"(H)Anna(h)'s Story" (sermon)

This year, in Advent and Christmas, we are doing things a little bit differently - instead of a more traditional "sermon," each week our reflection is going to take the form of story-telling, told from the perspective of someone who was waiting for Jesus.

 

 

Sunday November 28, 2021

First Sunday of Advent

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Scripture:  Luke 2:22-40

 

I wonder what my parents were thinking when they named me Hannah, after our ancestor in faith, the mother of Samuel.  She lived a bitter life, longing for a child, weeping and praying in the temple; and then when Samuel was born, the first Hannah handed him over as a young child so that he could live his whole life in the temple.  Maybe by naming me after that first Hannah, my parents doomed me to a life in the temple.

 

Like Hannah’s son, I too am a prophet.  I can’t control when God-whose-name-is-holy speaks to me, but I recognize their voice, and I share it with others.

 

When I was still a young girl, my parents arranged my marriage for me.  He was a kind man, but oh, so old.  He was looking for a nursemaid more than a wife.  We lived together for seven years before he died.  Like I said, he was kind, and he never abused me, but I was so busy caring for him, that I didn’t have time to speak to God-whose-name-is-holy.  When he died, I was sad, but we were still only just getting to know one another.

 

And when he died, I was all alone in the world.  My parents had died by that time so I couldn’t return to their house.  My husband had no other family members.  We had had no children.  I was a widow in the truest sense of the word – I had nobody.

 

And so I went to sit outside the temple to beg for others to help me – after all, God-whose-name-is-holy tells us that we are to care for widows and orphans and foreigners living in our land.

 

But it wasn’t too many days before the temple officials recognized that I was a prophet, and so they offered me a small room to sleep in, in exchange for sharing the words of God-whose-name-is-holy with the people who came there to worship.  From that day on, I never left the temple again.

 

It was a small room, and my routine didn’t vary from day to day, but at last I had time to spend in prayer and fasting.

 

The months slipped by, and then the years, each day the same as the day that came before.  The years passed, more than 60 of them, and now I am an old woman.

 

The day that I’m telling you about, it began the same as every other day.  There was nothing that made it any different in its beginning – there was nothing to tell me that this was going to be a special day.  People were coming and going from the temple, offering their sacrifices, the way that the law of our people tells them that they are to do.  And I was sitting in my room, surrounded by the heavy stone walls, with my heart open to hear whatever God-whose-name-is-holy wanted to tell me.

 

Suddenly, and I don’t know why, I felt a strong urge to leave my room and go out to the courtyard where the people were gathered to offer their sacrifices.  I have lived long enough that I have learned not to ignore these urges.

 

When I got out to the courtyard, there was Simeon.  I think that he was a prophet like I am.  He didn’t live at the temple, but he was there almost every day, offering sacrifices and prayers.  Rumour has it that God-whose-name-is-holy had told him that he would meet God’s Messiah before he died.

 

Well, Simeon is old, just as I am old, and he was running out of time to meet this Messiah, this one who was to be anointed, this one who was promised to lead us to freedom.

 

And this day, there was Simeon in the courtyard, and there was a commotion around him.  He had walked over to a pair of young parents, and taken their child from their arms.  This family was obviously here in the temple to offer their sacrifice of a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, as is expected for the birth of their firstborn son.

 

And Simeon took this young boy in his arms, and began to cry out:  “Lord, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”

 

And then God-whose-name-is-holy spoke to me more clearly than I have ever heard the holy voice before, telling me that this infant was the Messiah – the one we were waiting for.  And I began to sing, praising God, and my old feet began to dance.  And I told everyone who was there in the temple that day, and everyone who came every day after, that I had met the Messiah, that God’s time had come.

 

And afterwards, as I was walking back to my room, a beam of light shone into the dusky temple, where I had never seen a beam of light shining before.  And I knew that something was different.  I knew that the world would never be the same again.

 

 

“Prophetess Anna”

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1639)

Used with permission.

