"A Message from God" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday December 17, 2023 (Fourth Sunday of Advent)
Scripture Reading:  Luke 1:5-20

(This year, our Advent theme is focused on midwifery and birth. Each week, we will hear the story from the bible of someone who was a midwife, or who encountered a midwife. The waiting, the longing, the pain of the “not yet” – all of our Advent themes – are captured in the metaphor of a midwife, in the metaphor of birth.)

 

 

My name is Zechariah, of the tribe of Levi, a descendant of Aaron, and a priest in the eighth division of Abijah. My wife, Elizabeth, is also a descendant of Aaron, and I suspect that she would be an even better priest than I am, except that our laws forbid women from entering the most holy parts of the temple where God-whose-name-is-holy resides.

 

We were married when we were very young, and we grew up together and we grew old together. When we were first married, we assumed that we would have a large family just like most of our neighbours, but as the years passed, that dream slowly faded.

 

Elizabeth was heart-broken. She told me that she felt as though she had failed at the most important thing that she was supposed to do. My heart broke to see her heart broken. I told her that I wasn’t angry with her, that it didn’t matter. I told her that God-whose-name-is-holy is mysterious, beyond our ability to comprehend, and that we might never understand why we hadn’t been given the gift of children.

 

We were determined not to let our grief drive us apart, and instead we let our shared grief bring us closer together.

 

I am speaking to you today, but there was a time – nine months to be precise – when I wasn’t able to speak. It began when I was serving in the temple in Jerusalem, and it was my turn to enter the holy of holies where God-whose-name-is-holy resides. I had been in there before, and it was always an honour, but this day was different.

 

Even though the events of that day are burned into my memory, it is hard for me to put words to what I experienced. I remember that the room was filled with flames and feathered wings and it felt like there were eyes in every corner of the space, watching me, and something was spinning that made me feel dizzy to look. I knew that it must be an angel, a messenger from God-whose-name-is-holy, and I felt terrified. I was sure that I was going to die, right there in the holy of holies.

 

And then I could sense this being speaking to me, though I’m sure that it wasn’t with human words. I was told, “Don’t be afraid.” As if I could leave my terror behind at the door! But maybe I felt a little less afraid, for I was able to work out the next part of the message, telling me that Elizabeth and I were going to have a son, and that he will be named John, and that he will go about the world, pointing all people towards God.

Now I know that angels are messengers of God-whose-name-is-holy, so I knew that this message must come from God-whose-name-is-holy, but still. I also know that according to the way of women, Elizabeth was at least 10 years past this being possible. We would have welcomed this news when we were young, but now that we are old, it felt cruel to taunt us with this.

 

But when I told the angel that I didn’t believe the message, these were the last words I spoke for 9 months. The angel told me that because I didn’t believe the good news, I wouldn’t be able to speak again until the good news was fulfilled.

 

And when I left the holy of holies, as hard as I tried, I wasn’t able to speak a single word.

 

I went home to Elizabeth. I told you earlier that she would probably make a better priest that I am… well, she had no difficulty believing what the angel had told me. Using the unspoken language that grows between people who are friends as well as spouses, I was able to tell her about the angel’s visit, and a few weeks later when she suspected that she was carrying a new life within her, she didn’t seem surprised at all.

 

We kept mostly to ourselves through the months of her pregnancy. I was ashamed that my voice had been taken from me due to my lack of faith, and Elizabeth was content to stay at home where it was just the two of us. Her kinswoman Mary paid her a visit, and I let the two of them spend time alone together, but for the rest of those 9 months, it was mostly just Elizabeth and me.

 

When the time came for our baby to be born, I was just as terrified as I had been in the presence of the angel. I know that even young women can die when delivering babies. I didn’t know what I would do if I lost Elizabeth. I ran out to find our village’s midwife, and even though I couldn’t speak, I was able to communicate what was happening… though I suspect that she already knew what was happening when I showed up at her door!

 

The midwife came back with me to our house, then sent me out of the house to wait for it all to be over. I believe that most men go share a drink with friends while they are waiting, but I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t abandon Elizabeth after all that we’d been through together. And so I sat down on the ground outside of our house to wait. And wait. And wait.

