because it comes from God. How can you see three babies get baptized and not have hope? Oliviah, Steven, Wylie - hope is embodied in those lives that have only just started. Who knows what they'll achieve? And real hope - abiding hope; hope that can never be defeated - was embodied in Jesus, who taught us three hoping mechanisms: to place our faith in God and not in our own abilities, to be knowledgeable about God’s word, and to be aware of but not alarmed by what happens around us. No matter what - no one needs to be without hope - and hope is what we as followers of Jesus offer to the world.

A Thought For The Week Of November 9, 2015

"Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans." (Proverbs 16:3) We find Proverbs 16:3 in the midst of a somewhat scattered collection of proverbs - which is often the case with the Book of Proverbs (and it's worth reading perhaps all of Proverbs 16:1-9 to get the full context) - but the basic point of it all seems relatively clear and simple to me: as human beings, we all have our own plans - as we should. What would life be like if there were literally nothing to strive for; nothing that we seek to accomplish? But this verse and its surrounding context raise perhaps the most important question for a person of faith: are our plans and dreams and desires and goals  consistent with what God has planned for us? I don't believe that God determines every detail of our lives, but I do believe each of us has a calling - a plan that God has laid out for us. It's our choice whether or not to respond to that calling, but it's not always easy to figure out. The Book of Proverbs notes that sometimes (to us) our plans seem good and right and pure - but they just aren't God's plan for us. So we have to wonder: how do we discern when our plans are consistent or inconsistent with God's plans? After all, we aren't "called" to do everything that seems good, because we only have so much time and so many gifts and talents. This collection of proverbs doesn't really give us any specific guidance, but there are a few hints. If your plans are prideful - if you want to do something (even something good) primarily to be seen doing it and to get credit for it, that's a sign that it may not be a calling from God. If your plan requires you to be less than honest to succeed, that's a sign that it may not be a calling from God. And even when our plans and our motives seem pure to us, we still have to place ourselves in the hands of God's grace, because it may still not be God's calling on my life. In that case I trust God to "establish my plans" and still be able to work through me for the benefit of others.

November 8 2015 sermon: Yet Still He Suffers

For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

(Hebrews 9:24-28)

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     As often gets pointed out when such events happen, there are people in many parts of the world who are looking at Canada right about now and shaking their heads in amazement. Three weeks ago each one of us had the opportunity to cast a vote and to participate in choosing a new parliament and government for our nation; and just a few days ago we witnessed once again a party voluntarily surrender power at the will of the electorate and another party assume power at the will of the electorate. These are not things we should take for granted. As I said, many in the world, suffering under brutal regimes that regard public opinion as a threat and free elections as a joke, probably find what’s gone on in this country over the last few days and weeks little short of a miracle. It’s appropriate for us, at least once a year, to take time to remember that freedom is not won at no cost, and that freedom is not sustained without responsibility. No one would have upheld that belief more passionately than Jesus.

     Today’s reading speaks of the sacrifice of Jesus, who won us freedom at the cost of crucifixion. His sacrifice wasn’t made in a time of warfare or in combat - unless you consider his death to be an example - or perhaps THE example - of the very real costs of spiritual warfare; as a sign - or perhaps THE sign - of the confrontation between good and evil; between that which is holy and that which is profane. But perhaps there we see the link. When one considers the life and teachings of Jesus, what could be more profane and more evil than war. I say that with no disrespect toward those veterans whom we honour this week. In fact, most of the veterans I’ve known over the years - and I have known veterans of World War II, Korea and Afghanistan - would agree that war is an evil thing. Anything that causes suffering is an evil thing that causes us to confront the question of where God is in the midst of it all. God, I believe, is present even in time of war - not as a combatant, in spite of the assertion by every warring nation that “God is on our side,” but as one who suffers along with those who suffer - be they combatants or civilians, our allies or even our enemies. The author of Hebrews said that Jesus would not have to suffer “again and again” - that he offered himself once and never again. That may well be true from the perspective of Christian redemption, but is it true that Jesus no longer suffers? It seems to me that Jesus suffers any time that any of those he loves suffers - and what is there that causes more suffering than war?

