"Hungering for Relationship" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday March 8, 2026 – 3^rd Sunday in Lent
Scripture Reading:  John 4:5-42

I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the Woman at the Well that Jesus encounters in today’s bible story.  She is a much loved “character” from the story of Jesus’s life – I think I’ve mentioned before that I listen to a handful of preaching podcasts each week, and one of the hosts, Dr. Karoline Lewis from the Sermon Brainwave podcast, is a New Testament scholar with a focus on the Gospel of John.  It’s a running joke anytime she speaks on the podcast or elsewhere that she will defend the Gospel of John as the best gospel right to her last breath.  And in this week’s episode of the podcast, she told us that her favourite story in her favourite gospel was the story that we read this morning.

So what do we know about this woman?  She is unnamed for one thing – we never learn her name.

We also know that she is a Samaritan, and this is significant because the Samaritan people and the Jewish people didn’t get along.  They really didn’t get along.  The didn’t get along in the way that close neighbours who have a lot in common sometimes don’t get along with each other.  Both groups claimed descent from Abraham and Sarah, from Isaac and Rebekkah, from Jacob and his many wives.  Both groups worshiped the same God, the God of their ancestors.  But due to some schism in their distant path – possibly related to the schism of the kingdom that had been united under King David and King Solomon into two separate kingdoms, the two groups practiced their religion differently, and had different holy sites.  And a religious squabble became an, “I don’t like you because you’re not like me so I’m not going to talk to you” difference of opinions.

As the narrator tells us as an aside in this story, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.”

So we know that the woman at the well is a Samaritan.  An outsider, if you had a Jewish perspective.  Or maybe it was Jesus who was the outsider to her?  What else do we know about her?

We know that it was noon, and she was coming to the well alone.  This is unusual behaviour.  Hauling water is heavy work.  In Jesus’s time and place, there was no running water, and in many places in the world today, there is no running water.

When I lived in Tanzania, in East Africa, I lived on the hospital compound, and I could usually turn on the tap in my house and water would come out. (Though water outages were common enough that I usually kept a couple of jugs of water stashed just in case.)  But for many Tanzanians, this isn’t the reality.  They would fetch jugs and buckets of water from either a community tap, or a local spring, or a river, and haul it home to use for drinking, for cooking, and for washing.  In Tanzania, like in many places, hauling water is the work of women and children.  I would regularly see women helping each other lift 25-litre (6-gallon) pails of water onto each other’s heads, each one with a piece of banana leaf floating on top to keep the water from sloshing over the side, then trekking a kilometer or more back home.

It is heavy work.  It is hot work.  It is work that is done together, as it is impossible to lift a bucket that heavy on to your own head.  And it is not work that is usually done in the heat of the day.

It is very unusual for the Samaritan woman in today’s story to be at the well alone, and in the middle of the day.  Why wasn’t she there in the cool of the early morning or the evening with the other women from her village?  It’s almost as if she has been shunned by her neighbours, not welcomed in the places and groups where she would normally expect to be.

What else do we know about her?  We know that she has been married five times, and is currently with a partner to whom she is not married.

I don’t know how you have heard this story interpreted in your past, but I know that I have come across an interpretation in both sermons and in songs that names this woman as promiscuous, and that her neighbours are condemning her, shunning her for her promiscuity.  But there is absolutely nothing in the story that makes this claim.  And knowing what I know about how marriages worked in the first century in the Ancient Near East, I also know that she likely had very little agency in her marital state.

So why might she have had so many husbands?  Option 1 is that she had been widowed 5 times over.  And the effect that this would have had on her mental and emotional health is heartbreaking.  If there had been genuine love and affection in her marriages, five times she has dealt with the grief of widowhood.  And even if the marriage was more of a business transaction as was the practice of her time and place, five times she has lost the security of marriage and has been thrust into the vulnerability of widowhood.

And there are social implications of this too.  Even in today’s world, if a person were widowed five times over, the rumours fly that she or he is bad luck, or possibly guilty of murdering spouses.

If she hasn’t been widowed, the other option is that she has been divorced five times; and the most likely reason that a woman has been divorced multiple times is that she is infertile.  Marriage was about family security, and a woman who couldn’t offer that to her husband would be set aside in the hopes that a different wife might be able to do so.

And again, the emotional and social toll that this would have taken on her are immense.

Whether she has been widowed five times over, or divorced five times over, or some combination of the two, this woman seems to have been considered to be a bad luck token in her community; and as a result, she is hauling water alone at midday, without the companionship or help of the other women in her village.

