"The One Who Loves Us Best of All" (sermon)

Chetwynd Shared Ministry

January 28, 2018

Scripture:  Mark 1:21-28

 

If I am being completely honest, I have to confess that stories about unclean spirits and demons are pretty close to the top of my list of bible stories that I’m not comfortable talking about.  In our post-Enlightenment, scientific worldview, it’s difficult to read stories like the one we read today from Mark’s gospel and not start wondering what might have been going on in the man’s life, wonder what might have been possessing him.  Did he have some sort of mental illness or addiction?

But if we start equating mental illness with demon possession that needs to be exorcised, rather than seeing mental illness as a biological condition that requires medical care just like physical illnesses do, then we risk doing great harm to many people.

And I don’t know about you, but when I think about possession by unclean spirits, my brain jumps to images from the movies, with heads spinning and bodies floating in the air, and computer-altered voices speaking.

And all of these thought spinning around my brain this week didn’t help me at all to prepare a sermon on the reading from today.  I was stuck for most of the week figuring out what I could possibly have to say about a man with an unclean spirit crying out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” and Jesus responding by telling the unclean spirit to be silent and to leave the man.

It was only when I came across a quote from well-known preacher Fred Craddock that I finally had a way to see in to this story with my 21^st Century worldview.  Craddock wrote that “not believing in demons has hardly eradicated evil in our world.”[1]  It is probably safe to say that many of us don’t believe in the existence of demons of the type that we come across in books and movies; but there is still a problem of evil in the world.

This is something that we talked about last week in both bible study groups.  On Monday morning, we found in the first 5 verses of the book of Ruth, a family that became refugees because of a famine, the death of the husband and sons of the family, and a widow who was left all alone.  So much tragedy compressed into a short space.  And then on Wednesday evening, we looked at the opening chapters of the book of Genesis and saw how quickly the perfection of God’s creation was spoiled by humans making bad choices.  And it really didn’t take very much temptation for the humans to choose to disobey God.  The snake said to them, “eat the fruit and you will be like God,” and the humans said, “OK.”

Even though we may not believe in demons, there is still so much evil in our world.  There is evil that results from the choices that we humans make – wars and climate change and people who have been given power and authorized to have control over a button that could deploy nuclear weapons that would destroy the world that God created.  The thing that I struggle with the most with this sort of evil is that the people who making the choices for evil are often not the people who are most affected by the decisions.

And then there is evil in the world that just happens – that isn’t a result of human choice.  A young woman who never smoked develops lung cancer.  A young man is killed in an avalanche leaving behind a young widow and a 2-year-old without a father.  An earthquake triggers a tsunami and thousands of people drown.  Even if we don’t believe in demons, evil is still a reality in our world.

Have you ever had someone say to you, “Everything happens for a reason,” or “Everything happens according to God’s will”?  The thing is, I don’t believe that God’s will includes illness and suffering; I don’t believe that God’s will is for us to destroy one another and all of creation with wars; I don’t believe that it is God’s will for people to die of drug overdoses.  So I’m not able believe that everything in this world happens according to the will of God who is love.  Evil is real.

I wonder how the story from Mark’s gospel might read if it were told from the perspective of the man with an unclean spirit.  We aren’t told what kind of spirit he has – only that it is unclean.  It isn’t of God.  It is a spirit that controls him that isn’t the Holy Spirit.  There is some force or spirit that has power over this man, that is controlling this man, that doesn’t come from God.

I wonder how long this spirit had been controlling the man?  I wonder what sorts of things this spirit had been making the man think or do?  We know that the spirit was able to make him say things that he wouldn’t have said without the spirit.  I wonder how much pain the man felt because of the impure spirit, how much loneliness and isolation?

I also can’t help but think of what some of the unclean spirits in our world are – the things that have power over us that are not of God.  It is easy to name things like addiction as things that can control us that aren’t from God.  But what about emotions like anger and fear.  Have you ever done something out of anger that you regretted later on?  Could that anger then be seen as an unclean spirit?  And fear is a big one too – if we are afraid, we let the fear drive our decisions, and we are then in the power of that fear.  Fear of change, fear of insecurity, fear of that which is different than us – all of these can be unclean spirits, things that control us that don’t come from God.

And then there are urges that we are subject to – the desire for power or for revenge.  These can take over our lives to and control our words and our actions.

We are also living in a media-saturated culture.  What do we absorb from TV or Netflix or Facebook or Twitter?  How does the media have power over us and control us?  Is the media acting like a spirit that doesn’t come from God?

