"Visible Signs" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

January 13, 2019 - Baptism of Jesus

Scripture:  Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

I invite you to remember some of the more memorable meals that you’ve had.  Maybe you’re thinking of a holiday meal like Christmas or Thanksgiving with your family gathered around a large table, celebrating together.  Or maybe you’re thinking of a dinner party where the atmosphere and the guests just clicked and the meal became more than it would have been otherwise.  Or maybe you’re thinking about a restaurant meal where the food and the service and the atmosphere were something extra special.

I’m thinking of a dinner at my apartment in Nova Scotia in January, 4 years ago.  I’d just finished my first semester at school and I invited 5 classmates over to share a roast chicken.  We didn’t know each other very well yet, but as the meal progressed, the stories that we shared became deeper and more intimate, and the laughter became louder.  When we finally left the table at midnight, our friendship was cemented, and when I think back to that meal, there is a warm glow that hovers over my dining room.

Now I want you to take a moment and imagine what your special meal would have been like without the food.  No smell of roasting chicken wafting through the house.  Empty glasses raised in a toast.  Empty dishes being passed around the table.  Cutlery clattering on empty plates.  No food changes this memorable meal into something memorable but for very different reasons.  Food is important.  Food changes things.

We are not purely spiritual beings – we have physical bodies as well, and our physical selves need food and water to survive and thrive.  And that’s OK.  God created the physical world, and God saw that it was good.

In the United Church of Canada we recognize two sacraments – baptism and communion.  But what do we mean when we say “sacrament”?  I am drawn to St. Augustine’s definition of a sacrament – even though he wrote 1600 years ago, his definition still resonates with me today.  Augustine wrote that a sacrament is a visible sign of God’s invisible grace.  A visible sign of God’s invisible grace.

God’s grace, God’s love is invisible.  We can’t see it, we can’t reach out and touch it, but it is always there.  But since we are physical beings, made of matter, made of cells and molecules and atoms, God has given us physical, material ways to experience God’s love.  Ways that we can see and touch and taste and smell and hear God’s love.

The water of baptism, and the bread and wine of communion – they don’t replace God’s love, but instead they are signs – they point us towards God’s love.  Just as a stop sign doesn’t directly stop our car, but directs us to stop, the sacraments direct us towards experiencing the always-present, never-ending love of God.

When a person is baptized, either as a baby or as an adult, we don’t baptize just with words, it isn’t just a spiritual baptism where we know that the Holy Spirit has descended on this person.  Instead, there is water as well as words – water that we can hear being poured, water that we can see, water that we can touch.

When we gather at the communion table, we gather with words, but we also gather to share the bread and the juice – bread and juice that we can smell, taste, and see.

God made matter, so matter matters; but God also became matter in the person of Jesus Christ.  We’ve just finished the season of Christmas when we celebrated the time when God didn’t just put on humanity like a coat, but God actually became human.  God loves us so much that God became one of us.  God’s word became flesh.  Matter matters.

And we are given these sacraments so that our material selves – our flesh and blood – have something material to touch and taste so that the love of God can be made real to us.

In our scripture reading this morning, we heard about how Jesus came to the Jordan River and was baptized by John.  Again, this isn’t a purely spiritual baptism – there is physical water present.  Jesus waded into the river, went under the surface of the water, and came back up out of the water again.  And then Jesus saw the heavens torn apart and he saw the Spirit descending like a dove, and a voice from heaven said to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

In that moment of Jesus’ baptism, the whole Trinity is present.  The heavens are torn apart, and God descends like a dove and rests upon God, and the voice of God says, “You are my Son, the Beloved.”  And when we baptize in our church today, we baptize in the name of this same Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Our sacraments then, are this fabulous place where the physical and spiritual meet.  In the physical elements of the water, bread, and wine, we encounter God.  Because Jesus Christ was fully human and fully God, because the heavens were torn apart and the Holy Spirit descended, God is fully present in our world.  One of my favourite theologians, Richard Rohr, writes, “God is always present in the bread.  We just need to bring our hunger.”

