"Learning From the Long-Winded Preacher" (Sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday August 3, 2025
Scripture:  Acts 20:7-12


When I took the Licensed Lay Worship Leader course, many years ago, and we started learning how to write sermons, one of the first things our instructors taught us was don’t try to preach more than one sermon per sermon.  Which sounds silly, but it’s true.  We were beginner preachers, and when you start diving into the richness of the bible, with most readings there are many, many directions that you can go with the reading.  As beginner preachers, the temptation was there to try and say all the things.  But this leads to a sermon that doesn’t have any focus, or too many foci.  “I want to say this about the story, but I also want to say that, and what if I go down this rabbit hole here, and that detail is interesting too.”

Only preach one sermon per sermon, they taught us.  You’ll always have next week to say the thing that you didn’t get to say this week; and don’t forget that if you are following the lectionary, the same reading is going to come around 3 years from now, and you can say that other thing about the story then.

On the opposite side to this advice, I can also tell you about the time that I sat through a 3-hour sermon.  Not a 3-hour church service, but a 3-hour sermon.  The preacher that day was all over the bible.  He would be following one train of thought which would make him think of a bible reading – he would call out a chapter and verse and then point at someone in the congregation, and they were expected to find the verse and read them out loud for everyone, and the preacher would then follow that train of thought for a while.

It was an overwhelming experience for me, as someone not used to this style of preaching.  It was like thoughts and stories and teachings were washing over me.  At the end of 3 hours, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what the sermon was about, but 16 years later I still remember the feeling of being there in worship that day, and at least one of the points that the preacher was trying to make.

One other important point that I should make about this 3-hour sermon is the context.  I was in a Pentecostal house church in Tanzania.  They didn’t have a church building, and the pastor would travel around offering worship services wherever he found himself.  He showed up at the house where I was staying, as my hosts were members of his flock.  They then sent word to all of the neighbours who might be interested in attending, and once everyone had assembled, the worship service began in the living room.  (And for those of you who can’t imagine sitting there through a 3-hour sermon, don’t worry.  Because it was a house church, it was very relaxed – people were free to wander out and come back in again, and because we were all sitting on the floor, it was easy to shift and stretch and get more comfortable.)

So this was a case where the preacher was trying to say it all in one sermon, because who knows how long it would be before his next visit to this segment of his church.  He wanted to convey as much teaching, as much encouragement to them as he could – almost like filling them up in faith to keep them going until next time.

And when the sermon was done, when the prayers and the singing were over, our hosts brought out a meal and we broke bread together.

Which brings us to the Apostle Paul, and the bible story that _____ read for us this morning.  If you remember Paul’s story, he started out as a persecutor of the very early church, before he encountered the Risen Christ on the Road to Damascus and had a very dramatic conversion experience.  This led to his transformation from the primary persecutor of the church to the primary apostle of the church.  He undertook a series of missionary journeys all around the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and his visit to Troas that we read about today was on his third and final journey.

Here, he is on the coast of what would be modern-day Türkiye, and he is only able to stay for a week in Troas.  He has never been to this city before, never met the fledgling church that has sprung up there, and history tells us that Paul never had a chance to visit them again.  So he only has a single week to spend with them, and he wants to maximize the time he has with them.

On the last night, Paul starts preaching.  And he keeps on preaching.  I could be funny and suggest that maybe Paul’s persecution of the church hadn’t ended with his conversion if he was going to preach such long sermons!

And then somewhere around midnight – three, four, five hours into the sermon, a young man who had been perched on the window sill to listen to the sermon dozes off.  And when he falls asleep, he loses his balance and falls out of the window, landing on the street three storeys below.

At least Paul pauses his preaching at this point, and he and the others rush down.  The young man died as a result of his fall, but Paul, following in the footsteps of Jesus, raises the young man back to life.  We’re told that the people were much comforted by this, but I suspect that there was also a fair amount of celebration as a result.

As for Paul, he and the rest of his congregation went back upstairs, had a bite to eat, and then Paul continued to preach for the rest of the night, right up until daybreak.

It’s a quirky little story.  When I was planning out worship for the summer, I was tempted to put this story next week when our Session members are going to be leading worship so that they could complain about long-winded preachers and make jokes at our expense, but I decided to tackle this story myself and poke fun at myself.

I would put Paul’s visit to Troas, and his marathon 8-hour sermon, into the Tanzanian House Church category of sermons, rather than the LLWL “Only preach one sermon per sermon” category.  This is the only time that he is going to be able to spend with them, and he wants to convey as much as he possibly can to them.  If he had only preached for 10-15 minutes, the church in Troas probably would have felt cheated out of time that they had with him, like they were missing out on the wisdom that Paul had to impart on them.

But in this short story, we get to see so much of how church can be.  Church is people who want to spend time together.  Church is learning about our faith from each other.  Church is breaking bread together.  Church is healing one another.  Church is serving each other.

The church of the era of this story was very different than what we think of church today.  There were no church buildings – churches would have met in the house of whoever had the most space to welcome everyone.  There were no seminaries, no professional clergy.  Even what we think of as the bible didn’t exist yet – they would have known the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, as most of the early Christian communities arose out of the synagogues, but the very earliest parts of the New Testament, the letters that Paul himself was writing to the church in different places he visited, these were only just being written at the time of this story.