And in comes Jesus.  And Jesus sees he for who she truly is.  Jesus doesn’t push her away, as if her presence might jinx him.  Jesus offers her the living water of faith and the Holy Spirit that he gives.

And I love seeing the dialogue that ensues.  She, a woman, an outsider to Jesus’s world, a woman who has been cast out from her expected social place in her village, this unnamed Samaritan woman engages in dialogue with Jesus, seeking deeper meaning and seeking to know God better.  I know that this Lent, we’re talking about hungering for God, but given that we are at a well this week, and Jesus is offering her living water, we might better say that this woman is thirsting for God.

Last week, if you were worshipping with us, we read the story about Nicodemus coming to Jesus with his questions, and it is fascinating to compare the two stories.  Nicodemus is named, unlike this week’s woman, likely because he is a man.  Nicodemus comes to Jesus hidden by the shadows of the night, while the woman this week comes to him by full daylight where anyone could see.  Nicodemus, after asking a couple of questions, just sort of fades away back into the night; whereas this Samaritan woman engages in a full dialogue with Jesus, then goes back to her village to share what she has learned with others.

Which, perhaps, makes her the very first evangelist, sharing the Good News with other people.

And, to me, it is in her return to her village that we see the crux of this story.  Because this woman who has been outcast, not part of society, grieving and working alone – because of her encounter with Jesus, she is empowered to start knocking on doors and reclaiming her place in society.  Maybe, in fact, claiming a more important place in society than she ever had before as the bearer of good news to her village.

Jesus saw her fully; and because she was fully seen, because of her encounter with the Living Water, she was able to reclaim her place in the community that had been denied to her for too long.  Because of her relationship with Jesus, she was able to rebuild relationships with her neighbours.

We are not created to be alone.  The ideal of humanity is not a hermit living in a cave on the side of a mountain with no human contact.  Yes, even for those of us who are introverts who crave alone time!  We are created for community.  We need each other, and we can only be fully human through relationship with each other.

We are created in the image of God, and the God in whose image we are created is community – the community of the Trinity, the three-in-one and the one-in-three.  God is community within Godself, and we are created in the image of community.

In a world that feels so fractured and isolating these days – sometimes because we are choosing our silos, and sometimes because people are pushed out – we hunger for relationship and for community.  We hunger for belonging, and for purpose that can be found in finding our place in the interconnected and interdependent web that we are a part of.  Like the woman at the well, we hunger to be seen, and we hunger to be accepted.  And through our relationships – our relationship with God and our relationships with each other – we can find wholeness.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

Image:  “Fetching Water, Maradi, Niger”

Photo Credit:  Water Alternatives Photos on flickr

Used with Permission

 

"Hungering for Mystery" (sermon)

Two River Pastoral Charge
Sunday March 1, 2026 – 2^nd Sunday in Lent
Scripture Reading:  John 3:1-17

Let me begin with a story.  Last summer, at VBS – Vacation Bible School – our theme was water.  We had activities and experiments all involving water.  We had a lifeguard for the afternoon and spent a couple of hours down at the wharf.  And we read some stories from the bible involving water.  We read the story about how Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea so that the people could cross safely to the other side.  We read the story about how Jesus calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and then the story about how Jesus and Peter were able to walk on water.  And we read the story of Jesus’s baptism.

When we read the story of Jesus’s baptism, we also talked about what is baptism.  Some of the VBS participants had seen a baptism, but others hadn’t, so then we took a life-sized baby doll – about the size and weight of a 6-month old baby – thank you, Elizabeth, for letting us use your baby doll – and we did a baptism right there in the sanctuary at Long Reach, talking about what we were doing each step of the way, and why.

At the end, when the kids were heading back out to the River Room, a couple of the older girls stayed behind and came up to me and said, “We still don’t get it.  How does the water do anything?  We don’t understand.”

And I was honest with them.  I told them that I don’t really understand it either.  How can a splash of water change a person’s life?  How can marking someone’s forehead with the sign of the cross clothe them in Christ?  How can this strange ritual that we do convey to us the love of the Creator of the Universe?

Like my questioners, I don’t truly understand how baptism works, but I trust that it does.  I trust that through the words and the water, God tells us, “I love you,” and that the Holy Spirit begins the process of transforming our lives.

