"A Blessing of Hope" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday November 27, 2022

First Sunday in Advent

Scripture Reading:  Genesis 38:1-30

 

 

(Note:  this Advent, we are exploring the stories from Jesus’s family tree recounted in Matthew 1:1-17 – specifically the stories of the 5 women who are named there. Each week, one woman is going to visit us, share her story, and offer a blessing to the newborn child.)

 

 

At one point, long before my story was over, it felt like it was over.

 

My name is Tamar.  Your book doesn’t record anything about my life before I was married to Er, but please believe me when I say that it was a happy one.  I was the firstborn child of my mother, but I don’t remember a time when I was her only child.  I spent my time helping her with my younger brothers and sisters.  She used to tell me that I needed to get lots of practice now, because some day I would have my own children to look after!

 

I used to bring them with me when I went to fetch water from the well.  I used to tell them stories about El, the God of our people.  Sometimes I had to chase a snake away from them, but sometimes we would watch the birds as they hopped from tree to tree.

 

Then the day came when my parents told me that I was old enough – it was time for me to be married and have a family of my own.  They had arranged for me to be married to Er, the son of Judah and the grandson of Jacob.

 

There was much celebration that day.  I had been the first-born child of my parents, and now I was the first child to leave their tents.  I remember feasting and music and dancing, and palm wine.  I remember meeting my new husband and feeling shy, and a bit afraid, and yet full of dreams for what our future might hold.  The family I had grown up in had been a happy one, and I knew that ours would be too.

 

But it wasn’t to be.  We had only been married for a couple of months when Er died.  People said that he must have done something wrong, for God to have taken him so suddenly, but I don’t think that this could be true.  He was a good man, and he was always kind to me.  But we had barely had a chance to get to know each other, so while I went through the motions of mourning, I didn’t really feel deep sadness at his loss.

 

Our people believe in caring for widows, and so according to our practice, when the period of mourning was over, rather than being thrown from the tents of my in-laws, I was married to Er’s brother Onan.  There was less celebration this time – this marriage was a duty.  Onan was to keep me safe, and in exchange I was to provide children so that their family could continue.

 

But again, it wasn’t to be.  No children were to be had, and before a year had passed, Onan died too.  I was now a double-widow.  People started to whisper that I was bad luck, having lost two husbands.  I saw Judah and his wife, Bat Shu’a, start to look at me a little bit sideways.  People were afraid to talk to me.

 

When my second period of mourning was over, rather than marrying me to their third son, Shelah, Judah and Bat Shu’a told me that he was too young to be married, and they sent me back to my parents’ tent to wait.

 

And I waited.  Being in my parents’ tent wasn’t the same as it had been before I was married.  My help wasn’t needed with the children any more, as they were all old enough to watch themselves.  My sisters who were closest to me in age had been married and were looking after families of their own.  I had nothing to fill my days but to sit in my widow’s clothes, and wait, and feel the disappointment of my family wrapped around me.

 

And I waited.  Bat Shu’a died, but still Judah didn’t send for me to marry Shelah.  I waited, and eventually I realized that he was never going to send for me.  Shelah was grown up and old enough to be married, but Judah was so afraid of losing him, the way he had lost Er and Onan, that he was never going to send for me.

 

I was still young, but it felt like my life was over.  I was going to have to spend the rest of my years wrapped in my widow’s clothes sitting in my parents’ tent.  No husband. No family of my own.  This was to be the end of my story.

 

But then one day, I remembered the stories of El, the God of our people, that I used to tell to my siblings.  I remembered the story of the rainbow which promised Noah that the end was never the end.  I remembered the story of Sarah who had born a child decades after it should have been possible.  And I remembered that with El, the ending is never really the ending.

 

And so I did what I needed to do.  I exchanged my widow’s robes for coloured robes with a veil over my face.  I sat by the road where I knew Judah was going to pass, but I didn’t tell him who I was.  He thought that I was selling my body, and I didn’t dissuade him.  I let him lie with me, and when I returned to my parents’ tent, I discovered that at last I carried a child within my body.

 

When Judah heard that his widowed daughter-in-law was pregnant, he was scandalized.  He said that I must be stoned to death, as is the punishment for adulterers.  He didn’t want me to marry his son, but now it seemed that he didn’t want me to marry anyone.