And then, I think that maybe the least recognized unclean spirits are the voices that we carry around in our heads.  The voices that tell us that we aren’t good enough, aren’t smart enough, aren’t pretty enough.  This is one that I have struggled with personally.  When I went back to school a couple of years ago after being away from school for 15 years, for my first semester and a half, every time I handed in a paper, there was a voice in the back of my head that said to me, “This is the paper that is going to prove that you are an academic fraud, that you don’t really belong here.”  If you listen to these voices long enough, you come to believe them, and you begin to forget that you are a beloved child of God just because you are you.

So even though I can’t believe in Hollywood-style demons, I do have to admit that there are lots of unclean spirits in the world – things that have power over us that don’t come from God.  Not everything in the world happens according to God’s will.

But the good news of the story is still the good news of today.  God doesn’t want us to be controlled by these unclean spirits.  When Jesus saw that the man was being controlled by an unclean spirit, he didn’t tell him, “I gave you that spirit so that you will learn to respect me.”  No, Jesus saw that this man wasn’t able to be who God had called him to be, that he wasn’t living in to the fullness of life that God desires for each of us.  Jesus tells the spirit to stop talking and to leave the man.  And that is what happens.  God’s power is greater than the power of the other spirits in the world.

The core of Jesus’ teaching all through Mark’s gospel, right from the very first words that he says, is that the kingdom of God has come near – it’s right at hand.  It is so close that any of the powers or spirits other than God’s Holy Spirit no longer need to have the final word in our lives.  The Holy Spirit is stronger than any of these.

The God who is love is not a god who sends out punishment or a god who likes to see us suffer for doing wrong or making bad choices.  The God who is love is a God who is always reaching out to us in love, who is always calling us home, who is always calling us to fullness of life.

And so whatever unclean spirits might have control over our lives, I invite us to remind these spirits that God’s Spirit is stronger.  That God’s love is the force that has ultimate control over our lives.  I invite you to rest in God’s love until you can’t imagine any other way of being.

I want to finish by reading a story.  It is the story of Max, a young boy who allows the forces of a wild rumpus control his actions, until love and a hot meal call him home again.  Some of you might be familiar with it – it is called Where the Wild Things Are, and it is written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.[2]

(read Where the Wild Things Are)

God is love, and God is always calling us home from wherever we have wandered – home to the one who loves us best of all and a hot supper.  Thanks be to God!

 (This is a picture that says "home" to me - warmth and trust and love) 

---

[1] Fred B. Craddock, John H. Hayes, Carl R. Holladay, and Gene M. Tucker, Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year B: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Lectionary (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993), 92.

[2] Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (New York: Harper Collins, 1963).

"Matter Matters" (sermon)

Chetwynd Shared Ministry

January 7, 2017 - The Baptism of Our Lord

Scripture:  Mark 1:4-11 (with a brief reference to Genesis 1:1-5)

I invite you to think of 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, 3 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 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 in 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 turkey 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.  This morning we read the start of the first chapter of Genesis where God created the physical world, and God saw that the physical world was good.  God made matter, so matter matters.

Most churches around the world, including all four of our denominations, recognize two sacraments that were instituted by Jesus – baptism and communion.  I am drawn to St. Augustine’s definition of a sacrament.  What he wrote 1600 years ago 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, 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 around the table, we gather with words, but we also gather to share the bread and the wine – bread and wine 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 not only made matter, but God became matter, so matter really matters.

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

Today’s gospel reading is from the beginning of Mark’s gospel.  Now Mark doesn’t give us any birth stories like Matthew and Luke do.  Mark’s gospel begins with John the baptizer appearing in the wilderness, and the first appearance of Jesus is when he comes to John and is baptized by John in the Jordan River.

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.”

If we were to flip to the very end of Mark’s gospel, we would see a parallel event happening.  Here, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the heavens are torn apart, God is no longer contained or separated from God’s creation, and God’s voice says to Jesus, “You are my Son.”

At the end of Mark’s gospel, at the moment when Jesus dies, the curtain of the temple is torn apart.  Now the curtain of the temple separated the Holy of Holies, the place where God lived, from the rest of the temple.  Again, when this separating curtain is torn, God is no longer confined to one space, no longer separated from the rest of creation.  And at that moment, a Roman Centurion who witnessed and likely participated in the crucifixion of Jesus announced to the world, “Truly this man was God’s son.”

We’ve gone from the tearing of the heavens and a voice telling Jesus that he was God’s son, to the tearing of the curtain of the temple and a voice telling the world that Jesus was God’s son.  The beginning of Jesus’ ministry; and the beginning of the ministry of the church, the whole body of Christ.