In baptism, we make a covenant with God.  God is always present, and God’s love is always with us, but it is formalized in baptism.  We, or our parents, make promises, and we hear that each one of us is a beloved child of God.  The Holy Spirit hovers over the waters of our baptism, just as the Holy Spirit hovered over Jesus at his baptism.  And as a sign of God’s love, and as a sign of the promises that are made, water is sprinkled or poured or we are fully immersed in it.

And in the meal of Holy Communion, we are reminded again of God’s love for us.  We are reminded of God’s faithfulness in all generations, and we are strengthened in our faith.  The Holy Spirit hovers over the bread and the wine, and hovers over all of us when we gather at the table, closer to us than our very breath.  And we eat and we drink together, uniting us in that overwhelming love of God.  This isn’t a meal without food – empty glasses and bare plates.  This is a meal where God is present through the Holy Spirit in real bread and real juice.

God is fully present in the world – nothing can separate us from God and from God’s love.  Our sacraments are physical, tangible signs that point us to that love.  God made physical matter; God became physical matter, and so matter matters.  We are not just spiritual beings, but we are physical beings as well, and through the sacraments, God cares for us, and nourishes us, both physically and spiritually.

Thanks be to God!

The Youth Group and Sunday School helped us to remember our baptism

by flinging water from the baptismal font at the congregation!

"Following the Star" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

January 6, 2019

Scripture:  Matthew 2:1-12

 

Today, January 6th, is the Feast of the Epiphany.  It’s the day when we read about the journey and the arrival of the magi, coming from some unspecified country to the east of Palestine, who arrive at Bethlehem bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  We read about how King Herod was afraid of a new power taking over; but how these magi knew Herod’s intent, and so changed their travel plans so that they could avoid telling Herod where the baby was.

But what does that word “epiphany” mean?  It’s a word that we sometimes hear outside of the context of this church holy day, but not one that we hear often.

When we hear about someone having an epiphany, it usually means that they have had a sudden or striking realization or insight; an “A-ha” moment.  It might mean that they have a new or deeper perspective on something that they have been studying; or that they have an intuitive grasp of a new reality.

If I think about the moments in my life when I have had an epiphany, they are usually pretty memorable.  There is the moment when I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God loved me just the way that I was – that I was a beloved child of God, no matter what I had done or hadn’t done, just because I was me.

Or, in a different kind of holy moment, there is the time when I was studying quantum chemistry in my undergrad.  I just couldn’t wrap my brain around it; but I found that if I didn’t try to think too hard about it or look straight at it, but almost kept what I was studying in the peripheral vision of my mind, all of a sudden I caught a glimpse of great beauty and awe of the universe.

So epiphanies are moments of great transformation or insight – moments when we might catch a glimpse of God or what God has done.  We usually can’t plan for these moments, or hold on to them once they have passed, but they have the power to change our lives moving forward.

So what about these magi?  I’m fascinated by them.  We aren’t told how many of them there are; we aren’t told where they are from; we aren’t told how far they traveled or what means of transportation they used to get from “the East” to Jerusalem and then on to Bethlehem.  The Greek word “magi” which is often translated as “wise men” is actually related to our English words mage, magic, or magician.  They might have been magicians, they might have been astronomers or astrologers, they might have been learned or wise scholars.

But whatever their profession, or wherever they have come from, they travel a great distance because they have seen a star.

On Christmas Cards, this star is often depicted as being hundreds of times bigger and brighter than a regular star.  But if this were the case, then surely someone would have noticed it other than this group of magi.  If there was a huge and bright star in the sky, why wasn’t the whole world flocking to Bethlehem?  Current-day astronomers have looked for some celestial event 2021 years ago, give-or-take, that might explain the star that the magi were following, but they haven’t found any record of a comet or a supernova appearing in that period of history.

But have you ever looked up at the sky at night?  Millions and billions of little dots of light.  If a new star were to appear there tonight, do you think that you would notice?  So the only thing I can think is that this group of magi was particularly observant.  They studied the stars so carefully that when something new appeared, they noticed it, even when the rest of the world didn’t.