In the end, though, baptism remains somewhat of a mystery.  In fact – you folks know that I’m a bit of a word nerd, and our word sacraments comes to us from Latin – sacramentum.  If we were to look for the Greek equivalent word, we would discover the word mysterion.  Our word “sacrament” is very closely related to our word “mystery.”

Let me take a bit of a detour here, because I also love reading mystery novels.  I love following the plot as it unfolds; I love trying to connect the clues before the fictional detective does; and I love the contract that mystery authors have with their readers that the good will prevail, and there won’t be any unresolved plot lines.

But the mystery that we are talking about when it comes to the sacraments is very different than the mystery that we are talking about when it comes to detective books and shows.  The mystery of God isn’t a puzzle to be solved.  There usually aren’t nice tidy endings.  The mystery of God is more mysterious than puzzling.  It is a mystery to be pondered rather than a mystery to be solved.

Thinking back to my questioners last summer, it felt a little bit like a Nicodemus moment.  Nicodemus was a religious leader from the denomination of the Pharisees.  The Pharisees had a very logical approach to their faith, where everyone could have access to God through following the laws of the Torah.   But there was something about Jesus that seemed to intrigue Nicodemus, that drew him to come to Jesus by night.  We don’t get to see his motivations, but I wonder if something had disrupted his faith, that had him questioning what he thought that he knew.

But Jesus’s answers only led to further confusion.  Jesus talks about being born anew, born from above.  Nicodemus tries to picture someone crawling back into their mother’s womb to be born again.  “I don’t understand.  I don’t get it.”  Jesus talks about the Spirit-Wind, how she blows where she chooses, and how we must be born of the spirit.  Nicodemus asks how can this be.  “I don’t understand.  I don’t get it.”

And this is the last that we hear from Nicodemus in this chapter.  Jesus keeps on talking, but Nicodemus… he just sort of fades away, back out into the night.  He came to Jesus seeking clarity, but leaves with even more questions than he came with.

But I wonder if this is how it is with God.  That the more that we think we understand God, the further we are from God.  That God is Holy Mystery, to be contemplated, to be pondered, rather than understood.

As we hunger for God, we also hunger for mystery, we hunger for something that is beyond our ability to comprehend.  We hunger for a love that is so deep, so broad, so un-understandable, so all-encompassing that, like Nicodemus, we are shaken loose from all that we thought that we knew.

And in our hunger… in that mystery… God is there.

 

“Look Up for Faith, Hope, and Love”
Edie Mae Herrel
Used with Permission

"Hungering for Wholeness" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday February 22 – 1^st Sunday in Lent
Scripture Reading:  Matthew 4:1-11

What do you long for?  What does the deepest part of you yearn for?  What is it that your spirit craves?  I know that our theme in this season of Lent is “Hungering for God” but I want you to set aside what you learned in Sunday School where “Jesus” is the answer to every question that is asked.  What does your spirit hunger for?

In our bible story this morning, the one that ______ just read for us, we could answer this question in a very literal way.  Before the devil shows up, Jesus has been fasting in the desert for 40 days.  He has been out there in a barren rocky landscape with no water, no food, exposed to the heat of day and the frigid desert temperatures when the sun goes down.  And then the tempter shows up and says to him, “Why don’t you just turn all of those stone that are around you into bread?  You don’t need to suffer out here.  Turn the stones into bread and satisfy your hunger.”  And Jesus probably was pretty hungry at this point in time.  And pretty thirsty.  And pretty sunburnt. In addition to bread, his body was probably also craving shelter.  He was likely also craving the sight of even a single tree, or a spring bubbling up from the dry land.

Now this is probably a pretty extreme example, because, from a 21^st Century understanding of physiology, he needed all of these things.  Well, maybe not the sight of a tree, but the food and water part of the equation his body needed and was likely craving at that point in time.

Sometimes our bodies crave things that they need.  We feel hunger and thirst because we need food and water to survive.  I don’t think that’s the point of this story.  But sometimes our bodies crave things that they don’t need.  Sometimes I feel as though I need a cup of tea right now… but do I truly need it?  If I am thirsty, surely a glass of water will suffice?

We can take it one step further.  If you have ever experienced an addiction, or have ever talked to an addict, a person with an addiction doesn’t seek out the thing that they are addicted to, whether that be alcohol or a specific drug or food, they don’t seek out the thing because the thing makes them feel good.  Instead, an addict seeks it out because their body craves it. When you have an addiction, you don’t feel whole without the thing that you are addicted to.

