"Do Justice. Love Kindness. Walk Humbly." (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday January 29, 2023

Scripture:  Micah 6:1-8

(If you are a regular reader of my reflections, you may notice that the bible link this week takes you to a different website than usual. I learned this week that BibleGateway is owned by Zondervan, an imprint of Harper Collins Publisher, who have been on strike since November. I apologize for crossing the digital picket line in the past several months, and I will not be using BibleGateway until the strike is resolved.)

 

 

Micah was a prophet, and there are two things that are important to know about prophets.  The first is that prophets in every generation point people back to God and towards God’s way.  If you read the prophets we find in the Old Testament, many of them are concerned that the people are no longer following the commandments that God had given them.  They are concerned that resources aren’t being shared fairly, that widows and orphans and immigrants aren’t being cared for.  They are concerned that people are more concerned with material things than they are with God.  And so prophets are positioned so that they can both see what is going on and also see what God’s vision or plan for the world is, and then they have the courage to point out the discrepancy to people with power to make the change.

 

The same holds true for modern day prophets.  A couple of weeks ago, our neighbours in the US celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I think that he was a prophet.  He saw the racism and white supremacy in the world; he saw that racism and white supremacy aren’t in keeping with how God wants us to live in the world, and he spoke truth to power, even when that cost him his life.

 

So, if the first thing that we need to remember about prophets is that they point people back to God and back to God’s ways, the other thing that we need to know about prophets is that they were fond of a bit of drama to get their point across.  Many of them didn’t just use words, didn’t just put their message plainly, but they used actions or theatre to make their point.  Joshua commanded the sun to stay still in the sky; Elisha used a bow and arrow to make his point; Moses turned the Nile River to blood.  Possibly the most dramatic act – one that would get a modern-day prophet arrested for indecency – was Isaiah who walked around and preached naked for three years, trying to convey the urgency of his message that if people didn’t turn back to God, they would be carried into exile with nothing, not even the clothes on their back.

 

Micah wasn’t naked, but he did like his drama, and the reading that we heard this morning is structured as a courtroom drama.  God is bringing a lawsuit against the people, accusing them of not keeping the covenant that their ancestors had made with God.

 

The drama opens with the prophet serving as narrator, introducing the scene.  God is invited to present their case, with the mountains and hills as witnesses.

 

Then God presents their case – God has kept their side of the covenant since it was made with Abraham, bringing the people out of slavery in Egypt, giving them leaders in the form of Moses and Aaron and Miriam to keep them safe, working through a foreigner, Balaam, son of Boer, to protect them from King Balak of Moab as they wandered in the wilderness, and then seeing them safely across the Jordan River, crossing from Shittim to Gilgal.  Yet despite all God’s faithfulness, the people have stopped keeping their side of the covenant.

 

Then the Israelite people have a chance to respond, but instead of trying to argue with God, they plead guilty to all charges.  “Yes; you’re right; we have not kept our covenant promises! What do we need to do to make things right? What sacrifices to we need to make to restore our relationship with God?”  This is followed by an escalating list of possible offerings to repair the relationship. “Does God want burnt offerings of calves a year old?  Does God want a thousand rams to be sacrificed?  Does God want ten thousand rivers of the finest olive oil?  What about our firstborn children?  If we offer our firstborn children to God, will that restore our relationship?”

 

The drama ends with the voice of the prophet, sounding a bit like the voice of the judge.  “No, none of these things will restore your relationship.  I don’t need to tell you what God wants; you already know what God wants.  Do justice.  Love kindness.  Walk humbly with God.  That’s it – all the rest is just window dressing.  Without these actions that come from the heart, all of the sacrifices in the world would just be going through the motions.

 

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God.  That’s it.  This sounds remarkably like Jesus’s summary of all of the law and the prophets together – love God with your whole being, and love your neighbour as you love yourself.

 

This also sounds remarkably like who God is like.  God does justice because God is justice.  God loves kindness and mercy because God is kindness and mercy.  And God is the one who desires to be in relationship with us; the one who is always calling us into relationship; the one who walks alongside us.  And so when we do what the prophet calls us to do, then we are becoming God-like; we are becoming the Body of Christ; we are continuing the work that Jesus began.