And yet church still happened anyways.  The people gathered and they would have told the stories that they knew about Jesus – “Do you remember the story about the time when Jesus walked on water?  It went this way, there was a storm on the Sea of Galilee and the disciples were in a boat when they saw someone walking across the water towards them.”  At each gathering, they would have shared bread and wine in a communion meal.  As new people joined the faith, baptisms would have been offered by the community.  And so when someone like Paul came to visit, someone with authority and expertise in the faith, it was an opportunity for the members of the community to go deeper.

In some ways, I wonder of the 21^st Century Church is moving back towards this model of church.  For 1700 years in between, Christianity was the norm in society.  Christianity governed the nations.  Christianity set the laws.  And yet in the past 50 years or so, we have been moving into a post-Christendom world where church-going is not a societal requirement, and those of us who are here are here because we want to be here.

And so I think that a story like the one that we read today can offer us some comfort. We don’t need to be in the centre of society to be faithful followers of Jesus.  All that a church needs is people who want to learn and grow in faith, people who want to share the bread and the cup and offer the water of baptism, people who want to embody Christ in the world, serving and healing the world.  It’s as simple as that.  (Though I rather suspect that we can leave the 8-hour sermons back with Paul.)

No matter what the church of the future might hold, the one thing that has been consistent in the church across the eras is the presence of the Holy Spirit.  It is the Holy Spirit who calls us, the Holy Spirit who equips us, the Holy Spirit who sends us into the world and accompanies us along the way.  The same Holy Spirit who inspired Paul’s words almost 2000 years ago is dancing in our midst today.  For we are the church.  We are God’s church.  And God will never leave us nor forsake us, no matter what shape or form the church might take.  Thanks be to God!

 

 

The conclusion of my Not-8-Hours-Long Sermon
(And not even 3-hours-Long)

But if I didn’t have next Sunday, and the Sunday after that,

and the Sunday after that, who knows how long

this sermon would have been…

"Magic, or Idol, or Sign?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday July 27, 2025
Scripture:  Numbers 21:4-9


So in this year’s summer sermon series of “Wait?! What?! That’s in the bible???” when we’re looking at some of the lesser-known, quirkier stories in the bible, this week’s story falls under the category of just plain weird.

Unlike some of the other stories we’re going to be reading this summer, this story from the book of Numbers is actually found in the lectionary that we follow.  In chapter 3 of John’s gospel, Jesus refers to Moses lifting up the bronze serpent, and so on the 4th Sunday in Lent in year B, when we read chapter 3 of John’s gospel, this story is paired with it as the Old Testament reading.  But when I was reading and listening to some different commentaries on this reading, all of the commentators said some form of, “But none of you are going to actually be preaching on this story from Numbers, because it’s paired with the much more important, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only son’ reading.”

So this week is a bit of me pushing back on those commentators, and I am actually preaching on the story of the snakes in Numbers.

Like I said, it’s a weird story.  When I read it, two big questions or concerns jump off the page at me.  Number 1:  Surely God, a God who is love, didn’t actually send a bunch of venomous snakes to kill the people.  And Number 2:  What’s with healing people by having them look at a bronze snake on a pole?  This is sounding almost like magic or idolatry, and it wasn’t too long ago on their journey through the wilderness that the people got in a lot of trouble for worshipping a golden calf.

So those are my two concerns, and hopefully by the end of today I’ll have come up with some sort of satisfactory answer to both of them!

This story takes place in the middle of the Sinai wilderness.  If you remember, the Ancient Israelite people had been slaves in Egypt; Moses went to the Pharoah and demanded, “Let my people go!”; eventually the people were able to escape and Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea so that the people could cross over to safety; and then they spent 40 years wandering through the desert wilderness before they would be able to cross over the Jordan River into the land that had been promised to them and to their ancestors.

We don’t have an explicit time stamp on this story that we heard today, but it’s fair to say that they are getting close to the end of their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.  They are still on the move, but in just a couple more chapters, Moses is going to climb to the top of a hill and he will be able to see the promised land.  Then Moses is going to spend almost all of the book of Deuteronomy summarizing the journey so far and repeating God’s law to the people, then Moses is going to die and Joshua will lead the people across the Jordan River.

So from our perspective, because we can read ahead, we know that the journey of the Ancient Israelites is almost over.  We know that it is not long before they will be crossing into a land flowing with milk and honey.  But from their perspective, they would have had no idea how close to the end they were.  From their perspective, they have been traveling through a desert wilderness for 40 years, and they have no way of knowing that the journey isn’t going to last another 40 years.

But their complaining has been almost continual, and poor Moses (and poor God) have been listening to their continual grumbling for almost 40 years now.  Right away – as soon as they had crossed the Red Sea to leave Egypt, and as soon as they had sung a song of praise to God for delivering them from slavery – they had barely had time to put their drums and their stringed instruments away when the complaints began.  Why have you brought us out here into the desert to die?  Why can’t we go back to be slaves in Egypt again, because even though we were slaves, at least we had cucumbers and melons to eat, and fresh water to drink?

If you read through Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers, it is a continual litany of complaint.  The people complain to Moses, Moses passes on their complaint to God, and God responds.  God provides manna for them to eat.  God tells Moses to strike a rock with his staff and fresh water flows from it.  God causes flocks of quail to land on their campsite so they can have fresh meat.

And still the people complain.  40 years later and we hear them still grumbling:  “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food that we do have.”

And then a… I don’t know the right word for a collective of snakes… a herd of snakes?  a flock of snakes?  appears, and bite the people, and the people start dying.