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 the heavens were torn apart, because the curtain of the temple was torn apart, because Jesus Christ was fully human and fully God, 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 we are 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 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 wine.

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.

Let us pray:

Holy God,

            you are closer to us than our very breath.

When we forget you,

            remind us of your love,

            remind us that we are your beloved children,

            and remind us that you will never leave us.

Strengthen us through the water and bread and wine,

            so that we might know you more clearly,

            love you more dearly,

            and follow you more nearly,

                        day, by day, by day.

Amen.

(Remembering our Baptism)

Favourite Books of 2017

New Year's Day - time to compile a list of my favourite reads of 2017.  Same rules as in previous years:  it doesn't matter what year the book was published, I have to have read it for the first time in 2017, and all genres count.  I've linked to the books that I've reviewed.

So in no particular order, here is the list:

The Break (Katherena Vermette) - This is a beautiful, heartbreaking book that has stayed with me in the months since I read it.  It took me a long time to finish, because I cared so much about the characters and didn't want any more terrible things to happen to them, but the book ended with a note of hope.  I had a strong sense of place reading this book - when I was in Winnipeg recently, I kept looking around for places and characters from The Break.

Small Mechanics (Lorna Crozier) - In the words of my review, "this was a quiet, gentle, and occasionally delightful collection."  It is a collection of short poems that I read over the course of a couple of months last winter.  The one that I quote in the review, A New Religion, I've shared with many people in the past months.

Bone and Bread (Saleema Nawaz) - I read (or inhaled) this book last winter after it had been a contender in the previous year's Canada Reads competition.  This was another book where I really cared for the characters.

Still Life (Louise Penny) - I've finally jumped on to the Louise Penny bandwagon (I'm currently on book 4 in the series).  I really enjoyed the first two books in the series (Still Life and Dead Cold), but didn't like the third one (The Cruelest Month) as much (because of the plot, not the writing).  They really are delightful books - very Canadian, three-dimensional characters, and unique plots.

The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion) - My cousin loaned me this book last Christmas break, and I read it on the train in January when I was heading from Ontario back to Halifax.  It was perfect train reading - engaging, not too heavy, and with delightful characters.  I haven't picked up the sequel - the reviews that I've seen say that it doesn't live up to the promise of this book, and I'm happy to leave the characters where they were at the end of The Rosie Project.

Dietland (Sarai Walker) - I hesitated to put this book on the list as I just finished it a couple of days ago.  A friend and I decided to adopt the Icelandic custom of Jolabokaflod even though neither of us is Icelandic, and exchange books to be opened after the last of our Christmas services was over.  This is the book that she sent me, and it was one that I wouldn't have picked up on my own.  I can't begin to describe it - I've never read anything like it before.  It was dark, it was compelling reading, and the main character grew and developed throughout.  I haven't finished processing it yet, but I think that it will live up to list-status.

This list was more difficult that usual to put together, since most of my books are in storage right now - normally I put together the list by browsing my bookcases.  I have probably missed some great books, but this is what I could come up with from memory!

(My reading corner)

A Christmas Service of Lessons and Carols

Chetwynd Shared Ministry

December 31, 2017

 

First Lesson:  Isaiah 61:10 – 62:3

Reflection:

The history of the ancient people of Israel seems to follow a cycle of disaster and heartbreak, followed by redemption by God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy.  There was a famine in their land and people were starving; but Joseph had reached a position of power under the Pharaoh and he was able to bring his family to Egypt where there was food to eat.  The people ended up in slavery in Egypt; but then God acted through Moses to bring the people out of slavery in to freedom.  The people wandered in the desert for 40 years; but God was always present with them, guiding them, and eventually they arrived in the land that had been promised to them and to their ancestors.  Many generations later, this land was taken over by the Babylonian empire, the temple which was the home of God-Whose-Name-Is-Holy was destroyed, and the people were taken into exile in Babylon; but then the Babylonian empire fell, and the people were allowed to return to the Promised Land.

Throughout all generations, their hope was sustained by remembering that God had always been faithful to them in the past, and could therefore be depended on to be faithful to them in the future.  Even when they lamented what had happened to them, and even when they were angry at God for allowing terrible things to happen to them – and believe me, you just have to read the Psalms to get a sense of the depth of their pain and grief and anger – even through all of that, they knew that God was with them and could still hear them when they were crying out.