     If almost two thousand years ago Jesus was to suffer once and for all and never again, then it’s worth remembering that almost a hundred years ago the Armistice that ended World War I was supposed to have ended the war that would end all war, with the symbol of that armistice being the words “Never again!” Of course it hasn’t worked out that way.War continues. A little bit of research on the internet last week revealed that in the world today there are 65 countries currently with wars taking place within their boundaries, and a total of 663 sub-national groups such as militias or terrorist organizations involved in fighting. Those are astounding numbers - the more so because most of us probably had no idea that they were happening. War is such a common feature of our world now that we take it for granted, and unless it directly involves us we’re largely ignorant of it.

     In the poem “In Flanders Fields,” Lt. Col. John McRae wrote “if ye break faith with us who die …” In context, he was referring to the need for others to continue the battle that was ongoing, and not to allow those who had given their lives to have died in vain. But I wonder if there wasn’t a broader message McRae was sending: that breaking faith with those who died would also mean not learning the lesson of warfare; not making sure that “Never Again” became a reality rather than just a slogan. “If ye break faith with us who die …” And, for us here today, what about, “if we break faith with him who died?”

     Jesus would surely want us to honour those who lay down their lives for their friends - and for others. I’m grateful for those who laid down their lives so that I wouldn’t have to do so. I’m grateful for those who fought in war so that I could live in peace. We remember them today, and we’re grateful for them today - but how do we honour them today? I would suggest that we honour them best by standing for peace; by being a living witness to the words “Never Again!” Too often in the world today - as the numbers I shared a few moments ago suggest - war becomes the default solution rather than the last option. Too often, war is portrayed in noble terms rather than being acknowledged as nothing better than the lesser of evils. We may not be able to do away with war - as Jesus himself said, “you will hear of wars and rumours of war” - but we can commit ourselves to not seeing it as a normal state of affairs, especially for followers of the Prince of Peace. We can choose to see God not leading armies into battle, but weeping with those who are killed and wounded in battle and as a result of battle.

     If war becomes a normal state of affairs for the followers of Jesus, then Jesus suffers. Of that I have no doubt. In 1849, Edmund Hamilton Sears wrote the beautiful Christmas carol “It Came Upon The Midnight Clear.” In that carol, we find the words “and man at war with man hears not the love song which he brings.” For the first three hundred years of the church’s existence, Christianity was largely a pacifist faith. Christians refused to serve in the armies of the Roman Empire, sometimes at great cost to themselves as they were accused of disloyalty to and even treason against the Empire. Times changed, the church went from being a marginal force to living at the centre of power, and the church began to find ways to justify war rather than to oppose it, although still today there are Christians such as Quakers who cling to pacifism as the way of Jesus and as the only way for a follower of Jesus. We may not choose to go that far. We might accept that sometimes war is, indeed, the lesser of evils; that perhaps in the tension between being called to love our neighbour and to love our enemies we find ourselves having to act when our neighbours are being hurt by our enemies. But still we can keep faith with Jesus - and “with those who died” in McRae’s words - by at least accepting that war and violence are aberrations, and even abominations before God; by striving always to be instruments of peace - living with peace in our own lives, bringing peace to the lives of others and striving for peace in the world around us.

