December 31 2017 sermon: A Few Thoughts About Time

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

(Matthew 6:25-34)

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     As 2018 looms but a few hours away, we take New Year’s Eve to look back and reflect on what was; to look ahead to the possibilities of what might be; and perhaps more than anything to sit back and shake our heads and wonder how in the world we got here so fast! Years seem to fly by. One fades into another and on and on and on, and as each one comes to an end we get a chance to take a deep breath and take stock of our lives, along with our hopes and fears and dreams for the future. On this last day of the year I want to spend a few minutes reflecting on the passage of time, and how we respond as it flies by, because how we deal with the passage of time is important since time’s passage affects us all. We all have to deal with the uncertainty of time, because the future is, of course, a mystery. One year ago we all looked ahead to 2017, and gathered here today we’re probably all aware that this past year didn’t turn out exactly as we had planned. Things happened that we weren’t expecting and that we weren’t prepared for. Some of it was good and some of it wasn’t - and 2018 will be the same, and how we face the new year and the future in general says something about our faith. Do we fear the passage of time or not? Do we lament the past or do we look forward to the future? It’s all an indication of the state of our relationship with Christ. In the movie “Star Trek Generations” there was a valuable line about time. Patrick Stewart – playing the courageous and philosophical Jean-Luc Picard (captain of the Starship Enterprise) said that “time is either a relentless enemy who pursues us all our lives, or it’s a wonderful friend who accompanies us all our lives.” I invite you to reflect on that statement: is time your relentless enemy or your wonderful friend? And, in the interests of hopefulness, I want to offer you a few thoughts on why time should be regarded as a friend.

     From the words of Jesus that we heard earlier, we learn that time and the future are not to be feared. Both are in the hands of God, and if we trust in God then we have no reason to fear either. Many without faith are desperately afraid of time. They fear time because they know that time affects them. We all know that. As we get older – as time passes – we discover that the things we used to be able to do aren’t quite so easy to do. I don’t think of myself as particularly old – I’m 54 – but I do know that I can’t run as fast as I could when I was 18. If necessary I can still catch Hannah, but I’m not as fast as I used to be. That’s life, as they say. Most people learn to accept that the passage of time brings with it certain limitations and they live with that. But not everyone can accept the inevitability of time’s passage. Some people become so caught up with nostalgia for what used to be that they lose interest in what is. The present becomes nothing more than an opportunity to look back at the past. Some people become so obsessed with the past that they go to extremes to try to recapture it. You can see it in how they dress, perhaps, or how they speak or the kind of car they drive. Our society has created entire industries around people who want to deny the marching on of time. If you don’t want people to know how old you are you just get a little lift here or a little tuck there. It’s a way of denying the reality of time’s passage. I hate to inject a somber note into what is essentially a day of partying for many people, but the truth is that the passage of time which we mark tonight with the beginning of a new year is a reminder to us all that eventually so much time will have passed that none of us here today will even exist in this world. Maybe that’s why so many people party tonight – because this night more than any other reminds us that time marches on and that we can’t stop it!

     This is all related to faith, because it has to do with hope. If we’re hopeful about the future, we won’t fear the future. But when we look around, hope can seem elusive and perhaps even naive in the midst of all that we see happening in the world. But it is there. There is hope. There is always hope because there is always God. If we depend only on ourselves, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the problems of the world and saddened by the passage of time. It’s easy because we seem to have more than enough evidence over the centuries that what we’re really good at as humans is making a mess of things! But – yes - there’s always hope because there’s always God, and if we place our trust in God – in the God revealed by the baby born in Bethlehem so long ago – then we have a firm source of hope for the future, and the future then holds no fear, since the future belongs to God.

     Jesus addressed the issue of time when he spoke to the crowds on the Mount of Olives. The passage we heard from Matthew came from the Sermon on the  Mount, and the fact that Jesus had to tell the crowds not to worry about the future shows that even among those who followed him and listened to his teachings many must have been nervous about the passage of time and what the future might bring. And so Jesus offered those who were gathered around him this small piece of advice: don’t worry about the future! Some people get consumed by the end of the passage, when Jesus says not to worry about the future because there are enough troubles in the present. That’s true. The world has its problems, and I’m guessing that pretty much every person here today has some sort of trouble in their lives – ranging from how they’re going to pay for all those Christmas presents and other bills to how they’re going to save their marriage or how they’re going to deal with the diagnosis or how they’re going to find another job or the multitude of little things that might not be life-changing but that can gnaw away at us. Every day seems to bring some trouble, some worry, some fear or some concern, but Jesus really wasn’t talking about the troubles in this passage. His basic message was simple: don’t worry about the future because there’s nothing to worry about! God is in control!