"King of Kings? And Lord of Lords?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday November 21, 2021 – The Reign of Christ

 

Reading #1:  Revelation 1:4-8

 

Reflection – Part 1

 

Today’s celebration of the Reign of Christ, or Christ the King is a fairly recent addition to the church year.  It wasn’t celebrated as a special day by our ancient ancestors in faith, the way that Easter would have been celebrated.  Instead, Jesus was recognized as the ruler over our lives each and every day.

 

Throughout the generations, the church has written many different creeds or statements of faith – “We believe…”  Some of the better-known ancient creeds include the Apostles Creed, which some of you may have memorized in your Sunday School years, or the Nicene Creed which is a bit longer and I still stumble over some of the words if I recite it without being able to read it.  Back in the late 1960s, a group of United Church of Canada members sat down to try and express the faith that we share in a new creed, and what they came up with ended up becoming what might be the most familiar creed in the United Church of Canada – the one that begins “We are not alone. We live in God’s world. We believe in God, who has created and is creating; who has come in Jesus, the word made flesh, to reconcile and make new; who works in us and others by the Holy Spirit.”  We still call this The New Creed, even though it is more than 50 years old!

 

But the oldest creed of the church, that seems to have been in existence within years of Jesus’s death, is a very simple creed – easy to memorize – just three words – “Jesus is Lord.”  A basic statement – one that boils faith down to the essentials – a statement of faith that isn’t saved for the last Sunday before Advent, but one that could be said every day of a person’s life.  “Jesus is Lord.”

 

And, despite its brevity, it is also a very radical statement to make; because if we proclaim that Jesus is Lord, then we are also saying that nothing else can be the Lord over our lives.  In the time shortly after Jesus’s death, when the church was first being established, if you were to say that Jesus is Lord, you are also saying that the Emperor isn’t.  The pursuit and acquisition of wealth can’t be the Lord over our lives.  The worship of celebrity can’t be the Lord over our lives.  Worship of the self can’t be the Lord over our lives. If Jesus is Lord, then I’m not.

 

Like I said, the celebration of Christ the King or the Reign of Christ is a relatively recent addition to the church calendar. In 1925, the pope at the time was worried about the increase in secularism in the world – remember that this was the roaring 20s, just after the end of the Great War and the Spanish Flu.  Politically, this was also a time of great instability, with many of the royal houses across Europe crumbling, leaving people searching for anything that would offer stability.  And the pope suggested that the Church should offer an alternative to movements like fascism and communism.  Instead of secularism or fascism or communism or capitalism being the lord over our lives, Jesus Christ is the lord over our lives.  And so this Sunday celebration was established.

 

And what a great reading from the book of Revelation this is for today.  John, the author of this book, is greeting the churches that this book is addressed to – greeting them all with the full power and glory of Christ.  Listen to the titles that John gives to Jesus – the faithful witness. The firstborn of the dead. Ruler of the kings of the earth.  The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, who is and who was, and who is to come.  The almighty one.

 

This is who we worship – not just a king, but the king over all other kings.  Not just a lord, but the lord over all other lords.  I’m ready to break out into the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah now!

 

But at the same time I am challenged when I think of what a king means.  Kings and Emperors and other royal rules tend to like their power.  They tend to be willing to do whatever it takes to hold on to that power.  Kings in the history of the world have a troubling association with violence and wars.  And so if I think about Jesus as a king, then there are some troubling associations that come to mind.

 

And with that, I’m going to invite ________ to share our second reading with us, which comes from the Good Friday story.

 

 

Reading #2:  John 18:33-38

 

Reflection – Part 2

 

Isn’t this a powerful image?  Jesus, who has been arrested and beaten, is standing before Pilate, the governor, the Roman Emperor’s direct representative in that part of the Empire.

 

By all rights, we should be worshipping Pilate as king.  After all, he is the one with all of the power in this situation.  He hold the decision about whether Jesus lives or dies in his hands.  He is likely dressed in a royal purple robe, and he may have a crown on his head.