And I wonder if that’s maybe the key to unlocking this story about Jesus.  The tempter is tempting him with things that might make him feel whole.  “Oh, you’re feeling hungry?  Here, these rocks will become bread, you can eat and feel full, feel complete.”

I find the second and third temptations of Jesus to be even more interesting than the first one, because I read them as being all about power.  Why would you throw yourself off the highest building anyone has ever seen, let alone imagined, and call in God’s angels to catch you as you fall?  Maybe so that people could see you jump, could see your supernatural rescue, could see your closeness to God.  If you were to pull a stunt like this, people would hail your goodness and your bravery, and there is power in the adulation of a crowd.

I tried to think of a contemporary example of this.  One that came to mind is to look at the number of people who attempt to climb Mount Everest every year.  In 2025, 850 reached the top of Mount Everest, which is especially remarkable when you consider that prior to 1953 nobody had reached the summit.  For some of these 850 people, this is the culmination of a lifetime of training and preparation, and the last of the “Seven Summits” that they want to climb.  But for others, it is done in a quest for social media fame. They climb with their own camera crew, and model expensive… and sponsored… clothing as they climb.  And it doesn’t come without risk – on average, 7 people per year die trying to ascend, and the narrow trail to the summit is paved by 200 bodies of climbers who died in the attempt but it is too dangerous to bring the bodies down.

For the social media mountaineers, would you do it if nobody would ever know that you made the climb, or are you doing it for the likes and follows?  There is power in spectacle.

And then there is the offer that the devil makes to Jesus of literal power.  You can rule over all of the kingdoms of the world, and have access to all of the splendours of the world.

This one is much easier to find a contemporary example of.  I’m not going to say that all politicians are in politics for the power, but you don’t have to look too hard to find politicians who are in it only for the power.  And then there is the power that comes with fame, the power that comes with wealth, the power that comes with a platform.  And then those with political, financial, or social power choose who to share that power with – look at the young men being given $50,000 signing bonuses and firearms and a license to harass, detain, abuse, and even kill with no accountability right now.  And those with political, financial, or social power choose who they have power over, to which all that I say is release the files.

Power gets us in to so many problems in the world.

So we have three temptations that Jesus faced in the desert wilderness.  But how do these connect with the question I started with – what does your soul hunger for?  What does your spirit long for?  What does your being crave?

It is sometimes said that we each carry a God-shaped hole within us, and if we don’t fill it with God, we will seek other things that can make us whole.  Substances.  Praise and acclaim.  Power.

My favourite variation on this saying comes from St. Augustine, who wrote in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”

There is nothing wrong with the hole.  There is nothing wrong with the restlessness.  But the choice is ours for how we fill the hole or how we satisfy the restlessness.  The list of how we, as humans, try to make ourselves whole is endless.  I can only know myself, and while power and spectacle aren’t tempting to me, I have to resist the temptation to make myself whole through busyness.

But as we long for wholeness, as we long for rest… well, maybe that Sunday School answer is the right one here.  Maybe Jesus is the answer.

I actually wonder if Jesus found the strength to resist the temptations because the God-shaped hole within him was already filled by God.  I believe that Jesus was both fully human and fully God, and so he didn’t need to seek wholeness through power or spectacle.  He was already whole.

But the good news is that we too can be whole.  The Holy Spirit is working in you.  And my prayer is that you might find wholeness by allowing God to fill the God-shaped hole in you; and that you might find rest and deep peace by resting in God.  Amen, and amen.

 

 

 

“A Choice”
Lauren Wright Pittman
Used with Permission

 

"Transfiguration Sunday + Annual Meeting = ???" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday February 15, 2026 – Transfiguration Sunday (and Annual Meeting Sunday)
Scripture Reading:  Matthew 17:1-9

It happens every couple of years that our Annual Meeting falls on Transfiguration Sunday, the Sunday before the beginning of Lent.  It is an interesting pairing.  When you read the story of the Transfiguration, about Jesus’s physical presence being transformed into light, alongside the ancient leaders of Moses and Elijah, and about the voice of God echoing from the heavens – this story feels all mystery and holiness and transcendence.  And beside this story, we have the very mundane business of financial reports and budgets and building maintenance and fundraisers.  You are excused if you feel a bit of whiplash moving between the two!

So the question that I asked myself this week was – what is the connection between the story of the Transfiguration and our annual meeting?  (You folks know that I like a good challenge!)

