Sunday December 15, 2024
Sixth Sunday in Advent
You will find the video from this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/lVXpSuJdjxw
Sermon for the 6th Sunday of Extended Advent
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
Luke 1:39-55
Have you ever raised a monarch butterfly? For several summers, I’ve done this with my son and it’s truly a wondrous experience. Finding the tiny eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves. Watching them hatch and grow from tiny, barely visible dots to big, fat caterpillars in just a couple of weeks.
Only once, I’ve managed to catch the moment when the caterpillar goes into its’ chrysalis, which is truly mind-boggling. After hanging upside down like a letter J for close to a day, in just a few minutes the chrysalis forms. And it really looks like the caterpillar is turning itself inside out as it molts one final time.
It’s then that the waiting truly begins, because for the next two weeks, nothing much seems to happen. The beautiful green and gold chrysalis hangs there peacefully until finally a butterfly emerges.
While the caterpillar changes dramatically in size before it forms its’ chrysalis, what happens inside that chrysalis is change on a whole other scale. A total transformation in shape, structure, colour, and ability from what it was before. And the miracle of this transformation is fully hidden from our sight. We may know it’s happening, but we can’t see the results of this change until the butterfly chooses to reveal itself to the world.
In our story today, Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth right after receiving some life-changing news from the angel Gabriel – a messenger from God. Mary has learned that she is going to have a baby – AND, that this baby will be the Son of God. Incredibly, Mary doesn’t hesitate to say yes to this huge ask. Even though all of this has the potential to completely derail her life. Even though, at the very least, this new turn of events will make her life a whole lot more complicated. It’s not unlike Isaiah’s call story, which we heard a few weeks back. Like Isaiah who said “Here I am, send me” without yet knowing what his ‘yes’ would require of him, Mary likewise says, “Here am I, servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Mary’s very next act, according to Luke, is to immediately head off to visit her cousin Elizabeth. And this wasn’t just a drop-in visit. Elizabeth lived in another town some 100 miles away. We can imagine that Mary likely needed a safe place; a safe person to be with as she processes all that has happened to her. It’s not that she yet needs to get away from prying eyes, because this early in her pregnancy, she’s not showing yet.
Mary shows up on her cousin’s doorstep for this unexpected visit. And the only clue Elizabeth has to Mary’s big news is that the baby in her own belly recognizes the life already growing in Mary’s. Luke tells us that the baby in Elizabeth’s belly (John the Baptist), jumps in her womb at the sound of Mary’s voice.
Even though this seed of hope is not yet visible to the human eye, the turning point – the events that will change everything – are already in motion. Like that caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, hidden from our sight, God’s transformative and life-saving work is already underway – even though it is yet hidden to human eyes.
What are you waiting for? This is the question we’ve been coming back to throughout this extended season of Advent. We’ve talked about how we’re waiting for God’s peace, justice and love to win. That we’re waiting for an end to war, greed, injustice, hate.
As we finally arrive this week to the Christmas story – and in particular to this early moment in the Christmas story – we are given the promise that God is at work birthing hope into the world even when it seems hidden from our eyes.
And like Mary, we are asked to trust that in spite of how it often appears to us, God is still at work birthing hope and love into this world. Birthing hope and love through a tiny baby whose life will show us just how deeply and endlessly God loves this world. And birthing hope and love through each one of us when we guide our lives by this story of love.
In a world of so much suffering; of so much inequality and pain; living in this way, is an act of resistance, which is what Advent is all about. I love how my colleague Pastor Joanna Miller puts it. She writes, “Advent is an act of resistance. It’s hope, in spite of a world gone mad. It’s insistence that love is to be found. It is delighting in joy amid the heartbreak, and believing that Christ’s peace is for us.”1
This resistance is exactly what Mary models for us, as she experiences God’s advent – God’s arrival – in her very own body. While her miraculous child is yet but a tiny embryo in her womb, not yet visible or known to anyone else, Mary sings to us about God’s story of transformation; about God’s power to save us from ourselves.
She proclaims how God will scatter those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations. Pull the powerful down from their thrones and lift up the lowly. Fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty-handed. So firm is her hope in God’s power to transform the world in this way, she sings about it in past tense – as though God has already accomplished all these things!
This Advent season, as we wait, may we join Mary in magnifying God’s glory. May we seek to live out Advent hope, peace, joy, and love as we can. Not denying or ignoring the suffering of this world, but always responding in Christ’s way of compassion and kindness. And trusting that all the while, even when it’s hidden from our eyes, that God is still at work transforming and healing the pain of this world. AMEN.
1 Rev. Joanna Miller. Facebook Post. December 14, 2024.
Sunday December 8, 2024
Fifth Sunday in Advent
You will find the video from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/jsLy2ZpAhNA
Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Extended Advent
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
God’s Spirit Poured Out – Joel 2:12-29
Joel doesn’t give us enough details to know exactly what was going on in the world in his lifetime, although it’s believed that he lived either during or just after the time of the Babylonian exile. The one context clue we do get from him is that he lived and prophesied during the time of a great natural disaster. In his words, there are references to both drought and to an invasion of locusts. Clearly some kind of disaster has brought ruin upon the land, and as a result, upon the people, whose source of food is gone.
Joel speaks to a people grieving; a people uncertain of their future; a people who wondered whether they were being punished by God. This puts him in good stead with other Biblical prophets whose job was to speak a word of hope to people facing difficult circumstances. To lead the people back into right relationship with God. But there is something that sets Joel apart from other Old Testament prophets.
Whereas “prophets like Isaiah, Amos, Hosea and Jeremiah all criticize worship and repeated rituals, the prophet Joel calls the people to them. The other prophets want people to clean up their act before coming before God, but Joel senses that his people have already been away from God’s presence long enough. Joel wants the people to gather for worship.”1
“Blow the horn in Zion; demand a fast; request a special assembly,” Joel proclaims. “Gather the people; prepare a holy meeting; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the groom leave his room and the bride her chamber. Between the porch and the altar let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, weep. Let them say, “Have mercy, Lord, on your people, and don’t make your inheritance a disgrace, an example of failure among the nations.” (2:15-17a)
Joel calls the people to come before God; and to bring their whole selves to God, broken hearts and all.
The fact that Joel’s reality was an ecological crisis, brings his words close to us here today as we live through our own ecological crisis; the scale of which Joel and his people couldn’t even fathom. Extreme weather events have become regular occurrences, devastating communities and ecosystems around the globe. Our insatiable drive for “resources” as we like to call them, is destroying the land, the air, and the waters.
And this is what makes our ecological crisis all the more devastating. We know what is causing our crisis – we are. As a species, we have control over this ecological crisis, and yet we just can’t seem get our act together to live in a different way. To live more gently on this earth. To recognize that the land and animals and plants and waters are more than resources; they are our kin.
The magnitude of the problem is overwhelming. And we have done some things we aren’t sure we can get back. Depending on the day, depending on the headline, it often already feels too late. What do we do, when the situation seems hopeless, and we feel helpless?
“Yet even now,” God says, “return to me with all your hearts, with fasting, with weeping, and with sorrow; tear your hearts and not your clothing.” (2:12-13a)
Lament. Weeping. Passionately expressing our sorrow and grief. These are not things that we typically seek out. Perhaps you even actively avoid expressing or even feeling these kinds of emotions. As a former British colony, here in Canada we too are very good at keeping that stiff upper lip. At not showing distress or sadness in the face of adversity.
When the world is a mess, we can stick our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not true. Or we can get angry at ourselves or blame each other. But the prophet Joel offers us another way: to acknowledge how crappy things are and weep about it. 2 To bring your broken hearts to God. To trust that God will respond. To trust God will make a way forward where we can see no way.
For Joel’s people, we don’t know how much time passed between their weeping and their rescue. But their natural disaster wasn’t the end of their story. God takes pity on them – and not only on the humans, but on the land and the animals too! (In fact, in this vision for their future, God addresses the land and the animals before the people). God promises to pour our God’s Spirit upon them and upon their children – the generations to come. God promises to be with them into the future; a good and abundant future.
Now I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t some very real and significant differences between the localised natural disaster facing Joel and his people, and the global ecological crisis of our time. The scales are not even comparable. And yet, the question that Joel’s story raises is more than pertinent to us. Like Joel’s community, how are we called to live in the midst of a situation that is beyond our control – a situation to which we cannot see a way that it will end well or get better?
Well for starters, we remember that it’s never too late to repent. God says to us as God said to Joel’s people, yet even now, return to me. It’s not too late to change our behaviours. Climate scientists and advocates are clear that while some changes are already here for good, the end of the story has not yet been written.3 There is still time for us to write a better ending. So don’t give up yet or give in.
And “though it is true we control very little; hopelessness is the enemy.”4 When we lose hope, that’s when it’s dangerous. Joel was on to something when he called his hopeless people to lament. Because, although perhaps counterintuitive, lament can be a pathway to hope.
Grieving hearts are open hearts. When we grieve – when we cry out to God and shed tears – our hearts are broken open, pain is released, and space is made for hope to move in again. Space is made for God’s Spirit of hope to be poured upon us. Grieving hearts are open hearts, and God can always do something with open hearts.
This Advent we’ve been asking the question “What are you waiting for?” As I reflect upon Joel’s story this week, I know that I’m waiting for the wholeness of the earth. For that day when all of creation – the land, the air, the water, the animals – will be healed from the devastation we humans have brought. And while that day may not come in my lifetime, while I wait, I’m praying for every heart (including my own) to be broken open. For every heart (especially the hearts of those who have the power to make decisions that will lead to real change) to be opened up to the pain of the earth, so that God’s Spirit can pour out compassion and gratitude and hope into every heart; and that together we can write a more hopeful ending to our story. May it be so. AMEN.
1 Rev. Steve Hoffard, 2020.
2 Bobby Williamson on the BibleWorm Podcast. “Episode 615 Rend Your Hearts (Joel 2:12-29)” December 1, 2024.
3 For an exploration of this, listen to the podcast Science Vs. episode “Have We Crossed the Tipping Point” from September 19, 2024.
4 Amy Robertson on the BibleWorm Podcast. “Episode 615 Rend Your Hearts (Joel 2:12-29)” December 1, 2024.
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Sunday December 1, 2024
Fourth Sunday in Advent
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/jRZQPpd4sDs
The sermon from this past Sunday, December 1st, Fourth Sunday in Advent was given by Bishop Carla Blakley. Bishop Carla does not preach from a prepared text, so there is no printed sermon this week. For the sermon you will need to watch the video at the YouTube link above. The sermon begins at: 27:43
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Sunday November 24, 2024
Third Sunday in Advent
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/cpwnRNPhiBM
Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Extended Advent
Sunday, November 24, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
God Promises a New Covenant – Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-28; then 31:31-34
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been hearing from some of the Old Testament prophets: Elijah, Jonah, Isaiah. Coming onto the scene some 200 years after Isaiah, Jeremiah is yet another prophet in a long line of prophets that God has raised up to try and get the people back on the right track. But as with most of the prophets, people don’t want to hear what Jeremiah has to say.
In our popular culture we often think of a prophet as one who can predict the future. But at least in the Biblical tradition, prophets are those who can see through the garbage to the truth or reality of a situation. They are the ones who have the wisdom and courage to say – if we continue to act like this, if we continue to go down this path – this is what’s going to happen.