So these magi had an epiphany – a new insight or revelation that led them to Jesus; and their lives were changed by that encounter.  But I don’t think that their epiphany came out of the blue.  They studied the stars, they paid attention to them, and then when they noticed something different appear, they were willing to act on it.  They didn’t just sit back and say “That’s nice” and go back to their stargazing.  Instead they got up and followed the star, no matter how many months it might have taken them to get to Bethlehem.

And then did you notice at the end, they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, and instead of brushing it off as just a dream, they went home by a different route.  A new epiphany.

I think that if we listen to the Holy Spirit, all of us can experience these epiphanies, these new insights about God and how God is working in the world and in our lives.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit shouts at us, like the army of angels appearing in a field to a bunch of shepherds, proclaiming that Jesus had been born.  But sometimes the Holy Spirit nudges us instead.  A new star in the sky where there was no star before.  A dream or a feeling that you need to do something new or different.

And so I see the magi as offering a challenge to all of us.  How can we look for God working in our every-day lives?  If we are looking for exploding stars and supernovas and extraordinary miracles, then we might need to wait a long time; but if we are observant, if we pay attention, we can see God working in every minute of every day.

Before the end of the service, I’m going to be offering everyone a “Star Word.”  This is an assortment of words, each printed on a paper star.  I will invite you to take one from the basket without looking to see what is written.

Maybe you will like the word that you choose, or maybe it will make you feel uncomfortable.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit offers us comfort in our lives; but sometimes the Holy Spirit pushes us in new directions, to places that we never thought that we would or could go.

And so I invite you to take a word for this year ahead.  Reflect on this word, let it sit in the back of your mind.  You can ask God to show you how this word applies to your life; you can ask God to lead you by this word.  If you really, really don’t like your word, I will have the words with me next week and you can exchange it for a different word, but I encourage you to sit with your word for at least a week before exchanging it.

God is working in the world, and God is working in our lives.  The call of Epiphany is a call to pay attention; to look for the new star appearing in the sky; to listen for the nudges that the Holy Spirit gives us to do something differently.  And when we do so, we can catch glimpses of God.

May it be so.

Amen.

My "Star Word" has found a home on my bulletin board

If anyone would like a Star Word, let me know in the comments

and I will pull one from the basket for you

"Preparing" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday December 16, 2018

Scripture:  Luke 3:7-18

In this month and season of traditions that are followed from year to year and from generation to generation, one tradition that many people still keep is that of sending Christmas cards.

Several years ago, one of my friends wondered through, since we usually send these cards in the month of December, we are actually sending them in the season of Advent, so wouldn’t it be better to send Advent cards instead.  And so I made an Advent card to send to her, based on today’s Advent gospel reading from Luke.  I found an ikon of John the Baptist, and captioned it, “You Brood of Vipers!  Bear fruits worthy of repentance!”  This is maybe why we don’t send Advent cards!

(The Advent Card I sent to my friend!)

It is a harsh message that John is proclaiming to the people who have followed him out into the wilderness.  We have the image of an axe lying at the base of a tree, ready to cut it down if it doesn’t bear good fruit, and throw it into the brush fire.  We hear a teaching that we must not have any more than is absolutely necessary for life.  We have the image of a winnowing fork separating the wheat from the chaff, and throwing the chaff into the fire.

And this is the reading that the lectionary gives us on the third Sunday of Advent when we light the candle for joy.  On first read, this seems like a reading chosen to inspire fear rather than joy.

When I tried to look at this reading through the lens of joy, at first I came up short.  But then I realized that the joy depends on what perspective that you are reading it from.  I am reading it from a middle-class perspective where I do have more than one coat, and if you were to look in my fridge or my pantry I have more than enough food for today.  So when I read this passage, I am being told that I have too much and I need to give it away.  But if I were to read this passage from the perspective of someone who doesn’t have a coat in these cold December days and nights, or from someone who doesn’t have food in the fridge or cupboard to eat today, then this is a very joyful passage indeed.  For those without clothing or food or money are to be given what they need by those of us who have them.

Both John and Jesus preach a message of repentance.  It’s a funny word, repentance, and one that often isn’t well understood.  Repentance is different than remorse.  It means more than feeling very, very sorry for something.  The Greek word that we translate at “repentance” is metanoia and it means something more like changing our hearts and changing our actions; turning back to God; aligning our ways to God’s ways.  It’s more than just being sorry – it’s about repairing any relationships that have been broken, and changing how we live so that whatever went wrong doesn’t happen again.  Repentance is an action rather than a feeling.