Which brings me to the first of my questions.  Do I believe that God actually sent the snakes to kill the people?  To that, I have to say no.  I don’t think that a loving God, who has been caring for the people through 40 years of desert wandering, would all of a sudden send something to kill them.  If you read the passage carefully, we don’t have God telling Moses, “Let me send a bunch of venomous snakes.”  Instead, we have the narrator’s observation – then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people.

If we consider that the people had been complaining to God and blaming God for the hardships that they had been facing in the desert, when a bunch of deadly animals show up, it makes sense that they would continue to blame God.  And so I see the snakes coming from God as the people’s interpretation of what is happening rather than what God is actually doing.

Because isn’t it a temptation that most of us face, that when something bad happens in our lives, we want to blame God?  God – why did you take my loved one from me?  Why didn’t you stop that fire from destroying my house? Why didn’t you (insert complaint here)?

In the story we read today, we hear from God for the first time when God gives Moses instructions for how to cure the people – make a bronze snake, and put it on a pole, and anyone who looks at the snake will live.  Even if God didn’t send the danger, God offers a path to safety.  Bad things happen in our lives – everything doesn’t always happen for a reason, sometimes stuff just happens – but God is always there to accompany us through the bad things.

But what’s with the cure that God offers?  Instead of herding the snakes out of the camp, instead of telling Moses to strike the rock with his staff so that anti-venom will pour out of it, instead God instructs Moses to cast a bronze snake, and raise it up on a pole above the people, and when the people look at the snake they will recover.  Really?  Just looking at a bronze snake will cure snakebites?  First of all, this is bizarre; second of all, it smacks of woo-woo magic rather than of God; and third of all, how is looking at a bronze snake different than worshipping a golden calf?

I think what is important here is intent.  The bronze snake was a sign.  The people weren’t supposed to see the snake and worship it – they were supposed to look at the snake and then look past the snake to see God’s presence.  The bronze snake is a sign, pointing towards God.

Because I don’t think that the thing that the Ancient Israelites needed to be cured from was snakebite, because that wasn’t what was really ailing them.  The thing that they needed to be cured from was forgetting about God.  And by looking at a bronze snake, they could be reminded that God was still with them, guiding them, protecting them, and feeding them.  The cure wasn’t about the snake itself, it was about what the snake pointed to.  And just like we don’t worship our bibles or our crosses or our candles, they can all help us to remember that God is with us.  Always and forever.

Last Tuesday at our movie night, we watched the animated movie Flow, which begins when a little grey cat has its life turned upside down when a sudden flood takes away its home and familiar routines.  The cat can never go back to the way that things were – it can only move forward.  Even at the end of the movie, the cat hasn’t returned to its old home – it has created a new home and a new chosen family instead.  The Ancient Israelite people can never go back to the way that things were – they can only go forward, trusting that something new and something good awaits them at the end of their journey.

And we too can’t go back in time – we can’t go back to whatever golden age we might hold in our imaginations.  But we can trust that, even when it feels like we are wandering through the wilderness, God is still with us, and that the Promised Land that lies ahead of us, in whatever form that promised land might take, is miles better than all of the cucumbers and melons that the Egypt of our imagination might hold.  And if we forget that God is with us, well, maybe we won’t want a bronze snake on a pole, but we can use the things we need to use to remind us of God’s presence – gathering together to worship, prayer, singing, candles, crosses, incense.

We can never go back to the way that things were, but the future ahead of us is going to be even better than what we have left behind, knowing that God is with us on the journey, and God will be with us at the destination.  Amen

 

 

I promised that I wouldn’t bring any snakes

(real or toy)

to church this week.

I hope that you will forgive me for this photograph

of a sculpture of the Bronze Serpent,

made by Giovanni Fantoni and found outside

the Memorial Church of Moses on Mount Nebo, Jordan.

Image used with permission.

"Arise My Love, My Fair One" (Sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday July 13 and 20, 2025
Scripture Reading:  Song of Solomon 2:8-17 and 8:6-7a


Usually in the summer time around here, we have a bit of fun with our bible readings and sermons.  We go off-lectionary – we turn away from the 3-year cycle of readings that is used by many churches and denominations around the world – and do something a bit different.  Each summer we have a different theme, and this summer’s theme is, “Wait?! What?! That’s in the bible???”

And this week, we begin this theme with a bit of romantic love poetry!  If you were to read the Song of Solomon (sometimes called the Song of Songs) from beginning to end, it is an 8-chapter love poem, alternating between the voices of two lovers.  They praise each other’s beauty and strength.  They speak of how they long to sneak away to be together.  They share memories of the times they have spent together.  Some parts of it are… how shall I say… quite explicit.  We’ve stuck with some of the more tame parts of the book for today, in order to keep this church service PG.

Some couples have a practice of reading the Song of Solomon to each other, as it stands up well as love poetry.  When I was preparing todays service, and trying to figure out what I would do for the Story for All Ages, one suggestion I came across was to ask a couple in the congregation to stand up and read it to each other, back-and-forth.  I thought of doing that, but I didn’t want to put [name and name] on the spot!

It is also interesting to note that God’s name does not appear anywhere in the Song of Solomon – any of God’s names.  And yet every version of the bible includes this book – there is no debate around including the Song of Solomon in the official canon of the bible.

One of the ancient church fathers wrote a series of sermons on the Song of Solomon in the last years of his life.  Gregory of Nyssa lived in Cappadocia in what would be modern-day Turkey in the 300s, and was a bishop in the very early church.  In the last four years of his life, he wrote a series of 15 sermons on the Song of Solomon, and still felt like he had only scratched the surface.  So what is it, about a short book of romantic love poetry that never mentions God that could captivate the spiritual imagination an elderly bishop this way?