 

Which is beginning to sound a little bit like last week’s message – that we are called to allow ourselves to be transformed by the Holy Spirit into who God created us to be.

 

I have to confess that I struggled to come up with a conclusion to this sermon.  All of this is well and good if you are looking for a good story – there is a beginning, a middle, and an end, with a moral all wrapped up nicely with a bow in the form of a soundbite.

 

But this is a sermon rather than a story, and as my preaching professors used to hammer home to us, a sermon should be something more than a story, more than a lecture.  There has to be a “so what” to a sermon.

 

The “so what” in Micah’s time had to do with the Ancient Israelites straying away from the covenant that they had made with God – they had strayed away from their relationship with God, and as a result they weren’t treating each other well or treating God well.  And God wanted to give them a wake-up call that if they carried down that road, things weren’t going to go well for them. Justice, kindness, and humble relationship can be matters of life-and-death if they are missing.

 

And I can’t help but wonder if they might be a matter of life-and-death in our world today too.  You don’t have to look too far beyond the headlines to see places where justice, kindness, and humble relationship would make a difference in the world.

 

I think that a world with justice would be a world where no one was killed because of the colour of their skin.  It would be a world where the original inhabitants of a land have a say in how the land is used.  It would be a world where everyone, no matter where they live, would have access to health care for their physical, mental, and spiritual health.  It would be a world where there was a guaranteed livable income for everyone, where everyone had a safe shelter over their head at night, where everyone had clean water to drink, where everyone had access to the same rights and opportunities.

 

I think that a world governed by kindness would be a world where there was no such thing as homophobia or transphobia.  A world where no one was lonely.  A world where no one would go to bed hungry.  A world where no one of any age is bullied.  A world where no one has to go through any of the hard moments in life alone.

 

And how about the walking humbly with God?  I picture a world where everyone works together, reaching beyond the boundaries of religion and political affiliation to make the world a better place for everybody.  I picture a world where relationship is more important than who is right and who is wrong.  I picture a world where I want the best for all of my neighbours, and they want the best for me.  I picture a world where every single person is valued for who they are, and not for what they contribute.

 

And I do think that these things are life-and-death matters, with just as much urgency for us as they had for Micah’s original listeners.  What can we, as the church, do, to live with more justice, to love kindness more deeply, and to walk even more humbly with God?

 

For God has told us what they want from us.  And what does the Lord require from us, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.  May we all have ears to listen and hearts that are open to change.  Amen.

 

 

 

Image: “Damaged”

by elycefeliz on flickr

Used with permission.

 

What might repair the world?

Justice. Kindness. Walk humbly with God.

Fayne - Ann-Marie MacDonald (Book Review)

Let me begin this review by saying that Jane Eyre is one of my favourite books of all-time. My original copy (a Christmas present from my aunt when I was in grade 7) is currently held together by an elastic band, but I still choose to re-read that copy rather than the newer one I purchased a couple of decades ago.

Reading Fayne gave me a similar feeling to reading Jane Eyre. It was like reading a favourite book for the first time and discovering a new world. (And I also have to say that it was a delight looking for the Jane Eyre Easter Eggs in this book. The author has confirmed that the main character's name, Charlotte Bell, is a direct nod to the author of JE - if you know, you know! I won't say any more here as that may move into spoiler territory, but the Jane Eyre references made the unfolding of Fayne even more delightful to me.)

It has been a couple of years since I posted a book review on here, and even more years since I kept a dedicated book blog, but I had to write a review of this book. It was one of those books where, while I was reading it, the world of the book was more real to me than the world around me. I finished it 24 hours ago, and I am suffering from a severe book hangover at this point - I have two stacks of books in front of me to read, and I can't bear to pick any of them up for now.

My book reviewing skills feel rusty, but let me try to overview the story using journalistic prompts.
Who:  The Honourable Charlotte Bell and her family. It isn't a spoiler (since I have heard the author, Ann-Marie MacDonald share this information in interviews I've heard and at a book talk I attended) to say that Charlotte is born with intersex characteristics that shape the story of her life.
When:  1870s-1880s - a good Victorian Gothic era to be set in!
Where:  Fayne, an estate in the moors on the southern border of Scotland and/or the northern border of England, and Edinburgh. With brief sojourns in Italy and Boston.
What:  Family dynamics, Victorian medicine (espcially gynaecology), bird watching, geopolitical land disputes, feminism, queerness, fashion, magyk, bogs and moors.
Why:  Well, that is the whole point of the story, learning the motivations of each of the characters.