 

But I am craftier than he is.  You see, when he lay with me, he had given me his ring; and when I was called before him, I was able to show him his own ring, and then he knew that this was his child.  And then he realized that he had done me wrong.

 

When it was time for my baby to be born, I learned that there were two of them within me, twins, and I named them Perez and Zerah; and they grew up and had families of their own, and then I was a grandmother.  And the generations passed, until you were born, sweet baby, a descendent of Perez, and a child who carries my blood in you.

 

And I offer you the blessing of hope, sweet one.  As you go through your life, know that the ending is never the ending.  Even when it seems as though death and despair are all that you will ever know, I give you the blessing of hope so that you can know that new life awaits you on the other side.  May the hope that helped me in my life, guide your heart through yours.  May El, the God of our people, make it so.  Amen.

 

 

 Our Advent Candle of Hope shines brightly,

dispelling the gloom.

"This Isn't the End of the Story" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday November 13, 2022

Scripture Reading:  Isaiah 65:17-25

 

 

Earlier this year, I told a family member that I had made a donation on their behalf to Hestia House; and because my family isn’t from here, I had to explain that Hestia House is a shelter for women and children who are escaping domestic violence and abuse.  My family member said thank you for the donation, and that women’s shelters were something that they thought should always be supported; and I made a passing comment along the lines that I agreed, and that they are organizations that I will support until a time comes when they aren’t needed any more.  And to that, my family member laughed – “Ha!  Like that time will ever come.”

 

And that took me aback and made me think.  And I realized that I have to believe that the time will come.  I have to believe that a different world is not only possible, but it getting closer and closer all the time.  I think that if I wasn’t able to believe this, I would fall into despair, and the despair would paralyze me so that I wouldn’t be able to do anything.  I have to believe that the future holds something better than the brokenness of the present; however unlikely that future might seem from the perspective of the present.

 

Isaiah, like several other prophets in the bible, was a prophet of the exile.  (Side note – the book of Isaiah was likely written by three different people at three different points of time – before the exile to Babylon, in the middle of the exile, and just before returning to the land they had been taking from.)  The passage we heard today is from almost the very end of Isaiah – the people had seen their city and their temple destroyed 70 years ago, and had been carried away into a foreign land.  They had deeply grieved everything that they had lost, but then had built houses for themselves, they had learned to grow crops in this new place, they had married and children had been born.  Two generations had passed.  Almost everyone who was originally brought to Babylon is now dead, and it is their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are living in Babylon.  70 years and two generations – talk about circumstances where you can’t imagine anything ever being any different.

 

And yet God promises them that something different and something better is coming.  In the middle parts of Isaiah, God talks about raising the valleys and lowering the mountains and smoothing out the road so that the people would be able to return from exile.  And now at the end of Isaiah, God looks even further into the future and using beautiful poetic language describes a time that is coming – a new heaven and a new earth.  A time when there will be no more weeping and no more distress.  A time when a person a hundred years old will be considered young.  A time when there will be food enough for everyone.  A time when all of creation will be governed by peace so that a lamb is safe to lie down next to a wolf, and not a single person will hurt another single person.

 

And I have to trust that God, who has been trustworthy in the past – a God who did make a way for the people to return home from exile; a God who did lead Moses and the people to safety through the waters of the sea; a God who created the whole universe and called it good – I have to trust that since God has been trustworthy in the past, God will be trustworthy in the future.

 

And more than just God’s previous track record – I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it – but we are an Easter people.  We know that the end is never the end.  We know that Good Friday with all of its suffering and death and despair and abandonment isn’t the end of the story, because Easter and new life and new beginnings is just around the corner.  Because, as author Frederick Buechner wrote, “resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.

 

I don’t know everything that is going on in your life right now.  I don’t know if you are going through a time of exile like the ancient Israelite people – the exile of grief, the exile of illness, the exile of a struggling immune system that means that you have to be very careful these days about contact with other people.  I don’t know if you are going through a Good Friday time in your life right now – a Good Friday of despair, a Good Friday of exhaustion, a Good Friday of abandonment, a Good Friday of pain and suffering.

 

But while I don’t know everything that you are going through right now, what I do know is that exile isn’t the end of your story.  Good Friday isn’t the end of your story.  God gives us a glimpse, through these words of Isaiah, of what is coming.  Jesus gives us a glimpse, through his resurrection, of what is coming.