I actually think that the connection is maybe not as far-fetched as it might seem on the surface.  You see, Jesus’s disciples, after their encounter on the mountaintop, they didn’t stay on the mountaintop.  Even when Peter tried to prolong the experience by suggesting that he build some shelters for them to stay in, eventually Moses and Elijah disappeared, eventually the cloud of brightness dissipated, eventually Jesus returned to his normal appearance.  And then, after all of that, eventually Peter, James, and John accompanied Jesus back down off the mountainside to resume the work that they were doing.

But I also wonder how Peter, James, and John were changed by what they experienced on the mountaintop.  When we talk about Transfiguration Sunday, we are usually talking about how Jesus’s appearance is changed and transformed.  But I rather suspect that Peter, James, and John were also transformed by their encounter with the holiness of God.  I rather suspect that the people who walked down the mountain were different than the people who had climbed up it.  I rather suspect that their future ministry was different than their ministry had been before this encounter.

Which brings us to ourselves, and our experiences today.  I see the concept of church as combining both the transcendent and the practical.  When you read through my Minister’s report, or even the Annual Report as a whole, you will see both of these.  I talk about the transcendent experiences of worship and sacraments.  You will see baptisms recorded there, and the funerals we held.  All moments when we can encounter the holiness and the mystery of God.

And we are shaped by these moments of transcendence.  We are shaped by our worship; we are shaped by our participation in the sacraments; we are shaped by prayer.  And because our encounters with God change and transform us; like Peter, James, and John, our ministry is transformed.  Those encounters with God equip us to do the day-to-day work of churching – the work of making sandwiches for Romero House, the work of celebrating Pride Week, the work of managing the bank accounts of the church.

To me, church is always about balancing the two.  If we were to only have the mundane practical parts of church, we would be no different than a service club.  But on the flip side, if church was only about personally seeking encounters with the Divine, then we wouldn’t be carrying out God’s mission in our communities.

Our encounters with the Holy One shape us and inspire our mission, and our participation in God’s mission have us longing to draw close to the Divine Presence.

So I guess that maybe it is very appropriate to be having our annual meeting on Transfiguration Sunday!  For the work of the church and the worship of God are two sides of the same coin.

And may God bless us with Their presence, and may God equip us for Their mission this year and always.  Amen.

 

 

"Transfiguration" by JESUS MAFA
Used with Permission

"On Sideways Icicles and Guns Turned into Chocolate" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday February 1 – 4^th Sunday after Epiphany
Scripture Readings:  1 Corinthians1:18-31 and Matthew 5:1-12


I want to start by inviting you to let your imagination run wild!  I know that lots of you have a good imagination, and here is your chance to use it.

What is the wildest, most unexpected, most ridiculously good thing that you can imagine happening in the world?  This isn’t a rhetorical question – I actually want to hear your answers!  What is the wildest thing that you can imagine happening that would change the world for good?  Let’s have some fun with this – the crazier, more improbable, the better!

“I imagine a world where all weapons – every gun, every missile, every nuclear warhead – they are turned to chocolate.”
“I imagine a world where food is free for everyone and where farmers earn a fair salary.”
I imagine a world where every disagreement, big or small, is solved with ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors.’”
“I imagine a world where power imbalances have been eliminated, and where everyone has the same amount of power, no matter their gender, age, race, or nationality.”
“I imagine a world where icicles grow sideways and the hearts of ICE melt back into water as they run back to where they came from.”

Image Credit:  Diana Doncaster

Used with Permission.

 

I wanted to go as absurd as possible with this one, because Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is talking about wisdom and foolishness.  “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength."

What if what we thought of as foolishness – weapons turned to chocolate and the like – what if things that we think of as foolish are really wiser than we are able to comprehend?

And I ask this question because the other reading we heard today – the very well-known part of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount that is often call the Beatitudes or the Blessings – in that reading, Jesus is blessing some very unexpected groups of people.  Blessings that might sound foolish when we hear them, but also may be a reflection of God’s wisdom.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, the people who have no hope. Blessed are the people who are mourning, the people who are grieving.  Blessed are the meek and humble.  Blessed are the people who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness.  Blessed are the people who show mercy.  Blessed are the pure in heart.  Blessed are the peacemakers.  Blessed are the people who are persecuted because they are righteous.  Blessed are you when people insult you and harass you and speak all kinds of bad and false things about you.

OK Jesus – these are sounding almost as ridiculous as the wild and crazy changes to the world we were suggesting earlier!  Who would ever think that Jesus would be blessing the people who mourn, the people who are hopeless, the people who are meek?