Gregory of Nyssa’s approach was to interpret the Song of Solomon as an allegory – that the love shared between the lovers in the poem was referring to the love between God and God’s people.  That the exuberant, all-encompassing love that lovers share with each other is the same as the love that God has for people, and that we people have for God.  And in the richness of love that is found in this poem, Gregory of Nyssa found the richness of God’s love.

So on one hand, we have a beautiful love poem between two people – a poem that begins:  “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!  For your love is better than wine.”  A poem that continues:  “My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.’”  A poem that continues:  “I am my beloved’s and his desire is for me. Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields.”  A poem that ends:  “For love is as strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.”

On one hand, we have this beautiful love poem between two people; and on the other hand, we have an allegorical reading of it, that says that this poem is all about God’s love for God’s people, and the love of the people for God.  So which one is it?

To which I answer, why can’t it be both?

The bible tells us that God is love.  God doesn’t just feel love, God doesn’t just do love, but God is love.  If we believe in a God whose very nature, whose very essence is love, then all of the love that we have for one another is part of God. One of the hymns from More Voices that we aren’t singing today ends each verse with “God is where love is for love is of God.”

Which makes the Song of Solomon a both-and poem.  Yes, it is a beautiful love poem between two people.  And yes, it is a poem about God because God is present in the love that the two people share.  For God is love.

In all of the different loves that we experience and that we witness, God is present.  God is present in the romantic love between two lovers.  God is present in the love that a parent has for a child.  God is present in the love that siblings and cousins have for each other.  God is present in the love that is shared in communities, like the community of this church.  God is present in the love shared between best friends.  God is present when we love ourselves.  All of these different types of love are reflections of the beautiful love of God that includes every colour on the spectrum.

The poem ends with the permanence of love.  “For love is as strong as death.”  I might take it one step further and say that love is not just as strong as death, but love is stronger than death.  For even when it seems as though death has had the final word, love endures.  Something that I say at most funerals is that love never ends.  Even though we can’t see our loved ones any more, even though we can’t reach out and touch them, all of the love that they had for us, and all of the love that we have for them – this love isn’t going anywhere.  Love is stronger than death, and love never ends.

We are about to build our bouquet of memories.  We will be adding flowers to this bouquet for the loved ones we carry in our hearts.  And as we add the flowers, I invite you to hold on to the love that you carry.  Wrap the love around the person you love, but also let the love wrap around you too.  And when we are done, we’ll not only have a bouquet of memories, but this space that we are in will be filled with so much love that I wouldn’t be surprised if the air starts humming and vibrating with it.

We’ll begin by adding flowers for the people from this church community who have died in the past year, and then there will be an opportunity for all of us to come forward to add a flower for the people we carry in our hearts.

(invite the congregation to build bouquet of memories now)

Building our Bouquet of Memores

“We remember [name], and hold his/her family and loved ones in prayer.”

 

 

Bouquet of Memories
Long Reach United Church
July 20, 2025
(I probably should have moved the offering plate
before taking the picture!)

"Dancing Like the Northern Lights" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday June 8, 2025 – Pentecost
Scripture Reading:  Acts 2:1-17


The northern lights follow an 11-year cycle, give or take, related to the solar cycle or the sunspot cycle.  There was a peak beginning in 1989 that I remember – both because I remember gathering with my family in front of the picture windows in the house I grew up in, with all the lights turned out, watching the northern lights dance; but also because a huge solar flare that year caused widespread power outages in the middle of March Break.  Two years later, the sunspot activity was reaching its peak – I remember that fall I had a Tuesday night babysitting job, and it seemed like every Tuesday as I headed home down the road, I was accompanied by dancing lights in the sky.

In the early 2000s, there was another peak in the cycle – by then I was living in Thunder Bay, and I have memories of driving home at night, and being able to see the northern lights, even in the city.  In the winter of 2017/2018, after living in Halifax for a couple of years, I moved to northern BC for my internship, and I was excited that I might get to see the northern lights again – unfortunately that year fell at a quiet point in the solar cycle, and I was only able to see them once that winter.

When you see the northern lights dancing, they both feel close enough that you could reach out and touch them, but also far away and remote and massive and awe-inspiring.  You can’t predict what they are going to do next – you can only watch and gasp in amazement as they dance.  They are both very real, as well as mysterious and beyond our ability to control.

Which is why I love the northern lights as an image or a metaphor for the Holy Spirit.  She dances where she chooses. We can’t predict or control where she will go or what she will do next, we can only watch and follow and join the dance.  She is beautiful, and awe-inspiring, and covers all of creation.

But like all metaphors, this one eventually breaks down.  We can’t literally touch the northern lights, but the Holy Spirit is dancing within each of us, and in the space between us.  And while the northern lights might cause us to feel awe, we aren’t transformed or changed by the northern lights, whereas the Holy Spirit is working in each one of us, shaping us and transforming us into who God created us to be.

But I also want to say that just like the northern lights come in cycles, our ability to sense the Spirit’s action ebbs and flows – sometimes in our lives and in our church, we can sense her vibrancy, leading us to new places and to new ministries; but sometimes she feels further away.  But just like I still got to see the northern lights up in BC even during the quietest point in the solar cycle, the Holy Spirit never ever goes away or abandons us.