The last part of the book of Isaiah was written just after the people had returned from exile in Babylon.  Isaiah uses the language of shoots coming up in the garden in the springtime.  Even when the ground looks bare and desolate, new life always appears; and even when our lives look bare and desolate, new life is coming.  God has been faithful in the past, and will be faithful until time has ended.  Thanks be to God!

Hymn:  Joy to the World!

Second Lesson:  Luke 2:1-7

Reflection:

If we were to just read this passage and not know any of the history of what came before and what comes after, it is a very ordinary story.  A young couple are compelled by circumstances beyond their control to travel far from their home – they had to travel approximately 80 miles, or 130 kilometers.  The young woman is pregnant, and while they are there in that strange city, her first child is born.  She wraps him in bands of cloth – a receiving blanket – and lies him in a warm and quiet place.

If we just read this, it could be a story that happens every day.  It makes me think of some of the pictures that came out this fall of the Rohingya refugees who were forced to leave their homes in Myanmar and travel on foot to Bangladesh.  Some of the women were pregnant when they were forced to flee, and their babies were born on the side of the road and in refugee camps.  Forced migration seems to be part of our human story.

If we want to see what is special about this particular baby who was born far from home more than 2000 years ago, we have to look in the scriptures to what came before in the story, and what was to come after.

Nine months previously, an angel had appeared to his mother telling her that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and that the child she would bear would be holy, the Son of God.  And when this baby grew up, he would become a teacher and a healer; he would preach against the empire and about the coming kingdom of God, he would eventually be executed on a cross, but on the third day he would rise again.

But for now, he is a newborn baby, wrapped in a blanket, lying in a manger far from home.

Hymn:  What Child is This?

Third Lesson:  Luke 2:8-20

Reflection:

“Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”

Popular culture has co-opted the idea of angels, so that today, when you see pictures of angels, they are usually chubby child-like things with feathery white wings and halos.  We have cherubs for Valentine’s Day, and guardian angels that watch over us when we sleep.  My mother collected angels – she had stained glass angels, straw angels, porcelain angels, fabric angels, all on the shelves in the kitchen.

But this is not the biblical image of angels.  Angels in the bible are God’s messengers.  Some of them are named, like Gabriel and Michael, but most are unnamed.  There is no description of what they look like, or even if they have bodies; but when they appear, the first thing that they usually say is “Do not be afraid.”  Maybe this is the first part of God’s message to all of us; or maybe angels are just plain terrifying.

They shepherds in the field were terrified, but the Angel of the Lord says to them, “Do not be afraid; for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.”

Whenever God is doing something new in the world or in our lives, it is our normal reaction to be afraid.  But instead of listening to our fears and being led by our fears, I encourage you to listen to the message from God, sent to us through God’s messengers, God’s angels.  Do not be afraid.

Hymn:  Angels We Have Heard On High

Fourth Lesson:  Luke 2:21-40

Reflection:

Jesus was born to a Jewish family, and he lived and died as a Jewish man in first century Palestine.  We read about how he and his family followed the traditions and customs of their religion.  When he was 8 days old, Jesus was circumcised and named, as were all 8-day-old boys; a custom that continues in Jewish communities right through to today.  And then when he was 40 days old, they went to the temple so that Mary could be purified, as were all women after giving birth; and so that her firstborn son could be redeemed.  This is a tradition that goes right back to the Passover story before the Exodus from Egypt.  God “passed over” the houses of the Israelite people, sparing their firstborn sons while the firstborn sons of the Egyptian people all died.  Because of this, all firstborn sons belonged to God, and had to be redeemed, or purchased back.  And so Jesus’ parents made the appropriate sacrifice to God – a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.

And there in the temple, our young family encounters the next two witnesses to Jesus Christ.  The first witnesses were the shepherds – when they had received their angelic visitors and had visited the newborn lying in a manger, they made known what they had heard and what they had seen.  And here at the temple, the family meets Simeon and Anna – an elderly man and an 84-year-old widow.  And these two faithful people praise God and prophesy and witness, telling people about this child that they have seen.

In a culture that worships youth and strength and beauty; we would do well to remember that there is an important place for everyone, no matter your age or ability, in God’s mission in the world.

Hymn:  Go, Tell it on the Mountains

Fifth Lesson:  Matthew 2:1-12

Reflection:

I am fascinated by the magi.  We aren’t told where they come from; we aren’t told how many of them there are; we aren’t told how they traveled from “the East” to Jerusalem and then on to Bethlehem.  The word “magi” is related to our English words mage and magician.  They might have been magicians, they might have been astronomers or astrologers, they might have been learned or wise scholars.

But wherever their profession, or wherever they came from, they traveled a long distance because they had seen a star.