Last week, I talked about canoeing in northern Ontario.  Part of canoe trips are portages – carrying your canoe and gear around waterfalls or other hazards that can’t be navigated by water.  I remember one canoe trip that my friend and I did where we had to portage around a series of rapids that were too big for us to run.  So we pulled up to the shore at the place marked with trail tape and unloaded our canoe and set off into the woods.  We went a ways along, but then slowly came to the realization that we had left the path at some point, and we were no longer on the marked portage trail.

The decision at that point was pretty easy.  As soon as we realized that we were going the wrong way, we turned ourselves around to make our way to the main path.  If we’d stubbornly kept going forward the way we were going, we would have become more and more lost in the northern forest.  We turned ourselves around, and soon found the main path, and made our way safely back to the water on the other side of the rapids.

Repentance works the same way as this literal turning back.  When we realize that we are doing something wrong, rather than feeling sorry for it and carrying on in the same way, we are called to turn around, to change our ways, to make our way back to God’s ways.  When we have failed to love God with our whole hearts and have failed to love our neighbours as ourselves, God calls us to return to love and return to relationship.  When we have more than what we need while others go without, God calls us to share.  And the good news is that we can never go so far as to be beyond God’s call of love.  We are always able to return, no matter how far we have strayed.

Two weeks ago, we talked about the Advent practice of waiting.  Last week, our reading pointed us to the wilderness and the lessons that we can learn in the wilderness times of our lives.  This week, I see our reading pointing us towards the Advent theme of preparing.

In this season when we are preparing our houses for Christmas by decorating them, when we are preparing for the Christmas gift giving by buying and wrapping presents, when we are preparing our Christmas dinner by baking and cooking up a storm, John calls us to prepare our inner lives for Christmas by examining our hearts to see where they align with God and where we are out of alignment.  And once we have examined our hearts, John calls us to repent – to re-align our hearts with God.  And by doing so, we will be prepared for the Christmas joy.

Please pray with me:

God of our Advent waiting

            and God of our Christmas joy,

move through our hearts by your Holy Spirit

            so that we can repent

            and re-align our hearts with you.

Fill us with the joy that comes

            from knowing that you are with us

            and that we journey with you.

We pray this in the name of Jesus,

            the one for whom we wait.

Amen.

"Wilderness" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

December 9, 2018

Scripture:  Luke 3:1-6

I feel as though I need to begin by apologizing to our scripture readers this morning for the great long list of names of people and places in the reading from Luke’s gospel.  I considered cutting the first verse from the reading to save our readers from needing to read most of the names; but that list of names ended up being the first thing that really caught my attention when I looked at the reading earlier in the week.

We begin with a long list of names of who held the power and where.  If we were to translate this list into 2018, it might read something like, “In the second year of the reign of President Trump, when The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau was the Prime Minister of Canada and The Honourable Blaine Higgs was the Premier of New Brunswick, when Elizabeth II was the Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth…”  You see where this is going!

So our reading begins with a list of who held the power and where; but the Word of God doesn’t come to those who were in power.  The Word of God doesn’t come to the emperor or the governor or the rulers or the high priests.  Instead, the Word of God comes to John, an ordinary guy from Judea who didn’t live in a palace but instead made his home in the wilderness.

I don’t know about you, but I carry within me many memories of wilderness times.  Back in northwestern Ontario, one of my favourite things to do is a back-country canoe trip – the longer the better.  One of my friends and I like to go out for a week or two at a time.  We carry our food and our tent and our sleeping bags in our backpacks and we paddle from lake to lake and down rivers, sometimes carrying our canoe around rapids and waterfalls, or sometimes choosing to run the rapids.

It’s not an easy or a comfortable place to be.  Our canoe has capsized a couple of times.  It’s hard work, paddling and portaging all day; and then at night we sleep on the hard ground since there isn’t room for fancy air mattresses in our backpacks.  And depending on the time of year, the mosquitoes and blackflies can be something fierce!