Today is Pentecost, and we remember the Holy Spirit coming in power to Jesus’s disciples – the lights were dancing brightly that day.  This month is also when we are celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the United Church of Canada and we can look back at our history and see times when the Spirit was dancing brightly among us – maybe in 1936 when we, as a church, ordained the first female minister; maybe in 1988 when the church discerned that sexual orientation should not be a barrier to full participation in the church, including ordination; maybe also in 1988 when our teaching changed so that children were explicitly invited to take communion because we wouldn’t exclude children from the family table anywhere else.  1988 feels like a year when the Spirit was dancing brightly in our church!  But we might also remember times when the Spirit felt more distant – maybe in the years before 1969 when the church was operating Residential Schools; maybe in times and places, including today, when racism has excluded people, even within the church.  But the Holy Spirit is always with the church and will never abandon us.

This month, we can look back not just on the past 100 years of the United Church of Canada, but also the past 2000 years since that first Pentecost.  And we can also look forward – to the next 100 years, or to the next 2000 years.  Where is the Holy Spirit going to lead us next?  What new dance steps is she going to teach her church?  Just like the northern lights will always dance in the sky, so too will the Holy Spirit dance in our hearts, dance in the church, dance in the streets, dance in all of creation.  And may we have eyes to see hear, and ears to hear her, and a heart to join the dance.

 

 

When I went to change the hangings at Long Reach United Church

this week, I discovered that the red Pentecost hangings there look like

the Holy Spirit dove is already dancing among the Northern Lights

"From the Old We Travel to the New" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday May 18 – 5^th Sunday of Easter
Scripture:  John 13:31-35


Last weekend, I had the opportunity to attend Convocation at the Atlantic School of Theology and celebrate with the graduates.  The graduation ceremony is held in a church each year, as there isn’t a space on campus big enough to accommodate it; and because it is a theological school, it always feels like a cross between graduation and a worship service.  Last Saturday, 13 students graduated with their Master of Divinity degree, 6 students graduated with their Master of Arts in Theology and Religion, and 27 students graduated with various diplomas and certificates.  It was a grand celebration, with singing and prayers and moving speeches and a reception in the church hall afterwards.

And for all of the students who graduated, it marked a turning point in their lives.  Most of those who graduated with their Master of Divinity will be ordained in the coming weeks in different Regions and Dioceses across the country which makes graduation almost like stage one of the turning point, but for all of the students, no matter which program they were graduating from, the celebration marked a change.  They are no longer students, no longer writing essays, no longer listening to lectures or participating in seminars.  At the end of the ceremony, a commissioning and benediction were offered, just like we end all of our worship services – a sending out into the world with God’s blessing, to do God’s work.  The graduates have been sent from the university into the world, to take all that they have learned and use it to serve God’s mission.

So how does all of this connect with our gathering today?  The passage that _____ read for us from John’s gospel comes from the last day of Jesus’s life.  You might remember how this story goes – “on the night before he died, Jesus and his friends gathered around a table…”  In John’s version of events, there is no bread broken or wine poured out – or, quite likely there was bread broken and wine poured because they were sharing a meal, but John doesn’t attach any significance to the act.  Instead, John shows us Jesus, washing the feet of his disciples, and then telling them that they should serve others by washing their feet.

And John also shows us Jesus teaching his disciples.  Through the second half of chapter 13, then all of chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17, Jesus teaches his disciples – in the section that _____ read for us, Jesus is just getting warmed up!  These chapters include some of the best-known statements of Jesus – things like, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid”; or “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”; or “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”  Scholars like to call this part of the story Jesus’s Farewell Discourse – he is saying goodbye to his beloved friends, his beloved students, and giving them their final instructions.

And so in some ways, this part of the story is almost like the disciple’s graduation ceremony.  They have been in the presence of Jesus, watching what he did, listening to his teaching, learning from him.  But now this period of time is coming to an end.  After tonight, their teacher isn’t going to be with them anymore, at least not in the same way.  The time has come for them to take what they have learned from the Jesus-school and carry it into the world, and start living the way that they have learned.

And the commissioning that Jesus gives to them?  Love.  Love one another as Jesus has loved you.  Throughout the 4 ½ chapters, Jesus comes back to this theme again and again.  Love one another and love the world.  Serve one another and serve the world.  It’s almost as though Jesus knows that this is his last chance to teach his students, and he wants to send them out into the world with love ringing in their ears.

The disciples aren’t going to be left alone.  Their learning isn’t over, even as they are graduating from the Jesus-school, just as last weekend’s graduates will all be life-long learners.  They are going to encounter the risen Christ on the other side of Good Friday; and even in the farewell discourse, Jesus promises them that the Holy Spirit will be with them.  But this final meal together marks a turning point.

And we too, we are descendants of those first disciples.  We are living in the post-graduation world that they are stepping in to.  We aren’t going to have a chance to watch Jesus healing people, or be part of the crowd that receives the miraculous loaves and fish.  We don’t have the chance to put our hands in Jesus’s wounds the way Thomas did, or to feel Jesus’s arms literally wrapped around us.  We don’t have a chance to ask our questions and hear Jesus’s voice answering them… at least not yet.

But, like those first disciples, we have the stories that Jesus told, the teachings that he gave, the miracles he performed – even though we didn’t get to see them first-hand, we have the witness of God’s people that we can turn to any time.

And like those first disciples, we also have the Holy Spirit with us, guiding us, nudging us onward, and transforming us more and more into the image and likeness of Christ.