 

And yet today, we celebrate Jesus as our King, as our Lord, as the one who reigns over us.  Jesus, from the backwater of Galilee in the insignificant province of Judea, who is bleeding and in chains, who is so very, very vulnerable.  Jesus who is about to be crowned with thorns, and enthroned on a cross.  This is who we say is our King.

 

It is a powerful image.

 

Pilate asks Jesus directly – are you the King of the Jews?  Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not from this world.  If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.”  Jesus is knows that this is how the world works – kings and kingdoms of this world fight to hold on to power, the do whatever they can, fair or foul, to make sure that their power isn’t taken away.  Jesus is right – if he were an earthly king, with a kingdom from this world, not only would his followers be fighting on his behalf, but Jesus himself would be leading them into battle.

 

But instead, Jesus is here before Pilate, arrested and about to be crucified.

 

Jesus is turning the whole idea of kings and kingdoms on its head – he’s re-writing the book on what it means to be a king.  Being a king no longer means lusting after power.  Being a king no longer means ruling by violence.  Being a king no longer means a hierarchy with a small number on top being served by the majority below.

 

Instead, Jesus the King embraces his vulnerability.  Jesus the King reigns through radical love rather than through violence, even when that radical love and non-violence resulted in his death.  Jesus the King rules over a kingdom where the last and the least of these are seated in the place of honour at the feast.  Jesus the King rules over a kingdom where there is a place for everyone at the table, and where everyone is well fed.  Jesus the king offers healing to everyone who is broken, and community to everyone who is lonely.

 

Jesus is the king, not because he overthrows all other kings, but because he overthrows every concept of what a king should be and replaces it with something that is both new and radically different.

 

And so, to me, the question of the day is how can we celebrate both aspects of Christ the King?  How can we celebrate with both trumpets and fanfares and cries of Hallelujah to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords; as well as the King of vulnerable love and humble service and radical welcome?

 

Because I think that it can’t be an either-or here – it has to be a both-and.  Jesus the King is both the glorious Alpha and Omega, and the one who lies bleeding before Pilate.

 

And this is who we proclaim to the world when we say that Jesus is Lord.  This is the one who is Lord over our lives, so that we can’t have any other lords or kings before him.

 

Jesus is Lord.  Amen.

 

 

“What is Truth?” Christ and Pilate

By Nikolaĭ Nikolaevich Ge

Used with Permission

"The Beginning of the Birth Pangs" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

November 14, 2021

Scripture Reading:  Mark 13:1-8

 

 

How many times has the end of the world been predicted?  In recent years, I think of the Mayan Calendar prediction that said that the world was going to end on December 21, 2012.  Ronald Weinland has also been on the news a couple of times, having predicted the end of the world in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2019. A bunch of self-proclaimed prophets claimed that the world was going to end in the year 2000.  Going further back in time, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, thought that the world was going to end in 1836, and Martin Luther, the founder of the Lutheran Church, thought that the world was going to end no later than 1600.  In fact, if you were to believe every publicized prediction of the end of the world, the world should have ended almost 200 times in the past 2000 years!

 

But Jesus, in our reading today, tells us that no one knows when the world is going to end.  Not you.  Not me.  Not world-renowned theologians.  Not popular televangelists.

 

The reading that ______ shared with us today falls into the category of “apocalyptic” literature.  In the bible, the best-known apocalyptic writings come from the book of Revelation, but you also find apocalyptic writing in the gospels, and even earlier, in the Book of Daniel.  They tend to be filled with vivid images, and can be confusing or scary.

 

And pop-culture has taken this idea of apocalypse and run with it.  In this genre, something has happened to cause the collapse of society, and often the death of the majority of people.  Margaret Atwood’s Mad-Addam Trilogy would fall into this category, with environmental collapse as the cause.  The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndam is an older example, where humans lose their eyesight and the country is taken over by triffids – murderous walking plants.  The scariest book I have read in recent years was Second Sleep by Robert Harris – this is set almost 2000 years after the destruction of civilization as we know it due to a massive collapse of the Internet.