Christmas cards tend to depict this star as hundreds of times bigger and brighter than a regular star.  But if this was the case, then surely someone other than this group of magi would have noticed it.  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 2000 years ago that might explain the star that the magi were following, but they haven’t found any record of a comet or supernova appearing in that period of time.

So the only thing that 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.

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 will need to wait a long time; but if we are observant, if we pay attention, we will see God working in every minute of every day.

Hymn:  Angels from the Realms of Glory

Sixth Lesson:  Matthew 2:13-23

Reflection:

This is a part of the story that we don’t often hear read in churches.  We like to celebrate the newborn baby and angels and shepherds and magi.  We don’t like to think about Mary and Joseph and Jesus as refugees.

In Luke’s version of the nativity story, Mary and Joseph travel 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem where the baby is born.  In Matthew’s version of the story, they are forced to flee more than 400 miles after the baby is born, for fear for his life.

Our modern day world is filled with stories of refugees – people who are forced to leave their homes and flee, out of fear for their lives.  I mentioned earlier, the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, there are refugees from Syria settling in every part of the world, and we see pictures of people fleeing various conflicts in Africa, traveling by boat across the dangerous Mediterranean Sea.

This scripture tells us that God has experienced what it is like to be a refugee.  God has experienced what it is like to be so afraid of staying, that leaving home for the unknown becomes the only option.  God-in-Jesus has been a refugee, and is with all refugees and with all who are forced to flee or who have lost their homes.

Hymn:  Away in a Manger

Seventh Lesson:  John 1:1-14

Reflection:

And here is the core of the Christmas message – that God thought that we humans were worth coming to earth for; that we were worth becoming one of.  God’s Word became flesh and lived among us; lived as one of us; and in the person of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human, our humanity – our flesh and our experiences – can never more be separated from God.

A literal translation of that phrase that is translated here as, “lived among us,” would be “tented among us” or “made his dwelling with us.”  I read a translation this week, that the Word became flesh and blood and moved in to the ’hood.

Emmanuel.  God-With-Us.  Jesus is born, and God is human.  God is here, God is now, and we will never more be alone.  The light shines in the darkness of the world, and the darkness of the world can never extinguish the light of Christ.  Thanks be to God!

Hymn:  Silent Night, Holy Night

Waiting for the sunrise before worship started.

We can trust that the light of Christ has come in to the world -

even when it is -36 degrees outside!

"The Extraordinary in the Midst of the Ordinary" (Christmas Eve Sermon)

Chetwynd Shared Ministry

December 24, 2017

Scripture:  Luke 2:1-20 and John 1:1-5, 10-14

“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us.”

A baby is born.  An ordinary, every-day occurrence.  Earlier this week, my sister gave birth to her second child, a healthy baby boy.  He was one of many babies born that day.  On average, every day in Canada, 1068 babies are born.  If you expand that to a global scale, an estimated 360,000 babies are born every single day.  That’s more than 4 babies being born every single second.

And yet if you’ve ever held a newborn baby, you know that each and every single one of those babies is a miracle.  There is a new life where there wasn’t before.  This infant is a 3lb or 5lb or 9lb bundle of potential.  All of the things that this baby is going to do and be are yet to be discovered.  The extraordinary miracle of life is found in the middle of the ordinary every-day.

Every Christmas, we read the same story about how Mary and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and when they are there, Mary delivers a child.  “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”  The story doesn’t change from year-to-year.  After we’ve heard it a couple of times, the story can become so familiar to us that we don’t give it a second thought.

This is a birth like any other birth, filled with pain and messiness, followed by joy and relief.  But even though all births share some things in common, each and every birth is unique.  We tell birth-stories after babies are born.  When my sister tells her birth story from last week, she will probably tell of how she went to the hospital and was told that there was no room at the inn – in other words, the nursery was full – and how she was sent home and told to come back later.  I wonder what Jesus’ birth story looked like.  Imagine all of the details that are left out of the story that we read – all of the details that the narrator isn’t telling us.

I wonder if Mary was attended by a midwife; and if she was, what was the midwife’s experience of the birth?  The baby is placed in a manger – a feeding trough for animals – so I assume that there were some animals nearby.  I wonder what animals witnessed the birth of this baby?  I wonder if they were surrounded by Joseph’s extended family, or was the young couple alone in a strange city?  Even though the songs we sing at this time of year tell us, “the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes,” I’ve never met a baby who didn’t cry.  I wonder if he was a fussy baby or if he was easy to settle.

A baby is born.  An every-day experience.  But like all births, there would have been a unique birth story – after all, this was the only time that this baby was born.