Maybe we need to take a step backwards and begin with the question of “What is a blessing?” There are lots of different definitions to the word “blessing,” ranging from the social media #blessed, to a deeply theological definition of being able to see the present moment through the lens of the future.  But one of my favourite definitions of a blessing is to set aside or consecrate someone or something for God’s work.

Last Sunday at Westfield, we blessed a couple of prayer shawls that someone had knitted.  As we blessed them, we dedicated them, we set them apart so that they might be agents of God’s love, that whoever wraps themselves in those prayer shawls might be able to sense God’s love wrapping itself around them.  Those prayer shawls are blessed and set apart for God’s work.

I’ve also been asked to bless various items in the church building, from choir chairs to wall murals to food pantries. Each of these things, when it is blessed, is set apart for God’s use, so that God’s love and joy and hope and peace might be known through them.

I love blessing all of your pets too, when we do our Blessing of the Animals service.  The pets that we love are set apart to be agents of God’s love.  At weddings, I get to bless the couple’s marriage – that the marriage between two people might be a place where God’s work is done.  At the end of every worship service, I get to bless all of you – blessing you to be the Body of Christ, to be the literal hands and feet of Christ in the world.

Getting back to Jesus’s beatitudes though. If a blessing sets something apart for God, some of these beatitudes make more sense than others.  Blessed are the peacemakers – that one makes sense, because building peace is God work.  Blessed are the people who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness – again, that one makes sense, because their hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice and peace will spur them on to action so that God’s work can be done.

Some of them make less sense though. Blessed are the people who mourn and grieve.  How might their grief and mourning be part of God’s work?  Blessed are the hopeless and poor in spirit – this one really puzzles me, as hope itself is a gift from God.

But if God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, then what might God’s wisdom be?  If God’s foolishness is already beyond any human ability to comprehend, then God’s wisdom must go even further.  And what if it is only through what seems foolish that we can start to comprehend God?

I think that with these beatitudes, with these topsy-turvy blessings that don’t really make a lot of sense from our human understanding of the world, Jesus is teaching us about God’s topsy-turvy kingdom where foolishness is wisdom, where the last shall be first, where the hungry will be fed with good things, where swords are turned into ploughshares and guns are turned into chocolate, and where hearts of ICE melt with the warmth of love.

And even though this vision for the world might feel foolish, improbable, and impossible, what if we could trust in the foolishness of this vision? What if we could trust that this is God’s vision for the world, and then start taking baby steps in our own lives to live as if this world was already a reality? And what if more and more people joined us, walking the path of peacemaking, and humility, and hungering for righteousness?

I still might not understand all of these blessings of Jesus, but I do trust that there is a place in God’s kingdom for everyone who mourns, for everyone who is without hope – God’s love is embracing you, maybe even more than those of us who aren’t mourning at the moment.

And some day, this ridiculously good, foolish, peace-filled world is going to become reality, so that those of us who mourn will be comforted, those of us who hunger for righteousness will have that hunger satisfied, those of us who work for peace will be without any work left to do as weapons and oppression will be no more.

And may this time come soon.

And may this time come soon.

Amen.

"Looking for Light" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday January 25, 2026 – 3^rd Sunday After Epiphany
Scripture Readings:  Isaiah 9:1-4 and Matthew 4:12-23

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of great darkness – on them, light has shined.”

If that reading from Isaiah sounded a bit familiar, we most often hear it as one of the Christmas scripture readings.  If Martha/Pat had continued to read a bit further, if she had read on to verse six, we would have heard the even more famous verse:

For a child has been born for us,
     a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
     and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
     Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

But the lectionary doesn’t give us that verse today – instead, I suspect that we are supposed to focus on the first part of chapter 9 because the narrator of Matthew quotes from it right at the very beginning of Jesus’s ministry.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of great darkness – on them, light has shined.”

The people that Isaiah was speaking to were living in a land of great darkness.  30-ish years ago, the Assyrian army had conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, including the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali, and the people had been killed, carried away to exile, or fled south seeking safety in Jerusalem.

But even in the southern kingdom of Judah, things weren’t all sunshine and roses.  Even though they had held out against the Assyrian army, they were still a small nation surrounded by superpowers.  The people knew that they were at risk, and eventually, 100-ish years after Isaiah’s prophesy, it would be the Babylonian army that would destroy Jerusalem and carry the people into exile in Babylon.