Jeremiah had a long and very challenging vocation as a prophet in the kingdom of Judah. Serving as a prophet for more than 40 years, he lived through a very tumultuous time in Judah’s history. Throughout his lifetime, Judah was a vassal state – first to the powerful Assyrian Empire, and then to the Babylonians, whose empire eclipsed the Assyrians in 605 BC.1
As a vassal state, the kingdom of Judah has some level independence but was obliged to pay taxes and provide men for the empire’s military. Eventually, the king of Judah decided it was better to fight for their independence, which is the backdrop to today’s story. Judah has rebelled and Babylon is at their gate; an invasion seems inevitable.
All along, the word that God has given to Jeremiah is that the people should not resist for this exact reason. But Jeremiah’s stance was never popular, and he suffered terribly for it, experiencing ridicule and even imprisonment. Even now, with Babylon bearing down, the king doesn’t want to hear it. The king literally cuts apart and burns the scroll on which Jeremiah’s prophecy is written. After being so set on his vision for independence, no matter how badly things are going, the king cannot even entertain another way.
One of the patterns we’ve seen play out again and again this fall as we’ve journeyed with God’s story is that we humans struggle to trust in God’s way for us.
In the garden, Adam and Eve can’t help but eat fruit from the one tree God told them to leave alone.
Abraham and Sarah struggled to trust that God would fulfill the promise of descendants, instead taking matters into their own hands.
God leads the Israelites from slavery to freedom, re-establishing the covenant relationship with them through the giving of the ten commandments on Sinai. And within weeks the people make a golden calf to worship instead.
God has tried establishing a covenant with the people by speaking it to them, by writing it in stone, and by writing it on a scroll – but it just can’t seem to stick. No matter what God tries, the people continue to break the covenant. And incredibly, God keeps coming back.
Adam and Eve pushed God away, and God came back.
The Israelites pushed God away in the desert and God came back.
In Jeremiah’s time, the people again have pushed God away and still God wants to be in relationship with them. Promising yet again, to “make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”
All other ways of covenanting have not worked – speech, stone, scroll – but God does not give up. Tirelessly, imaginatively, this time God says,
“I will put my Instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. They will no longer need to teach each other to say, “Know the LORD!” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD; for I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins.”
As it turned out, Jeremiah and his people would desperately need this new covenant that was written in their hearts. Because the kingdom of Judah will fall. The city of Jerusalem and the temple will be destroyed. Many of the people will be taken away from their homes into exile in Babylon. And when all that happens, they will need this word, that promise that God is as close as their hearts, even when their world has come crumbling down around them.
Like Jeremiah, we live in uncertain and tumultuous times. In some ways, the world has always known uncertainty and tumult. Most of us are simply lucky to have been born in a time and place, and in communities where we’ve been insulated from these things. And certainly, on a personal level, some of us have known a lot more than our fair share of uncertainty and tumult in our lives.
Living on this side of a global pandemic, it does feel as though so much of what we thought we could count on is not so certain anymore. Which is why the promise of this new covenant is such a word of hope for us too. Because through any and every uncertainty, through every challenge, we can trust that God is with us. God is as close to you as the heart beating in your chest.
Although here at St Peter’s we are celebrating an extended season of Advent, in the church today is also Reign of Christ Sunday. This is a day to remember that Christ is the ultimate authority in our lives, and the one by whom we orient our lives. And today, Jeremiah’s words invite us to consider how Christ is that Word that is written upon each one of our hearts. A word of love, of grace, of everlasting presence.
No matter what may come, we can hold fast to the promise that nothing – no human leader, no life altering event – can take away the love and peace of Christ that is written on our hearts.
As we wait for God’s peace and justice to be a reality on earth as it is in heaven, the Word already written upon our hearts compels us to live as if it were already so. To live out God’s grace and unconditional love for this world because this is the way God has already shown us. Please pray with me…
God, whose fondness for humanity knows no limit, Write your word upon our hearts, so that we need no scroll, no book, no script to know that you love us. Show us the power of your covenant, that you will be faithful to us, even when we fail to remain faithful to you. For the beauty of your word inscribed upon us, we pray, in the name of the one whose body and blood became your new covenant with us, Jesus Christ, our redeemer. Amen.2
1 https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/god-promises-a-new-covenant/commentary-on-jeremiah-361-8-21-23-27-28-then-3131-34-2
2 https://www.workingpreacher.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/narrative_lectionary_worship_2024-25.pdf
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Sunday November 17, 2024
Second Sunday in Advent
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/HzuO0yRaX2c
Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in extended Advent
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev Laura Sauder
Isaiah 6:1-13 – God Calls Isaiah
Isaiah’s call story is an impressive one. This mystical experience in the temple. A dreamlike vision, as if the temple furnishings magically come to life right in front of him.1 Into this holy space, God asks a question: “Whom should I send, and who will go for us?” And before even knowing what the assignment is, Isaiah jumps right in. “I’m here; send me!”
This is a story that’s often read at ordination services because it is so clearly about answering God’s call. But usually we stop at verse 8. “Here I am. Send me!” And I’m sure you can appreciate the temptation to end the reading there, after having heard what comes next. It’s sobering to realize what this call will entail for Isaiah. That the people will not listen to him; that they won’t understand the messages he will bring.
This Isaiah (whose story is recorded in chapters 1-39 of the book of Isaiah), was a prophet to the Southern Kingdom of Judah in the 8th century BCE. Unlike some prophets who spoke from the margins of society, Isaiah was passionately involved in the political life of his day, with direct access to speak with the king.
In Isaiah’s lifetime, Assyria was the big military power. And Judah had allied itself with Assyria for protection, becoming a vassal state of Assyria. This meant that they had to pay large sums of tribute money to Assyria every year and King Ahaz of Judah (along with his people) were required to pledge their loyalty to the Assyrian monarch.
This is the political climate into which Isaiah is called to speak. And following through on his assignment from God, he continually urges King Ahaz to break this alliance with Assyria – warning the King not to get involved in the game of playing power politics because it won’t end well for Judah. But as it was foretold, minds are dull, and Isaiah’s warnings are not heeded.
“Make the minds of this people dull.
Make their ears deaf and their eyes blind,
so they can’t see with their eyes or hear with their ears,
or understand with their minds,
and turn, and be healed.”
These words feel as true for our society today as they were for Isaiah’s people. How dull minded we are. Deaf to the cries of the earth; to the cries of our neighbours; our kin both human and more than human (a term we use in my eco-spirituality course to speak about the animals, plants, and elements in the world).
For decades, scientists have shown us how human action is harming our planet. Right now, people from around the world are gathered in Azerbaijan for the 29th UN Conference on Climate Change. We know what needs to be done to address the climate crisis, and yet we are so slow (and even unwilling) to make the necessary shifts and sacrifices.
In many nations, including here in Canada, affordability continues to make the housing crisis worse. And rather than putting resources to really address the issue by housing people and providing supports, we have cities –including our own – asking the province to criminalize homelessness. We can afford to give every Ontarian $200 (regardless of financial need) to the tune of 3 billion dollars, and yet we can’t afford to house people.
I wonder how many of you are wishing we’d stopped reading at verse 8 right now? Because of course we could go on about the ways our economic and political systems leave far too many people behind.
The call of Isaiah is not an uplifting Bible story, but it is very much an Advent story. The promise of Advent is that God will make all things new. But painfully, before the new thing comes, the old must pass away. That before salvation, there will be judgement.
The kingdom of Judah did not fall during Isaiah’s lifetime. Eventually the Assyrian empire will be eclipsed by the Babylonians. They are the ones who will invade Judah, leaving cities lying in ruin, houses empty as the people are sent into exile, and devastate the land. All that will be left is a stump, but that stump will be a holy seed.
The tiniest glimmer of hope amidst so much devastation. But this glimmer is everything. It’s the promise that God will not ever let sin, death, and destruction get the last word. Nowhere is too bleak, too far gone, for God’s power to bring new life.
It’s a heavy word for us this morning. It’s not an optimistic word, but it is realistic and deeply grounded in hope. Not grounded in confidence of the human capacity to do the necessary shift; but grounded in the confidence of God’s power to heal and renew. A promise we cling to.
Our guiding question this Advent season invites us to ask: what are you waiting for? What are we called to do in this uncertain time?
Looking at Isaiah’s situation and how it played out, we could be tempted to be defeatist about the whole thing. Does it even matter what we do? Can anything we do even make enough of a difference? But we can’t ignore the fact that God knows how things will unfold for the kingdom of Judah, and God calls and sends Isaiah anyway.
Even if it won’t change every heart and mind, our responsibility – our calling as disciples of Jesus – is to name sin and preach love. To name the sin of greed or hard heartedness or apathy that leads to harm. To share Christ’s love and compassion with this whole hurting world, and especially the most vulnerable.
One of the other hopeful pieces I pull out of this story is that image of the angels – the seraphs – singing to each other. Calling out to one another and reminding each other of God’s presence.2
The powers that make the decisions in this world are so much bigger than us. It’s discouraging for sure when it feels like we’re not making a difference. But this is where we really do need one another. The powers that be benefit when we’re siloed and isolated. Alone we feel powerless. Like those angels, we need to help one another rest in the promise of God’s love. To proclaim the power of God’s love for one another. To remind one another of God’s presence even through really difficult times. On days when I’m feeling discouraged, I need you to remind me of God’s power and presence. On days when you’re feeling discouraged, you need me to do the same.
As way of closing, I want to share with you some angelic words of wisdom that were widely shared on social media the day after the US election. Written by Venice Williams (not the tennis pro, but the food security advocate and pastor from Milwaukee), these words remind us of the job God has called us to. Like those angels, she reminds us that no matter who sits on the throne, or what happens tomorrow, our job is still the same. She writes,
You are awakening to the
same country you fell asleep to.
The very same country.
Pull yourself together.
And,
when you see me,
do not ask me
"What do we do now?
How do we get through the next four years?"
Some of my Ancestors dealt with
at least 400 years of this
under worse conditions.
Continue to do the good work.
Continue to build bridges not walls.
Continue to lead with compassion.
Continue the demanding work of liberation for all.
Continue to dismantle broken systems, large and small.
Continue to set the best example for the children.
Continue to be a vessel of nourishing joy.
Continue right where you are.
Right where you live into your days.
Do so in the name of
The Creator who expects
nothing less from each of us.
And if you are not "continuing"
ALL of the above,
in community, partnership, collaboration?
What is it you have been doing?
What is it you are waiting for?3
AMEN
1 https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/god-calls-isaiah/commentary-on-isaiah-61-8-9
2 Amy Robertson. BibleWorm Podcast Episode 612 “Hear I Am Send Me” (Isaiah 6:1-13). November 3, 2024.
3 https://www.facebook.com/venice.williams.16/posts/pfbid02LaUr4LhxpZc3JCcxkL6VANgYijEXWn9V5HNF EHEtuYKd9HwVyApxcrTskBGeFRYel
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Sunday November 10, 2024
First Sunday in Advent
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/2ekQHyK37Yw
Sermon for the 1st Sunday in Extended Advent
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
Jonah and God’s Mercy
To understand why Jonah didn’t want to go to Ninevah, it’s important to know something about the Assyrian Empire. Assyria controlled most of the ancient near east at the time of this story. Nineveh was the capital city of this great empire, and its people were in desperate need of a change of heart.