 

It's hard to wait for something that you long for and dread in equal measure. And I didn’t know how long the waiting was going to be. And even though the angel had told me that this child is going to be important to God, I still didn’t fully trust the angel’s message, and I was terrified that I was going to lose both Elizabeth and our baby.

 

I could hear Elizabeth’s cries inside the house through those long hours of waiting. The midwife sent her apprentice out a couple of times to fetch things – water, herbs, clean linens.

 

And just when I thought that I couldn’t wait any longer, I heard Elizabeth give a loud cry, and then there was silence. And then I heard the most beautiful sound in the world – the cry of a newborn baby. And then I heard the voices of the midwife and her apprentice, and yes, Elizabeth’s voice too, singing a song of praise, and I knew that everything was going to be OK.

 

I wasn’t able to speak right away. I was able to hold my son, and look at his face and his perfect fingers and his tiny toes, but he wasn’t able to hear my voice at first. On the eighth day, according to our custom, he was circumcised, and Elizabeth insisted that his name was John. Our family tried to dissuade her, telling her that there was no one named John in either of our families, and wouldn’t she rather he be named Zechariah after his father? But she insisted, and then I found a writing tablet, and I wrote on it, “Elizabeth is correct. His name is John.”

 

And in that moment, once all that the angel had told me had come true, my tongue was released and I was able to speak and sing and praise God-whose-name-is-holy!

 

I am not a prophet. I had never before been given a God’s-eye vision of the world. But that day I was given a glimpse of God’s plan for the world. I spoke to all the people gathered, saying “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favourably on his people, and has redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David.” And then I spoke to my child, to John, saying “You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.”

 

Because we are old now, I don’t know if Elizabeth and I will live to see the day when our son will prepare the way for God-whose-name-is-holy, but what we will do is raise him to know, to love, and to revere God-whose-name-is-holy, so that he can do his part to do whatever God-whose-name-is-holy calls him to do.

 

And isn’t that all that any of us can do; to serve God-whose-name-is-holy with whatever gifts we have been given?

 

 

 

Angels probably don’t look the way
the way they are usually portrayed!
After all, every angel begins their message with
“Do not be afraid!”
(Try searching Google for images of
“biblically accurate angels” – this was
one of the less-disturbing images I encountered!)

"A Midwifing God" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday December 10, 2023 (Third Sunday of Advent)
Scripture Reading:  Isaiah 46:3-11

(This year, our Advent theme is focused on midwifery and birth. Each week, we will hear the story from the bible of someone who was a midwife, or who encountered a midwife. The waiting, the longing, the pain of the “not yet” – all of our Advent themes – are captured in the metaphor of a midwife, in the metaphor of birth.)

 

 

I wrote those words that you just heard.  Are you surprised?  I suspect that you expected me to be a man talking to you, but I am a woman.  I am a woman from the tribe of Levi, a descendant of Israel, though I was born in the foreign land of Babylon.

 

I’ve taken a look through that book that you have named Isaiah, and it made me laugh. The first part was so clearly written by someone when our people were still living in Jerusalem, before we were taken into exile in Babylon. But then I recognized my own words, written in Babylon, in the middle part of the book. And the words at the end – they seem to have come from a time after I died, as I don’t recognize any of them. And yet your scholars have lumped us all together and named us Isaiah.

 

I am a prophet, and the daughter of a prophet. When my parents were only just married, the Babylonian army put their city of Jerusalem under siege, and eventually destroyed it. Because my father was a prophet, they weren’t allowed to remain there in the rubble, but instead they were carried off to Babylon along with all of the other people with power and prestige.

 

My father told me about those early years in exile – the years when I was too young to remember for myself. All of the people who had been carried away were in deep grief. They had seen their homes destroyed and their city destroyed. They had witnessed the deaths of their family members and friends and neighbours. They had even witnessed the destruction of the temple at the heart of the city – the temple that was the home of our God-whose-name-is-holy.

 

And now that they were living in exile, they didn’t even have a place to go to pray. And my father said that the deepest grief of all was that they were separated from God-whose-name-is-holy who lived in Jerusalem. My parents used to sing me the songs of those early years of exile:

         By the rivers of Babylon –

                  there we sat down and there we wept

                  when we remembered Zion.