 

And once we catch a glimpse of what is coming, that doesn’t mean that we sit back and passively wait for it to get here.  No – instead once we can see what is coming, then the Holy Spirit working in us makes us increasingly uncomfortable with the brokenness that we see in the world around us.  We look around and we see poverty and hunger and violence and war and abuse and inequal sharing of the world’s resources… and none of this lines up with God’s dream for the world.

 

And that is when the vision for the future has the ability to transform the present – it has the ability to transform our lives so that we can be people who work for a better world.

 

As I said to my family member earlier this year – I will continue to donate to Hestia House and other shelters for people fleeing domestic abuse until the time comes when they aren’t needed any more.  And I have to believe that this time will come – even if it isn’t in my lifetime – because that is what motivates me to work for change in the right now.

 

For this isn’t the end of the story.  The wars and the violence and the suffering that we see around us or that we experience ourselves isn’t the end of the story.  God’s dream for the world is more beautiful, more loving, more peace-filled than anything that we could ever imagine.  We have to trust that the exile will end someday, that Easter will eventually dawn, that the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and all of creation will be at peace.  And may this time come soon.  And may it come soon.  And may it come soon.  Amen.

 

Right after the sermon, we sang “When Hands Reach Out Beyond Divides” – the words matched this reflection perfectly.

 

 

 

Photo Credit:  “hope” by fen-tastic on Flickr

Used with Permission

"We Don't Know How to Ask Good Questions" (sermon)

Sunday November 6

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Scripture Reading:  Luke 20:27-40

 

 

So this was one of the weeks where the assigned readings had me scratching my head and wondering, “What the heck am I going to say about this on Sunday?”

 

On one level, it’s a fairly straightforward story.  The setting is Jerusalem in the middle of Holy Week in the days before Jesus’s crucifixion.  Tensions are high.  Everyone is just waiting for Jesus to make one wrong step so that he can be arrested.  And so a group of people who don’t believe in resurrection decide to ask Jesus a question with no answer.

 

Here, it’s not Seven Brides for Seven Brothers but rather One Bride for Seven Brothers.  If there is one thing that God’s Law, as given to Moses, is very clear on, it is that you are to protect the most vulnerable among you – specifically widows, orphans, and foreigners living in your land.  And so the practice of what is called Levirate Marriage was to protect widows.  If a woman’s husband died and she didn’t have any children, then her husband’s brother was to marry her to give her a home and to give her protection; and if she were later to have any children, her first born child would be considered to be her first husband’s child.

 

So along comes this group of people who don’t believe that there is any resurrection, and they ask Jesus what seems to be a silly hypothetical question.  “OK Jesus, c’mon now.  There can’t be any resurrection, because what about this woman.  She was married to each one of seven brothers, and all of them died, and there were no children involved that might make her first husband her one true husband.  So if there was a resurrection, she couldn’t be married to all 7 of them, could she? So which one of them would be her husband in the resurrection?”  It is an impossible-to-answer question.

 

And impossible-to-answer questions aren’t that uncommon.  I think of my friend’s mother who was an English teacher, and when her school board forced her to include multiple choice questions on her exams – she hated multiple choice questions – she would always prove her point by including an impossible to answer question.  For example, “At the end of the play, Hamlet:

a) Hamlet is dead.

b) Ophelia is dead.

c) Claudius is dead.

d) None of the above.

e) All of the above.

 

An impossible-to-answer question, because you can’t pick e, all of the above, since “the above” includes none of the above.

 

And so here is a group of people asking Jesus an impossible-to-answer question. How could he possibly decide which of the seven brothers the woman is married to; but he also doesn’t want to deny the resurrection and the fullness of life that he knows is God’s reality.

 

But what he can do is call his questioners out for asking the wrong question.  “Why are you asking who she will be married to.  Don’t you know that everything will be different.  Good; better than you could ever imagine, but different.  It won’t matter who she was married to before because everything will be changed!”

 

And that is where I landed in my “What the heck am I going to say on Sunday?” conundrum.  Because I think that we still don’t know how to ask the right questions when it comes to what resurrection is going to look like.  In fact, I don’t think that it is possible to ask the right questions… at least not while we are still on this side of the curtain that separates this life from the life that is coming.