And into this setting of a painful history, an uncertain future, and danger lurking around every corner, Isaiah proclaims, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of great darkness – on them, light has shined.”

600 years later, the author of Matthew begins Jesus’s ministry by quoting from Isaiah:  “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

600 years later, the reigning superpower had changed, but the threat was still there.  Now, instead of the Assyrian or Babylonian army, it was the Roman army who controlled the land.  You paid taxes and honoured the emperor in Rome on the threat of execution by crucifixion.

Empires in every time and every place have held on to their power using fear and violence.

And yet the author of Matthew introduces Jesus’s ministry by proclaiming that it is going to be about bringing light to people sitting in the shadows and darkness.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about light, and thinking about where I find light when our world today feels so very full of shadows.  In a world where preschool children can be kidnapped by the powers of the world and used as “bait”; in a world where an ICU nurse can be executed on the street by the powers of the world, where can I find light?  And I realized this week that the places where I am finding light these days is in community.

I found light this week in a gathering on Thursday bringing together the United Churches in southwestern New Brunswick to share in worship and a meal, and time spent together sharing what we are all up to these days.

I found light this week in videos of community coming together peacefully in the streets of Minneapolis to sing – 600 people walking through a neighbourhood and singing to people who are hiding behind locked doors:  “Hold on. Hold on. My dear one, here comes the dawn.”

And when the weight of the news feels too heavy to bear, I find light in turning off my computer and calling one of you to ask you, “How are you doing? What is going on in your world these days?”

I shouldn’t be surprised that the places where I am finding light right now are places of community.  After all, I believe that we are all created in the image of God, and I also believe that the God in whose image we are created is Trinity, is community within Godself. We are created in the image of Community, and we are created for community with one another.

And in a few minutes, we are going to be fed at the community table, the communion table, the table that welcomes everyone and where everyone can be well-fed.  We are going to break bread together, and be nurtured as God’s beloved community.

Just as those first disciples, Peter and Andrew, James and John, were drawn to the Light of the World, we too are called by the light and fed by the light.  And just as those first disciples were sent out into the world to bring the light to others, the question then becomes, how are we going to not just find the light in these shadowy times, but how are we going to be the light, or how are we going to reflect the Light of the World to bring hope to others?

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of great darkness – on them, light has shined.”

The light is always there.  As we light our Christ Candle at every gathering, we remind ourselves that there is nothing that can ever extinguish the light of Christ.  The world tried on Good Friday, but we are a resurrection people, and we know that the light is stronger and will always return.

And so let us seek out the light; let us be fed by the light, and then let us carry the light into the world so that others can see.

And may God give us the strength and the courage so to do.  Amen.

 

 

“For Those In Darkness (Light is Dawning)”
Lauren Wright Pittman
Used with Permission

"What is truth?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday January 18, 2026 – 2^nd Sunday after Epiphany
Scripture Reading:  John 1:29-42

I’ve been reading a book this week, a novel, that has me echoing Pontius Pilate’s famous question, “What is truth?”

The book is called, Everyone is Lying to You and I’m finding the genre hard to define.  It is sort of a murder mystery.  It is sort of a thriller, though not a super scary one because I don’t do scary, but it is hard to put down and is keeping me on the edge of my seat.  It is also sort of an exposé of social media influencer culture.

 

Very early on, the book pulls back the curtain to show us how what we see on social media is far from the truth.  That influencer who presents themself on Instagram as the perfect parent, chore charts perfectly organized, children dressed in matching outfits, house never in disarray?  Behind the scenes, she probably has a bevy of nannies and housekeepers, paid to help her present this life to the camera.  And that “tradwife” influencer, cosplaying a 1950s housewife, dressed in a just-below-the-knee housedress, making breakfast cereal from scratch, subservient to her husband who is the breadwinner of the family?  In reality, she manages a multi-million dollar company whose brand is herself, and her husband is now actually an employee of her company.

Social media influencers are lying to us, presenting a lifestyle to us as reality, when in actual reality, it is anything but.

What is truth?

The layers go deeper though.  This book is told through alternating narrators – two women who were best friends in college but who were estranged afterwards, but who then reconnect a decade later as they are both managing careers and children.  One has become a journalist, writing and editing for a floundering print magazine; the other has become a tradwife influencer, presenting her six children and chickens and 3-legged goat and scenic ranch to the world on social media.