         On the willow’s there

                  we hung up our harps.

         For there our captors asked us for songs,

         and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,

                  “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

         How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

 

How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land, when the Lord our God is buried under the rubble in Jerusalem?

 

I am the youngest child of my parents, yet I am the only child who inherited the gift of prophesy from our father.  I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of the presence of God-whose-name-is-holy within me.

 

My father tells me that I, and the other prophets of my generation, were important to the elders in exile. At first, they weren’t able to sense God’s presence there in a foreign land. The voice of grief drowned out the voice of God-whose-name-is-holy. But then they were able to hear my voice, and the voices of the prophets who hadn’t known Jerusalem. They heard how God-whose-name-is-holy was still speaking to us. And all of the people began to realize that God-whose-name-is-holy wasn’t limited to the pile of rubble that had been the temple, but that God-whose-name-is-holy is with us wherever we are.

 

The message that I and the other prophets began to receive was that our people were going to eventually be able to return to Jerusalem. God-whose-name-is-holy was going to make the mountains bow low and the valleys rise up so that our pathway through the desert would be smooth. God-whose-name-is-holy was going to give us wings like eagles so that we would be able to soar over the miles that separated us from the place that we call home. We would run and not grow weary; we would walk and not feel faint.  God-whose-name-is-holy was going to usher us into new life.

 

God-whose-name-is-holy was going to be like a midwife for our people, birthing us from a life in exile to a new life back in the Promised Land.

 

Which is why you shouldn’t be surprised that I am a woman. This image of God-whose-name-is-holy as a midwife, it is much more likely to be given to a woman who has known the pain of childbirth than to a man who has only witnessed it.  And yet God-whose-name-is-holy is very much like a midwife, accompanying her people through a time of pain and danger, encouraging her people, and keeping us safe, until the danger has passed and new life is here.

 

And I don’t think that my voice is the only female voice in scriptures, even when our names have been concealed.  If you look closely, you will be able to find us.  Some of the psalms that our people sing – words that are attributed to our ancestor, King David, they speak of God delivering us from our mother’s womb. 

 

So many of the other prophets speak of God-whose-name-is-holy delivering us to safety as a warrior does; it’s good to balance out this image of a Warrior-God with the image of God-whose-name-is-holy delivering us to safety as a midwife does.

 

And just as there is rejoicing when a midwife has safely delivered a baby, there will be rejoicing when God-whose-name-is-holy has safely delivered us back to Jerusalem. There will be rejoicing and celebration and joy and singing and dancing beyond imagination when that day comes. For the pain of labour is only temporary, and God-the-Midwife is delivering us from our pain and from our suffering.

 

And then, won’t you rejoice with me?

 

 

What “tools” would a Midwifing-God use

to deliver us from our pain and suffering?

Image Credit: Direct Relief onflickr; used with permission

"Peace Be With You" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday November 26, 2023 (First Sunday of Advent)
Scripture Reading:  Genesis 35:16-21

(This year, our Advent theme is focused on midwifery and birth. Each week, we will hear the story from the bible of someone who was a midwife, or who encountered a midwife. The waiting, the longing, the pain of the “not yet” – all of our Advent themes – are captured in the metaphor of a midwife, in the metaphor of birth.)

 

 

My name is Miriam, and I am a midwife in the town of Ephrath, also known as Bethlehem. I was the first-born of 8 children, and when I was a child, I watched the midwife come to our house again and again to deliver my younger siblings. When I was just 6 years old, I began to assist her, fetching her water and clean cloths. She told me about the herbs that she was using, and she had me hold my mother’s hands as my mother strained and pushed.

 

When my 9^th sibling was being born though, my mother died, along with the baby. The midwife cried as she bundled up the wee body and covered my mother’s face with a blanket. I was only 13 years old at that point. My father didn’t know what to do with all of us, and he talked about finding a husband for me, so that I would be one less child he had to worry about.

 

But then the midwife came and spoke to him, and offered to take me on as an apprentice. She would put a roof over my head, and put food in my belly, and teach me everything that she knew.  I knew right away that I didn’t want to get married. I had seen what had happened to my mother, and I didn’t want babies of my own. But instead, I wanted to learn how to help other women and keep them and their babies safe.