And like those first disciples in a post-Easter world, in a post-graduation world, we have Jesus’s words of commissioning ringing in our ears:  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

I invite you to take a moment to imagine yourself standing on a graduation stage.  If you can remember your own high school or university graduation, you can imagine yourself on to that same stage, or maybe you want to imagine something different.

You are standing there with all of your classmates, all of the other followers of Jesus. Imagine Jesus standing up there and saying to you and to everyone else:  “I love you.  Now go into the world and love everyone you meet in the same way that I love you.”  You all know that the work hasn’t ended – it is only beginning.  Know that the learning hasn’t ended – it is only beginning.

Now imagine that it is your turn to cross the stage to receive your diploma.  Imagine crossing the stage, walking towards Jesus, and he hands you a rolled-up diploma.  Look into his eyes.  What words does he offer to you directly in this moment?  Does he offer you words of encouragement?  Does he give you a specific mission or commissioning?  Does he simply smile his love into your soul?

And as you and your classmates turn to walk off the stage, Jesus’s parting words to you are the same as the words he began with:  Love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you must love one another.

 

 

Listening to inspiring words from this year’s Valedictorian
AST Convocation – May 10, 2025

"Call and Re-Call" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday May 4, 2025 – 3^rd Sunday of Easter
Scripture:  John 21:1-19


Let’s talk a bit about Peter.  If we only remember what he did when Jesus was crucified, he doesn’t come off in the best light.  After all, three times he denied knowing Jesus.  Even though, at the start of Holy Week, Peter had promised to stay with Jesus to the end, to go wherever he would go, when push came to shove and Jesus was arrested and put on trial, there in the courtyard in front of the palace three times Peter denied that he had anything to do with Jesus and his followers.

But this isn’t where Peter’s journey started.  His story didn’t begin with Jesus’s crucifixion and his own denial… and his story didn’t end there either.

Peter’s story began up north in Galilee.  The details of the story of how Peter first met Jesus are different depending on whether you are reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, but because today’s story came to us from the gospel of John, let’s stick with John’s version of events.

If we turn back to chapter 1 of John, we begin with John the Baptist doing his thing out in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord and baptizing people as a sign of repentance, as a sign of hearts and lives that had been changed by this message.

Jesus shows up one day, and John the Baptist points at him and proclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”  John, like all teachers, had a number of disciples or students, and two of them, after hearing their teacher point out Jesus as the Lamb of God, turned from John and started following Jesus.

When Jesus saw them, he gave them an invitation:  “Come and see.”  They came and they saw and they listened to what Jesus had to say.

Peter still isn’t on the scene yet, but Peter’s brother Andrew was one of the ones who had turned from John to “come and see” what Jesus was all about.  Andrew, obviously excited about what he was seeing and hearing, went and found his brother, Simon Peter, and told him, “We have found the Messiah, the anointed one!”

So Jesus invites Andrew, “come and see”; and Andrew goes and invites his brother, “come and see!”

In John’s version of the story of Jesus, some of the well-known stories about from the other gospels are left out.  We don’t get to hear Peter trying to persuade Jesus to turn away from the way that leads to crucifixion, and we don’t get to hear Jesus condemning Peter in return, “Get behind me Satan!”  In John, we don’t get the story of the Transfiguration, where Peter, James, and John follow Jesus up a mountain and witness him transformed and hear the voice of God; which means that we also don’t get to hear Peter stumbling over his words with excitement, “Lord, it is good to be here! Let’s build some tents to try and stay here!”

But in John, we get to see some of Peter’s faithfulness, even in the early times.  When Jesus’s teachings become controversial, and many of his followers drift away, Jesus asked his inner circle, “do you want to leave me too?” and it is Peter who answers on behalf of the twelve:  “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Peter is the spokesman again on the night before Jesus died, when Jesus kneels down and washes his disciples’ feet, taking on the role of a servant.  Peter protests this act – “Lord, you should never wash my feet!”  Jesus then teaches Peter, and the rest of the disciples, that we need to do both – we need to be able to receive the loving acts of service that others offer, and we must also go into the world to serve others we encounter.

Later in the same meal, Peter proclaims his loyalty to Jesus:  “Lord, I will lay down my life for you.”  And at first, he keeps this promise.  When Jesus is arrested, Peter pulls out a sword and uses it to cut off the ear of the slave of the high priest.  How he smuggled that sword into the garden, we aren’t told; or even why he thought he might need a sword.  But as Jesus is arrested, Peter risks his own arrest standing up for his teacher.

And then John gives us story of Peter’s three-fold denial of Jesus.  Three times, while Jesus is on trial in the palace, people recognize Peter as one of his followers; and three times, to save his own skin, Peter denies knowing Jesus.

On Easter morning, in John’s gospel, Peter is one of the first disciples to arrive at the empty tomb, though he doesn’t get to see Jesus right away – it is Mary Magdalene who first encounters the risen Christ.  But then Peter is presumably with the disciples as they cower behind a locked door and the risen Christ appears, saying, “Peace be with you.”

How we get from that moment behind a closed door in Jerusalem to a fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee isn’t clear, but it seems as though Peter and some of the other disciples are at loose ends following the crucifixion and the resurrection.  Jesus is no longer with them.  They have lost their purpose of learning about God’s way of being in the world from the one who showed them that way.  And so they go back to what is familiar – their boats and their nets on the Sea of Galilee.