     Jesus was speaking to people who must have had problems and worries and fears in their lives, who were concerned about the future, who desperately needed hope, who saw in Jesus a source of hope – and what did Jesus offer them? Birds and flowers! But for a very good reason. Plants and animals don’t worry about the future. They aren’t aware of what’s coming next. They take care of their immediate needs, and they seem to know instinctively that God will provide. We should know that too – but for all our intelligence we have trouble trusting God. We think about these things – we worry about them; we obsess on them. We wonder where the next dollar is going to come from – and we worry. Somehow we find it so difficult to believe that God will provide for us. I’ll admit that God won’t necessarily provide a lot, but I believe that God will always provide enough. After all, God loves us – and as Martina Boone wrote in the novel Compulsion, “we’ve lost a lot of years, but you can’t lose love. Not real love. It stays locked inside you, ready for whenever you are strong enough to find it again.” But still, we worry and we think we have to solve our problems on our own and we lose sight of God – we forget to pray, we forget to trust, maybe we even start to doubt that God is with us; that God is real. And then the passage of time becomes something that we fear – because in the end, no matter how many other problems we may be able to solve on our own, we will never defeat time. Time will always beat us. There’s no escape from it. As Jesus said, “can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”

     But God will take care of us! That’s the most wonderful thing that Jesus teaches us about God: that God will take care of us. Yes, there will be challenges and hardships along the way. We can’t escape those. They’re part of the tapestry of life. But even in the midst of them, God will be there – and God’s greatest desire is to reconcile with us – to overcome that which separates us from God. I pray that 2018 will bring many blessings to each and every one of us, but I don’t worry about 2018. I think about today – because today is when we can make the decision to trust God with our tomorrows – a decision that keeps us moving forward in faith, in hope and in love! A decision that I hope you’ve all made!

A Thought For The Week Of December 25, 2017

"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:18-19) This is the last of my weekly devotionals for 2017 and I have the pending change in the calendar to 2018 on my mind today. Over the next few days many people will be making so-called "New Year's Resolutions." These are promises either to ourselves or perhaps, for people of faith, to God, in which we commit ourselves to either doing something we haven't been doing but should be doing or to stop doing something that we have been doing but shouldn't be doing. I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, but there's nothing wrong with making such resolutions - although the tough part is actually keeping them as the excitement of January 1 begins to fade. But rather than making a promise that deals with what we will or won't do in the future, I think that just maybe we need to make some resolutions about the past as well. Is there anyone among us who doesn't live with regrets? Do we not all have something in our past (in the past 12 months or even farther back) that we wish we hadn't one or said, or that we wish we had done or said. Perhaps we hurt someone, or missed an opportunity to share with someone in need, or failed to reconcile with someone before we found out it was too late. We all probably have these experiences or more in our past. I want to encourage you to let them go. Try to make amends where it's possible and productive to do so - but don't allow yourself to be held hostage by a past that you simply can't change. In Isaiah 43:18 God tells his people that they need to let go of the past - and for one very simple reason. God has already moved on. We can burden ourselves with our failures of the past and let them bind us in chains we can't escape from - but to what end? Instead, why not simply let it go and look to God? God is already "doing a new thing." For God, the past is past - for God, even our past is past and the grace of God that appeared in Jesus has given us a new start. So, if we're going to make New Year's Resolutions - maybe one of them should be to look (carefully and constantly) to see what new thing God is doing around us and to be open to what new thing God might want to do through us.