 

And I did learn all this.  I learned the rhythm of labour, how it ebbs and flows.  I learned how to use different herbs to lessen the pain, to speed up the labour, to slow down the labour, to stop the blood flow.  I learned how to feel the baby in its mother’s womb, and how to use the pressure of my hands to change the position of the baby. I learned what prayers to pray to help a mother through the birth. I learned how to deliver the afterbirth, how to cut the cord, how to clean up after the messiness of birth.

 

I still remember the first time that a mother named her child after me. It had been a long labour, more than a day, but when her baby was safely lying on her chest, the mother smiled at me and told me that she was going to name her Miriam, so that she would never forget how I had helped.

 

I’m now an old woman. I’ve been working for many years now, and I have started to deliver the children of the babies I delivered when I first started out. The midwife who taught me died last year, but before she did, she told me that my skills were even greater than hers. The student has surpassed the teacher.

 

Last night was one of the hardest nights I’ve had to face.  I had been called out a day and a half earlier to attend a birth at a caravan that was passing through Ephrath. The woman’s name was Rachel, and her husband was Jacob.  I’ve seen some strange families in my time, but I have to say that this was one of the stranger ones. Rachel was Jacob’s favourite wife, but her sister Leah was his first wife and the one with precedence in the family. Jacob had 12 children so far – 11 boys and 1 girl. Leah, the first wife, had born 7 of the children. Rachel, the favourite wife, had only born 1 son so far. I’ve you’re doing the math so far, you know that there are 4 children left – two of them had been born by Bilhah, the slave who belonged to Rachel; and the other 2 had been born by Zilpah, the slave who belonged to Leah.

 

We had many hours to talk, Rachel and I, as she laboured through the long days and nights.  One of the things that we do as midwives, the first time we meet a woman, is to find out her history of childbearing. Rachel told me that childbearing didn’t come as easily to her as it did to Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah.  Even though she was the favourite wife, she hadn’t conceived a child for many, many years of marriage, and her heart broke every time she saw the birth of another child to her husband.

 

She also shared with me, as she rested between the contractions, that when her first son, Joseph, had been born, it hadn’t been an easy passage for either of them. It had been another long and difficult labour, and when he was born, she felt as though she was being ripped in two.  It had taken her weeks before she was able to get out of bed and move around her tent, and months before she was able to care for her new baby on her own.

 

This labour was also a slow one. I could see her energy waning as she entered the second night of labour.  I didn’t know if she was going to have the strength to push out this child when the time came. I kept talking to her, and encouraging her, and giving her cups of tea that would hopefully keep the labour moving forward.

 

And finally it was time for her to push. The pushes were weak at first, but then her body seemed to remember what to do, and the pushes became stronger.  Finally, there was a rush of fluid and blood, and I caught this tiny baby before he could land on the straw that had been laid out. He was blue at first, but I knew what to do. I rubbed his little back until he let out a cry, and then I wrapped him in a cloth and laid him on his mother’s chest so that he could feel her breathing, in and out, in and out.

 

Poor Rachel was exhausted, and she kept slipping in and out of sleep. I sat back to wait for the afterbirth, and I knew that I might need to wait a while after such a long and exhausting labour. There was no hurry to cut the cord until the afterbirth was delivered.

 

But then everything seemed to happen all at once.  Rachel gave a loud shriek which, of course, started the baby to cry. And then there was blood. So much blood, coming fast and bright red.

 

I kept my voice calm, and I told Rachel that she had to nurse this new baby of hers. She had to focus all of her attention on this new life that she had just brought into the world. And she did. After that first shriek, she talked quietly to her baby, despite the pain and the fear that she must have been feeling.

 

I tried putting pressure on her womb. I prayed every prayer that I knew. I gave her a tea of herbs that might stop the bleeding. But none of them worked this time. I could see the life fading from her eyes as her blood continued to flow out of her. The last words that she whispered before falling unconscious were to name this new child Ben-Oni or “Son of My Sorrow.”

 

It is hard to tell a husband that his wife has died. I remember how inconsolable my father had been when my mother and baby sister died. This time, at least, the baby had survived. I went out of the tent to search for Jacob, and found him sitting right outside. He had heard everything, and he had already guessed what had happened. I watched the tears stream down his face when he heard that his beloved Rachel was gone.