And yet despite all of this, or maybe because of it, there’s something about being in the wilderness – away from telephones, away from the internet, away from Facebook, away from regular commitments.  There’s something about the repetitive action of paddle… paddle… repeat.  There’s something about portaging along a rough trail, canoe overhead and a heavy pack on your back, one foot in front of the other.  There’s something about being in tune with the cycle of the day from sunrise to sunset with no watch or phone to track the hours.  It seems as though each time we go out into the wilderness, either my friend or I is struggling to discern something; and by the time we get back to so-called civilization, an important decision has been reached.  There’s something special about the wilderness.

In the wilderness, we need to choose what is essential, and what we are going to leave behind.  We need to trust our companions, because it is only by working together that we will make it to the other side.  We need to be fully present in the moment, alert to both the beauty and the dangers.

All of us go through periods of time in our lives that feel like wilderness times.  Times when everything that has seemed to be safe and predictable drops away from us; times that feel uncomfortable or downright scary; times that feel like it is just such hard work to get from one day to the next.

I wonder if maybe the lessons from the literal wilderness might help us to get through these wilderness times in our lives?  We need to decide what is essential, and what burdens can be left behind.  We need to choose our companions, and then work together and trust them in order to arrive safely on the other side.  We need to be fully present in the moment rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.

The word of God came to John in the wilderness; and God comes to us too in the wilderness times in our lives.  I wonder if maybe these wilderness times that we face in our lives open our hearts to God’s presence?  Maybe they draw us closer together, and to draw us closer to God?  The wilderness is not an easy place to be, or a comfortable place to be; but there is something about being in the wilderness.

The voice in the wilderness cries out:  “The path will be made easy since the valleys will be raised up and the hills will be lowered and the twists and turns will be straightened out!  The path of God will be prepared, and all of humanity will see and know God’s salvation!”

May it be so.

Amen.

 

(An aerial shot of one of the rapids that tipped our canoe over in the wilderness)

"Waiting..." (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
December 2, 2018

Scripture:  Jeremiah 33:14-16

So who here has ever had to wait for anything?  Waiting to get an appointment with a specialist.  Waiting for the results of medical tests.  Waiting for a much-anticipated baby or grandbaby to be born.  Waiting for a flight to land bringing a loved one home.  Waiting with someone as they pass from this life into the next.  Waiting in line at Sobey’s.

I think that all of us have waited on more than one occasion!

Next question:  who here enjoys waiting?  It’s not always a comfortable place to be.  Often we’d rather skip over the waiting and go straight to the ending!

I have two sisters, and when we were growing up, the rule was that on Christmas morning we weren’t allowed into the living room where the stockings had been hung by the chimney with care until 7am.  Being kids though, we were usually awake at 6am (or earlier).  We would go downstairs to wait.  Usually our auntie would wait with us – making us hot chocolate and trying to entertain us until the magic hour.

That hour between waking up and being allowed at our stockings felt like the longest hour of the year.  It felt like it took at least 6 hours for the clock to move from 6 to 7.  Waiting was not fun – if given the choice, we would have much rather gone straight to the ending and opened up our presents as soon as we were awake!

Advent is a season of waiting.  We too are waiting for Christmas.  When the world around us is in full-blown Christmas by now, here in the church we are in a season of not-yet-Christmas.  We are in a season of waiting and preparing and longing for Christmas.

The people that Jeremiah was addressing were also in a season of waiting.  The ancient Israelite people lived in a small country surrounded by superpowers, and as usually happens to small countries surrounded by superpowers, they were invaded by their more powerful neighbours.  First of all, the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrian army and the people fled south for safety; and then just over a hundred years later, the southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonian army, Jerusalem and the first temple were destroyed, and most of the key leaders were sent into exile to Babylon.

And this is the moment that Jeremiah is prophesying in.  He is speaking to a people on the brink of exile.  It’s pretty much a given that things aren’t going to go well for the people.  With the perspective of history, we know that they are going to be exiled to Babylon for 70 years – the people who went into exile were not the same generation that would return.  It is going to be a 70-year waiting period before their descendants would be allowed to return.  Maybe next time you are waiting in line at the grocery story and it feels as though the line is moving at a snail’s pace, you can re-assure yourself by thinking, “at least it isn’t going to be a 70-year wait!”