Christmas Eve 2017 (11 pm) sermon - A Down To Earth God

Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”

(John 6:28-40)

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     At this time of year it’s fairly common to hear Christians lamenting that the meaning of Christmas seems to have been lost. The irony of that lament is that it’s based on the assumption that, as Christians, we “get it” - and yet it seems to me that even a lot of very faithful and dedicated Christians have missed the big picture, and they’ve reduced Christmas to just a few loosely connected snippets of a much larger story. Several years ago there was an episode of the TV show “Thirtysomething” that involved a seasonal religious debate between two of the characters – Hope, a Christian, and her Jewish husband Michael. Hope wanted to know why Jews celebrated Hannukah – which actually ended just a few days ago. She asked, “Do you really believe that a handful of Jews held off a huge army by using a bunch of lamps that miraculously wouldn’t run out of oil?” Michael replied with a question of his own. “Do you really believe that an angel appeared to some teenage girl who got pregnant without a man and traveled to Bethlehem and spent the night in a barn and had a baby that turned out to be the Saviour of the world?” As a Christian, I have little to say about Hannukah, except to wish a “Happy Hannukah” to the Jewish community. But as for Michael’s question about Christmas? That was actually a pretty fair summary of Luke’s story and if you were to ask Christians what Christmas is about you’d probably get a variety of variations on that one basic theme. C.S. Lewis once wrote about Christmas that “the whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear – a Jewish girl at her prayers.” And that’s correct as far as what we would call Luke’s Christmas story goes. If there were only Luke’s Gospel then Christmas would, indeed, be about what Lewis described as that “little point.” And that’s the problem. Christians often become narrower and narrower in their faith and we start settling for little points rather than the big picture. Our faith is usually a lot bigger and grander than we think it is.

     We usually only think of two of the Gospels as having Christmas stories: Luke speaks for Mary and Matthew speaks for Joseph. We don’t often think of the Gospel of John as having a Christmas story, and yet John’s Christmas story might well be the most important of all. John doesn’t mention the birth of Jesus, I suspect because he never fell into the trap of narrowing things down to a single “little point.” John is totally concerned with the big picture – the biggest picture of all, in fact. Luke and Matthew relate a story that happened on a particular night in that little town of Bethlehem; John’s story takes place in the depths of the cosmos and the far recesses of time itself. You could say that if Luke speaks for Mary and Joseph speaks for Matthew, then John speaks for God! John doesn’t worry about explanations – he gets right to the heart of the matter. His first words (which we didn’t read tonight) are clear: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” In John’s Gospel, the big picture is shared: Jesus is the One sent by God; Jesus was a man who came down from the heavens; through Jesus God decided to get down to earth – not just to get a closer look at what had been created, but to enter into our reality of flesh and blood. The Creator became the creature. That was John’s message.

     Think of some of what we read a few moments ago: the work of God is to “believe in him whom he has sent;” “the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world;” “I have come down from heaven, ... to do ... the will of him who sent me.” Those are big picture statements, and some people’s view of God won’t allow for this type of understanding. “How could a mere human claim to have come from heaven?” they ask. The author Madeleine L’Engle wrote that “The virgin birth has never been a major stumbling block in my struggle with Christianity; it’s far less mind-boggling than the Power of all Creation stooping so low as to become one of us.” She had no problem with what C.S. Lewis called the narrow point. It was the big picture that gave her pause – probably as it should cause us all to look up in wonder, in awe and even sometimes with doubt. Some of the people of Jesus’ day knew him and they couldn’t believe it. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” they asked. “Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? … And they took offence at him.” The narrow point was easy; the big picture was tough. In the Koran, Muhammad wrote that “those who claim that God has begotten a son preach a monstrous falsehood.” Ironically, Muhammad got the big picture better than most Christians. Yes, indeed – we claim that God has begotten a son. We go even farther and claim that this son is an incarnation of God. But rather than being a “monstrous falsehood,” we claim it as a mind-boggling and wondrous truth. It should be. It’s not easy to believe. It shouldn’t be. But it’s the claim of our faith.

     Soren Kierkegaard once tried to explain the incarnation in a parable. A great and good king fell in love with a lowly peasant girl and contemplated how to win her love. He considered going directly to her or even sending a messenger from his royal court but then he realized that the relationship wouldn’t be real – she would be compelled to respond to such an invitation. He thought about disguising himself as a peasant and coming to her that way, but he realized that would be dishonest and dishonesty violates the very essence of love. Finally, the king realized that there was only one way out of his dilemma. He would have to give up his throne and all the perks, privileges and wealth that accompanied it in order to truly be the equal of his bride and to honestly win her love – and if he did that he still had no guarantee that the peasant girl would return his love. Kierkegaard’s point was that love – if it is to be real – has to be based on equality and has to run the honest risk of being rejected.