 

But then I was able to tell him that his son was still alive, and the most incredible peace seemed to pass through his body. I’m amazed at how, at a time of such deep grief, peace can still be given as a gift.  I placed his son in his arms, and told him that Rachel had named him Ben-Oni. Jacob said no – this child wasn’t going to carry the name of grief, and instead he was going to be called Benjamin, or Son of My Right Hand.

 

Rachel is going to be buried here, outside of the walls of Bethlehem, near the tent where she had died. And yet her son lives, and the cycle of life continues.

 

I pray that the peace that was given to Jacob that day might be the sort of peace that lives in all of our hearts – a peace that endures, no matter the circumstances that we face. May this peace be yours, today and every day. Amen.

 

 

 

Rachel’s Tomb, just outside Bethlehem, is now a mosque,

and is located near a checkpoint in the wall that separates

the West Bank from Israel. There are so many layers of irony

in this tourism poster near that checkpoint.
And yet the message of peace abides.

Photo Credit: James Emery on flickr

"Midwives of the Future" (sermon

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday November 26, 2023 (First Sunday of Advent)
Scripture Reading:  Exodus 1:8-22

(This year, our Advent theme is focused on midwifery and birth. Each week, we will hear the story from the bible of someone who was a midwife, or who encountered a midwife. The waiting, the longing, the pain of the “not yet” – all of our Advent themes – are captured in the metaphor of a midwife, in the metaphor of birth.)

 

 

My name is Shiphrah, daughter of Milcah, granddaughter of Hannah, of the tribe of Naphtali. Like my mother and my grandmother before me, I am a midwife. When the time comes for a mother to birth a child, I am sent for.  I accompany a woman through the hours or through the days of labour. I encourage her. I tell her when to push and when to refrain from pushing. I remind her to continue to draw fresh air into her body. If needed, I give her the herbs I have learned how to use to speed up her labour or to stop her bleeding.  When the baby comes, I catch the baby. I am the one to place the baby on the mother’s chest. I catch the afterbirth, I cut the cord, and I wash the baby. The day after the baby is born, I come to check on the baby and the mother to make sure that all is well.

 

Even though I live in the land of Egypt, I am an Israelite. I am a descendant of Jacob who was called Israel.  In a time of famine, Israel’s son Joseph was able to bring our people to Egypt under the protection of the Pharoah so that we would have food in a time of hunger. But now, many generations later, there is a new Pharoah in Egypt… one who is scared of us… and he has made all of our people to be slaves.

 

This new Pharoah, because he is afraid of us, he treats us poorly. Our men and our women have to spend their days working in the fields and building the city. If we ever do anything that displeases an Egyptian, we are punished for it. And sometimes the punishment is doled out for no reason. It is a scary existence for us.

 

I work with my sister Puah. I call her my sister, even though we have no blood relationship, and yet we have the kinship of the work that we share. The two of us are busy, as it seems as though every day there are many women delivering their babies. We have trained apprentices who work with us, but Puah and I are the lead midwives.

 

We are respected by the Egyptians more than the other Israelites. I think that they recognize the universality of birth – that they are only alive today because a midwife attended their birth. We are generally free to move around the community unmolested, attending to our business day and night.

 

Last year though… last year Puah and I were summoned to appear before Pharoah. Normally we are confident as we move about the world, but I have to confess that my knees were trembling that day.  We had no idea what he wanted from us.

 

I told you that he was afraid of us, and his fear usually came out as cruelty. That day, he told us that any time we, or any of the other midwives, delivered a boy child, we were to kill it at the moment of birth.  We knew in that moment that we wouldn’t be able to carry out these orders. As midwives, we are bringers of life, not bringers of death.

 

We had to wait until we were safely away from the palace to discuss what we would do next, but later that night, Puah and I were able to talk in private.  We knew that disobeying the Pharoah would likely bring us death, but we also knew that we couldn’t be the ones to bring death to an innocent baby.

 

The next night we called together all of our apprentice midwives.  We told them what Pharoah had ordered. And then we told them to disobey this order.  Any midwives who weren’t comfortable disobeying Pharoah were free to stop midwifing, but those of us who brought life were not permitted to bring death as well.