And not only would there be a unique birth story, but in the middle of an ordinary, messy, and painful birth, was born a special child.  Nine months previously, Mary had been visited by the Angel Gabriel who told her that she would be giving birth to a holy child, the Son of God.  God’s Word had become flesh and had come to the world to dwell among us, to be one of us.  God had become human and the world would never be the same again.

In the middle of the every-day miracle of birth, God is born in human form.  In the middle of the ordinary, the extraordinary breaks through.  “She gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger.”

The first people in the story to hear about the birth of this baby, other than his parents, were some shepherds living in the fields.  Now shepherds weren’t people who held positions of power, or people who were respected.  Shepherds were people who lived on the margins of society; people who were not trusted; people who lived transient lifestyles.  Shepherds worked hard, were often cut off from society living in the fields, and their hard work was not well rewarded.

But that night, to a group of shepherds in the field, at first one angel and then a multitude of angels appeared to them.  In the middle of an ordinary night, the extraordinary breaks through.

Can you imagine what those shepherds must have been thinking or feeling?  The first thing that the angel says to them is “Do not be afraid” so their first reaction was probably one of fear or terror.  An army of angels is not what you normally expect when you are working on the side of the hill at night.  But after the angels leave them, the shepherds leave the hillside, visit the baby lying in the manger, and when they return to the hills outside of town, they are praising God for everything that they heard and saw that night.

And here we are, more than 2000 years later, gathered once again around the manger.  The story is the same one that we read last year and the year before.  The baby is the same, the manger is the same.

The manger, another ordinary, every-day object.  A trough, maybe made of wood, but more likely carved out of stone, filled with animal feed.  Yet did you notice that this is one detail that the narrator does include in the story?  We aren’t told about the midwife, we aren’t told about the animals, we aren’t told about relatives, but three times the narrator tells us that the baby was lying in a manger.

In an everyday, ordinary animal feed trough lies a baby who will grow up to say, “I am the bread of life.”  The one who lies where animals are fed will grow up to feed the world with the bread of life.  The extraordinary is breaking in again, and is lying in the ordinary.

One of my favourite Christmas Hymns, “See Amid the Winter’s Snow,” captures this perfectly, when the second verse begins:

            “Lo, within a manger lies,

            He who built the starry skies…”

And so here we are, gathered this night around the manger.  We are reminded once more that God is with us – that God has become human so that we, in our humanity, can no longer be separated from God.  The extraordinary has once more broken into the ordinariness of a birth; the extraordinary has once more broken into the ordinariness of marginalized workers just doing their job on the fringes of society; the extraordinary has once more broken into the world and lies in a manger from whence he will feed the world.

How are we going to respond to the extraordinary this year?  How are we going to be changed by the birth of this baby?  How are we going to live as though we can never more be separated from God?  How are we going to let the Christmas story change us?

Will we be like the shepherds, rejoicing and singing praises to God?  Will we be like Joseph, trusting that God has a plan for us and for the world?  Will we be like those who heard what the shepherds told them, amazed at what we are hearing?  Will we be like Mary, and treasure the message we have been given and ponder it in our hearts?

My prayer is that each one of us might be changed by this Christmas story.  That we might know not only that God is always with us, but that we might know that the extraordinary is always breaking into the ordinariness of this world.

Let us pray:

Holy God,

            we give you thanks for this holiest of nights.

We thank you that you are always present with us –

            always breaking in to our ordinary lives.

Fill us with the awe, the wonder, the joy

            that comes with the birth of a baby –

                        with the birth of your Word-Made-Flesh;

And let this awe transform us,

            and keep us close to you.

We pray this in the name of the Christ-Child.

Amen.

(Preparing the worship service)

"Mary's 'Yes'" (Sermon for Advent 4)

Chetwynd Shared Ministry

December 24, 2017

Scripture Readings:  Luke 1:26-38 and  Luke 1:46-55

I want to invite you to take a couple of minutes and imagine yourself into Mary’s situation.  She is engaged to Joseph but they aren’t married yet.  In a place and a time when the patriarchy was even stronger than it is today, and when women were married at a younger age than in our time and place, Mary was probably a teenager.  And marriage didn’t happen because two people fell in love with each other – marriage was all about a contract between families.  Two families would come together to arrange the marriage, and marriage was to continue the family line – in other words, the important thing about marriage is that you have children.