 

What we do know is that it will be good – better than anything that we could ever imagine.  I think that we maybe get glimpses of it, if our hearts are attuned to look for them.  We might see glimpses of it in the words and the pictures of books like The Next Place that we read earlier.  We might hear glimpses of it in certain songs or pieces of music.  And I definitely think that we can catch glimpses of it in the communion meal like the one that we are going to be sharing shortly – a meal where everyone is welcome, without exception; a meal where everyone can celebrate and know that they are loved; a meal where everyone is well fed.

 

We don’t know how to ask the right questions about the life that is coming, but as Jesus said, God is the God of the living; so if God is with us in this life, how much more will God be with us in the resurrected life?

 

For God is good; and God is love; and some day we will cross through that curtain and nothing will be between us and that infinite love.  Thanks be to God!

 

 

 

In our Story for All Ages this week,

we read The Next Place by Warren Hanson.

Some weeks, the Story for All Ages gives a

teaser for what is coming; this week it gave away

the punchline of the sermon.

It is a beautifully written and illustrated book.

"On War, Pandemics, and Lament" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday October 30, 2022 – 21^st Sunday After Pentecost

 

 

First Scripture Reading:

Habakkuk 1:1-4

 

First Reflection

This is the lament of the prophet Habakkuk.  Habakkuk was a prophet around the time of the exile to Babylon.  He had seen some horrible things happening in the time and the place where he lived.

 

A generation before Habakkuk, the Assyrian empire had overtaken the northern kingdom of Israel, and Jerusalem and the rest of the southern kingdom of Judah had been filled with refugees fleeing that fighting.  And now it was the Babylonian empire who was knocking on their door.

 

Judah didn’t fall peacefully – they fought back against the empire, but the empire was stronger.  Violence was followed by a siege of the city of Jerusalem, which was followed by more violence, which was followed by the destruction of Jerusalem, including the temple which was believed to be the home of God, which was followed by exile to a foreign land.

 

And surrounded by all of this devastation – violence and death and starvation and loss of home and loss of family and loss of everything that is familiar – surrounded by all of this, Habakkuk pours his heart out to God.

 

How long, O God?

How long will you ignore my cries for help?

How long will this violence continue?

How long will injustice and oppression be the norm?

How long will wickedness hold more power than goodness?

 

Lament is powerful.  When we lament, we pour our hearts out to God.  When we lament, we are free to complain, we are free to be sad, we are free to be angry with God.  And yet lament is an act of deep faith – if we didn’t think that anyone was listening to our lament, what would be the point?  When we lament, when we weep for the state of the world, we trust that God weeps alongside us.

 

Many of us have been living through a very difficult couple of years for a number of reasons.  I was talking with a friend a couple of weeks ago about trauma, and the collective trauma that we, as a society, have faced with this pandemic.  You may have seen the same meme circulating as I have – it says something along the lines of, “We’re not all in the same boat together, but we are all facing the same storm.”

Each one of us has experienced the pandemic differently, and so many people have been traumatized by it in different ways.  Maybe your experience was one of loneliness and isolation, cut off from your friends and family.  Maybe you lost a loved one in the middle of a lockdown and weren’t able to gather together to grieve properly.  Maybe you were in hospital and weren’t able to have your family visit you; or maybe a loved one was in hospital and you weren’t able to visit.  Maybe you were working in health care, or another essential service, and your experience has been one of stress and burnout.  Maybe you were trying to navigate the balance between working from home while supervising the online schooling of your children who were just not able to focus.  Whatever your experience of the pandemic, there is so much trauma in our world today as a result of it.

 

And the pandemic isn’t the only reason to lament.  Systemic racism that is embedded into our way of being has been exposed over the past decade or so.  We, as a country, have been lamenting our colonial past as the unmarked graves of Indigenous children who died because of colonization were brought to public attention.  Climate change continues to cause anxiety, especially in younger generations who wonder what sort of a world they are going to be living in, decades from now.  Inflation and increased costs for food and shelter are resulting in so many hungry people, and so many people with no housing or precarious housing.  Homophobia and transphobia continue to be a thing that threatens the wholeness and wellness of so many people.  War rages on in Ukraine.

 

There is so much that we can lament in the world today.

 

If you were to write your own lament, what might it sound like?  How would you pour your heart out to God?

 

How long, O God?

How much longer until healing will be stronger than the trauma of the pandemic?

How much longer will racism and colonialism infect the way that we live as a society?