And as for the How, I think that was what I loved the most about this book. The structure of the book moves backwards and forwards through time, between Charlotte in the present day (1888) and the early married life of her parents, Mae and Henry, in the early 1870s. Information is gradually revealed to the reader (as it is gradually revealed to Charlotte) so that eventually the whole story of what happened felt like it landed in my lap fully formed.  It felt a bit slow to get going (though the vivid writing, descriptions of the moors, and Charlotte herself kept me engaged in the story), but momentum kept building and the more of it I read, the harder it was for me to put down.

Ann-Marie MacDonald is one of my auto-buy authors. I was excited when I heard last fall that she had a new book out, and even more excited when I got to attend a reading at the Saint John Public Library and get my copy autographed. I was saving it for after Christmas when I knew I would have more time to dive into it, and it didn't disappoint.

So, in a nutshell, Fayne is a queer, late-Victorian, Jane-Eyre-esque, gothic(ish) novel written by a master in her craft. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Now go out and read it, so that we can discuss it together!

"Change Your Hearts and Lives" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday January 22, 2023

Scripture:  Matthew 4:12-23

 

 

I want you to imagine what it must have been like for those first couple of disciples of Jesus – for Simon Peter, for Andrew, for James, and for John.  They were all fishermen, and at least in James and John’s case, they were sons of fishermen… and it’s quite likely that Peter and Andrew’s father was a fishermen too.

 

That was the only life they had ever known.  They had grown up next to the freshwater Sea of Galilee surrounded by nets and by boats and by the smell of fish.  Once they were old enough, their father would have taken them out on the boat and taught them to cast a net into the water, and when they weren’t out on the water, they would have been learning how to mend nets.  They likely learned at a young age all of the tricks of the trade to sell the fish that they caught – to barter in order to bring in enough coins to keep a roof over their family’s head, and likely also to pay the rent for the boat that they fished from.

 

If you flip forward a couple of chapters, you will find a story about Peter’s mother-in-law, so we know that at least one of this group of four was married.  Matthew and the other gospel writers don’t give us any other details about their families, who their spouses were, or whether they had any children.  I wonder if the four of them did have children who were now old enough so that their fathers had started to teach them about fishing, to begin to pass the family business on to the next generation.

 

And yet when Jesus shows up there on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and calls out to them, “Follow me,” we are told that immediately they left their nets and their boats and their families and followed Jesus.  Immediately.  No hesitation.  In an instant, the whole course of their life was changed.

 

I wonder what was going on in their hearts and their lives that caused such a sudden and dramatic change.

 

I’ve heard it suggested that there must have been something so powerfully attractive about Jesus that these fishermen would leave everything behind to follow.  Whether it was something in his eyes, or something in the way that he carried himself, or something in his voice – Peter, Andrew, James, and John weren’t able to do anything but obey and follow.

 

I’ve also heard it suggested that maybe they had reached the tipping point and they were ready to join the revolution.  Remember that they were living in a corner of the Roman Empire – the emperor in Rome determined how their lives were played out, and the emperor’s decisions were enforced by military power.  In the history of that part of the world, there had been revolution after revolution, all with the aim of overthrowing the Roman occupation of the land; and as we know from the history books, none of them had succeeded.

 

We heard in today’s reading that Jesus’s ministry began right after he got the news that John the Baptist had been arrested.  Was this Jesus’s tipping point?  John could no longer get the message out there, so now it was up to Jesus himself.  And maybe Peter, Andrew, James, and John had reached a similar tipping point, tired and frustrated at being on the bottom rung of a society, most of their money going to the emperor, and always at risk of going hungry or losing their home. And so when they heard rumours of this preacher proclaiming a new way for the world to be, they dropped everything to join the revolution.

 

I can hear the voices of the village aunties, echoing the refrain that is heard in every time and every place of war – “what a waste of five young and promising lives.”