A Thought For The Week Of November 2

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness ..." (2 Timothy 3:16) This verse has, for me, become a guiding text in how to understand what we mean by the inspiration of Scripture. I don't accept the traditional understanding of the absolute inerrancy of Scripture. I accept that there may be mistakes in the Bible, and that there are some contradictions. To me, that's to be expected - and it even strengthens the witness of the text. After all, when you're dealing with the Bible you're dealing with writing that encompasses literally thousands of years and dozens of authors. Why wouldn't there be contradictions here and there? It's actually quite spiritually liberating for me to realize that I can accept that and not have my faith shaken. But what of inspiration? Do I give up on the idea of the divine inspiration of Scripture? Of course not, and this verse helps me find a way forward. After all, this verse doesn't declare Scripture to be either inerrant or perfect. It declares it to be (1) inspired by God and (2) useful (or, in some translations, profitable) for various things. Perfection or inerrance is not a prerequisite for something to be useful or profitable - and by accepting that the Bible need not be perfect I find myself much more in sync with the biblical authors. Maybe they were a lot like me - or any of us. Maybe at times they struggled to interpret what was happening around them and to them. Maybe at times they struggled to figure out just what God was saying in the midst of it all. Maybe God didn't dictate the Bible the way some seem to imagine, but rather tugged at the hearts of those who wrote. Maybe this is as much an inspired WITNESS TO God as it is the inspired WORD OF God. These inspired words are Scripture because the wider Christian community accepts them as such, but perhaps there are  words that don't become Scripture but are still inspired by God in the same way. Such a view of inspiration requires us to think deeply about our own experience of God and to listen carefully to the experiences others have had of God.

A Thought For The Week Of October 26, 2015

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16) The idea of confessing our sins - and, more than that, "to each other" - is an intriguing one. It's a concept that I suspect many Protestants especially would rather set aside on the grounds that it sounds a little bit like the Roman Catholic confessional. And, of course, we've been conditioned as Protestants to the idea that we need to confess our sins only to God. We are our own priests; we have direct access to God; that's that. And, of course, I don't want to deny the belief in the priesthood of all believers. We do all have direct access to God. And so, I hope that we all take time to confess our sins to God. And if we offer them with a sincere and repentant heart and attitude, God hears those prayers, and God forgives us. After all, such prayers are powerful and effective. But what about the instruction that we should confess "to each other." There's probably a knee jerk reaction against those words - even, I confess, by me. Do I confess all my sins to other Christians? Well, of course not. I confess them to God, I believe they're forgiven, and I move on. I don't bare my soul to other Christians on a regular basis. But I do see the point and value of the concept. It's accountability within the community. I think it's probably even therapeutic to be able to unburden yourself to another person that you trust. But perhaps there's the rub. Trust. Do we really trust each other - even within the church? To an extent, certainly, but I'm not sure we trust each other enough to actually do what James tells us to do. Does that make us bad people? Or at least bad Christians? No. It makes us human, I guess. When there's something we find in the Bible that we just can't live up to, it's nice to know that God that God forgives us and gives us grace to move on.

October 25, 2015 sermon: Three Things We've Learned From Job

Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that You can do all things; no plan of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures My counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of You but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” ... After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring. The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job's daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so he died, old and full of years. 

(Job 42:1-6,10-17)

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  And so, today we come to the end of the story. Job’s is a difficult story for us to deal with, either because so much of what happens to Job – so many of his troubles, so many of his tragedies and so many of his fears – either mirror our own or serve as an uncomfortable reminder to us of how easy it can be for things to be going well for us one day and then have everything collapse the next, although such, I suppose, is the way of the world. There are no guarantees. Those of us who find ourselves blessed in a worldly sense need to remember to be thankful for what we have because none of it is ours by right and all of it is so very fragile, and those who from time to time may feel as if they’re being cursed in a worldly sense need to try to hold on to the hope that God offers to us all. Through it all, there’s the reminder to all of us that in a life of faith there is no room for pride, because, to use an old phrase “there but for the grace of God go I.” In a month whose central celebration is that of Thanksgiving, the story of Job is a powerful reminder for us to be grateful in all things and for all things. It’s a reminder for us also to be both compassionate to and understanding of those who are less fortunate than we are, because their misfortune doesn’t make them any less worthy of the love of God, and certainly, therefore, it doesn’t make them unworthy of our compassion.

     In today’s reading, we come to the end of the Book of Job, and for Job, in the end things worked out pretty well. With God’s help he made it through the dark times that he faced and he rebuilt his life quite successfully. In fact, he emerged as a wealthy man. Such material blessings won’t always come to those with faith. Job isn’t normative in that sense, but what the story does teach us is that God will see us through our difficulties. The 23rd Psalm gets read at many funerals, and I often remind those in attendance that this most famous of psalms doesn’t promise that we’ll avoid dark valleys, but it also doesn’t tell us that we’ll get stuck in them. Instead, we’re told that we’ll “walk through” those dark valleys we face. If we get nothing else out of our look at the Book of Job, that in itself is worthwhile – the reminder that no matter how tough our times might be, we will get through them, if we remember to depend on God for the strength. But if that learning alone is worthwhile, there are still other things we’ve learned from Job, and I want to offer you what might be the three most important learnings we get from this story after that most basic principle that I just shared, with you. What three things do we learn from Job?