     That’s the risk God took in coming down to earth. It was a display of love without parallel. In receiving Communion tonight we remember that this is, indeed, a down to earth God whom we worship; a real flesh and blood deity. Christmas, you see, isn’t just about a baby in a manger. That’s just a “little point.” Christmas is about the big picture: an Almighty God who came to us in weakness and vulnerability and humility; who came as one of us!

December 24 2017 sermon - The Christmas Angel To Joseph: God Has A Purpose For You

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.” 

(Matthew 1:18-25)

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     You may think that this is a strange way for me to start a sermon, but I do not much care for Rodney Dangerfield. I suspect that you all know who Rodney Dangerfield was. He was a comedian who was pretty well known in his day. I have to admit that I never much cared for Rodney Dangerfield. I’ve always found his humour to be foul-mouthed rather than funny, and most of his movies that I’ve seen I would describe as “disasters.” And, of course, his famous tagline was “I don’t get no respect.” Which is true. I can’t deny that as much as I didn’t care for him, Rodney Dangerfield made a pretty good career for himself. But he never won any big awards, and – depending on your era – he would never be mistaken for Clark Gable or Gary Cooper or Marlon Brando or Tom Hanks or Brad Pitt. Indeed, in spite of his long and respected career, he got no respect. And believe it or not, whenever Christmas starts to approach I start to think a bit about Rodney Dangerfield, because he reminds me of someone else who got no respect.

     Spare a thought for poor Joseph at this time of the year. He really does fade into the background, doesn’t he. He’s overshadowed by the stars of the show – Mary, and of course, Jesus. And if they’re the stars of the show, then even the supporting players get more attention and are more noticed than Joseph: the angels, the magi, the shepherds. We sing songs about Mary and Jesus and the shepherd and the angels and the magi – but do you know how hard it was for me to find a song that was actually about Joseph? “Saint Joseph Was A Just Man” was the only one I could come up with, so I had us sing it this morning. Joseph generally gets forgotten – and not just at Christmas. He barely rates a mention in the Gospels, except for some cursory references to Jesus as “Joseph’s son” or in one instance (even more anonymously) to Jesus as just “the carpenter’s son.” No one thinks about Joseph. He’s just another part of the nativity scene. Even in the earliest days of the Christian faith, Joseph tended to be overlooked or ignored. He was inconvenient. Jesus was the Son of God, after all – so what are we supposed to do with this man? And so, Joseph largely faded away into oblivion – except for one thing. He shows us how to play our parts in the unfolding drama of God’s redemptive plan for the world.

     As I was reflecting on Joseph this week I thought of a joke by another comedian - George Carlin: “I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me it would defeat the purpose.” Sometimes there is value involved in having to figure things out for ourselves rather than being given easy answers. I’m sure that Joseph was confused. I have no doubt that Joseph was a man of big dreams. He was about to be married, after all – which is a time of big dreams and giant expectations. Marriage, family, respect in the community. It was all working out pretty much the way Joseph had expected. He was on the way. Nothing could stop him now! Except perhaps the unexpected pregnancy of his fiance – a pregnancy that he wasn’t responsible for! I’m quite certain that nowhere in the recesses of Joseph’s mind did Joseph ever dream about becoming the father of someone else’s baby. In a way, Joseph’s silence and his relative anonymity are a bit of a surprise. All things considered, you kind of assume that when he found out that Mary was pregnant, he would have had a few words to say about that. And perhaps he did. I suppose it’s altogether possible that when he wrote his Gospel, Matthew just couldn’t come up with the appropriate Greek words to translate whatever it was Joseph had said in Aramaic! That’s possible, but on the other hand if Matthew is to be believed then Joseph actually took this news rather well. Here are a few things to consider about this man who so easily fades into the background.

     Joseph was “a righteous man.” Those words are pretty simple. Joseph was right with God. He had lived a life of faith and he had tried to please his God. The reality is that leading such a life meant that Joseph was probably fairly anonymous even before these events, because living righteously doesn’t usually make you noteworthy. People are usually much more interested in the unrighteous and the scandal-ridden and the controversial. But Joseph was “righteous.” That actually made him the ideal choice for the role he was about to play. Being righteous before God implies among other things being humble. Joseph had no problem with pride. If he had such a problem, he probably wouldn’t have been chosen for this role. Usually we tend to focus on the righteousness of Mary. What made her worthy to be the mother of Jesus? But we can ask a similar question about Joseph as well. What made him worthy to be so highly favoured of God that he would be chosen to play the part of worldly father to this holy child about to be born? It was, quite simply, that he was “righteous” - not in the negative sense of the word (not proud and self-righteous) but in the best sense of the word (humble and obedient to God.)