 

But I also wonder if there might be a third explanation – something that goes beyond Jesus’s personal magnetism; something that goes beyond the promise of uprising and revolution.  Because when the Holy Spirit is working in our lives, sometimes the change is gradual, but sometimes the change is immediate and we know in the blink of an eye what we are called to do even when we can’t give any rational explanation for it.  And so I wonder if that radical and immediate change that we see in the lives of Peter, Andrew, James, and John, isn’t for any reason that we could explain, but it is rather because the Holy Spirit changed the entire course of their lives in that instant. After their encounter with Jesus, their lives would never be the same again.

 

Change and transformation are at the very heart of Jesus’s message.  This is the very beginning of Jesus’s public ministry.  Like I mentioned last week, one literary trick that the writers of the gospels employ is to use the first public words of Jesus to be a summary of his whole ministry in the gospel.  And here in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’s first public words are, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  In fact they aren’t just his opening words, but Matthew tells us plainly that this was the message that Jesus was preaching as he traveled around Galilee.

 

The word “repentance” is one of those churchy words that has been given a bad rap, mostly because it has been used in harmful and threatening ways – “Repent of what you have done, or else.”

 

But the Greek word that most English translators translate as “repent” has a very different meaning.  Or maybe I should say that the meaning of our English word “repent” or “repentance” has shifted over the centuries so that we have lost its original meaning.

 

The Greek word here is “metanoia” and it doesn’t mean to feel sorry, or to apologize, though that may be part of it.  Instead, metanoia is an action word, meaning to change your path.  I think that I’ve used this example before, but if you set out from here to drive to Moncton, but you find yourself in Lorneville, you are on the wrong road, and you are better to metanoia, you are better to repent, you are better to change your path right away, rather than waiting until you get to St. Andrew’s exit to do so.

 

When it comes to behaviour that isn’t in keeping with the way of Jesus, then yes, we maybe should feel sorry for what we have done, and if our actions have harmed another, then an apology is likely going to be part of our metanoia, part of our repentance; but if we keep on doing the thing, then it isn’t repentance, because repentance requires us to change our path.  On that road trip to Moncton, saying sorry as you pass the signs to Lorneville and not doing anything else isn’t going to get you on the right path to Moncton!

 

One translation of the bible that I like reading from, the Common English Bible, translates that word, metanoia, not as “repent” but instead as “change your heart and life”; and I think that in the 21^st Century, that maybe captures the meaning of the word better that “repent.”  “Change your hearts and your lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!”

 

And I think that Peter, Andrew, James, and John maybe give us the ultimate example of metanoia.  In that moment, their lives that were heading down one path, a path of fishing in the Sea of Galillee, has taken a sudden turn, and now they are literally following after Jesus.  The Holy Spirit has changed their hearts and their lives in an instant, in a way that we can’t explain in any rational way.

 

And maybe this is the metanoia, the repentance, the transformation that we are all continually being called to.  It may not be as spectacularly visible as the transformation of the fishermen in today’s story, but as we move through our lives, the Holy Spirit is always working within us, always transforming us, always nudging us this way and that so that as we move through life, our lives are aligned with who God created us to be, and with the way that Jesus shows us.

 

Ross drove over to Long Reach with me this morning, and in the car we were talking about the theme of today’s service; and in our conversation, we realized that one local example of metanoia here at Two Rivers Pastoral Charge is our Affirming Journey.  We were on this pathway going this direction as a welcoming congregation, but then the Holy Spirit nudged us in our journey – nudged us to expand our love, to become more welcoming and Affirming – so that now our path is taking us in this direction, more aligned with God’s expansive love.

 

The Holy Spirit is always transforming us, so that we might be channels of peace and of love, so that we might bring God’s healing power to the world, so that we might be hope-bearers, so that we might reflect the light of Christ into the shadows.

 

This is metanoia, this is aligning our path with the path we are called to follow, this is changing our hearts and our lives so that we might be Christ’s presence in the world.

 

Rather than a threat, I hear this as an invitation.  We are invited to change our hearts and our lives; for God’s world, God’s kingdom is at hand. It’s just around the corner, and we are invited to be a part of it!  O, Holy Spirit, come and transform us, so that we can be part of this new thing.  Amen.