In the world of the story, we see both women bending the truth.  The influencer loves her children but hates the pretend life she has created, yet continues to create content in that pretend life.  The traditional journalist may seem more trustworthy, but we get to see her curating the stories that she sends back to the magazine, deciding what to include and what to leave out.

What is truth?

And because these two women alternate back and forth telling the story, there is no all-knowing narrator, and there is no way of knowing how much of what they are saying is the actual objective truth.  Each character is choosing how much to tell us, the readers, and each character is interpreting the story through their own perspective and experience.  I, as the reader, have no way of knowing what they are leaving out, or what they are twisting in the telling.

What is truth?

I also find myself asking this question as I move through the world outside of this book.

In a world that feels increasingly divided, it feels like everything is presented to us with a spin.  Various media sources can be placed on a spectrum of left-leaning vs. right-leaning.  There is no such thing as totally unbiased reporting – reporters are always choosing what to include and what to leave out and how to interpret what they are witnessing; and in today’s world, it feels like the biases are becoming even stronger, that editorial positions are becoming more entrenched.

Politicians too, of all colours and stripes, are guilty of this too.  It is no longer enough to just support one party, we are encouraged to demonize and dehumanize the other side.  And we tend to accuse the other side of doing this, without recognizing that we, ourselves, are guilty of the same charge.

What is truth?

AI, Artificial Intelligence, is another force at work in the world that pushes us to ask this question.  As we scroll through the internet, how many of the images that we see are real, and how many are AI-generated?  Sometimes it is easy to tell – 7 fingers on one hand is usually a giveaway, or a video of an owl sheltering her owlets under her wing where the number of owlets keeps changing as you watch.  But sometimes it isn’t possible to tell.  The same goes for what we read – how many of the stories that we read are real, and how many are written by AI, generated through a series of prompts that someone fed into it?  Again, there are certain clues that you can look for if you know the tells – things like an m-dash, lists of three, or a distinctive authoritative yet confidential voice.  But it isn’t always possible to know.  A year ago, it was estimated that over 40% of Facebook posts were generated by AI - that percentage is likely even higher now.

What is truth?

The irony of the question that Pilate is asking, is that he is asking this question of Jesus; and shortly before Pilate asked his question, Jesus told his followers, his disciples, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”  Pilate is standing in front of The Truth, and yet he is not able to recognize the truth.

I suspect that at least some of you are starting to wonder if I’m ever going to get to the story from the bible that we read today!  I’ve taken the long way around to get here, but in today’s story, in contrast to Pilate, we have a number of people who encounter Jesus and who are able to see him for who he is.

Jesus approaches John the Baptist, who is doing his thing, baptizing people in the Jordan River, testifying to the light of God, and teaching the people about the Messiah who is to come.  As soon as Jesus walks by, John stops what he is doing, points at him and says, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”  Unlike Pilate, John is able to clearly recognize who Jesus is.

And then we have those first two disciples.  They had been disciples of John the Baptist, but after hearing their teacher proclaim that Jesus is the Lamb of God, they also immediately turn and follow Jesus.  Again, in that moment they have a much greater insight about who Jesus is than Pilate does.

And then one of those first disciples, Andrew, after hearing Jesus teach (and oh, I wish that there was some record of what Jesus said that day), Andrew went to find his brother, Simon Peter, and told him, “Come and see! I’ve found the Messiah!”

And so all of these people in today’s story – all of them are able to recognize the truth.

So turning from the story back to the world that we are living in – in a world where truth feels to be so slippery, how can we recognize the truth?

If we trust that Jesus is the truth, as he claims to be, then to recognize the truth, we can look for the places in the world where we recognize God.  Places where there is love.  Places where there is peace – a genuine peace, and not solely places where violence is suppressed.  Places where generosity and abundance abound.  Places where joy bubbles up in unexpected ways.

God is present when a neighbour lends a hand to another neighbour.  God is present when a community rallies together to protect the most vulnerable.  God is present when protestors walk through the streets without violence, singing together.  God is present when someone brings you a cup of tea… or coffee… and asks, “how are you doing?”  God is present in so many big and little ways in our world.

When we share our God Sightings at the start of each worship service, we are sharing the times when we have been especially aware of God’s presence, the times when we have noticed God working in the world.  And in a world of chaos, when truth seems slippery and we don’t know what we can trust, these are the moments we can turn to when we need to ground ourselves.

What is truth?  God is truth, and in the places where we find God, we will find truth.  And may God give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to love.  Amen.