History tells us that the Ninevites were proud killers of the Judeans. A couple of centuries ago archaeologists discovered wall panel reliefs that illustrate the Assyrian sieges. These gory images depict Judeans being impaled and their heads placed in stacks for all to see. So when God calls Jonah to go THERE - to Nineveh – into the centre of corrupt power and stomach-churning violence … to preach a word of repentance, it’s no wonder that Jonah says “no way!”
At best the people will ignore him, at worst they will kill him. But there’s also a third possibility Jonah’s worried about. The Ninevites – these Judean killers – might actually repent; and then God, who is gracious and merciful, would forgive them; which means that Jonah would have to forgive them too. And he’s just not ready to do that.
This is why Jonah heads in the other direction. He wants to get as far away from Ninevah as possible, and who can really fault him for that! It’s no small ask to show love to those who hate you. And this is where the familiar storm and fish come in. Jonah boards a ship, a great storm arises, and Jonah ends up overboard. After 3 days in the belly of a fish, Jonah thinks twice about disobeying God’s call again. Begrudgingly he makes his way to Ninevah where he issues the warning to repent.
To Jonah’s surprise and disappointment, the king, along with all the people of Ninevah, listen to him. They turn from their wicked ways and as just Jonah feared, God forgives them. Jonah, however, can’t find it within himself to do the same. Jonah is so angry he tells God he wants to die, and that’s where the story ends. With repentant Ninevites and a Jonah determined to go to his grave holding on to his hatred for them. Not the outcome God desired for Jonah, and certainly, there must be another way.
In 1991, Rabbi Michael Weisser, along with family, moved from New York City to Lincoln, Nebraska for Weisser’s new position at South Street Temple. One Sunday morning, a few days after they had moved, the phone rang. The man on the other end of the line called Rabbi Weisser “Jew boy” and told him he would be sorry he had moved in. Two days later, a thick package of anti-black, anti-Semitic pamphlets arrived in the mail, including an unsigned card that read, “The KKK is watching you, scum.”
The police suggested that the caller and antagonist was very likely Larry Trapp, the local Grand Dragon of the KKK chapter in Nebraska. Trapp, as it happens, was also a double amputee, having lost his legs to advanced diabetes at a young age.
Weisser was worried for his family but decided to take a different approach. He got Trapp’s phone number from a friend and began leaving messages on his answering machine, like:
“Larry, there’s a lot of love out there. You’re not getting any of it. Don’t you want some?”
“Larry, the very first laws that the Nazis passed were against people like yourself, who have physical disabilities, and you would have been among those to die under the Nazis. Why do you love the Nazis so much?”
This turned into a regular routine, with Weisser calling every Thursday. One time, Trapp answered the call by screaming profanities and asking Weisser what he wanted. Weisser replied that he knew Trapp was disabled and offered to give him a ride to the grocery store. Trapp told him he was all set and told him not to call anymore.
But Weisser kept calling and leaving messages of love. Then, one day, Weisser’s phone rang. It was Trapp, who asked, “Is this the Rabbi? I want to get out of what I am doing, and I don’t know how.”
Despite warnings from his family, Weisser decided to visit Trapp at his house that night to “break bread.” Weisser thought he had made a grave mistake when Trapp answered the door in his wheelchair with three guns in his lap. Then, Trapp reached out his hand, introduced himself and burst into tears.
After talking for hours, Weisser learned of the severe emotional and physical abuse Trapp had suffered at the hands of his father. It became clear that Trapp’s hateful actions were a manifestation of having never felt loved. Over the next year, Trapp became a fixture in the community, making amends and talking to groups about the perils of hatred. Around this time, his health also began to deteriorate.
Surprising everyone, the Weisser’s invited Trapp to come live with them. Trapp stayed with them until his death a year later. During this time, he also converted to Judaism. The day of his funeral, the synagogue was packed with people who would have never expected to be there just a few years before. 1
You could say that both these stories are about loving your enemies. But I think there’s an important nuance here. We tend to think of enemies as those we dislike – and certainly that element is present in these stories (it was definitely true for Jonah and the Ninevites – no love lost there!). But more accurately, I think, these are stories about loving those who hate you.
This is something that Jesus talked about in his Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you.”2 The call to love those who hate you is a Christian calling.
But for many of us, being hated is something we are privileged not to have experienced firsthand.
It’s a privilege not to have enemies. To not have people who hate you because of something that is beyond your control – like the colour of your skin, your sexual orientation or gender identity, your nationality or immigration status or the accent of your speech.
It can be hard to appreciate the fear that goes along with this when you’re not a member of a marginalized group. I know there are a lot of people in the US who don’t feel safe after last week’s election. That there are many here in our own country who don’t feel safe because of the anti-immigrant, anti-trans, anti-gay rhetoric that is so loud right now.
Jesus calls us to love those who hate, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy or risk free.
Sometimes, perhaps often, like Jonah, we will struggle to meet hate with love. We will fail to speak up often enough and strongly enough. To call those who speak hate to account; to repentance. And often because there’s very real risk of further harm in doing so – especially if the hate is directed at you personally.
Sometimes, like Rabbi Weisser, we might actually muster the courage to face hate with mercy, love, and grace. And I can only imagine that the stories of his faith – stories like Jonah’s that speak of God’s expansive mercy – sustained him as he persevered in reaching out in love to his enemy.
Meeting hate with love is risky, and yet, when we can recognize and honour our shared humanity, there is possibility for transformation. These stories teach us to never count anyone out. Even though we may not get results as quickly or as completely as Jonah did.
In Advent, we wait for the day when God’s vision of unity will be fulfilled. When the lion will lay down in the lamb. And as we wait for God to act, God is also waiting for us to the hard work of honouring one other’s humanity. Even those who hate us or those we love. To love, even through our fear, the way that God loves every human on this planet. And to know that God loves them even when we can’t.
Because thankfully God’s grace and mercy and love are far more expansive than our own. God’s mercy is big enough for our enemies. It’s also big enough for us when we find ourselves, like Jonah, struggling to love those who hate.
God of Advent, give us the courage to meet hate with love. Soften our hearts to always see the humanity in one another so that hearts and minds might be transformed by your expansive love. Amen.
1 https://www.robertglazer.com/friday-forward/love-hate/ https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/nyregion/05rabbi.html
2 Matthew 5:43-44
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Sunday November 3, 2024
All Saints Sunday
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/-EiO0AFkhf8
Sermon for All Saints Sunday
Sunday, November 3, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
1 Kings 17:1-16 – God’s Care for the Widow
As we continue to make our way through God’s story, this week we encounter the prophet Elijah. About 30 years have passed, since King Solomon’s death (whose story we heard last week), but so many changes have already swept the region. The united kingdom made up of the twelve tribes of Israel – united by Solomon’s father David – is no more. After a century of unity, the kingdom has split into two: the northern part keeping the name Israel and the southern part becoming the kingdom of Judah.
Elijah is a prophet to the northern kingdom around the year 850 BC, under the reign of a King named Ahab. As a royal prophet, Elijah’s job is to make sure the king obeys God’s commands. Elijah has his hands full with King Ahab, whose non-Israelite wives are introducing their religious practices to the people of Israel. Elijah takes particular issue with King Ahab’s wife Jezebel, a Canaanite who brought with her the worship of Baal.
As punishment, God brings a three year long drought upon the nation. And in the midst of this devastating drought, God calls Elijah to pick up and leave home. Even though this puts him in a very precarious position, Elijah faithfully goes where God sends him.
What a scary and difficult time this must have been for Elijah. Separated from his community, needing to find sustenance in unfamiliar territory, in a time of drought, no less, Elijah is at the mercy of the wilderness, and of God.
As a metaphor, Elijah’s journey into the wilderness is not unlike the experience of grief. When someone we love dies, suddenly we find ourselves thrust on a journey we never asked to go on; forced to navigate wholly unfamiliar territory.
Reflecting on what it was like after her mother died, journalist Chitra Ramaswamy writes, “I have learned that grief is a foreign country and we do things differently here. We become tourists in our old existences, constantly losing our minds and keys (twice, in my case), trying to get by with next to no language. We are overwhelmed by the smallest of things – floored by an episode of Gardeners’ World, undone by a leaf falling from a tree. We are somewhere else, in another time, visited by things said and unsaid.”1
Grief disorients us; it unmoors us; as we yearn to return home – to a time, to a place, where our loved one is still alive.
In the wilderness, God directs Elijah to the Cherith brook. And in this wild place, God sends ravens to bring food. Ravens were considered unclean animals by the Israelites, but in this new reality, none of that matters to Elijah. Food is food when you’re hungry, and Elijah eats what the ravens bring, recognizing God’s gift and grace for him in this wilderness time.
But eventually the brook runs dry and Elijah must move, so God sends him to Zarephath in Sidon. I can’t help but wonder what Elijah was thinking when God told him his next destination. Sidon was not only a foreign land, but it was the homeland of Queen Jezebel, and so presumably filled with more worshippers of the false god Baal.
But again, with nothing more to lose, walking by faith, Elijah goes. And again, Elijah is cared for by someone unexpected.
Thirsty and hungry, Elijah implores a poor widow to give him a drink and a meal. She has barely enough to feed herself and her child, and while at first, she protests, she brings him a meal. In a foreshadowing of Jesus feeding the multitudes, Elijah and the widow’s family are able to eat from this small store of meal and oil for many days.
What strikes me as special about Elijah’s story is that God doesn’t provide sustenance for Elijah out of thin air. Instead, God uses ravens and a poor widow to make sure Elijah’s physical needs are met. Through these unexpected saints – through animals and a vulnerable stranger – Elijah also finds relationship and connection.
Days like All Saints remind us of the gift and blessing of human relationships. We give thanks for the saints not just for who they were, but for who they were to us. Ordinary, beloved, blessed people, whose love and kindness and faith and care has seen us through good times and bad. Parents, Grandparents, children, siblings, pastors, Sunday School teachers, mentors, friends:
who have shared God’s gift of love with us.
Although it raises painful emotions to remember those who have died, our sadness is a sign that their lives made a mark upon our own. Grief is the price we pay for love, and even in our grief, this love lives on in us and through us.
For you who are grieving today, like Elijah, may you find the courage to ask for help when you need it, knowing it’s not a sign of weakness but a sign of our interconnectedness. I pray that sustenance and comfort will show up for you in the least likely places and people.
And for all of us, may the memory of the saints – those relationships of gift and grace – encourage us to look out for one another. To check in our friends and neighbours in the weeks and months after a loss, to remind them that they are not alone and that their loved one is not forgotten.
For we honour the memory of all the saints, when even in the wilderness and unfamiliar territory, we carry on in Christ’s way of peace and compassion; the love of God shining through us to care for stranger and for friend. AMEN
1 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/dec/21/losing-my-mum-in-lockdown-was-a-brutal-lesson-in-the-abject-loneliness-of-grief
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Sunday October 27, 2024
Reformation Sunday
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/NT53MFU4Mjw
Sermon for Reformation Sunday
Sunday, October 27, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
1 Kings 8:22-24, 27-30, 52-60a - Solomon Dedicates the Temple
Last week, we heard about King David’s dream to build a temple for God. But God had other plans for David’s legacy. Through the prophet Nathan, God reveals to David that rather than him building a temple God, David’s legacy would be the dynasty God would build from his descendants.