     Joseph was “unwilling to expose [Mary] to public disgrace,” and so he “planned to dismiss her quietly.” That demonstrates Joseph’s essential compassion. Joseph could have been very angry. He could have made a spectacle of Mary. He could have made sure that everyone knew about her pregnancy by someone other than him. But Joseph was a man of integrity who wanted to do the right thing in the right way. To end this marriage before it had even started would have been a serious thing, and if he had called attention to the circumstances the punishment for Mary could have been stoning to death. At the very least, she would have been shamed and humiliated and cut off from her people. Some wronged husbands to be might have chosen that route. The society would have expected it and the law would have condoned it. No one would have blamed Joseph if he had taken that step. But in his righteousness there was compassion. Because while a self-righteous person might become proud and full of judgment, a truly righteous person is humble and full of compassion. Joseph’s essential compassion made him the perfect choice for the part assigned to him, because humility combined with compassion made him willing to listen to the message of the angel: “...do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

     So Joseph “… did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife ...” In the end, out of his righteousness, out of his compassion and out of his humility, Joseph did what God required of him. What a lesson that is for us! When our lives seem to take a wrong turn, we cry out (as Joseph must have cried out) “God, how could this happen to me!?” And it’s easy for us to drown God’s response out with our cries and refuse to hear. Joseph, though, kept listening, and finally he heard that still, small voice from God that said to him, “Trust me. I have a plan and you have a part.” God’s ways are not always our ways. God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. God doesn’t always act in the ways we expect. The truth is that we may never fully understand everything that God is doing, but God said “Trust me, and all things will work together for good.” And for Joseph, and Mary, and Jesus – they did. Not without hardship, not without trial, not without suffering and not without tears – but all things did finally work together, and through these three, the world was blessed.

     Joseph isn’t the star of the show. He’s a lot like Rodney  Dangerfield – he gets no respect, he’s always in the background; he’s never quite front and centre, he’s often overlooked – but he’s there, and unless he had played his part perfectly, none of this plan would have worked. It takes a special quality to be a Joseph. I once heard of a Sunday School Christmas Pageant. There were two boys who wanted to play Joseph. Only one could get the part, of course, and the boy who didn’t get the part was jealous. He got cast as the innkeeper instead, and he began to plot his revenge against his rival. On the day of the pageant, everything was going according to plan. Joseph and Mary showed up at the door to the inn, and – well, you know the story. The inn-keeper answered and Joseph asked for a room. “Now,” thought the boy playing the innkeeper, “is my chance for revenge.” He had it planned. He’d leave the boy playing Joseph tongue tied and embarrassed. Rather than turning the couple away by telling them that the inn was full, he looked at his rival and said “Come on in. I’ll give you the best room I have.” But the boy playing Joseph was quick on his feet. After a moment’s hesitation, he looked past the inn-keeper into the inn and then said “You expect us to stay in a dump like this? Your barn would be better!” And the congregation laughed and applauded. Joseph saved the day again, and the play went on to its inevitable conclusion – ending with all the attention once again on Mary and Jesus.

     Joseph is an example for us all. We all have a purpose; we all have a part to play in God’s unfolding plan. It may not be the starring role. No one may notice our efforts. We may not get pats on the back. No one may remember us. It might take us a while to figure it out. And we have to puzzle it out. We have to listen to and for God’s voice. Others can walk the walk with us, but ultimately only God can direct us. But each and every moment – each one of us is a part of God’s plan in some way, and we have a purpose. To God, you’re vitally important. More than that – by God, you’re loved.