And all of a sudden, Jesus is there, and there is a miraculous catch of fish, followed by a breakfast meal shared on the beach.  And following the meal, for each time that Peter had denied Jesus, Jesus asks him, “Peter, do you love me?”  Each time, Peter replies, “Yes, I love you. You know that I love you!”  And then each time Jesus replies with a command:  “Feed my sheep.”

The first time Peter met Jesus, Jesus called him with an invitation, “Come and see.”  Peter has spent all of this time seeing, witnessing to God’s Way in the world; and now in his final encounter with Jesus, Jesus calls him slightly differently, not with an invitation but with a commission:  “Go, and tend my people.”  Peter has been changed by all that he has seen, all that he has witnessed, and so his calling changes to suit.

God calls all of us, but like Peter I don’t think that our calling is static.  I think that our calling changes over time depending on where we are at in our life and where we are at in our journey with Jesus.  There are times when we might be called to “come and see” – to listen and learn and observe.  There are times when we might be called to simply rest in God’s presence.  There are times when we might be called to feed God’s sheep – to go out into the world to serve the people we encounter there.  There are times when we might be called to proclaim God’s goodness and to teach God’s ways.  There are times when we might be called to be prophets – that challenging role of pointing out to the world how the world is straying away from God’s vision.

I invite you, this week, to ponder God’s calling in your life.  What is God calling you to in this moment?  Are you called to come and see?  Are you called to rest?  Are you called to go and serve?  Has your calling changed at any time?

God needs all of us listening to our calling; the world needs all of us listening to our calling, and following where we are sent.  And just like for Peter, Jesus will be there with each one of us, accompanying us along the way, and welcoming us home.  Thanks be to God!

 

 

“Breakfast on the Beach”

Peter Koenig

Used with Permission

"Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition!" (An Easter Sermon - I promise!)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday April 20, 2025 – Easter Sunday
Scripture:  Luke 24:1-12


Any Monty Python fans here this morning?  If you aren’t familiar with Monty Python, they were a British comedy troop who used a lot of absurdist as well as physical comedy.  One of their most famous sketches is The Spanish Inquisition.  The set-up is a conversation between two family members, and one of the family members says, “I wasn’t expecting a Spanish Inquisition.”  Cue three men, wearing red clerical robes bursting into the room and one of them loudly proclaims “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”  The same thing happens over again a couple of times, with different details in the set-up, but always resulting in those three members of the Spanish Inquisition bursting into the room, proclaiming, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

It is absurd.  It is hilarious.  If humour is found in the difference between expectations and reality, nobody expects people to burst into a room proclaiming “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” There are multiple layers of unexpectedness in one short skit!

So what does this have to do with Easter?  On a certain level, everything.  A group of women go to a tomb.  Just two days ago, they bore witness as they watched their teacher and their friend nailed to a cross and left there to die.  They watched his body carried away and laid in a tomb.  They saw a heavy stone rolled across the entrance to the tomb.  They went home, and prepared the spices and ointments that would prepare his body for its final rest; then yesterday, on the Sabbath, they rested.  And now this morning, they take their prepared spices and go to wash and prepare his body.  But when they got there, the stone had been rolled back from the entrance, and there was no body to be found.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.  Nobody expects an empty tomb.

The whole world has been tipped sideways and off-kilter.  They say that the only things that are certain in this world are death and taxes, and now we can’t even trust death any more.

It is a great, absurd cosmic joke.  And from the inside of the joke, those women going to the tomb aren’t able to make any sense of it at all, at least not at first.

It is interesting to notice, in this story, what isn’t present, alongside what is present.  There are no trumpets, no Hallelujahs, no angelic choruses proclaiming “Jesus Christ is Risen Today!”  We don’t even have Jesus present in this moment – his dead body isn’t present, and neither is his resurrected body.

Instead, we have a group of bewildered women who will be the one to bring word of the empty tomb back to the other disciples; and we have two… beings… in dazzling clothes chiding them, saying, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, for he is risen!”

The risen Christ isn’t going to appear to Jesus’s disciples until they leave the tombs, until they leave the realms of death and go back into the land of the living.  Their hallelujahs aren’t going to ring from their lips until they start to expect the empty tomb, until they start to trust that death has been defeated.

And so the message of Easter is that maybe we should expect the Spanish Inquisition.  Or, at least, we should expect graves to be empty and death to be defeated and Jesus to be risen from the dead.  Because if this is possible, then it means that the end of the story is never really the end of the story; it means that love is always stronger than death; it means that Good Friday is always followed by Easter; it means that new life and new beginnings are always possible.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition; but we all expect the grave to be empty.  And that is the place from which we sing our Hallelujahs.  And that is the place from which we draw our hope.  Amen.

"Three Parades" (Palm Sunday Sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday April 13, 2025 – Palm Sunday
Scripture:  Luke 19:28-40


I have three stories that I want to share with you this morning.

For story number one, I invite you to cast your mind back to January 2017.  You might recall that our neighbours to the south had had a… significant… election two months previously.  There was an air of uncertainty with an undercurrent of fear, especially for anyone who was marginalized.  There was worry that instead of moving towards greater equality for all people, that some rights that had been fought hard for were going to be revoked.

All of this is sounding very familiar in 2025, 8 years later, but let’s stay in the past for now.

My story is not about the election itself, but about the response to that election.  You might recall that in January 2017, women gathered in Washington DC.  They gathered not just from the city itself, not just from the states surrounding Washington, but from all across the country and even some from Canada. They traveled by the busload, by train, by car.  The subways were packed that day as the women gathered.