So here you are, a young girl who is going to be married into Joseph’s family in order that Joseph’s family would survive for another generation.  Your family isn’t a wealthy or powerful family.  You live in Nazareth, a small village in the rural part of the backwater that is called Galilee.  Everybody knows everybody in your village – after all, there aren’t that many people to know.  And you are a girl – you are the property of your father, until you become the property of your husband.

And here arrives an angel, a messenger from God, telling you that you are going to have a baby.  How do you feel?  Afraid of what your family and Joseph’s family are going to say?  Afraid of what your village is going to say about you?  Afraid of this new experience of pregnancy and birth?  Are you feeling ashamed of what is going to happen to your body?  Are you puzzled about how all of this is going to happen?  Are you curious about why God has chosen you; why you have found favour with God?

One of the first things that the angel Gabriel says to you is “Do not be afraid.”  I wonder if he says this because he knows that you are afraid of what is happening.  But then again, whenever angels appear to humans, the first thing that they say is “Do not be afraid.”  Maybe angels are inherently terrifying, or maybe this is the first part of God’s message to all of us.

But even if Mary is scared, she doesn’t let fear drive her actions.  Instead she says “yes” to the angel, “yes” to God.  “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

There is a popular Christmas song that asks, “Mary, did you know?”  Mary, did you know that the child that you’ve delivered will soon deliver you?  Mary, did you know that when you kiss your little baby, you’ve kissed the face of God?  Mary, did you know that your baby boy is the Lord of all creation?  Mary, did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb; this sleeping child you’re holding is the great I AM?  Our reading today answers these questions.  Mary knew.  Not only did Mary know, but she agreed for it all to happen.

This year, there has been a lot of discussion about this story and how it relates to the current revelations of sexual abuse by so many people in power, and the #metoo stories that are being shared.  People are asking if this story should be treated as Mary’s #metoo moment.  There is something to consider in this perspective.  After all, in the encounter between Mary and the angel Gabriel, Gabriel has the power and Mary is in the much more vulnerable position – not only is she a female living on the margins of society, but she is a human compared to her angelic visitor.  Could Mary have given full and informed consent to what was about to happen to her body?

I choose to answer this question by looking for what isn’t in the story – for the details that we aren’t told.  We aren’t told whether Mary was the first young woman approached by the angel Gabriel.  Maybe she was just the first young woman who said “yes” – who gave consent for her body to be the home of God’s Word Made Flesh.  I can’t imagine that the God-Who-Is-Love would allow any woman’s body to be used without her consent.

And this then leads me to wonder more about Mary.  She said “yes” when God asked her, and she became the human parent of Jesus.  I wonder how Jesus would have been different if a different woman had said yes, if his human DNA had come from a different woman, if he had been raised in a different family.

But it was Mary who said “yes” when God asked.  It was Mary who said, “Let it be with me according to your word.”  Mary allowed her body, her very self, to be transformed by the workings of the Holy Spirit.

And shortly after that, we see what God is working in Mary when she visits her relative Elizabeth.  The Holy Spirit has not only created a foetus within Mary’s body where there should, by all logical reasoning, be no foetus, but the Holy Spirit has also given Mary the voice of a prophet.  She visits her relative Elizabeth, and when she is there, she sings the words of her Magnificat that we read responsively this morning – Mary’s words of praise to God, and her vision of what God’s world will be.  Mary sings out:

            “My soul magnifies the Lord

                        and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,

            for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.

            Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

            for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

                        and holy is his name.

            His mercy is for those who fear him

                        from generation to generation.

            He has shown strength with his arm;

                        he has scattered the proud in the

thoughts of their hearts.

            He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

                        and lifted up the lowly;

            he has filled the hungry with good things,

                        and sent the rich away empty.

            He has helped his servant Israel,

                        in remembrance of his mercy,

            according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

                        to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

Mary’s question, “how can this be?” has been transformed into “My soul magnifies the Lord!”

This is a very revolutionary song that Mary sings.  When you look at pictures of Mary on Christmas cards, or when she appears in the Christmas carols that we sing, she is often pictured as “meek and mild”; but not only did she have the courage to say “yes” to God, she also sings this song that is anything but meek and mild.  Mary sings about the powerful being brought down from their thrones, the marginalized being lifted up, the hungry being fed, and the rich being sent away hungry.

Does this sound like the teaching of anyone else in the bible?  Mary here sounds an awful lot like what Jesus is going to sound like 30-some-odd years later.  Jesus who taught that the last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Jesus who taught that the way we behave towards those on the margins of society is the way we treat Jesus himself.  Jesus who gave food to all who were hungry, healing to all who were ill, peace to all who were troubled.  I wonder how much of his message Jesus learned from his mother’s teaching?