As we pick up God’s story today, we’re introduced to one of these descendants from the very next generation – the man who succeeded King David on the throne – his son Solomon. A king who is remembered for being wise, Solomon’s reign was a time of rare peace and prosperity for the fledgling kingdom. Solomon is also remembered for being the one to build the temple his father couldn’t.
In our reading today, we hear part of the prayer Solomon prayed at the dedication of the temple once it was completed. I can just imagine what a poignant moment this must have been for him –
this vision finally a reality. As he stands before the altar – the place at the centre of the temple where offerings were made before God – he knows that he is only in standing in this place because of the faithful people who have come before him.
In his prayer, he remembers his father David, who only dreamed of building a temple like this one. He remembers the covenant that has woven through the generations – through Abraham and Sarah, through Joseph, through Moses – to this very moment. As Solomon remembers the blessing of the past, he prays for God’s blessing to continue on in his generation.
For us Lutherans, Reformation Sunday is a time to remember and reflect upon our ancestors in faith. To remember Luther and the other reformers who set in motion the events that have brought us here to this moment. We wouldn’t be sitting here today in a Lutheran church if the Reformation hadn’t happened.
And yet, Luther never set out to start a new church. He certainly didn’t like it when those who agreed with his views were called “Lutherans.” But his steadfast trust in the promise that we are saved by grace through faith, and his dogged determination to share this good news with the world, put him at odds with the church of his day, and we are the result. History may not have unfolded as Luther envisioned, and yet his example of faith is still a blessing for us today.
As we sit this morning with Solomon’s dedication of the temple, which was a moment of unity for his people, and with Luther’s Reformation, which led to a huge rift in the church,
it’s not necessarily self- evident where these two things might connect. But I do wonder, if in their differences, these stories invite us to think about what it means for God’s promises to carry from generation to generation.1
Because God’s promises do not change. What does change is how these promises sit differently with different generations. These promises will elicit different responses from God’s people, depending on what’s going on in the world at any given time.
As we think about how “God’s promises” sit differently with different generations, it’s important to be clear about what we mean when we talk about “God’s promises.” One of the simplest and most concise answers I’ve heard comes from protestant theologian Karl Barth. “According to an oft-told story, during a 1962 lecture in Chicago, … Barth was asked if he could sum up his theology in one sentence. He responded with the well-known words of the children’s hymn: Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so.”2
For Solomon, trusting the promise of God’s love meant building a temple in Jerusalem where his people could bring offerings to God and be reminded of God’s blessing. Where they could live into their part of the covenant with God.
For Luther, trusting the promise of God’s love meant standing against those who said forgiveness can be bought. It was that impulse, that compulsion, to share God’s unconditional and undying love that led to the reformation.
I wonder, what does trusting the promise of God’s love mean for us in this time? When we trust that God’s deep and abiding love is already here, among us, where might trusting in that promise lead us?
Even though we live in a very different time than Martin Luther, and certainly that of King Solomon, the need for people to know God’s grace, to know God’s love for them, hasn’t changed. When sharing God’s love becomes our main objective – the litmus test we use to measure any new idea or program we might want to try out – we are on the right path.
Every generation faces its’ own challenges. Some generations know peace and stability. Some generations know only fear and uncertainty. But in every generation, God’s promises remain steadfast and true. In every generation, God’s gracious and abiding love is showered upon us.
On this Reformation Sunday, we give thanks for the faithful ancestors who’ve come before us; who’ve brought us this far. We also remember that we are someone’s ancestors too. That the prayers we lift before God; the love we share in our community; will leave an imprint.
We can’t know what the future holds for our community, but I firmly believe that when we prioritize sharing God’s grace and unconditional love with our neighbours, the path will make itself known (as it did for Luther). As we dig deep and find the courage to follow where this will lead us, both we and our neighbours will be blessed.
On this Reformation Sunday, as we recommit again to following in the faithful steps of our ancestors, may the words of blessing from our ancestor Solomon be a word of blessing for us too: “May the Lord our God be with us, just as God was with our ancestors. May God never leave us or abandon us. May God draw our hearts to walk in all God’s ways and observe God’s commands, laws, and the judgments given to our ancestors. And may our prayers remain near to the Lord our God day and night, so that all the earth’s peoples may know that the Lord is God.” AMEN.
1 BibleWorm Podcast. Episode 609 Dedicating the Temple. October 13, 2024.
2 Bible Study. “After Certainty: Session Two, Community” by Meghan Johnston Aelabouni. Gathermagazine.org July/August 2024.
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Sunday October 20, 2024
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/w64Y6j73B6g
Sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, October 20, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
God’s Promise to David – 2 Samuel 7:1-17
Today we pick up the story of Scripture with King David: the second person to be anointed king by Hannah’s son, the prophet Samuel, after the time of the judges. David may be the second king of Israel, but he is remembered as the greatest king. Because unlike the first King, Saul, David succeeded in uniting the twelve tribes of Israel into one kingdom. Previously, the tribes had long been divided into two camps – the Northern tribes and the Southern tribes – fighting each other. With David’s triumph, the people rally behind him and finally find the security and stability they’d been longing for.
To foster this newfound unity, David declares the strategically located city of Jerusalem both the royal and the religious capital of his kingdom. This is where he builds his palace, and where he brings the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. This is the ornamented box that holds the Ten Commandments and embodies God’s presence among the people. But David’s vision for this royal and religious capital is not yet complete. It troubles him that he lives in a house of cedar while the ark of the covenant resides in a tent. And so David sets his sights on building a house for God.
We can’t know David’s exact motivations for wanting to build this temple – whether it’s for further personal and political gain, out of an earnest desire to serve and thank God, or perhaps some combination of the two. What does seem clear is that David is operating from an assumption that God must want what he wants – a beautiful place to dwell.
It’s so very human. To assume that others see things the same way we do. That others want the same things we do. Psychology has a name for this. They call it the “false consensus effect.” It’s the idea that individuals frequently overestimate how much others share their beliefs, values, and behaviors. We often project our personal attitudes and ideas onto others, assuming they are more common or widespread than they actually are.”1
It's always a shock when we discover that not everyone loves the same things we do, right? It’s a common reality, and yet it never ceases to be shocking. How can you (not) love camping? How can you vote for “that” political party? How could God not want a beautiful palace to dwell in?
To give David some credit, before going full steam ahead with his plan he does consult his spiritual advisor. He tells the prophet Nathan – an advisor with special access to God – about this plan and who tells him to go for it. Notice that Nathan doesn’t actually take the time to consult God. David has been in God’s favour for so long now that Nathan assumes this next big idea will be no problem either.
He couldn’t, however, have been more wrong. Because later that very same night, Nathan receives a very different message from God. God makes it clearly known that God does not want David to build a temple.
“You will not build me a house. I will be the one to build a house for you,” God says.
God turns focus from what David wants to do, to what God has already done and is still doing. And the house that God is already establishing isn’t a building at all, but a people. The “house” that matters most to God are the people – the dynasty – that will come after David. In this particular moment, this is what matters most. A time for a temple will come; but this is not the moment.
When we think of our own ministry, it can be hard at times to know what God is calling us to next. When we have a big idea, how do we know this is something that God also wants for us, or whether it’s just what we want for ourselves?
For the past several months, church council has been reading through a book together called “Breakthrough: Trusting God for Big Change in your Church.” It tells the story of a historic church in Odessa, Texas that decided to sell their building and move to a new location. I want to read a short excerpt for you, a reflection from one of the pastors titled “It’s not about us.” He writes,
Our long preparation for the discernment process focused on intentionally of purpose. Why is our church here? And the answer was inevitably that we exist as a faith community not only for those of us in the church, but for the sake of God’s children outside the walls.
One small circumstance that moved our congregation was the homeless camp that developed on our property. Downtown unhoused folks starting camping under the porch outside our garage. Being in conversation with them, it quickly became clear that running them off simply meant putting them on someone else’s porch. So, we decided to work with them. Nobody wanted homeless people on our property. One Sunday morning, an older church lady who always came in from the back walked past a man changing his shirt! It caused quite a stir. But being in relationship with and working with those folks postured us to act not based on what made us comfortable, but as a church following Jesus. As small as our ministry was, it challenged our sense of who we are and why we exist.
Many years ago, I was in an annual training for elders. A new elder asked, “Do we pick up the bread tray and hand it to the deacon, and then pick up the cup tray and hand it over? Or do we pick them both up at the same time, and hand them over both at once?” A senior elder blurted out, “No, we hand the bread and cup at the same time. I like it that way!” I thought to myself: actually, Jesus passed one and then the other. I’ve never forgotten my disappointment at an elder using the criteria “I like it that way” as a standard for how we conduct our ministry. We will not be faithful to Christ’s ministry if our criteria are what we like and what makes us comfortable.”2
“We will not be faithful to Christ’s ministry if our criteria are what we like and what makes us comfortable.” Because what we like and what makes us comfortable, is not necessarily what God wants and what makes God comfortable.
As we think about our future – and the legacy that we will leave behind us – this awareness is essential. I wonder, what kind of house is God calling us to build? What kind of house does God want to build among us?
Unlike Nathan and David, we are still waiting for our clear answer; specific to this moment, this place, this group of people. In the meantime, it’s essential to keep asking and praying about these questions – what kind of house is God calling us to build? What kind of house does God want to build among us?
Holy Spirit, as we wait, help us stay true to Jesus’ often uncomfortable way of grace and love, that we might be open and ready to receive our answer when it comes. AMEN.
1 https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/false-consensus-effect
2 Breakthrough: Trusting God for Big Change in Your Church, page 16-17.
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Sunday October 13, 2024-Day of Thanksgiving
Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/rXM6t4OOmv8
Sermon for Thanksgiving Sunday
Sunday, October 13, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
God Answers Hannah – 1 Samuel 1:9-11, 19-20; 2:1-10
A lot has happened in the story between this week and last week. After forty years of wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites have finally been led by Joshua into the promised land, where they settle to create lives for themselves as a free people. This begins the period of Biblical history known as the time of the Judges.
For close to 200 years the people are led by a series of charismatic military leaders called judges. This was an era marked by tribal warfare – lots of violence and unrest – and by the time Hannah enters the story, the people are longing for a different kind of leader. They want a king to lead them and bring stability. Hannah will play a pivotal role in this transition to a new kind of leadership. She is the mother of Samuel – the prophet who will anoint the first two kings of Israel.
When we first encounter Hannah, Samuel has not yet been born. Hannah is married to a man named Elkanah; but she’s not his only wife. Elkanah is also married to a woman named Peninnah.
We can imagine that there would be a natural rivalry between two women married to the same man. But what complicates things even more for these two women is that Peninnah has children while Hannah does not. In a culture where producing children is what makes a wife valuable, this is a big deal. Given her ability to bear children, Peninnah should be the favoured wife. And yet Elkanah has a soft spot in his heart for Hannah, despite her lack of offspring, and gives her special treatment. Which of course only makes Penninah jealous and she makes Hannah’s life miserable for it.
When Hannah comes to the temple at Shiloh, she’s at the end of her rope. Her cry to God for a child comes from a place of deep longing AND deep misery. She longs for her life to be different than it is right now, and feels completely powerless to make that happen.