All of this is sounding very familiar in 2025, 8 years later.  Last weekend, millions of people gathering in thousands of locations, with more gatherings planned for next weekend.  But it will take some time to know the full extent of what is going on in the Resistance right now, so let’s stay in the past.

In 2017, the marchers wore distinctive pink hats with cat ears, made out of fleece, out of felt, knitted, sewn, and crocheted.  And there, in the city that inaugurates presidents, in the city that receives world leaders on a regular basis, there in that city, the women filled the streets.  They gathered to remind the people in power that all people are precious, all people are valued – all people of all genders and gender identities, and not just the men who tend to occupy the seats of power in our world today.

At the Women’s March on Washington, almost half a million people showed up, but the march wasn’t limited to Washington. In cities around the world, women gathered to say “We won’t be forgotten.” It’s estimated that 7 million women marched that day.

They carried a message about women’s rights, about reforming immigration systems, about LGBTQ+ rights, about racial justice, about workers’ rights, about environmental rights.  7 million people gathered that day to speak truth to power, saying:  “We won’t let you oppress us any longer.”

For story number 2, I invite you to think a little bit closer to home, both in terms of time and geography.  Picture a sunny Saturday afternoon in early August in uptown Saint John.  Picture several hundred people gathered for a parade – some with floats, some driving vehicles, some walking.  Rainbows of all sorts are everywhere you turn, because this is the annual Pride Parade.

The route begins at the old Loyalist Burial grounds; it winds around Kings Square and down King Street; then it continues along Water Street until it gets to the Container Village.  Music is playing from different groups and floats; flags are being waved, not just rainbow flags but all of the different pride flags are present.  People are laughing, hugs are being shared, and the crowds that line the street are cheering as we walk past them.  There is so much joy in the air that it almost spills over into tears.

This is a parade that proclaims that love always wins.  Love always wins.  Those of us walking as the church remind the crowds that God is proud of ALL of Their children, that ALL people are created in God’s image.  There is so much joy and so much love in the streets of the city that day.

And yet, despite all of the joy, despite all of the love, there is still an undercurrent that reminds everyone present of why we need to have Pride Parades.  Pride Parades are still necessary because there are people and groups in our world who would try to deny the love that this parade proclaims.  There are people in the world who would try to take away rights from queer and trans folx.  This parade is necessary to make sure that the voice of love will always drown out the voices of hatred and oppression.

And there is always the fear that this might be the year that someone tries to stop the parade using violence.

Yet the parade continues, because love ALWAYS wins.

For story number 3, you’re going to have to use your sacred imagination a little bit more, because this story takes place before any of us were born.  This story is set in the city of Jerusalem, some 2000 years ago, just before the celebration of Passover.

Jerusalem, like Washington DC, is familiar with parades of power – it is familiar with visiting dignitaries and military leaders.  The people in power of this time and place tend to parade through the streets of Jerusalem, not in limos with darkened windows, but rather on war horses cloaked in the finest cloth and bedecked with jewels.

Now, in the days before one of the major annual festivals, the city streets are crowded with pilgrims from all around the known world, come to celebrate their ancestors’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt, come to celebrate the time when the angel of death passed over their homes, sparing their children, come to celebrate this Passover in the temple which was the very home of God-whose-name-is-Holy.

And yet there is an undercurrent of tension because Jerusalem is not an independent city, and Ancient Israel was not an independent country.  It was part of the Roman Empire, and the emperor in Rome ruled over the land through a series of governors like Pilate and puppet kings like Herod.

The Roman Empire, like every empire, tended to govern through fear – you towed the line because you were afraid to do otherwise.  Treason against Rome was punished by nailing the traitor to a cross and leaving them there to die.

More echoes of 2025?

The city has swelled to 3 or 4 times its usual size as people from every nation have gathered to celebrate the Passover celebration of liberation; and into this city enters a parade.  This one doesn’t have a war horse or jewels.  Instead, the person at the heart of this parade is riding a donkey, a comic sight as he has to hold his legs up so that his feet don’t drag on the ground.  Instead of fancy garments, the people gathered have laid their ordinary cloaks on the ground to pave the path for the one they are celebrating.  Rather than gold and jewels, they are waving branches that they cut off nearby trees.  And instead of trumpets announcing the arrival, the people sing a psalm of praise:
         Hosanna! Save us!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

The message of this parade is not one that announces a military victory.  This isn’t a parade to celebrate the empire or to honour the emperor.  Instead, this is a parade that honours a person who said “blessed are the meek.”  This is a parade that raises up a person who taught that the most important things that a person should do are to love God with your whole being, and to love your neighbour as yourself.  This is a parade that celebrates a person who offered healing and liberation to anyone who was oppressed.

And as the people dared to cheer on the one who proclaims the topsy-turvy world, the ones with the power try to silence their voices.  “Shush.  You don’t want Rome to catch wind of this kingdom. That kind of treason leads to a cross.”  But the one riding the donkey says, “They have to cry out.  They have to cry out for God’s world of peace and glory.  They have to use their voices to cry out for God’s justice.  And even if these people were silent, the very stones would take up the song.”

All of us who are here today – we have dared to join this parade.  We have dared to add our voices to the shouts of “Hosanna!”  We have chosen to join in the parade that celebrates humility and love and liberation, rather than joining the parade on the other side of town that celebrates power and might.

And the question that I invite you to ponder today is:  Why have you joined this parade?

 

 

 

“Palm Sunday”

by Frank Wesley

Used with Permission