And Jeremiah promises the people that God is with them, and God has not forgotten about them, no matter how long the wait may be.  God promises that they will return from exile, and that Jerusalem will be re-built.  “The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill my gracious promise.”  God doesn’t say how long it will take, but the time is coming!

And so Advent is a season of waiting; but if God is with us, then waiting can be a holy time.  We are on the threshold of something new – there is something new unfolding in front of us, and God is with us as we wait and as we watch the unfolding and as we long for that which is new to be revealed.

Our Advent theme this week is hope; and our hope grows in the waiting.  Theological hope is so much more than wishful thinking – our hope is our confidence that God is with us, our confidence that God loves us, our confidence that God’s promises for all of creation will come true.

And so while our waiting feels long, our times of waiting are times that we can set aside to look for God’s presence in our lives.  Our times of waiting are times that we can set aside to see how God is working in the world.  Our times of waiting are times that we can examine our own hearts to see how they are lined up with God’s plan for the world, but also how they might be out of alignment.  This can be uncomfortable, but waiting is uncomfortable.  But it is in our discomfort that God can work on our hearts.

So rather than rushing to the ending, rather than skipping ahead to Christmas Day, I would invite you to embrace this time of holy waiting.  And whatever it is that you are waiting for in your life, whether it’s the result of medical tests, the birth of a new baby, the opportunity to see a loved one, or opening your stocking on Christmas morning, I invite you to embrace the waiting.  Sit with the discomfort.  Avoid the temptation to distract yourself from the waiting, whether the distraction be in the form of a cell phone or a whirlwind of social engagements.  Embrace the waiting, be still, and simply BE with God.  Embrace the waiting and see how God is wanting to use you and change you and prepare you for the new thing that is coming.

May we all have a holy Advent.

Amen.

 

(Waiting for the Sunrise)

"What Sort of King? What Sort of Kingdom?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

November 25, 2018

Scripture:  John 18:33-37

It feels a bit strange, perched on the threshold of Advent as we move towards Christmas, to have a reading taken straight from our Good Friday story.  In the context of our Sunday-morning readings it makes sense.  Ever since the middle of September, we have been moving with Jesus towards Jerusalem, and for the past couple of weeks we have been there in the city, hearing about the events of the last week of Jesus’ life.  And now, even though we’ve skipped from Mark’s gospel over to John’s, we still have some continuity.  We are there with Jesus standing before Pilate as the judge.  Christ is on trial.

The church year doesn’t quite follow the calendar year.  It starts with Advent and cycles through until today, which is known as the Reign of Christ, or Christ the King Sunday.  We begin in Advent which is a season of waiting and preparing, then we move through the events of Jesus’ life – his birth, his teachings, his actions, his death, and his resurrection – and then we come to today which is also a time of waiting.  We are waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled, for a time when God will fully rule or reign over all of creation.

But what does God’s reign look like?  We talk about Christ the King, but do we really want a King ruling over us?  What sorts of models of king-ship to we have in our world?

In the world that Jesus was living in, the rule was by the Roman Emperors, who were not known for their loving-kindness and generosity.  The ancient Israelite people had had their kings too, beginning with King David and stretching on for several centuries until they were defeated and sent into exile in Babylon.  But if you look at scripture, you will see that of the 43 kings, only 7 of them did good in the eyes of God, which leaves 36 of them who did evil from God’s perspective.

And then what about our examples of kingship that we have in our world today?  We have the British royal family, who gives us weddings that we can wake up at 4am to watch, and baby bumps that we can follow on social media; but aside from supporting various charities, they are a pretty benign force in the big picture of things.

And so when we call Christ our King, or when we long for the reign or rule of Christ to come, what are we really longing for?  Do we want Christ to be a king in the way that the Roman Emperors ruled?  Do we want a benign and harmless king like the British monarchy?

I’m fascinated by the contrast between Jesus and Pilate in today’s reading.  Here we have Jesus, who has been arrested like any other criminal.  His followers have left him.  Peter has just denied knowing him.  He’s stood before the High Priest, and now he’s standing before the governor of the region.  Almost immediately following the passage that we read today, he’s going to be beaten and nailed to a cross.