A Thought For The Week Of December 18, 2017

"This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:12) With Christmas fast approaching, I find my attention drawn ever closer to the incarnation - its meaning, its purpose and its implications. A line from C.S. Lewis seemed appropriate: "The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby." That's rather mind-boggling. The Supreme and Almighty God came to us in as vulnerable a way as possible: as "a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Babies are completely dependent on others; and completely vulnerable to those who would harm them. And yet, that is how God came. That picture of incarnation says two things to me. First, that God - having been vulnerable - understands what it is to be vulnerable. Those who are the vulnerable among us (and any of us might be vulnerable at any given moments - and some may always be vulnerable due to their circumstances) are not alone. God who was vulnerable understands the vulnerable and stands with them. Far from being abandoned - they are loved, perhaps in a specially intimate way because God has shared this condition. Second, this reminds me that God calls upon we who are able to look out for the vulnerable: to accept and welcome them; to protect them and their rights; to stand up when systems or society abuses them or tries to cast them aside. Jesus said that "whatever you do for the least of these you do for me." By "the least of these" Jesus was in fact speaking of the extremely vulnerable of our society. When we stand for them we stand for Jesus - because Jesus was one of them. Incarnation - that God took on human flesh - is especially important to my own understanding of the Gospel. Understanding the vulnerability that Jesus experienced through the incarnation reminds me of what my purpose as a Christian is - to be a voice for those whose voices are silenced, and to look out for those who through no fault of their own cannot look out for themselves, or at least who need help to do so.

December 17 2017 sermon: The Christmas Angel To Mary: Answering The Unanswerable

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

(Luke 1:26-38)

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     Like pretty much everybody, I love a good mystery. There’s nothing quite like reading or watching a good mystery – walking through the story with the characters and struggling with them to try to figure it all out. Sometimes I’m successful at solving the mystery and sometimes I’m not, but the fun is in the trying; the fun is in the existence of the mystery itself and the invitation the mystery represents to puzzle it out. I don’t think there’s anybody who doesn’t love a good mystery. Setting aside books and movies and TV shows, there are all kinds of mysteries in the world. What do we make of people who claim to have seen UFOs, or sasquatches, or yetis, or chupacabras? We might dismiss them as crazy, or we might just assume that they’re mistaken, or we might believe them, but the mystery is still intriguing, isn’t it? The fun is in wondering if it’s really true or not – or even if it’s possible! When I was a kid I was really into the whole UFO thing. There are a lot of really great UFO stories out there. I don’t know if many of you saw this in the news, but on June 17 of this year a wildlife photographer was taking photos in the marsh area near the General Motors headquarters in Oshawa, when he noticed this object off in the distance:

     He said 

“I was walking back to my car and I just saw something pop out of nowhere, way up high, far away in the sky. I thought it was a big turkey vulture so I just took a picture of it anyway and then it kind of hovered, sat there for a minute and then it took off. … A balloon wouldn’t go that fast and disappear … and it was too high. Nobody would be flying a kite there because it’s just railroad tracks and the road and there was nobody around there. … and where did it go? … It’s just really odd; I’ve never seen anything like that. … I don’t know what it is”

     I’ve been to Oshawa a few times – and seen a few things there (a few of them kind of strange!) – but I’ve never seen anything quite like that. It’s a mystery – and it’s close to home! You have to love it!

     There’s another – and far more significant – mystery that’s even closer to home for us. The Christian faith deals in mystery. The opening works of “A Song Of faith” - one of the United Church’s statements of doctrine – are “God is Holy Mystery, beyond complete knowledge, above perfect description.” And yet, for all that mystery, week after week we seek to know God better, even if we can’t know God perfectly. But rather than simple answers we proclaim mystery; rather than a simplistic view of God we proclaim a God who is Holy Mystery. Advent is a season of mystery, as we reflect on the nature of the God who boggles the human imagination by becoming one of us. During Communion services we often summarize the mystery of our faith with the words “Christ has died – Christ is risen – Christ will come again,” but I want to suggest that there’s a fourth and essential part of the equation that gets left out: Christ was born! That’s just as mysterious! At one time in my life of faith I would have called myself an Easter Christian and argued up and down and sideways that Easter was the central celebration of the Christian faith; that without the resurrection Christianity would be emptied of its power. Now, I haven’t abandoned either Easter or the resurrection. I still don’t believe there would be a Christian faith (at least not one we would recognize) without the resurrection, but I have come to the conclusion that I’m more of a Christmas Christian. Resurrection is central to our faith, but crucifixion and resurrection lost their focus if they themselves aren’t grounded in incarnation – in the birth of Jesus as God in the flesh, as strange and mysterious as that sounds.

     The idea of God in the flesh may sound mysterious to us – but it was just as mysterious two thousand years ago to those who were closest to the event.