Hannah’s story is one we see played out more than once in Scripture – women who had been unable to conceive suddenly miraculously pregnant, of course with a son. For some of us this is a story that hits way too close to home. For those who know the pain of infertility, hearing Hannah’s story raises painful emotions. Especially because her story ends the way anyone dealing with the pain of interfertility longs for their story to end.
As we well know, the harder reality is that in life, the deepest longings of our heart may not come to be.
-A relationship hoped for that didn’t happen
-The desire for a relationship we do have to be different or better
-For healing after a difficult diagnosis
-For a long desired and prayed for child
We all have desires and longings that don’t come as we would wish; that don’t come according to the timeline we desire; that don’t ever come at all. What gives us the courage, the constitution, to keep putting one foot in front of the other when our deep longings threaten to drag us down?
The Narrative lectionary titles this story: God answers Hannah. And that’s often how we talk about this story. That it’s about God answering Hannah’s prayer for a child. And yet, this week I was struck by the fact the story doesn’t actually use that word “answer.” God didn’t answer Hannah’s prayer, instead, we’re told that “The Lord remembered her.” And in due time she conceived and bore a son.
I may very well be grasping at straws but I can’t help but wonder if this could be the story’s way of pointing to the all too frustrating and even painful reality that prayer is often not answered quickly or in the way we would wish. And even yet, God remembers. God does not forget those deep longings, no matter how much time passes.
When the deep longing of Hannah’s heart for a son IS at last fulfilled, she comes before God in prayer and praise. This prayer, which makes up the second half of today’s reading, is a powerful witness to the kind of God we serve. And while we might envy Hannah for having HER prayer answered, it’s precisely because Hannah knows what it feels like and looks like to have her prayer answered, that her gratitude and praise can become a word of hope for us.
Hannah can proclaim with authority that the God in whom we trust is one who makes surprising reversals – because she has experienced this to be true in her own life! She knows from experience that God cares about the needs of those the world has deemed weak or lowly. She has seen for herself that God has power to reverse human circumstances of status and power.
It’s prayers like Hannah’s that give me the courage and the constitution to hold on to hope. To trust, that in spite of how things look some days, God hasn’t forgotten me, and that God desires good for my life. And that God desires this for all of us – especially those whose lot in life has meant hardship and pain.
The life of faith is to live believing that things will not always be this way. This doesn’t mean we just need to grin and bear it when things get tough. Like Hannah, we also have permission to weep and wail; to complain and cry out to God.
And, this vision of another way empowers us to put one foot in front of the other when we’re going through challenging times. To offer kindness and compassion to others in their moments of pain. To do what’s within our power to help lift up those who’ve been pushed down by life.
And in those moments when our prayers ARE answered, Hannah’s story is an invitation to think about our next step. Hannah longed for a child of her own. And when this longing is finally fulfilled, she turns around and gives this child right back to God. She dedicates her child Samuel to God’s service, entrusting his care to the priests at the temple.
I wonder, what does gratitude look like for us when our prayers ARE answered. When we receive blessing in our lives. Like Hannah, how can we hold these lightly or even let them go
so that these gifts from God bring blessing to others? So that they continue to be a part of that cycle of thanksgiving and gratitude and blessing.
We may not know what the future holds, but we know who holds us. Life may not unfold as we had imagined it would, and yet, we can trust that God will remember us just as God remembered Hannah; Just as God remembers all who are in need. Today, and every day, this is a gift to give thanks for indeed! Amen
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Sunday October 6, 2024-Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/ktkcfkSRxis
Sermon for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, October 6, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
Exodus 32:1-14 – Golden Calf
The Israelites are no longer slaves in Egypt. God has brought them safely through the Red Sea and provided daily quail and manna for them to eat. With Moses leading the way, they have arrived at the foot of Mount Sinai where God has given them the Ten Commandments to guide their communal life. And even yet, with one miracle after another to bring them to this moment, the people struggle to trust in God’s goodness and faithfulness.
Moses has gone back up the mountain and when he’s delayed in coming back, the people get antsy. How hard it is to trust in a God we cannot see. At least when Moses is around the people can place their confidence in him, the official go-between, but now there’s no one.
And poor Aaron, Moses’ brother, is left to manage their frustration and anxiety. The people want something “real” to cling to, and so they ask Aaron, to make them a god they can see. It’s surprising how quickly Aaron seems to get on board with the plan since this request is in direct opposition to the commandment not to make any images of God.
I can’t help but wonder if in his own way Aaron was trying to stall or deter them. I wonder if asking the people to bring him all their gold, he was hoping they might not be so keen to head down this road if it literally costs them something significant. But the people seem happy to part with their valuable gold. And Aaron’s put between a rock and a hard place. He is one man against an agitated, anxious, mob – and so he agrees. They gather all their gold, melt it down, and mold it into a golden calf.
Like the Israelites and Aaron, I’m sure you too have had moments of feeling anxious about the state of your life – or the state of the world. It’s no coincidence that one of the New York Times best sellers this year is Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation.” This book is about the mental health crisis among young people today – but I would argue that anxiety is something that many of us struggle with these days. There’s so much about life right now that feels uncertain – or that we’re told to feel anxious about.
And the thing about anxiety is that this energy has to go somewhere. And often it leads us to distract ourselves with false idols. We may not cast gold statues but we have our own coping mechanisms; those behaviours that help us through challenging times.
For some this might look like watching mindless TV. For others this might look like keeping as busy as possible. Two very different behaviors, that serve the same purpose – they distract us from the difficult thoughts and emotions that anxiety puts upon us every day.
We need distractions from time to time because we need a break from stress and worry. And yet, it can be a fine line when they also serve to distract us from God; from how God is trying to lead us in this time.
There are a lot of big emotions in this story. If we think the Israelites are behaving badly, we might say the same thing about God. God doesn’t come across as particularly loving or gracious or merciful in this story. In fact, God shows a completely other side of God’s self.
That said, if I were in God’s shoes, I would pretty upset at the peoples’ behavior. At their lack of gratitude and even rejection of all that God has done for them. We know what it’s like to have that hurt and anger burn within us when someone rejects us.
When my own child is acting up, one of the sayings I picked up from my parents is to say: “some peoples’ children.” I love how this saying allows me to express some frustration at their behaviour while also recognizing that as a parent I’m responsible for my own child.
God doesn’t quite mean to do this, but it’s kind of what happens when God says to Moses: “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, are ruining everything!”
The thing is, these aren’t Moses’ people. All along it’s been clear that the Israelites are God’s children. Which is why Moses is quick to fire back with: “Lord, why does your fury burn against YOUR own people, whom YOU brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and amazing force?”
It’s a humourous rebuttal that cuts through the anger. It’s enough to make God change their mind. And in the end, in spite of that moment of hotheadness, God remains faithful to the covenant that was made with Abraham and his descendants.
It’s a promise that while our actions have the power to anger God, we can trust that God will come down on the side of mercy and compassion.
In times of anxiety it can be hard to trust God; hard to find God. Unlike deep grief or fear or loss, which upend our lives so completely they almost push into God’s arms, anxiety is trickier. When we’re feeling anxious, it can be hard to keep our focus on God and where God might be leading us.
One step towards remedying this is simply realizing that it is so. Noticing when we’re feeling anxious, and pausing to breathe. To do something that brings us back into our bodies – going for a walk or a run, getting a hug from a friend, dancing in your kitchen to “too loud” music.
When we’re in the wilderness, it can be hard to remember; hard to see; that God is right there with us. Taking time to pray, to read scripture, to be in beloved community. All of these things too help us to remember that we’re not alone in this.
We live in anxious times, but in spite of what it sometimes seems, we can be certain that the unseen living God is always already walking this path beside you; beside us. Gracious Spirit, help us to see this promise when our own eyes and anxiety deceive us. AMEN
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Sunday September 29, 2024-Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/gTo6TyHxWps
Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
Exodus 12:1-14 – The Promise of Passover
Stories matter. The stories we tell about who we are and how we got here, shape who we are and who we aspire to be. From Exodus we hear one of the foundational stories of the Hebrew people – their liberation from captivity in Egypt.
It’s been many generations since the Israelites first travelled to Egypt during a time of famine. In fact, so much time has passed that when a new pharaoh rises to power, afraid of the Israelites huge numbers, he enslaves them to keep them in check.
This is where Moses enters the picture of God’s story. God raises up Moses to lead his people out of slavery into freedom. But the pharaoh doesn’t make this task easy. Which is where we find ourselves in the story today. God has already sent nine plagues to torment the Egyptians into letting the Israelites go – skin lesions and locusts, frogs and flies, water turned to blood. And when none of these are successful in swaying pharaoh’s mind, God sends this tenth plague – the shadow of death for every firstborn child.
This tenth plague wins the Israelites their freedom, which is why this is a story that the Hebrew people are instructed to remember. They’re even given a detailed ritual to help them teach this story of liberation and freedom to their children and grandchildren.
This is a story that teaches us about God’s power to deliver from those forces in the world that seek to dehumanize. It’s a powerful story about God’s power to save, but we also see clearly that this liberation comes at a horrific cost.
The violence in this story – at God’s own hand – is not an easy thing for us to reconcile. And I don’t even know if we can. But it’s important to acknowledge it and name this tension. Because the truth is, many of the stories that shape our lives – the stories that have been passed down from our ancestors – are complicated.
This is something that as Canadians, we’ve only begun to reckon with in the last couple of decades.
Those of us who are settlers are descended from people who came to these lands seeking a better life for themselves and their families. Many of our ancestors were fleeing persecution and hardship in the old country, and Canada was a place that offered them freedom and opportunity. How many of our ancestors receive free or nearly free land from the Canadian government? I count my Sauder ancestors among those. They arrived at the start of the 20th century from Eastern Europe and homesteaded on government granted land near Rush Lake, SK.
Those who arrived to settle the west found an empty land. What many of them didn’t know is the land wasn’t empty. Rather it had been emptied of its original inhabitants through starvation and forced migration. For many of our ancestors, this was a land of freedom. But the story they were told didn’t include the fact that these newfound freedoms came at the cost of the freedom of those who were here first.
To learn that the Canada many of us love was only possible by denying the rights and freedoms of those who were here first is a difficult truth to receive. And these truths about our history are only now being told again because of the persistence and courage of those who survived this attempted erasure.
Learning the full truth of our history is difficult, but necessary work as Canadians. It’s necessary as we seek to honour the inherent worth and dignity of one another. As we seek to listen to the voices of our indigenous siblings and their stories. People like residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad, whose own healing journey has us wearing orange shirts on the last day of September as we seek to tell a new story for Canada where “every child matters.”
The story of the Exodus – of God’s rescue of the Hebrew people from slavery – is a part of God’s larger story of liberation that is woven throughout scripture. This story of liberation is our story too.
In three of the four gospels, the final meal that Jesus shared with his disciples was a Passover meal. They were enacting this directive to remember their ancestors’ liberation from slavery. And Jesus takes this Passover story, and imbues it with another layer of meaning for his disciples. Reinterpreting the bread and wine and his own flesh and blood, Jesus tells a story of his own self-giving love for the sake of the world.
Every time we celebrate communion, we join in telling this story of liberation. In this meal we receive Jesus’ liberating love, so that when we step out these doors into the world we go as agents of God’s liberating love. The story we tell is a story of being nourished by Jesus so that we can love others as deeply as Jesus loves us.