 

I have mentioned before that I don’t do scary – books or movies – and that I have a very low threshold for what I consider to be scary! And so I generally stay away from these apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic books and movies.  Almost without exception, they portray the world that comes after the apocalypse as more violent, more dangerous, more fearful, than the world before the apocalypse.

 

But that is where pop culture and bible apocalypses are different.  In biblical apocalypse stories, it is the world before the apocalypse that is scary and dangerous, and the world that follows the apocalypse is a good world, a world where God is fully present, a world where all of God’s promises of peace and joy and love are fully realized.

 

In the apocalypse story that we read today, Jesus and his disciples are standing just outside the temple in Jerusalem.  It is just days before Jesus is going to be crucified.  It has been a tense couple of days, as Jesus has been arguing with the spiritual leaders in the temple.  I can just picture those disciples, after the tension of those debates, taking a shaky breath and making a comment in passing, a bit like we might comment on the weather.  “Look at the amazing architecture of the temple here.  I never could have imagined such a huge and spectacular building!”

 

But Jesus isn’t done with the high-stakes teaching; and so in response to their tentative comment, he tells them that not a single stone in the temple will be left standing, there will be wars and rumours of wars, nation will rise against nation, and there will be earthquakes and famines.  This is scary stuff, he’s talking about.

 

But the thing is, these things – the famines and wars and earthquakes – they aren’t part of the world after the apocalypse; they are part of the world before the apocalypse.  They are part of the present day world – the world that Jesus was living in, and the world that we are still living in.  2000-some-odd years after Jesus was talking to his disciples, we are still living in a world where earthquakes happen, where there are famines, where nation rises up against nation.

 

If you look at the word “apocalypse,” it means revelation.  It means that something is being revealed.  It means that the mask is being taken off, and the true face is being revealed.  It means that the superficial world is being peeled back so that the real world can be revealed.  The only thing that should be scary about this is the unfamiliarity.  We lose the familiarity of our broken world with its famines and wars, but in exchange for that, we gain the real-er world that is the world as God wants it to be.

 

Today’s reading ended with Jesus saying, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”  I found that to be a very powerful image.  I have never given birth, I have never been in labour, but I can imagine that it is a scary and painful thing to go through.

 

You may have heard of the TLC television show, I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.  Each episode follows the story of a person who didn’t know that they were pregnant until they are giving birth.  There is a YouTuber, Mama Doctor Jones, who is an Obstetrician Gynaecologist, who watches episodes of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant and offers medical commentary on what is happening.  One thing that she frequently comments is that if you didn’t know that you were pregnant and you go into labour, you would probably think that you were dying.  You would think that your world was ending.  Even though there is usually new life waiting for you on the other side of that labour, if you didn’t know that, then labour would be terrifying.

 

And Jesus says that the world as we know it is the beginning of labour, the beginning of the birth pangs.  All of the scary and terrible things in our world – wars, earthquakes, pandemics, climate change – all of this isn’t the post-apocalyptic world – all of this is the brokenness of our current world – the brokenness that will be peeled back so that the real-er world, God’s world, can be fully revealed.  The brokenness will be transformed into a world of love and peace and justice and joy.

 

And so apocalypses, in the biblical sense of things, aren’t things that we need to be scared of.  They are the revelation of God’s world.

 

The psalm writer tells us that “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”  The pain of the world we are living in, all of this pain is going to end some day.  A time is coming when the labour pains will be over and new life will be here.  A time is coming when the brokenness of all of creation will be transformed into healing and wholeness.

 

When we trust that this revelation is going to happen – when we trust that God’s goodness will have the final say over all of the pain and grief of the world – the name that we give to this is hope.  Hope is the trust that better things are coming.  Hope is believing that the labour pains will eventually end, no matter how long they linger on.