 

 

“Sea of Galilee”
Photo by Michael Coyer on flickr

Used with Permission

"What Are You Looking For?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday January 15, 2022

Scripture Reading:  John 1:29-42

 

 

“What are you looking for?”

 

I remember one time when I was living in Tanzania, I was trying to find a house in the village 5km from the hospital to do a home visit.  I have very vague instructions – we live behind Daktari’s store – but in a place with no street names or house numbers, I wasn’t having any luck.  So I went in to Daktari’s store to ask for help.  “What are you looking for?” he asked.  When I said whose house I was looking for, he sent his assistant with me to take me right to the house.

 

“What are you looking for?”

 

I suspect that I’m not the only fan of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache books; and like many of her readers, I wish that the village of Three Pines was a real place.  In the world of the books, this is a village that is not found on any map, and people usually stumble across it by accident.  It is a village of good friends and good food.  Here is one of her descriptions of the village from the book A World of Curiosities: “Three Pines was a safe place, they’d declared. Not safe from hurt or pain. Not safe from illness or death. What the village in the valley offered was a place to heal. It offered company and companionship, in life and at the end of life. It offered a surefire cure for loneliness.”

 

“What are you looking for?”

 

There have been times in my life when I haven’t been able to name or describe the thing that I was looking for.  I think of the time in my late teens and early twenties when I was skirting on the edges of faith.  I wasn’t comfortable with where my life was at in that moment.  I was lonely.  I was feeling overwhelmed.  I didn’t really have a sense of purpose or direction in my life.  If someone had come up to me and asked me, “What are you looking for?” I probably wouldn’t have been able to answer… and maybe would have burst in to tears with the force and the implications of that question.

 

And so I ask, “What are YOU looking for?”

 

These are the very first words of Jesus in the gospel of John; and one trick that all four of the gospel writers use is putting extra significance on the first public words of Jesus.  These first public words of Jesus, even more than the opening words of the gospel itself, give us insight into what Jesus’s focus is going to be through the whole gospel story.  (And if you want to dig into Jesus’s first words in the gospel of Matthew, come back next week!)

 

Here, in John’s gospel, Jesus’s first words are, “What are you looking for?” followed almost immediately by “Come and see!”  Jesus, in John’s gospel, is most concerned with inviting people into relationship with him – inviting people to encounter God, and then transforming them into disciples, into people who follow the way of Jesus and live God’s love in the world.

 

Even when I wasn’t able to articulate what I was looking for, the invitation to come and see was still there for me.  And when I came, and when I encountered the overwhelming love of God – that was when I was able to articulate what I was looking for, what I was longing for – I was longing to know that I was loved, not for anything I had done or for anything that I hadn’t done, but simply because I was me.  And that is what I found when I answered the invitation to come and see.

 

And that invitation is for all of us.  Even when you aren’t able to name your deepest longings, the invitation to come to Jesus and see is there for you.  The invitation is there to seek the answers even when you don’t know what the question is.  The invitation is there to rest in God’s love and to allow yourself to be transformed by this love.

 

Because God’s love is transforming – God’s love meets us where we are, but doesn’t leave us where we are.  God’s love transforms us into the Body of Christ – we are literally made into new people by God’s love so that we can continue the work of Christ.

 

We start to see this at the end of the reading we heard today – Jesus invites Andrew to come and see, then Andrew became a follower, a disciple of Jesus.  Then Jesus himself didn’t need to invite Simon Peter – the invitation came from Andrew, acting as Christ, to come and see who he had found.

 

If we were to read beyond the passage we heard today, we would see this same pattern again – Jesus calls Philip to follow, then Philp invites Nathanael to “Come and see.”

 

And so I ask you again, “What are you looking for?”  What are the deepest longings of your heart?  What is it that you are seeking – that thing that is so important, so special, so sacred that you are maybe afraid to put it in to words?

 

And even if you aren’t able to put words to your longing, I invite you to “come and see.”  Come and see the face of Christ, as reflected by this community.  Come and know that you are beloved – know that you are deeply, deeply loved by God and by this community.  Come and rest in this love, for you are a beautiful, beloved Child of God.  And come and be transformed by this love – transformed into the image of Christ – transformed, not into someone different, but to be even more yourself, to be who God created you to be.