 We used this image in our "Story for All Ages" contrasting Pilate and Jesus

"'What is Truth?' Christ and Pilate" by N. N. Ge

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:What_is_truth.jpg

Public Domain

 

And then we have Pilate.  Pilate was the prefect, or governor of the province of Judea.  He represented the Emperor in the region; he ruled on behalf of the Emperor; he was the ultimate political authority in the region.  He was probably dressed in fancy robes representing his status.  He was probably surrounded by servants and slaves and soldiers, ready to do his every bidding.

So when we look at these two standing together – Pilate and Jesus – which one of them appears to have the power?

And yet we dare to call Jesus our king.  We are choosing to follow a king who rode in to Jerusalem on a donkey rather than a warhorse.  We are choosing to follow a king who wears a crown of thorns rather than a crown of gold.  We are choosing to follow a king who is raised up on a cross rather than on a throne.  We are choosing to follow a king who rules by love rather than by retaliatory violence.

The feminist in me wishes that we had a good gender-inclusive word that would convey that sense of absolute authority that “king” or “lord” carries; but we are constrained by the English language here.  And the thing is, if we call Christ our King or our Lord, we are actually making a very powerful statement; because if we are subjects of Jesus Christ – if we give Christ the ultimate authority over our lives – then we can’t give that authority to anyone else.

If God-in-Jesus is Lord over our lives, then our possessions can’t be Lord.

If God-in-Jesus is Lord over our lives, then our political affiliation can’t be Lord.

If God-in-Jesus is Lord over our lives, then we ourselves can’t be Lord.

If God-in-Jesus is Lord over our lives, then celebrity and social media culture can’t be Lord.

If God-in-Jesus is Lord over our lives, then violence and anger can’t be Lord.

When we recognize and celebrate this Sunday as the Reign of Christ Sunday, we are proclaiming that we celebrate God’s topsy-turvy, upside-down kingdom where the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  We are proclaiming that we have confidence that the time is coming when this topsy-turvy, upside down kingdom will be the only kingdom across the whole earth and throughout all of creation.  We are proclaiming that we aren’t satisfied with the world as it is, because we know that something better is coming; and we are proclaiming our intention to live by the rules of God’s kingdom rather than the rules of the world around us.  We are proclaiming that we intend to live in celebration of abundance rather than fear of scarcity.  We are proclaiming that we intend to live by love and peace rather than by fear and violence.  We are proclaiming that we intend to live in community with all of creation rather than in self-centered isolation.

I mentioned at the beginning that this Sunday is the last one in the church year, and that a new church year will begin next week with the season of Advent.  Which makes today a little bit like New Year’s Eve.  And so as we sit on the threshold of a new year, I would like to invite you to take part in the time-honoured tradition of making New Year’s Resolutions.  How can we, as a church, resolve to be a community where this alternative, counter-cultural kingdom can bubble up into existence?  How can we live our allegiance to Christ the King in the world that we live in?

Let us pray:

Holy God,

            blow your Holy Spirit through our church,

                        and through our lives,

            uniting us with one another,

                        and making us one with Christ.

Help us to be a place where your kingdom can come;

            and help us to show the world

                        that there is a different way to be.

We pray this in the name of Christ the King.

Amen.

"Hope, Instead of Fear" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Dec. 18, 2018

Scripture:  Mark 13:1-8

When I say “apocalypse” what do you think of?  If you are anything like me, I know that my brain tends to jump straight to movies featuring zombies with blank stares, post-nuclear wastelands, and warring factions; or to books like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or just about anything written by Margaret Atwood.  What seems to tie them together is a sense of pervading fear and violence, and a plot that features one person or a small group fighting against the rest of the world.

Post-apocalyptic dystopias in fiction and movies seem to have been increasing in popularity in the past decade and a half, and many people have linked this trend to what’s going on in the world around us.  Wars leading to unfathomable numbers of refugees.  Climate change leading to changing weather patterns with more powerful storms than we have known in the past.  Rapid changes in technology that is almost impossible to keep up with.  Just this week, we have been flooded with images of fires in California leaving behind landscapes that are almost impossible to imagine in their total devastation.  Is it any wonder that this apocalyptic genre resonates with us and has been gaining popularity in books and movies?