 

And if we believe that a better world is coming, what can we do in the here-and-now to live as if this world was already here?  How can we live in the brokenness, knowing that peace and love and joy will have the final word?

 

Amen.

 

 

Image:  “Beginning the Reveal”

loren chipman on flickr

CC BY-NC 2.0

"Noticing. And Acting." (sermon)

Sunday November 7, 2021

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Scripture Reading:  Mark 12:38:44

 

 

In our Wednesday morning bible study, it has taken us just over two years, but this past week we finished our slow read through the Gospel of Mark.  All 16 chapters, at a rate of a couple of verses a week.  We were aiming for depth, rather than speed!

 

Last winter, we read and discussed the story that we heard this morning – the story of the widow who put two small copper coins – everything that she had to live on – into the temple treasury. At the end of our conversation, I commented to the group that I wished that I had recorded our conversation, because I knew that we were going to be reading this story in November, and I could have re-played our conversation rather than writing a sermon, because as a group, we had explored this story so well!  But I didn’t record that conversation, so I am going to have to rely on my memory for what was said that day.

 

Our conversations that week began with the widow, commenting on the depth of her faith and her devotion to put everything that she had into the offering box there in the temple where Jesus and his disciples were sitting.  Some of our group members said that they wished that they could have the faith of the widow – to love and trust God so much that they would offer everything to God.

 

But we were doing a deep and careful reading of the story, and our problems began when we noticed, not what Jesus says, but what he doesn’t say with respect to this woman.  Jesus sees her and what she is doing, then he turns to his disciples and says, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

 

If you listen carefully, you might see where this is leading.  Nowhere does Jesus say, “Now, go out there and be like the widow.”  Jesus doesn’t say, the way that he says at other times, “Go, and do likewise.”  Jesus doesn’t even say about her, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

 

If you listen carefully to the story, Jesus doesn’t praise the widow, or what she is doing.  He only observes her and tells his disciples what she is doing.

 

Our troubles that week at bible study continued when we tried to connect this story to other parts of the bible.  The problem is, Jesus never wants people in poverty to give away the little that they have to live on.  Instead, Jesus tends to do the opposite – Jesus tends to feed people who are hungry and heal people who are sick.  Jesus’s ministry was focused on lifting people out of poverty, not pushing them further into it.

 

The problem deepened when we looked to what had come immediately before Jesus observed the widow.  Jesus has just warned his follower to beware of the scribes, the religious leaders; and one of the things that he is condemning them for is “devouring widows’ houses.”

 

God wanted the temple, the religious system of that time and place, to care for people who were in need – all through the laws of the Old Testament, we hear God commanding God’s people to care for widows and orphans and foreigners who are living in your land.  But here, Jesus observes that the system that was supposed to care for this widow, has instead been corrupted to take from her what little she had to live on.

 

So… what can we take away from this story?  If Jesus isn’t praising the widow for her faithfulness but is instead condemning the system that keeps her in poverty rather than providing for her, I wonder if we are perhaps called to be, not like the widow, but like Jesus instead?

 

Jesus, sitting there in the temple with his followers, sees the widow put in her two coins and then points her out to his disciples, telling them what she was doing.  I wonder if anyone else who was there that day noticed her?  Some people were putting large sums of money – I bet that they were noticed.  But I doubt if anyone else saw what that nameless widow had done.

 

I would suggest that our call, as the Body of Christ, is to notice the systems in our world that oppress some people and keep them in poverty.  We are called to notice the metaphorical widows in our world.  We are called to call out the systems in our world that keep some people in poverty.  And as we try to live into the kingdom of God – this glorious time that we trust is coming when systems of oppression will be no more, and when everyone will be well-fed at God’s banquet – we are called to live as if that time was already here, sharing out of our abundance so that everyone has a place at the table.

 

For that time is coming; and when it gets here, do we want to be on the side of those who didn’t see the widow; or do we want to be on the side of noticing and of acting?

 

Amen.

 

 

Picture by Matteo Angelino on flickr

CC BY-NC 2.0