 

And when you are there, resting in Love, letting God’s love wash over you and flow through you, then it is our turn to be the ones inviting – it is our turn to be like Andrew and like Philip, inviting the people around us, the people in our lives, to come and see.

 

One of my favourite songs by U2 is “Window in the Skies,” and the chorus goes, “Oh, can’t you see what love has done? What it’s doing to me?”

 

We are transformed by love, and this transformation can be visible to the world around us.  “Oh, can’t you see what love has done and is doing to me?  Come and see what this love can do for you!”

 

 

 

“Yearning to Fly”

Tero Karppinen on flickr

Used with Permission

"A Star and a Dream" (reflection)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday January 8, 2023 – Celebration of Epiphany

Scripture Reading:  Matthew 2:1-12

 

 

One song that is usually associated with Epiphany is “We Three Kings.”  There are a couple of problems with this song though, one of which is that there weren’t three of them – if you look carefully at the bible, you’ll see that the number of visitors isn’t given.  Another problem with the song is that they weren’t kings.  They are named as magi which is the plural of mage, and shares the same word root as magician.  It is an obscure word in the ancient Greek that the bible is written in – it’s not quite clear what these “magoi” that Matthew refers to actually are.  Some English translations preserve the ambiguity of magi, some English translations refer to them as “wise men,” others call them “scholars,” still others call them “astronomers” or “astrologers.”

 

But whatever their job description was, or their role in society, these wise ones were people who studied the stars.  They studied the stars so carefully that they noticed when a new star appeared in the sky.

 

I don’t know about you, but if a new star appeared in the night sky, I don’t think that I would notice it.  I don’t study the sky carefully, or count the stars that surround the constellations, and so if a new star were to appear, it is very unlikely that I would notice it.

 

So many Christmas cards show the star shining over Bethlehem as disproportionately large, so bright that it outshines every other star in the sky, so large that anyone could notice it.  But the star that shone over Bethlehem couldn’t have been like these Christmas Card stars, because no one other than this group of magi noticed it.  There weren’t floods of tourists showing up at Mary and Joseph’s door looking for what this star signified.  Only this group of magi – this group of scholars who diligently studied the stars night after night after night noticed when a new star appeared in the sky.

 

There have been various people over the centuries who have tried to speculate what that star might have been – a comet, a supernova, an alignment of planets.  But there is no evidence for any of these things happening at this time.  And I wonder if the search for a rational explanation might detract from the story.

 

There is a lovely poem by Walt Whitman that goes:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer when he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,

How soon unaccountable became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.[1]

 

I think of my time in a chemistry class in undergrad when we were learning quantum chemistry.  I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now; but sitting there in the lecture hall I let my mind wander a little bit, and then out of the metaphorical corner of my mind’s eye I caught a glimpse of something of great wonder and beauty.  An epiphany.  A sudden revelation.  And overwhelming aha moment.  A star that says, “look at me!”

 

But the magi did more than notice the new star – they acted on it.  They didn’t observe this new star, then return to their homes at dawn, content with a good night’s work – instead they left their homes behind and made a long and arduous journey westward to learn what the new star signified.

 

They had done the groundwork to prepare themselves to see the star; they were observant enough to notice it; they were curious enough to see where it would lead; and they were courageous enough to follow.  What a great model for us to follow in our journeys of faith!  Preparation, observation, curiosity, and courage.

 

Following the star is the part of the story that is best-remembered by most people – the part of the story that is reproduced in Christmas pageants and on Christmas cards; but there is another part of the story too.  After visiting Jesus and his parents and worshiping him, the magi return home by a different route.

 

King Herod, when he had directed the magi to Bethlehem, had asked them to return to his palace to tell him exactly where the baby was to be found so that he could go and worship him; but in reality King Herod was so afraid of being deposed by a new king, he was so afraid of a baby, that he planned to kill this baby.  And worse, if we read the story that follows, we will see that he goes on to kill all of the children under the age of two, just to make sure that the new king is dead.

 

But the magi – they don’t return to King Herod.  They return home by a different road.  They have had a dream telling them to do so, and they listened to what the dream was telling them to do.  Just as they listened to the guidance of the star, they also listened to the guidance of their dream.  Again, they were prepared to notice, and then had the courage to do what the dream told them to do, even when it meant disobeying a notoriously violent king.