 

Our God is a god of life, and we serve our God by bringing life. And so we continued in our work.

 

Six months later, the Pharoah noticed that there continued to be baby boys around our community, and we were summoned to appear before him again.  Again, my knees trembled as we went – surely he was going to know that we disobeyed him, and I didn’t expect to be able to leave the palace alive.

 

This brought us to our next risk:  we lied to the Pharoah. We told a lie to the person who had the power to have us killed on the spot, and we told him that the Israelite women were stronger than the Egyptian women, and that they had stopped calling the midwife to attend their labour. We told Pharoah that we were willing to carry out his orders, but that we no longer had the opportunity to do so.

 

And he believed us. He must not have believed that our women were fully human; he must not have believed that our women felt pain and fear as they laboured and as they delivered; he must have thought that our women dropped their babies in the field, like a horse or a cow. He didn’t believe that our women needed the support of a midwife.

 

And so we were free to go, but instead, Pharoah ordered his soldiers to kill all of the male babies of our people. His reign of fear continues.

 

Three months ago though, I delivered a beautiful baby boy to Jochebed of the tribe of Levi. She already had two beautiful children – Miriam was 9 and Aaron was just 6. Now Jochebed is determined to keep her newest baby alive. She has hidden him away in her house, and she nurses him any time he threatens to make a fuss. He is growing well, but now it is getting harder for her to keep him hidden away.

 

She has made a basket for him, and has made it waterproof, and she tells me that she is going to float him in his basket down the river. He may be eaten by a crocodile, but the uncertainty of that end is better than the certain death her baby will face if he is discovered.

 

People say that I am courageous, to disobey Pharoah the way that I have; but me, I look to Jochebed when I need hope. She trusts that this baby of hers has a future, and because she trusts in his future, she is willing to take these risks. We may be slaves now, but Jochebed trusts that one day we won’t be; and she is going to do everything that she can to keep Miriam and Aaron, and now wee baby Moses alive so that they can witness the birth of this future; so that maybe they can be midwives of this future that will be theirs.

 

May God give us all the hope of Jochebed. And may we be midwives too, bringing life to this future that is ours. Amen.

 

 

“Shiphrah, Puah, Jocheved, Miriam,

Pharoah’s Daughter, and the Infant Moses”

Mural from the Dura-Europos Synagogue, ca. 245

Used with Permission.

"Still, We Hope" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday November 19, 2023 (Reign of Christ)
Scripture:  Matthew 25:31-46

 

 

As I mentioned earlier, the Christmas letter is at the back of the church for you to pick up on your way out if you haven’t picked it up already. I wrote this letter back in October, because Elaine needed to print it for me to sign before I went on vacation. (I told this story to the Official Board on Wednesday night, so my apologies to you if you have heard it before.) So I wrote the letter and sent it off to Elaine, but then the next time we were both at the church at the same time, she summoned me into her office. She sat me down and gave me my letter to read. A couple of minutes later she asked if I was done yet, and I said “almost.” She asked how I was feeling.  “Fine…” Apparently I wasn’t fine, and that first letter I had written was far too gloomy to be sent out as a Christmas letter.

 

Because I trust Elaine’s judgement, I re-wrote the Christmas letter the next day; with thanks to the Summerville quilters who offered to be my test audience – they approved version 2, which I was then able to send to Elaine who also approved version 2 and printed it so that I could sign 300 copies of it before going on vacation.

 

The challenge with writing the Christmas letter this year is that the world feels so full of doom and gloom at the moment.  As I was writing that first version of the letter, the fighting in Gaza was intense… well, I guess it’s still pretty intense… it was the day that the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine had happened; Covid infection rates were surging; and my list could go on and on and on. Poverty is increasing as inflation increases. This time of year brings longer nights and shorter days.

 

With all of this going on, it was really hard to write a cheerful Christmas letter this year!

 

Don’t get me wrong – the underlying message of that first letter was exactly the same as the message of the one that was printed, but apparently I spent too long in the first draft expanding on the woes of the world.