It’s a rather simple story, and yet it’s a hard story to live out because, it means listening to stories that challenge our own view of the world. It means letting go of old stories that no longer serve us well or that have been harmful to others. It means listening to the voices of those who’ve been pushed aside or put down, and learning from them what new stories we want to tell together.
This week we used a new acclamation from All Creation Sings. It’s one that Brad and I had never really noticed before, but the Spirit led us to it this week, and that last line in particular was crying out to be sung: “Listen even if you don’t understand.”
When it comes to right relationship with the original inhabitants of Turtle Island; when it comes to walking in Jesus’ way; when it comes to wrestling with the difficult stories we’ve inherited; we are all on a journey of learning. And in order to learn, we begin by listening – even when we struggle to understand. But as we listen, as we pray, we trust that in time the Spirit will help us discern the way forward in a good way. To tell a story of liberation where everyone has a place to belong. May it be so. Amen.
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Sunday September 22, 2024-Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
You will also find the video for this service at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/gkXOc-qWvn8
Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
Genesis 37: 3-8, 17b-22, 26-34 – God Works Through Joseph
Where to begin? All I can say is that with this much dysfunction and drama, if Joseph and his family were alive today they could easily star in their own reality TV show.
We have the father, who not only has a favourite child, but lets it be known to the whole family by singling him out and giving him a robe. This means every time the brothers see Joseph wearing his special coat they are reminded that their father loves him best.
We have Joseph, who knows he’s favoured by his dad and by God. Who either naively or arrogantly, tells his older brothers that some day they’ll all bow down to him.
And then there are the older brothers, whose jealousy moves them to contemplate killing their brother, but eventually settle for just selling him into slavery and tricking their father into thinking he’s dead. You know, typical sibling rivalry stuff, right?
This is a story about family dysfunction and sibling rivalry. But the truths held within this story stretch even wider. We can also read this as a story about human relationships. About the rivalries and conflicts and tensions that exist among not only individuals, but among groups, communities, and nations.
Which is something that, in our time, feels especially relevant as we witness rising geopolitical tensions and so many drawn-out conflicts around the world. At the forefront for many of us right now is the violence and war in the Holy Land. Land that has been fought over since Biblical times. So much conflict and division stemming from the question: who has a right or claim to this land? Like with Joseph and his brothers, the hatred and fear and jealousy run so deep. And at this moment in particular, the possibility of a peaceful resolution feels further away than ever. Which also means that working for peace is more important than ever.
Yesterday, September 21st, was the United Nations International Day of Peace. And this year marked the 25th anniversary of the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace. This declaration recognizes that peace isn’t merely the absence of conflict, but peace is means working actively to bring people together to dialogue and solve conflicts in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation.1 The idea of peace, the culture of peace, is something that must be cultivated in our hearts and minds and relationships. To see one another’s humanity – and beyond the things that seem to divide and separate us.
The idea that we should all just get along seems like a simple thing, and yet it’s one of the hardest things to put into practice – in our homes and in our communities. But Joseph’s story shows us it’s not an impossibility. Peace and reconciliation do come in Joseph’s story, but not before his life takes many turns.
When we read on to the rest of Joseph’s story – which stretches over 13 chapters of Genesis – we see that after being sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph is taken to Egypt as a slave where he also spends a lot of years in prison after being falsely accused of a crime. But eventually his gift to interpret dreams raises him to the top ranks of Pharaoh’s court.
Years later, when a famine hits the land, his brothers travel to Egypt looking for food. Unbeknownst to them, the man they deal with is their long lost brother. Joseph, however, recognizes his brothers right away but chooses not to reveal his true identity to them. Instead, he uses this as an opportunity for a little payback.
There’s some back and forth as Joseph plays a couple of tricks on them, not the least being when he sets up the youngest brother Benjamin as a thief – planting a silver cup in Benjamin’s bag and accusing him of being a thief. The other brothers, terrified that their father will now lose his other favourite son, plead with Joseph for mercy. It’s only when Joseph sees them begging that he breaks down and reveals his true identity.
The whole family then moves to Egypt so their father Israel can be reunited with his son. But even after all of this, the relationship between Joseph and his brothers remains strained. It’s not until their father dies some years later that they confront their past and reconcile their relationship.
After their father’s death, Joseph’s brothers come to him yet again begging for forgiveness. But apparently only because they’re worried that Joseph might take it out on them now that their dad is out of the picture. While we might doubt the sincerity of their apology, Joseph is moved by their words. Joseph weeps when they speak to him. And his showing of vulnerability, his tears, bring his brothers to tears too.
Only then comes the moment of grace and reconciliation, possible only because Joseph has done his own work and found some measure of healing from God. Because it’s really God’s grace and mercy flowing through Joseph in this moment of reconciliation.
He tells his brothers, “You planned something bad for me, but God produced something good from it, in order to save the lives of many people, just as he’s doing today. Now, don’t be afraid. I will take care of you and your children.”
It took 39 years for this moment of reconciliation to occur. Which is incredibly sad, but also a miracle that it happened at all. Because for many, this is not how their story ends. Joseph’s story is testament that forgiveness and reconciliation are always possible, but that they’re never a given.
As bleak as things feel right now when it comes to peace in the Middle East – and in many other places in our world – we are invited to trust in Joseph’s words, that even when humans plan something bad, God can produce something good from it.
In this we place our trust and our hope. That God can produce something good from whatever mess we humans make. And from this promise we find the motivation to keep working for peace. We trust and hope that cultivating a culture of peace in our hearts and homes and our communities can multiply and make a real difference in the world.
God of peace, open our hearts to do the hard work of cultivating peace – of forgiveness and reconciliation, of letting go of hurts and seeking the good of all. Help us to see one another’s humanity – and beyond the things that seem to divide and separate us – so that your dream of peace may yet become a reality here on earth. Amen
1 https://www.un.org/en/observances/international-day-peace
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Sunday September 15, 2024-Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
You will also find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/h7TTEs7HzDU
Sermon for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, September 15, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
Genesis 15:1-6
This isn’t the way things were supposed to be. At 75 years of age Abraham1 received a call from God to leave behind his country and kin, to go to a land that God would show him. God promises Abraham that if he follows this call, God will make him the father of a great nation, something Abraham wants badly because he and wife Sarah have no children. They have no one to carry on the family line. So Abraham takes the leap of faith and goes, as the Lord had told him. But time passes, and keeps passing, and STILL God has NOT made good on that promise of descendants.
How much more faith does Abraham need to show? He’s kept up his end of the covenant, but he and Sarah aren’t getting any younger. Where are these children that God promised? At this point it seems very clear that everything Abraham and Sarah have amassed for themselves will be inherited by a servant. It’s no wonder then that when God speaks to Abraham for what is now a third time, Abraham counters back with frustration and despair, “O Lord God, what can you possibly give me, since I still have no children.” It wasn’t supposed to be like this!
I wonder how many of you have ever had that thought cross your mind. Or perhaps even spoken those words out loud to yourself or to a trusted friend or to God. For some of us, this has happened in our lives in really significant and painful ways. A tragic loss or a debilitating illness. The unraveling of a relationship. Far too many have found themselves as some point like Abraham. Having worked hard all their life to acquire all the things we’re told we need to be successful, only to find that something is still missing. In this life, so many of our hopes and dreams and expectations are dashed or unfulfilled. And it can be hard to see where God is in all of this.
And for poor Abraham, not even the third time is the charm. Because when God comes to him for this third time, it’s still not with the clear answers Abraham desperately wants. God doesn’t give Abraham any more information about how or when this promise will be fulfilled. Instead, God simply reassures Abraham yet again that it will indeed come to pass.
So it’s no wonder that Abraham is frustrated with God. But then God asks Abraham to step outside. There, under the stars, so numerous they can’t even be counted, God speaks the promise one more time. There are no shooting stars. No plane writing Abram across the sky. Just the same old stars that shine in the sky every night.2
Incredibly, “the sign of the promise is something that has already been there every day of Abram’s life.”3 But it took this moment – it took God helping Abram to see them in a new light. And in this moment, staring up at those familiar stars, something shifts for Abram. Looking at the stars, so numerous he can’t even count them, he chooses again to put his trust in God. He chooses not to let his present reality stop him from hoping for something more.
One of the promises I hear in our story today is that God’s commitment to us is true. We may not, in this moment, be able to see or understand what God is up to in our lives, but we have the promise that God is with us and that God is leading us forward. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be smooth sailing, it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen on our timeline in the way we think is should happen. But God is with us and God is leading us to the next thing.
The signs of God’s promise are already all around us. But sometimes we need a little help to perceive them. We need something to shift our perspective. To see them clearly, as Abram did that night. It’s like the band Red Molly when they sing,
“May I suggest This time is blessed for you? This time is blessed and shining almost blinding bright Just turn your head And you'll begin to see The thousand reasons that were just beyond your sight”4
Just turn your head and you’ll begin to see the signs of the promise that are already there. Just go outside and look at the stars. The signs of God’s promise are already all around you.
So where are the signs of God’s promises for us? I would venture that we too can find the signs of God’s promises in creation. In the grandeur and beauty and complexity and wonder of creation. When we take the time to pause and be present with all our relations – not just the human ones.
Certainly these promises are found in the words of Scripture. These holy stories that have been passed down through the generations to inspire and encourage God’s people. They are in the sacraments – at the font and at the table – because God has promised to meet us there.
Abram’s story is a story of trust. And he doesn’t always do that well. He and Sarah make some pretty big mistakes – several times tried taking matters into their own hands when God’s timeline doesn’t match up with their own. They were deeply flawed people, but they were deeply flawed people who did their best to trust in God. And that’s really all that any of us are asked to do. To wake up each morning and say, “I’m gonna trust the promise today.” To wake up each day and choose to trust and live by God’s goodness. And to do it again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that one.5
With God, this is a long game. But we can trust, that even in terrible times, God’s goodness shines, however faintly. This isn’t to downplay or ignore our pain, but to recognize that pain and hope, that suffering and joy, can exist side by side. And those glimmers of goodness, hope, and joy will carry us through the difficult times.
It can be hard to imagine a brighter future when our present is not as we would wish. It can be downright impossible some days to imagine how it might ever be better or different.
But like the stars in the sky, God is always with us, promising that even when things aren’t the way they were “supposed to be,” it won’t always be this way. Holy God, help us to trust that it is so, and “reckon it to us as righteousness.”6 AMEN
1 In the Bible Abraham was originally known as Abram. In this sermon I refer to him using both names.
2 https://www.biblewormpodcast.com/e/episode-602-trusting-the-promise-genesis-151-21/
3 Ibid.
4 https://genius.com/Red-molly-may-i-suggest-lyrics
5 https://www.biblewormpodcast.com/e/episode-602-trusting-the-promise-genesis-151-21/
6 Genesis 15:6 (NRSVUE)
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Sunday September 8, 2024-Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/zrvnfUzoHKw
Sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17; 3:1-8
I love preaching on these first chapters of Genesis. There is so much in these creation stories. So many angles – so many little pieces that are worth digging into. Which also makes it challenging, because we only have so much time together this morning. We can’t do it all! But I do want to start with just a little bit of background about this part of the Bible.