How much longer will this beautiful planet that you created continue to burn?

How much longer will there be hungry people in the world?

How much longer will wars rage,

            and will people be scared of nuclear threats?

How long, O God?

 

 

Second Scripture Reading:

Habakkuk 2:1-4

 

Second Reflection

The second half of our reading today begins again with Habakkuk, the prophet.  Habakkuk declares that he is going to keep watch to see how God responds to his complaint.  He is going to station himself on the city walls without resting until he hears an answer from God.

 

And God does answer him; but the funny thing, if you listen carefully to God’s answer, is that it is almost a non-answer.  God describes what the answer is going to be like.  The answer is going to be so plain that even someone running past it would be able to read it.  The answer may feel delayed, but it is trustworthy and it will come.  The answer is God’s dream, God’s vision for the time that is coming.

 

But what is this vision?  In other places, the vision is fleshed out, but here it is left up to our prophetic imagination.  We are invited to join Habakkuk and the other prophets to let God’s vision be realized through us.

 

Now this can be frustrating to anyone who likes clear descriptions and concrete answers; but it is also a beautiful response in its open-endedness.  Just as the specifics of Habakkuk’s lament – war and siege and exile – are different than the specifics of our lament, so too can the specifics of God’s response to Habakkuk be different than God’s response to our lament.  For Habakkuk and the people of Ancient Jerusalem, even though it took 70 years, in time the people did eventually return from exile… or at least their descendants did… and the city and the temple were re-built.

 

And what might God’s vision for our time be?  A world without racism and homophobia and transphobia?  A world where gender-based violence and discrimination is no longer a thing?  A world where there is no such thing as a nuclear threat, and where people have forgotten what a war is?  A world where resources are shared fairly so no one ever goes to bed hungry?  A world where every single person is valued for who they are rather than for what they contribute?  A world where every member of the community of creation, living and non-living things alike, are able to fully be what they were created to be?

 

For God does have a vision for the appointed time; and God’s vision is trustworthy, and God’s vision is good – is better than anything we could ever imagine.

 

And we are called to join our imagination with God’s imagination until this vision becomes a reality, even if it doesn’t happen in our generation but for some generation in the future.  We are called to trust in this vision.  We are called to hope.  We are called to live our lives today as though we know that this vision is going to come to pass.  And may God’s Holy Spirit fan the flame of hope within us so that we can trust, with our whole lives, that the time is coming.  Amen.

 

 

 

 

(This was a good opportunity to sing one of my favourite hymns this week - one that is more familiar in the Lutheran Church where I used to play the piano than it is in most United Churches:  If You Will Trust in God to Guide You.)

"Waiting for the Rain" (sermon)

Sunday October 23, 2022

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Scripture Reading:  Joel 2:23-32

 

 

The book of Joel is a short little book – only three chapters long, tucked into the middle of the prophets.  I’ve heard it called a “Table of Contents Book” because most people need to look it up in the table of contents in the bible in order to be able to find it – I know that I had to this week!

 

And we don’t know very much about Joel beyond his name and his father’s name – we don’t even know when he was living.  Most prophets include some hints that let us guess when they were alive – a reference to who was king of Israel or Judah, a reference to what was happening in the world.  But Joel is missing any of these hints that might let us put his words into context.

 

He is writing about time of drought, a time when locusts swarmed over the land and devoured anything green, a time of famine and hunger.  And into the midst of that, God promises that a time will come when abundant rain will pour down, a time when the threshing floors will be full of grain, a time when the storage vats will be overflowing with all of the wine and olive oil that is produced, a time when the people will have more than enough to eat.

 

If you look closely at the grammar of this passage though, this time of plenty is all still in the future; which makes me think that Joel is prophesying in the middle of the drought and famine.  The people have to trust that a time will come when the rain will fall, a time will come when there will be enough for everyone to eat.

 

If you get my mid-week e-mails, this week I used a phrase to describe hope – “Hope is only possible when everything is hopeless” (and I really wish that I could track down the source of that quote that I came across years ago).  When things are good – when the famine is over and there is enough to eat – this isn’t when we need hope.  Hope doesn’t hold any meaning when there is nothing to hope for.  Instead, it is in the middle of the famine when everything seems to be hopeless – this is when hope comes in to play – this is when hope means trusting that the famine will eventually end and a time of plenty will come.