 

The message of both drafts of this year’s letter is that we, as the church, are in the “Business of Hope.”  We, as the church, trust that the grief and the pain and the fear of the right now isn’t the end of the story.  We trust that God dreams of a world that is radically transformed, so that all of the grief has become love, so that all of the pain has become joy, so that all of the fear has become peace.

 

And we trust that this dream, that this vision of God will one day be the only reality.

 

Which brings us to today.  Today is the day when we celebrate the Reign of Christ, or Christ the King Sunday. It is the last Sunday of the church year – next week when we enter the season of Advent, we will begin a new year. As we move through the church year, we travel through Jesus’s life story – from the anticipation of his birth, to the birth itself, stories of his teachings and his actions, the story of the last week of his life, his crucifixion and death, and his resurrection. We read stories about the very early church, from its origins at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came to the disciples in force.  And today – this last Sunday of the church year – this is a day dedicated to looking forward in time.  Today we look forward to that time that will come when God’s dream for the world will be complete, will be fulfilled, will be perfected.  And we trust that this transformed world is going to come some day.

 

As we said in our Prayer of Awareness today, we tend to want the “not yet” to be the “right now.” We want all wars to end right now. We want all poverty to end right now. We want all grief and suffering to end right now. We want the transformation of the world that began with the birth of Jesus to reach completion right now. It’s hard to be patient.

 

But because we trust that this transformation has begun, that the transformation began when God took on flesh and blood in the person of Jesus; and because we trust that the transformation of the world will some day reach completion, we can keep going, one step at a time.

 

I heard an interview earlier this week on CBC radio with two women, one Palestinian and one Israeli, both actively working towards peace by building relationships, one person at a time. When the interviewer asked how they avoided becoming despondent, one of them replied, “we have to hope.”

 

We have to cling to hope.  Without hope, we would be paralyzed by despair. But because we have hope, we keep on going, one step at a time, one loving act at a time.

 

In today’s bible reading, we heard Jesus’s very last public teaching before his crucifixion. He has some private teaching time with his disciples after this, but this is his last public teaching. And in this teaching, what does he say?  He says, in a fairly direct way (and we all know how Jesus can sometimes talk in circles, but this time his instructions are pretty concrete):  feed anyone who is hungry; give water to anyone who is thirsty; welcome strangers; give clothing to anyone who needs it; care for anyone who is sick; and visit people in prison.  And why should we do all of this? Because whenever we do this to another person, we are doing it to Jesus himself.

 

If Jesus were giving us concrete instructions in 2023, what might he say to us?  “For I was being bombed, and you cried out for peace. For I was a transgender student and you advocated for my rights and gave me a safe space. For I was a child in a refugee camp, and you supported my schooling by donating to Mission & Service. Truly I tell you, just as you have done it for one of the least of these siblings of mine, you have done it for me.”

 

Sometimes when we read stories from the bible, a good question to ask ourselves is “where to I see myself in this story?” but with this story, an even better question might be to ask, “where do I see Jesus in this story?”

 

Jesus is the one sitting on the seat of judgement, separating the sheep from the lambs.  Jesus is also present in anyone who is hungry, in anyone who is thirsty, in anyone without clothing, in anyone who is sick, in anyone who is in prison. In other words, Jesus is present in anyone who is vulnerable or marginalized.

 

But I also think that Jesus is present in the helpers in the story as well – Jesus is present in the ones giving food and water and clothing, Jesus is present in people who care for the sick and visit the incarcerated. Because when we, as the church, do these things, we are able to do them because we are the Body of Christ, carrying out God’s mission in the world.

 

Which brings us back to where we started.  We serve the vulnerable people in the world because the Holy Spirit is transforming us into the Body of Christ. And we keep on serving, even in the pain of this world, because we know that the world as it is right now isn’t the world that God dreams of. And we keep on serving, without falling into despair and despondency, because we have hope, because we trust, because we are confident that the world will eventually change.

 

We as the church – we are in the business of hope.  Everything that we do as the church should proclaim this hope to the world, especially in times like right now.

 

And when my hope falters, I know that your hope will carry me through. And if your hope falters, I pray that my hope might carry you through.  And together we hope.  Still, we hope.

 

Amen.

 

 

 

Signing Those (Revised) Christmas Letters

(With Help from my Favourite Christmas Movie)