  The first thing I would suggest to you is that we learn from Job to live not by feelings but by faith. Our society today celebrates feelings above all else. Counsellors instruct their clients to get in touch with their feelings and to learn to be comfortable expressing those feelings. I have no argument with that advice. God created us with emotions, so to keep them completely bottled up would be to be less than human. That doesn’t mean wearing your emotions on your sleeve, so to speak, but it does mean to at least be in touch with what you’re feeling. That can be a slippery slope though. Being in touch with your feelings can easily become a form of idolatry, as we start to let ourselves be led by our feelings, then controlled by our feelings and ultimately dominated by them. “If it feels good it must be OK.” That becomes a common justification for engaging in actions we know darn well we shouldn’t engage in. Job reminds us to be not without feelings but to always remember to ensure that our feelings are subordinated to our faith. Feelings don’t guide us; faith guides us. Our emotions are not our god – we have only one God. After Job lost his family, his wealth and his health, he expressed his feelings, but in the midst of it he kept his faith in God. “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.” We live in uncertain times – economically, environmentally, socially, politically. We live in uncertain times. In the midst of the uncertainty, may we also say “may the name of the Lord be praised.”

  The second learning I hope you take out of this look at Job is to avoid the temptation to try to figure everything out, and to learn to accept the fact that there are some things that only God has the answers for. Curiosity is a great thing. If we weren’t curious most of the scientific marvels of our age would have gone undiscovered. So, yes, curiosity is a great thing, but remember too that “curiosity killed the cat!” Some things are best left to God. That’s not a cop-out, nor is it blind faith. It’s an acknowledgment that we need to become comfortable with uncertainty and with mystery if we’re going to be in a relationship with our God. After everything that happened to Job, he and his friends tried to figure it out together. They debated, they deliberated, they argued - and in the end they couldn’t figure it out. Maybe the point is that we don’t have to figure everything out. We don’t have to understand the reason behind every difficulty, every disappointment, every divorce and every death. Sometimes perhaps we need to simply accept that only God has all the answers, and stop tormenting ourselves trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. When those uncertain times come upon you and you find yourself asking that unanswerable “why” question – try to remember the example of Job, and remember to simply trust in God, because only God has all the answers!

  The final thing I hope you learn from Job is not to live by your misfortunes but rather by your blessings. I know a lot of people who live by their misfortunes. They feed off them hungrily, they wail about them incessantly, they shed tears over them constantly, they complain about them bitterly, and they take the joy out of their lives. I understand the temptation. When things aren’t going well, it’s hard to try to focus on the blessings, because the apparent curses are so powerful. And it’s OK to vent sometimes. But at some point faith has to teach us to let go of venting. And we should be able to do that because blessings there are – blessings there always are, and with God’s blessing, we’ll make it through the storms we face, and the sorrows we endure and through every ridiculously unfair situation life throws at us. With God’s blessings, Job made it through his and with God’s blessing we’ll make it through ours.

     So,  what have we learned from Job? What would Job tell us today if he were here? I have no doubt that he’d say, based on his own experiences: don’t live by feelings but by faith, don’t try to figure everything out because only God has all the answers, and don’t live on your misfortunes but on God’s blessing because God’s blessing will see you through. As the Rev. Scott Hoetzee wrote, “The only hope for a truly 'happy ending' for us all is that we truly do serve a God of all grace who is rich in mercy and compassion and kindness.” Just ask Job. He knew that - and he made it through!