The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

     There’s the question, folks: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Actually, you can even set aside the last part of that question. It’s not that I don’t believe that Mary was a virgin, but maybe – just maybe – that isn’t really the point. Maybe all that really needs to be said is, “How can this be?” How could God be one of us? Why would God be one of us? Maybe the process by which that happened is less important than simply that it happened! Advent pushes us to consider the mystery of incarnation; to ask the questions and to embrace the uncertainties and in doing so to be touched and transformed by God.

     Of Jesus, A Song of Faith says,

In response to who Jesus was and to all he did and taught, to his life, death and resurrection, and to his continuing presence with us through the Spirit, we celebrate him as the Word made flesh, the one in whom God and humanity are perfectly joined, the transformation of our lives, the Christ.

     It is this union of the divine with the human that is the greatest of mysteries. This is the ultimate display of divine love – that God, who needs nothing, would nevertheless choose to experience the all that accompanies the existence of those whom God has created: joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, friends and enemies, loyalty and betrayal, and even birth and death. “This is love,” John wrote, “not that we loved God but that [God] loved us and sent his Son.” This is divine love freely given to us – the depth of which is perhaps the greatest of mysteries.

     Advent and Christmas are invitations into the mystery of incarnation. When Mary asked, “How can this be?” the angel gave her the only answer possible: “the Holy Spirit will come upon you.” The Holy Spirit guides us ever so gently into the mystery that is God’s love, demonstrated by the coming of Jesus, and then ever so slowly the mystery is unraveled until we too come face to face with God’s presence among us and with God’s presence around us and with God’s presence within us, and, being touched and inspired and even overwhelmed by the experience, we then say as did Mary “let it be with me according to your Word.” The mystery of incarnation reminds us that we are indeed to wait upon God – to wait for God’s call upon our lives and to respond to it humbly, serving God even as God served us through Christ. Let us, then, celebrate the mystery that is the birth of Jesus, and that God appeared in him.

     Incarnation – God in the flesh – raises a lot of questions, but ultimately the Holy Spirit provides the answer – God is love, God came to us out of love, God came to bring us love, and God calls us to love. In response to that call, may we – like Mary – say, “let it be with me according to your will.”

A Thought For The Week Of December 11, 2017

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem ..." (Psalm 122:6a) The city of Jerusalem has been much in the news lately. I have my opinions, but here I'm not really interested in the politics around the status of Jerusalem. I'm interested in Jerusalem as a symbol; Jerusalem as a spiritual hope - an appropriate issue to reflect upon during Advent. The city plays an important role in the biblical story. It's the centre of the home of biblical Israel; the place where the temple was located. It's a troubled city - not just today but for millennia, and the Bible portrays that. We aren't asked to pray for the peace of a city that enjoys peace, after all. It was devastated by Babylon as the exile approached; it was declared to be troubled (or frightened, or disturbed) by the news of the birth of Jesus; Jesus referred to it as the place that killed the prophets; and it was, of course, the place of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and later of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans. Although the temple has never been rebuilt, the city remains the symbolic centre of religious life for the Jewish people, and for the Muslim world it's the home of the Al-Aqsa mosque, considered the third most holiest site in Islam. Many Christians consider it holy - although, to be honest, I consider the city more important historically than spiritually. But as a spiritual symbol, Jerusalem matters. I take the concept of the "New Jerusalem" very seriously. Revelation 21:2 speaks of "... the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God ..." As a symbol, Jerusalem (the former home of the Jewish temple, and the only place, really, where such a temple could be rebuilt) represents the dwelling place of God. The idea of a New Jerusalem to come reminds me that the day will come when all that separates God from humanity will be removed - and there will be peace not only between God and humanity, but among humanity as well. This New Jerusalem will be a place not to be contested among nations, but to be open to all peoples. This New Jerusalem to come won't have walls or boundaries to keep people out. Instead, it will have the presence of God welcoming people in. It will be whatever reality it is that God will call into being at the appointed time, when righteousness will rule and perfect reconciliation will be achieved. When we "pray for the peace of Jerusalem," of course we're praying for the peace and security of all those of any religious faith within the earthly city - but we are also praying for the inbreaking of God's Kingdom; the establishment of God's reign on earth. To "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" is, in a sense, another way of saying, "Come, Lord Jesus, come," with the establishment of peace that Christians believe his return will mean.