 

Reading through Joel this week, I was thinking about the time that I spent in Tanzania.  Here in Canada, our seasons are defined by the temperature and by the length of day; but on the equator the length of day stays the same throughout the year, and the temperature also stays fairly consistent from month to month.  There are seasons, however, but they are defined by the rains.  In the part of Tanzania where I lived, there were two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year.  The long dry season usually lasted from mid- to late-May right through to the beginning of September.  In those months, not a single drop of rain falls.  The water level gradually drops in rivers and in streams.  The dirt dries out into powdery dust that gets in your nose, in your hair, in your clothes.  The grass dries out and turns brown.

 

And yet every year, the people who live there trust that the rains will arrive with September.  In August each year, people start burning the grass in the fields and on the hillside to clear away the roots so that when the rain starts to fall, the new grass will be able to spring up easily.  Every year in late August, people start planting bean seed and peas and spinach so that when the rain starts to fall, the seeds will already be in the ground.

 

In the midst of the dryness and dust, people trust that the rains will come, and so they live their lives trusting in the rain.

 

This is a powerful testimony to hope – trusting in something that you can’t see yet – but the metaphor does break down.  In that corner of Tanzania, we know the timeline for the rains.  We know that they are going to begin in September each year.  But God’s promises don’t usually come with a timeline.  God promises that a time of abundance will follow a time of famine, but doesn’t tell us when.  And yet we are called to live as though we expect the abundance and feasting to be any day now.

 

And it’s hard.  It’s hard to sustain hope through the drought, through the famine, when you don’t know when it is going to end.

 

And yet we are an Easter people.  We aren’t a Good Friday people – we are an Easter people.  We know that resurrection is always just around the corner.

 

And I think that is what passages like the one we read today from Joel remind us of.  No matter what Good Friday we might be going through right now – the Good Friday of grief, the Good Friday of fear, the Good Friday of loneliness, the Good Friday of oppression, the Good Friday of pain, the Good Friday of addictions or illness or anxiety or depression or or or…  No matter what Good Friday you are travelling through right now, Easter is coming.  No Good Friday lasts forever; and the Easter that is coming will be even better than a little chocolate bar for everyone. (Note:  this refers back to the Story for All Ages – see below.)  It is worth waiting for!

 

And that is hope.  Hope means trusting that Easter is just around the corner, even though we can’t see it yet.  Hope means trusting that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, even while we are still in total darkness.  Hope is only possible – hope is only a thing when everything feels hopeless.

 

And that is my prayer for all of us – that the Holy Spirit might breathe hope into our Good Friday lives – that seeds might be planted even when the rain hasn’t started to fall yet – that our voices might join the song of the birds who sing before the sun has risen, encouraging the world to hold on just a little longer because the dawn is coming, because the rains are coming, because Easter is almost here!  Amen.

 

 

Story for All Ages:

Cards were set up and we took turns turning over a card

looking for the Queen of Hearts.

A surprise was promised once someone found the right card.

The surprise was a chocolate bar for everyone!

If you can trust me, that I haven’t removed the Queen from

the deck (even though we had to wait a bit before she was found),

how much more can we trust God and trust in God’s promises,

even when we have to wait a bit for them to come true!

"A Covid Thanksgiving Letter" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday October 9, 2022 – Thanksgiving Weekend

Scripture Reading:  Philippians 4:4-9

 

[Note:  Last Wednesday, I tested positive for Covid-19, so I wasn’t able to be in-person at church today. Session (the committee that oversees the spiritual life of the congregation) stepped in and implemented the plan we made 2 years ago, so that Session members led worship at each church using the service that I had prepared.  I modified my reflection into a letter from me to the church, so that my words wouldn’t sound too strange coming from someone else’s voice.]

 

 

 

Dear Church,

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

I was thinking this week, that this is my fifth Thanksgiving at Two Rivers, and our third Thanksgiving in the season of Covid-tide.  I looked back in my computer to see what I preached about 3 Thanksgivings ago, back in 2019, and discovered that we had read the same passage from Philippians that we heard today.  And when I read through that sermon from 3 years ago, I also realized that my message 3 years ago was the same message that I am hearing in these verses this year; but I am feeling them in a much deeper way than I did back in 2019.