A Thought For The Week Of October 19, 2015

"And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent." (1 Samuel 15:29) I'm writing this shortly after having come back from the local polling station to cast my vote in Canada's federal election. It struck me that this was an interesting verse to be reflecting on during election day. Really, when you get right down to it (and unfortunately) what basically seems to characterize the feeling of voters - in my opinion at least - is probably distrust. We really don't believe that the politicians are going to do the things they promise us they're going to do. In other words, we don't believe that they're honest.That's a shame, really, but I do believe it's an accurate assessment of where we stand and of what people's attitudes are. And it strikes me that it's therefore very important to have someone or something to put our trust in without having to worry about whether they might let us down.And, ultimately, isn't that the real value of faith? This verse talks about the fact that, unlike people, God will not "lie or repent" or (in the words of some translations) "change his mind." God is faithful, and God will not change. This reminds me of one of the affirmations of the New Testament - that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." In a society in which people (even those who lead us) let us down on a regular basis, it's good to have someone we can place our faith in and never be let down. Politicians make us a lot of promises - but what has God promised us? God has promised to be with us, to love us, to forgive us and to give us eternal life. Those are big promises - and we can have faith that these promises will be kept.

October 18 2015 sermon: A Truly Divine Plan

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements - surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

(Job 38:1-7)

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     A few years ago, an eight year old girl in the United States decided that she wanted a puppy. That certainly doesn’t make her unique, but her story is an interesting one nonetheless. Her father, you see, wasn’t enthusiastic about her getting a puppy. He apparently didn’t think she was either mature enough or responsible enough to care for a dog. So he made her a promise that he was sure would put the idea to bed forever. He would get her a puppy, he said, if he was told to get her a puppy by the President of the United States. You’d think that would be a rather daunting roadblock standing in the way of the little girl getting her puppy, but this was a very determined little girl. And so, she wrote a letter to the President, explaining in great detail why she thought it would be a good experience for her to have a dog, put it in an envelope, addressed it and dropped it in a mailbox. Sure enough, a few weeks later, an envelope from the White House addressed to the girl’s father appeared in the family’s mailbox. In a hand-written and signed note on White House stationary, George W. Bush proceeded to explain to the girl’s father that he, personally, loved dogs, and that, while it was obviously the father’s decision, he thought that children learned a lot about responsibility by having dogs and that it would be good for the little girl. Well, the little girl’s father couldn’t really go back on his promise. He now had in his hands a hand-written and signed note from the President of the United States saying essentially “get the girl a dog!” I trust that the dog and its family are now living happily ever after - all because of a most unexpected reply to a little girl’s plea.

     As we continue our month long journey through some of the stories in the Book of Job today, that story about the little girl is a lot more relevant than you might think. Last week we spoke about how frustrating it is when God doesn’t give us the answer we want when we ask a question. Job had been dealing with this frustration for some time now. In today’s reading we’ve jumped ahead 15 chapters since last week, and Job is still in the midst of it We’ve seen that Job had gone through terrible tragedies and that he had experienced a terrifying feeling of being isolated from God. He may well have come to the conclusion that God was never going to give him a direct answer to his questions.He may well have been on the verge of giving up hope. And then - all of a sudden - it happened! All of a sudden (and probably quite unexpectedly) God spoke! Job must have been startled. I suspect that, in spite of all the pleas he had made, Job wasn’t really looking for a conversation with God. Maybe he was doing nothing more than venting. If he had any expectation at all, perhaps he was looking for some sort of sign (a vision, a dream, a picture burned into his morning toast, perhaps) but he almost certainly wasn’t looking for God to engage him in a dialogue. But the passage does not say that this was a vision or a dream, and there’s no toast mentioned. The passage says that God spoke. Audibly and clearly, Job heard the voice of God. It seems that in spite of his righteousness, this was not an everyday occurrence for Job - it’s probably even less so for us! I work under the philosophy that says that when God speaks - we should listen, so I think we need to consider pretty carefully what God said here in response to Job’s pleading for an answer. Maybe that will help us to figure out what God might say to us in our times of hardship.