The story we just heard is actually part of the second creation story. If you didn’t know there were two creation stories in the Bible – and even if you did – I would invite you to pull out your Bibles at home this week and take a read through the first three chapters of Genesis.
What you’ll see is that chapter 1 tells the cosmic story of creation. This is the story where God fashions the universe in 6 days – speaking everything into being – and humans are God’s final creation – either the pinnacle of creation or, one could argue, dependent on everything else that came first for survival. Adam and Eve don’t show up in this story. Instead, we find them where we began today, in chapter 2.
If Genesis 1 gives us the big picture, Genesis 2 is a story that zooms us right in close. We see God as this potter – an artist – shaping creation with God’s very hands. In this story, God creates the human first, to be a caretaker – a farmer – to tend and care for the land and animals. It’s a much more intimate story, with God getting right up close with creation; even having some fun as God tries to form the perfect partner for the human – making giraffes and cheetah and bison and wolves and ducks before finally getting it right with Eve.
The reason I love digging into these stories is that they seek to answer some of our deepest questions. These stories are not science. These are not factual retellings of historical events. These are spiritual stories that teach truths about what it means to be human. About our place in God’s whole creation – the land, the animals, the universe. They help us to consider our relationship with the divine, the holy – with God. And because they’re not science or historical fact, it’s good to have two stories, even when they seem to contradict each other. In his reflections on the creation stories, author and teacher Brian McLaren makes the point that just as two heads are better than one because insight from multiple perspectives adds wisdom, the same is true with stories.1
For those with long memories, you might remember that we began last September with this same creation story from Genesis 2. But this morning, the snippets we hear are invite us to reflect more closely on the part of the story that comes in chapter 3. The more painful part of the story that Christians often refer to as “the fall.” It goes like this. Things were perfect…and then something goes terribly wrong. The humans do the one thing God told them not to do – they eat the fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil. It all feels like this series of unfortunate events.
If only God hadn’t created snakes. If only Eve hadn’t eaten the fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil. If only Adam hadn’t followed suit. If only, if only, if only. Things might be different, right? Obviously this is where things go wrong. But I also can’t help but wonder, it is that straightforward?
For the sake of time in worship, we didn’t read the entire story, but it’s familiar to many of you. That same night, when God is out for a walk in the garden, Adam and Eve hide from God, ashamed of what they’ve done. But of course, God finds them.
And when God asks Adam what happened. When God asks, “who told you you were naked?” What does Adam say? He blames Eve. When God asks Eve about her part in this, what does she do? She points her finger at the snake. The choice to disobey God’s command to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil leads to consequences for all three of them. Forever banished from Eden – the place of ultimate good and peace – humans are now bound for lives marked by pain, suffering, and hardship. The snake, who apparently once had legs, is condemned to crawl on its belly.
But I can’t help but wonder, could this story have ended differently if Eve & Adam had taken responsibility for their mistake rather than pointing their finger at someone else? What if Eve & Adam had been honest with God about their mistake? What if they had shown remorse for their part in the whole debacle rather than blaming one another? Because to me, that’s where things really go wrong in this story. The opportunities to do the right thing after making a mistake are missed. Instead of fessing up and taking responsibility, shame leads to blame.
And as we know all too well, this kind of courage – the courage to take ownership of our mistakes – is still one of the hardest things for us humans to do. Especially when it comes to something we know goes against God’s desire for our life. Genesis chapter 3 is a painful story, but it’s a truthful story that asks us to confront the not so good parts of our humanity. It’s a story that reminds us of our own shortcomings and the times we’ve not been able to do the right thing.
This is a story that doesn’t end well for us. But it’s not without hope. In her book “This Here Flesh,” author Arthur Cole Riley points out that before God banishes the humans from the garden, God sews them some clothes (Gen 3:21). See, they’ve only been able to slap together some fig leaves, which I can’t imagine will hold up too well where they’re going. So God sews them clothes.
As a sewer myself I can appreciate the love and care shown in this act. One final, creative act of love for Eve & Adam as they head out into the harsh, unknown. A promise that in spite of their mistakes and their inability to own them, God still cares for them. A tangible reminder of that enduring love and presence wrapped around them as they head out into the world.
It’s important to remember that this story isn’t the end, but is the very beginning of a long and ongoing relationship and commitment God makes with humans. That God makes with us.
In our world, which is a complex world filled with both good and evil; joy and suffering; there are many different voices that call out to us to listen. Voices from within our own hearts and minds. Voices from without. Part of our work is learning to listen for God’s voice. To tease out that voice of love, of hope, of peace, of goodness, from all the other voices that seek to lead us astray. To listen for that voice that will help us learn from our mistakes. That will help us repair relationships. Help us take responsibility for our actions. To listen to that voice that leads us toward goodness, and away from evil.
This is where these index cards come into play. This week I want you to take some time to reflect on which voices you are most attuned to hearing. What voices take up the most space in your head?
On one side I want you to write the words good, enough, and love. On the other side, evil, more, fear. These are three “pairings” that I found helpful to think about the opposing voices. Maybe you have other pairings you want to add. Take some time this week to notice which voices call out to you.
We can’t control the voices that call out to us, but we can choose which voices we will follow. Thankfully, no matter how loud any of those other voices get, God never stops calling out to us too, seeking after us even when we try and hide. Amen.
1 Brian McLaren. We Make the Road by Walking, page 7.
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Sunday September 1, 2024-Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/fBmVTpnR86k
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
Cambridge, Ontario
September 1, 2024
Rev. Monika Wiesner
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
The Tradition of the Elders
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around [Jesus], they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’
Sermon:
I suspect we all grew up with our mothers teaching us to wash our hands, especially before sitting down to eat. We learned that dirt and germs needed to be removed before they got into our food and then into our stomachs. But that’s not the reason the Jewish people in this morning’s gospel story were washing their hands.
Washing your hands in 1st Century Palestine was about ritual purity. Even today, Orthodox Jews go through ritual hand-washing. Several years ago, when I was in Israel, I had the opportunity to see this happening. It was on the eve of Passover – the holiest night of the year – and I was having dinner with my travel group in the hotel where we were staying. We were in Tiberius, that ancient city on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. As we began our meal, we noticed a large group of Orthodox Jews come into a separate area of the dining room to have their Passover meal together. When they entered the dining room, they all washed their hands at special hand-washing stations that the hotel had set up inside the dining room.
This was for “ritual” handwashing and not for hygiene. Great big barrels of water … not unlike beer barrels … with faucets … lined the wall on one side of the dining room … and people washed their hands before they sat down at the table. This is the ritual handwashing that this morning’s gospel story is about.
We hear in this morning’s gospel reading that the disciples chose not to wash their hands. The Pharisees notice and get upset with them. Now think about it for a moment.
These Pharisees wanted to lead lives that were pleasing to God in the best way that they understood it … by obeying the 613 laws that were recorded in the Torah that covered many aspects of daily life, including family, personal hygiene and diet. And now Jesus tells them they’ve got it all wrong.
So what’s this all about?
To answer that question, we need to first of all look at the gospel in which this story is recorded. The Gospel of Mark, the first of the four gospels, was written around the year 70 CE, some 40 years after the earthly life of Jesus had ended. At that time, there were already two well-established groups within the early church – those Christians that followed the Apostle Paul … and those who followed the Apostle James. Now Paul’s ministry was mostly to the Gentiles, to non-Jews. [pause] And James, (who was the brother of Jesus), focused his ministry on the Jewish Christians, Jews that had converted to Christianity but who were most likely still worshiping within Judaism … and therefore inside the synagogue … and therefore almost certainly still following the purity laws and the dietary laws that define Judaism, even to this day. So what you have here, essentially, are two groups of Christians – one that still followed the purity laws and kept kosher kitchens … and a second group that did not. You have the Jewish Christians … and the Gentile Christians. And the group that did follow the purity laws was not allowed to fellowship with the group that did not. In other words, the purity laws were putting up walls between people.
Not a good way to begin a new church!
The Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians had to mix, had to get along, had to have table fellowship in the developing Christian Church. How else could this fledgling church ever grow? And so the writer of Mark’s gospel lifts up a story where Jesus challenges those purity laws by holding his listeners to a much higher law – what Jesus calls the “commandment of God”.
Biblical scholars have called this one of Jesus’ most radical statements. “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile … but the things that come out are what defile.”
“Stop worrying about your hands”, Jesus says, “and concern yourselves with matters of the heart.” In other words, it’s what comes from your heart that ultimately defines you … because the heart is the birthplace of our actions.
The heart is the birthplace of our actions … and our actions are a result of our motivations. If we look deep into our own hearts, we know what it feels like when our motives are not clean … and we know what it feels like when our motives come from love. We know when we are obeying the “commandment of God” … and when we’re not.
This morning’s gospel story is about the human heart. Human laws and church laws have their place. But if they do not come from the heart … if they do not bring people closer to God … and closer to each other … then they are not the “commandment of God”. Only that which brings people closer to God … and closer to each other … is truly from God.
As some of you may know, I work as a spiritual director at Loyola House, a Jesuit retreat center in Guelph. The retreat center offers, among other things, 8-day silent retreats. Retreatants come to be in silence for eight days to develop an inner stillness so that they can draw closer to God in prayer. It is often here, in this inner stillness, that people learn that true transformation happens in the heart … not in the intellect. Not in the head. So as spiritual directors, we help people move their thoughts and their prayers from their head to their heart … because this is where transformation takes place.
When you come to Loyola House, there is a bench right outside the front entrance door of the retreat center. You see it just before you walk through the front door. On the backrest of the bench is written, “The longest journey you will ever make … is the one from your head to your heart.” This is the invitation that greets you as you enter into the building.
I believe this is the invitation for today. Jesus is inviting us to begin that journey from our head to our heart … so that our heart space will be open … and our rough edges will begin to soften. I believe that is the great “commandment of God” … to open ourselves to God’s Love … and let God do the rest.
Amen
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Sunday August 25, 2024-Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/-xgqqqS5Tp4
Lesson Intro & Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, August 25, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
Lesson Intro - Joshua 24:1-2a; 14-18
In our first reading, “Joshua has gathered the Israelites at Shechem (an important religious shrine for the later northern kingdom) to renew the covenant, which was part of the instructions God gave to Moses and the people at Mt. Sinai. ”1 This particular occasion follows a period of time where, after finally reaching the Promised Land, the Israelites haven’t had the best track record of living into their covenant relationship with God. And yet, despite their failings, in this moment of grace, Joshua gives the people another chance to choose who they will serve. A reminder that God never forces relationship upon us – it’s a gift we are free to choose.
Sermon - John 6:56-69
Today we wrap up our five-week exploration of Jesus’ “Bread of Life” teaching. It began with Jesus miraculously feeding a huge crowd with just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. And then this long teaching about how this sign was to teach us that he himself is the bread and the blood that gives life to all who receive it. By the end, what we see is that not everyone is able to receive or accept Jesus’ claim to be the Bread of Life. Many of the disciples wonder aloud: This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it?
This teaching was simply too difficult for them to accept. They had, what some might call, a crisis of faith they simply couldn’t reconcile, and so “many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.”