 

And so I wonder, rather than this being a story about “we three kings,” if this is a story of two kings.  Herod, the violent despot, willing to murder hundreds of babies out of fear that he might lose his power, representing all of the power and the violence of this world; and Jesus, the vulnerable one, the Prince of Peace, enthroned in a manger and later on a cross, wearing a crown of thorns, humble to the point of death, even death on the cross.

 

And we, like the magi – we are called to choose which king we are going to give our homage to.  And we, like the magi – we are called to be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, whether we are led through a star or a dream or a word.  We prepare our hearts.  We observe so that we can notice.  We are open to curiosity.  And we then have the courage to do and to go.

 

Prepare.  Notice.  Curiosity.  Courage.

 

And may it be so.  Amen.

---

[1] Walt Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” Drum-tap, 1865.

 

 

 

 “Awake My Soul”
(“An abstract depicting the light of The Word shattering the darkness.”)
Mike Moyers, 2011

Used with Permission

2022 in Books

The calendar has turned and a new year is upon us, and so it is time for my annual post about my reading in the past year.

Unfortunately I don't have much to say this year. 2022 was not the best reading year ever. Somewhere between a book slump, lots of non-reading stuff going on, and a couple of disappointing DNFs, I didn't read as much as I have in the past couple of years. I also confess that I didn't track my books read the way I did the past couple of years so I don't have any stats for you this year; but I've already created my 2023 spreadsheet and will try to track myself better over the next 12 months.

I can't compile a top ten list this year, so instead let me award a couple of accolades (or not):

Favourite Non-Fiction: Permanent Astonishment (Tomson Highway)

I love Tomson Highway's story-telling style - as I read this book, I could hear his voice reading it to me in my head. This is a memoir of growing up in northern Canada, on the Manitoba side of the junction of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories. He writes of the love of his family, his delight in the land, and the joy he finds in language. He writes of his time in a residential school (including a few pages about the abuse he experienced), but my overall impression of this book was of delight. It also made me want to go back and re-read Kiss of the Fur Queen, since it is a fictionalized account of his family. (I had an opportunity to hear him speak live this year at a recording of one of the Massey Lectures in Fredericton, but I haven't read that book yet.)

Favourite Fiction: The Heart Principle (Helen Hoang)

This book hit me in all of the feels - when I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. It was actually sitting on my TBR stack for more than a year before I picked it up - I had read some reviews that it was "heavy" emotionally so I was waiting for the right time - but when I started to read it, it was the sort of book that chewed me up and spat me out as a different person. It is a story of family, of love, of healing, of music, of burn-out, of asking what is the next best thing.

Favourite Local Interest Book:  The Miramichi Fire (Alan MacEachern)

I heard Alan MacEachern interviewed on CBC about this book, so when he was the keynote speaker at a conference I attended in June, I picked up a copy at the conference bookstore and had it autographed. His writing style is very engaging (a pleasant surprise in a history text that I worried might be dry), and the content gave me insight into the history of the province I now call home.

Favourite Work-Related Book:  The Theology of the United Church of Canada (ed. Don Schweitzer, Rob Fennell, Michael Bourgeois)

I'd had this book on my bookshelf since it was first published in 2019, but hadn't moved beyond skimming the table of contents and a couple of chapters until this spring. Working as a TA for Rob Fennell when he taught United Church Doctrine (online) at AST last winter was the nudge that I needed to finally dive into it. Each chapter covers a different doctrinal topic and is written by a different theologian in the United Church so each chapter has a different feel, but together they make an incredible resource for the church.

Most Disappointing DNF:  State of Terror (Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny)

I love Louise Penny's books (though I didn't read any of her Gamache books this year and have two that I haven't read yet), but I just couldn't get in to this one. I was looking forward to reading this one and borrowed it from the library, but after 2 renewals I just wasn't able to get in to it and had to return it to the library. I gave it a good try - I was about half-way through - but though the writing was excellent, the plot (and the US politics) just didn't grab me.

And I think that's about it for this year. The good news is that 2023 seems to be off to a good start as I'm part-way through two excellent books at the moment (Born a Crime by Trevor Noah and Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald).

I wish all of you a year of happy, engaging, illuminating reading!