     What I really noticed in this passage is that although God is answering Job, God isn’t giving Job the answer that he wants. Last week, I suggested that God always answers us; it’s just that we don’t always like the answer God gives us. Here we have the biblical foundation for that statement. In legal terms, Job had asked God either for an indictment - which would lay out in detail what he’s accused of having done wrong - or a verdict - which Job confidently assumed would be “not guilty.” He got neither. Instead, God answered Job’s questions with - wait for it - a question! Now that must have been frustrating for Job. His blood pressure shot way up at that moment. We ask questions because we want answers, because we’re tired of seeking out the answers on our own and because we want someone else to answer the questions for us. When our questions get answered with more questions, then all we have are more answers to seek.. And that’s what Job was now facing - not only had God not answered him; God had given Job another question to ponder and another answer to seek. You might say that this was a challenge to Job from God; not the sort of comfort we usually think of when we turn to God in times of great hardship.

     As I reflect on God’s challenge to Job, what really stands out to me is that although God gives no direct answer to Job, there’s also no sense of condescension - God doesn’t patronize Job and God doesn’t consider him unworthy of receiving an answer. Instead, God’s reply to Job is really an invitation for Job to consider God’s plan - not just God’s plan for Job, but God’s plan for all of creation, and how Job’s experience fits into that. There’s some really interesting language used here. “Gird up your loins like a man,” God said. I actually almost chuckle every time I read that! But it wasn’t an insult, in the way we might think of “be a man” today. It was actually a show of respect. God was challenging Job to challenge God - and that, I think, is a connection for us today. God challenges us in the same way. In a sense, God said to Job, “don’t wallow in self-pity” (because that’s essentially what Job had been doing.) “Come to me instead, with all your questions and complaints, and we’ll work this thing out together.” I suspect that God delights in these kinds of encounters - because once Job accepted that finding solutions rather than just presenting complaints was what really mattered there was an opening for building a deeper relationship with God based on a better understanding of God. So Job is invited to embark with God on a journey of discovery, and all of us are invited to join with God on a journey of discovery - one that begins with our questions and with our sincere desire to determine God’s answers.

     God’s challenge to Job begins with a question: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” and then: “Tell me, if you have understanding.” The irony here is that Job can’t possibly have the understanding that God is speaking of. When God “laid the foundation of the earth,” Job didn’t exist, after all. To truly understand something we haven’t experienced is impossible. God’s plan for creation, laid out before anything even existed, is beyond our ability to fully comprehend. So, in essence, God’s response to Job was: “you’re welcome to begin this quest with me, but understand that it’s a quest that will never end, because you’ll never be able to fully understand me.” That’s also our greatest challenge, isn’t it? To commit ourselves in faith to a relationship with God even though there are so many things about God that we can never fully understand; that will simply remain a mystery. And what we discover is that as things turned out, Job could live with that. Job could live with divine mystery, as long as he could be assured of divine presence, and as long as he knew that there was a divine plan being furthered, and that he was a part of it. So, by this exchange (even though God sounds a bit harsh) Job finally understands that he hasn’t been deserted by God in his time of greatest need. He could still enjoy a relationship with God. Nothing he was experiencing would change that, and with that assurance Job could move on. And Job’s assurance is our assurance: even in the face of divine mystery in our lives, there is a still a divine presence in our lives, and there is still a divine plan being worked out at least partly through our lives. We may not understand it fully, but we are a part of it. As Paul would write centuries later to the Christians in Rome, “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” And, folks - those who are “called according to [God’s] purpose?” That’s us!

     I began my remarks today with the story of the little girl who must have been surprised to get an answer to her pleas from the president of the United States. I suspect it may have been even more surprising for Job to get an answer from God. “I have a plan,” God said, “and your life and all its experiences are a part of that plan.” God answers us as well, in ways that we can’t fully understand, and our challenge is to follow Jesus, even when we’re not always sure where it is that he’s taking us. That’s something I’ve had to learn; that’s something I still find myself struggling with at times. “Why here and not there?” “Why this and not that?” “Why now and not later?” The frustrating thing is that I can’t figure out the answers to those questions any better than you can or any better than Job could - but I know this: there is a truly divine plan at work, and I’m somehow a part of it, and so are you. In the words of an old gospel song: “I don’t need to understand, I just need to hold his hand.”