 

The Apostle Paul is writing this letter to the Philippians – to the church in the city of Philippi – from prison.  We don’t know exactly when or where in his life this was, but we do know that Paul was thrown into jail several times for sharing the message of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.  This is a counter-cultural message that undermines authority and tends to make the people in charge feel uncomfortable – for if Jesus Christ has authority over our lives, and if this same Jesus has the ability to overturn even death, then what does it say about the human leaders in the world?

 

Anyways, preaching about Jesus frequently landed Paul in prison, and from one of his stays in prison, he writes a short letter – at least short by Paul’s standards – he writes a short letter to the church in Philippi, a church that he had founded in his travels throughout the Mediterranean.  It is possible that he is writing this from his final imprisonment in Rome – an imprisonment that ended with Paul’s execution.

 

Paul’s freedom is restricted.  His physical comfort is affected.  His very life is in peril.  And yet he can still write the beautiful words that we heard this morning.  “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say Rejoice!”  “Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”  And he offers them a beautiful blessing:  “and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

 

How could Paul, in prison, write such beautiful words of peace and hope and comfort and joy?

 

When I think back on the past three years, I think about everything that has changed since that last time I wrote about this passage.

 

We are 2 ½ years into a global pandemic, with the World Health Organization reporting over 6.5 Million confirmed deaths from Covid-19 and over 600 Million confirmed cases.

 

The pandemic has revealed the depths of systemic racism in our society.

 

Unmarked burials have been revealed on the grounds of former Residential Schools across this country, and we have been forced to contend with our colonial history as a country and as a church.

 

Families have been separated.

 

The health care system is under increasing strain with each month that passes.

 

Students have been impacted in ways that likely won’t be fully known for decades.

 

Workers in every field are dealing with stress and burnout like never before.

 

And don’t even get me started on the “Supply Chain Issues!”

 

And this weekend we come to Thanksgiving.  How can we possibly be expected to be thankful in a time like this?  What do we possibly have to be thankful for, when the world seems to be falling to pieces around us?

 

And then I turn to Paul’s words to the Philippians.  Like I said, they hit me on a much deeper level than they did 3 years ago.

 

As I write these words, I am sitting at home, cat on my lap, because I tested positive for Covid this week.

 

I had to cancel a house guest who was planning to visit from Ontario this weekend.

 

I am not able to be with all of you today, to celebrate Thanksgiving with you.

 

There have been many times in the past 2 ½ years that I have been teetering close to burnout.

 

I, along with all of us in this church, have lost some very dear friends in the past 3 years.

 

This is a very challenging time for us to be living through; and even though I’m not in jail the way that Paul was, I think that maybe this year I have a bit of a deeper understanding of just how profound his words to the Philippians are.

 

It’s one thing to rejoice and give thanks and be filled with peace when life is good and everything is sunshine and rainbows and unicorns.  It’s another matter entirely to rejoice and give thanks and be filled with peace when life keeps throwing us challenge after challenge after challenge.

 

So where does all of that leave us, this Thanksgiving of 2022?

 

3 years ago, I concluded that giving thanks was a choice – an active choice that we make.  I am going to choose to give thanks rather than letting myself fall into despair.

 

Today, I still think that we are all given a choice to be thankful or not.  But I think that maybe thankfulness is a gift given to us by the Holy Spirit.  By ourselves, when life is difficult, it is hard – maybe even impossible – to give thanks.  But the Holy Spirit, working in us, allows us to choose thankfulness even when the obstacles seem impossible to overcome.

 

This weekend, I give thanks for vaccines and for a good immune system.

 

I give thanks for all of the offers of help that flooded into my phone and inbox and Facebook when I let people know that I had Covid.

 

I give thanks for my cats who are quite content to sit on my lap this week as I rest my eyes and blow my nose.

 

I give thanks for the changing colours of the leaves outside my window that I saw when I slowed down enough to notice them.

 

I give thanks for the smell of the dead leaves on the ground, and I give thanks that Covid hasn’t taken away my ability to smell them.

 

I give thanks for the Divine Love that is always surrounding me, holding me close, even when I am tempted to collapse inward and feel sorry for myself.

 

And I give thanks for all of you, dear church.  I give thanks for your ministry of loving the world; and I pray that the Holy Spirit fills your heart with the gift of thanksgiving, today and every day.

 

I love you all, and I can’t wait to see you again.

 

And may God bless you, and those you love, today and always.

Rev. Kate.