How might Mary’s song be heard in the world of 2017?  We are living in a world today where a small group of people and corporations are becoming more powerful, and more and more people are getting pushed to the margins.  Imagine for a minute, what the world might look like if the powerful were brought down from their thrones and the marginalized were lifted up; if food was distributed so that everyone had enough and no one was hungry and no one wasted the excess.  Who might be brought down from their thrones, and who might be lifted up?  Now imagine the same thing happening here in our town of Chetwynd.  Who is having their power taken away, and who is being lifted up?  Who are the hungry who are now being fed?

Did you notice the verb tense that Mary uses in her song?  She sings her song as if these things have already happened.  God has brought down the powerful.  God has lifted up the lowly.  God has filled the hungry with good things.  God has sent the rich away empty.

But if you look at the world that Mary was living in, it would be obvious that these things haven’t happened yet.  The emperor in Rome was still in charge, still governing through fear and oppression.  There were still a small number of elite and a large number of people living in poverty.  This vision of God’s kingdom hadn’t happened yet.  And if we look around our world today, it is obvious that the things that Mary sings about haven’t yet come to be.  We still have people in our world who want to claim the throne of the empire and govern the world through fear and oppression.  We still have a small number of elite and a growing number of people living in poverty, both here in Canada and on a global scale.

You can remember things that have happened in the past; but is it possible to remember things that will happen in the future?  Are any of you fans of science fiction or time travel books and movies?  I think that there might be a loose comparison there for Mary’s verb tense issues.  Picture a character in a book or a movie who travels back in time by two hundred years.  This character can remember things that happened to her in her childhood, even though they aren’t going to happen for almost 200 years.  She is remembering things in the future.

Now I’m not saying that Mary has been time traveling, but she does seem to be remembering forward.  She is seeing the world from God’s perspective – from a perspective outside of time where all times are seen simultaneously.  She, with her prophetic voice, notices what is wrong in the world that she is living in, and compares them with God’s vision for the world.  She sees clearly what God wants for the world, she trusts that this vision is going to be realized, and she speaks as though it has already happened.

And our time travel, verb-tense-shifting becomes even more fun when you consider that God’s vision for the world had already begun at that point in time.  As Mary proclaims these words, she is already carrying within her a foetus that would be Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human.

One of the titles sometimes given to Mary is the Greek word, “Theotokos,” meaning “God-bearer” or “She-who-gives-birth-to-God.”  Mary is carrying God within her body, and in a few short months, she is going to give birth to God in the messiness of hay and amniotic fluid.  She is going to raise God-in-human-form in her family in a remote village in a remote province.

I believe that this is the start of the overthrowing of the power structures of the world that Mary sings about.  God has chosen someone from the very margins of society, someone with no power, to be the temple, the home of God – the body of a woman, from a poor family, in a geographically remote location.  For 9 months, the same God who created the heavens and the earth is going to rest within the body of a marginalized woman, and then throughout his childhood this same God is going to be nurtured by this same woman.

God has started to lift up the lowly.

God’s work is not done yet.  Mary sings as though she is remembering forward.  There will come a time when God’s work is done and we will be able to remember its completion in the past.  But we’re not there yet.  We are still waiting.

Mary’s “yes” to God transformed her body and gave her the voice of a prophet.  Mary sang a song about God’s topsy-turvy kingdom where the power structures are not only reversed but are completely destroyed – Mary sang as though this topsy-turvy kingdom was already here.  And indeed, that upside-down kingdom where the powerless and marginalized are raised up began when Mary said “yes” to God.

And so I ask you to consider – just as God called Mary to a specific task in God’s overall kingdom, God calls each of us to a specific task or vocation.  How can you say “yes” to what God is calling you to?  How will our “yes” fit into God’s vision for the world, where the powerful are brought down from their thrones and the marginalized and powerless are raised up?  How can we individually, and we as a group say “yes” to God?

Just as Mary’s body was home to God for nine months, our bodies are the home of the Holy Spirit.  God dwells within us too.  How are we allowing ourselves to be transformed, as Mary was transformed?

Let us pray:

Holy God,

            send your Holy Spirit to us.

Give us the courage to say “yes”

            when you call to us,

                        so that we might be transformed

                                    into who and what you call us to be.

Help us to sustain our trust and our confidence

            that the world that Mary sang about is coming,

                        and that some day,

                                    your kingdom will come

                                                and we will be fully and forever

                                                            in your presence.

All of this we ask in the name of the one

            who was carried in Mary’s body.

Amen.

"Madonna and Child"

by Parker Fitzgerald