But apocalyptic literature isn’t a new genre to this century.  We find it as far back as parts of the Old and New Testament.  The best-known examples are probably the books of Daniel and Revelation; but we also find shorter passages scattered throughout, including the one that we read this morning from Mark’s gospel.

On the surface, this biblical apocalyptic literature contains some scary images.  In today’s reading from Mark, we have mention of earthquakes and famines and wars, and a prediction that the temple, the heart of the culture in which Jesus lived, was going to be destroyed.

But the origins of the word apocalypse don’t have anything to do with fear, or even with the end of the world.  It means something more like an unveiling, revealing something that has been hidden.

We see a bit of that unveiling in today’s reading.  Jesus and his disciples are leaving the temple, and one of his disciples pauses, in awe, at the sight of the temple.  And the temple was surely an awe-inspiring sight – each stone that made the walls was 12m long, 4m high, and 5½m deep.  It was by far the biggest building in Jerusalem, the biggest building that anyone had ever seen, almost impossible to fathom and as solid a building as you could imagine.  And the disciple, lost in awe, wants to share that awe with Jesus.  “What large stones, and what large buildings!”  But Jesus, looking with unveiled eyes, doesn’t see something to be in awe of.  Jesus sees a building that is built with human hands, and that will eventually crumble just as everything that humans build crumbles.  With Jesus’ unveiled eyes, the only thing that can inspire awe is God.

And I think that this is the key to reading the apocalyptic books in the bible.  We need to keep God at the centre of our reading.  We need to have our eyes unveiled so that we can keep them fixed on God.

I think that one of the things that the apocalyptic books and passages in the bible tell us is that scary things happen in every generation.  When Jesus and his disciples were standing outside the temple, they were living under the rule of the Roman Empire – a rule that didn’t allow for any questioning or opposition, or else you might end up nailed to a cross.  30 or 40 years later when the Gospel of Mark was being written down, the community that recorded these stories of Jesus’ life was still living under Roman oppression, but now they were in the middle of a full-blown war that eventually caused the destruction of Jerusalem including the temple that the disciple was in awe of.  And today?  Well, today we still have scary things in our world.  We still have wars, we have people displaced from their homes, we are destroying the world that God created.

But the thing that the apocalyptic stories in the bible give us that we don’t usually find in popular culture apocalyptic stories is the reassurance, the confidence that God is with us.  Bad things are going to happen in every generation, but God is with us.  We might be tempted to feel fear in the moment, but God is with us and so we don’t need to feel afraid.

Baptism is given to us as a sign that God is with us always.  We baptized Jack this morning, and while common sense tells us that life won’t always be smooth sailing and rainbows and unicorns for Jack and his parents; we can be assured that God is with them.  We can be confident that God is with them when things are good, and we can be confident that God is with them even when things are tough and scary.

Today’s passage from Mark’s gospel hints at this re-assurance.  As Jesus is describing wars and famines and earthquakes, Jesus tells us that this isn’t the end of the story – the end is yet to come – the end where God is fully present and all of these bad and scary things will end.  Jesus goes on to use a childbirth image.  While I have never given birth myself, I’m told that it is a painful and sometimes scary thing to go through, but at the end, a new life has begun.  And with God as midwife, what a birthing it will be as God’s vision for the world is revealed!

And this is the source of our hope.  God is with us in every generation when things are good and when things are bad; God is with us in the here and now; and God will be with us in the future when this unveiling, this revelation, this apocalypse is complete and God’s dream for the world is fully realized.

I want to end with a quote from Adrienne Maree Brown, an author and Black activist.  Two and a half years ago, in the middle of the Black Lives Matter movement, days after Alton Sterling and Philando Castile had been killed, she tweeted the following:  “things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered.  we must hold each other tight & continue to pull back the veil.”

And so when we are tempted to fear, instead let us hold each other close, and let us work together to pull back the veil so that God’s vision for the world can be revealed.

May it be so.

Amen.

What popular culture associates with "apocalypse"

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