I can still remember my first crisis of faith. In my undergraduate degree I majored in Religious Studies. I took courses on a lot of different religions, but I especially loved learning about Christianity, Judaism, and the history and background of the Bible. The thing is, studying Christianity and the Bible from an academic perspective challenged a lot of what had been taught to me as a child and teenager. And 3 years in to my degree, I can still so clearly remember having what I now call – a crisis of faith.
I was working at a Lutheran Bible Camp for the summer, and I can still picture exactly where I was – cleaning out the sauna (one of my duties as the Waterfront Supervisor) – as I had this sinking feeling that maybe I had lost my faith. I had no clue how to bring together all the pieces, or if it was even possible. I had so many questions and doubts about my faith. I wanted to believe, I just wasn’t sure that I did anymore, because somewhere along the way I’d come to understand that doubts were the opposite of faith.
I know I’ve shared before about the conversation that helped me move through this crisis. That fall, I was at my lifeguarding job at the Regina YMCA and chatting on a break with a fellow lifeguard who was a few years older than me and studying to be a pastor in the Alliance Church. I remember being a little afraid, even ashamed to admit that I was having doubts about God and faith, so I think I said something like, “it’s not that I doubt God…” when my friend interrupted me and said, “why not? I doubt God all the time!”
I can’t express how freeing it was for me to hear those words. To know that someone who took his faith very seriously, someone who was studying to be a pastor, also had doubts about his faith. If he could have doubts, then maybe I was going to be ok too.
Doubt is not the opposite of faith. I was reminded of this truth again more recently by Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber whose emails I receive in my inbox each week. Responding to a woman struggling with a recent medical diagnosis she writes,
“I’m not sure at what point it was decided that having faith looks like an unwavering and changeless belief in God no matter what kind of shitstorm we are in the midst of; I’m also not sure we were created to be quite that boring. I’ve mentioned it before, but the opposite of faith isn’t doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.”2
Standing here today, some 20 years on from that crisis of faith, I most certainly am ok. I still don’t have all the answers, and most days I’m ok with that. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that I know I stand with Simon Peter. When Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answers saying, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
As we grow up, especially as we move into adulthood, we naturally start to question a lot of what was taught to us as children. A lot of folks do choose to leave faith behind at this stage in life, especially if their faith community hasn’t been helpful in holding space for these questions with them.
For those who decide to stay, or to return after a crisis of faith, we often come back to God, we return to Jesus’ words again and again, not because we have all the answers and have it all figured out. Not because we haven’t been tempted at times to turn back and go another way. But because, like Peter, there’s something within us that says: Lord, to whom else can we go?
To have faith does not mean having all the answers. To have faith means to trust in God’s loving presence in our world. To trust that God meets us and is with us through every twist and turn our lives take.
I will be up front with you, when I listen to Jesus’ teaching about being the Bread of Life, even with my years of seminary training, I can’t say that I “understand” exactly what he’s talking about. As the disciples say, it is a difficult teaching – not only to accept, but to understand as well! And honestly, I think that’s part of the point.
At the beginning of John’s Gospel, Jesus calls the disciples by inviting them to “come and see.”
For me this has been an important measure or gauge for my faith. It helps me remember that faith isn’t so much about already having all the answers, but rather having that desire or willingness to “come and see.”
At the end of the day, in spite of my questions and doubts, I am pretty certain of at least one thing. I still want to “come and see.” I want to be a part of Jesus’ way of love and truth even though it’s not an easy path, because along the way, I’ve had those moments of experiencing for myself how abundant life with God truly is.
For Simon Peter and the disciples, and for us, the way with Jesus will be filled with both blessing and hardship; much joy and much pain. But Jesus promises that this is the way that leads to abundant life. And I’m here for that, even when I don’t fully understand it. I hope you are too!
AMEN
2 https://thecorners.substack.com/p/the-opposite-of-faith
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Sunday August 18, 2024-Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/LD_V-c_kegg
Lesson Intro & Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, August 18, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
Lesson Intro - Proverbs 9:1-6
Our first reading comes from the book of Proverbs, which is a book of wise sayings intended “to teach young people how to live with wisdom and integrity, how to live the good life, in the best sense of that term.”1
In these verses we hear wisdom imagined as a Woman, inviting us to her feast. To come and dine on the nutritious and delicious food only God can give, which is true insight and understanding. It’s a promise that while many voices call us to follow, true wisdom is only found at God’s banquet. Let us listen to the word…
Sermon - John 6:51-58
As we continue our multi-week exploration of the Bread of Life teaching, where Jesus explains to us the significance of the feeding of the 5000, it’s finally time to talk about Holy Communion. And that’s because in John’s gospel, this is where the author’s sacramental theology shows up. This is where we get a glimpse of what John believes about holy communion – why it matters and what it means for those who share in this meal.
In the other gospels – in Matthew, Mark & Luke – this theme comes up at the last supper; that final gathering with his disciples where Jesus reinterprets the Passover meal as a symbol of his own self-giving of life and love; and where he institutes the practice of Holy Communion. This is where we find those familiar words spoken each week at the communion table, “This is my body given for you; this is my blood shed for you.”
John’s gospel doesn’t include this story. Instead, it’s in this ‘bread of life’ teaching where we get a glimpse of what communion means for John. It’s different but complementary to what the other gospels teach. We especially hear those parallels about sacrifice and self-giving when Jesus says, “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Once again, it’s not surprising that Jesus’ audience is shocked by this statement. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
This would have been downright outright offensive, to Jesus’ Jewish audience. Not only would they – like most cultures – not eat human flesh, but observant Jews do not ingest any blood because it’s believed that the life of the animal is contained in the blood. In fact, kosher meat is always prepared in a way that removes the blood. Meat (well certain meats) is fine for consumption, but blood – the life-force within every mammal – is reserved for God.
Even for us, these words are shocking. What does it mean for us that Jesus gives us his flesh to eat? It’s hard to ignore the cannibalistic overtones of this passage. And over the centuries, there have been various ways to try and make sense of what Jesus is really saying here.
In the Roman Catholic church, they believe that in the celebration of communion, the bread and wine are transformed into Jesus’ flesh and blood. While the bread and wine may still look like bread and wine – their essence has changed. And that’s why any leftovers need to be treated with reverence.
On the other end of the spectrum are certain strands of Protestant Christians who believe that Jesus was speaking in metaphor. This means that holy communion is a symbolic meal – a memorial to remember Jesus’ self-giving love.
Lutherans – although also Protestants – find ourselves somewhere in between these two views. Martin Luther believed that Christ is “really present” in the bread and the wine as communion is celebrated. The essence of the bread and wine don’t change – they remain really bread and really wine – and this is more than a symbolic act. In the act of celebrating communion – as the words are spoken, and as bread and wine are shared – Christ is present with us in, with, and under the elements (as Luther would say).
While metaphors are always inadequate, I do find it helpful to think of this like a sponge full of water – if the sponge is the bread & wine, and the water is Christ. A sponge full of water is still a sponge, and yet when it’s full of water that water permeates all of it.
As Christians, we don’t all agree on exactly how communion “works.” It’s ultimately a mystery. We can’t adequately explain or fully comprehend how Christ can be present each week in these wafers and wine. This is a promise we receive by faith. And the power of this promise is that, as Jesus tells us, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them.”
This theme of ‘remaining with’ – of abiding – is a theme that is woven throughout John’s gospel. Up to this point, Jesus has been talking about his close abiding relationship with Creator. Now this abiding relationship is extended to all who believe. Those who eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood abide in him and he in them. It’s the promise that each time we partake in communion, Jesus’ very life is bound up in our own.
Even though Jesus’ audience wouldn’t have understood it this way, I love to think of this promise through the lens of science. Nutrition science tells us that everything we eat is digested and used by our body for sustenance. “[Our] digestive system converts the foods we eat into their simplest forms, like glucose (sugars), amino acids (that make up protein) or fatty acids (that make up fats). The broken-down food is then absorbed into the bloodstream from the small intestine and the nutrients are carried to each cell in the body.”2
This is how close Jesus comes to us. I can’t imagine a deeper, more intimate connection. Each week, as we eat and drink at the communion table, Jesus abides with us – in our hearts, in our minds, in our bodies, in our very cells.
This is also a meal that unites in a real way all those who eat together. At the table, we each take in our bodies a little bit of these same elements. In this way, we are bound up together as a community – our bodies each carrying with it the real presence of Christ. Even as we leave this place each week, we remain connected in a real way because we have all eaten at the same table – the same sugars from the bread and wine now living in our cells.
It’s also the promise that when we leave this place at the end of worship, Jesus comes with us out these doors. Jesus abides with us and within us, giving us power and strength to face every challenge and to meet every need that crosses us our path. Jesus abides with us and within us, loving us, leading us, sustaining us. THIS is the abundant life we are promised here and now. THIS is the real presence that unites us as one. Thanks be to God! Amen.
1 Kathryn Schifferdecker - https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-20-2/commentary-on-proverbs-91-6-6
2 https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/digestive-system
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Sunday August 11, 2024-Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
You will also find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/TpD_6MFeEio
Lesson Intro & Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, August 11, 2024
Preached at St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge
Rev. Laura Sauder
Lesson Intro – Ephesians 4:25—5:2
The letter to the Ephesians was addressed to a primarily Gentile audience who have left their pagan ways behind. In this section, Paul rattles off a list of ‘dos’ and don’ts’ – virtues to live by now that they have committed to following Christ.
According to Paul, Christians are called to be imitators of God. This does not mean we will be perfect, but it means we trust that the Spirit is at work in our lives. It means that we trust that with the guidance, wisdom, and strength of the Spirit our actions and attitudes can and will reflect the love and forgiveness we have received through Christ. It means that we strive imperfectly – with our own unique God-given gifts – to live into this vision that Paul lays before us here, for our own sake and the sake of one another.
Sermon – John 6:35-51a
I’m curious, do I have any sourdough bread bakers here? Like many, I had a brief foray into sourdough bread baking during the pandemic. A friend gifted me some sourdough starter and encouraged me to give it a try.
Now those who bake bread will know that in addition to flour and water, you need some kind of yeast to make leavened bread (bread that isn’t flat). You can buy baker’s yeast at a grocery store, which is what is used in regular bread. But for sourdough, you need a starter.
This is a mixture of flour and water that is left to ferment, and that captures wild yeast from the environment. Did you know that “there are thousands of strains of wild yeast floating in the air, hanging out on the surface of produce, and generally sneaking around your kitchen right now? Sourdough starters are basically little at-home petri dishes for capturing all these yeasts.”1
Part of what sold me on giving sourdough a try is the starter my friend gave me was one he started while he was visiting friends in Curacao. It seemed kind of exotic – sourdough starter from the Caribbean.
What I’ve since learned, however, is that when you take a sourdough starter to a new location, within a few days the culture of the sourdough changes. The strains of wild yeast are different in every county, every region, every home, so as I cultivated that sourdough starter, although it originated in Curacao, by the time I received some it had been living in Hamilton for a while – and as I continued to nurture it and feed it – it very soon became dominated by Brodhagen strains of yeast.
Every loaf baked with that starter will still be a sourdough loaf, but each loaf will have a unique flavour because of the different strains of yeast in the environment that are hyper-local.
As you may already know, we’re going to be talking about bread for a while. A couple of weeks ago on Sunday morning we heard the story of Jesus feeding the multitudes with just a few fish and loaves of bread.
This morning we find ourselves in part two of a four week exploration of what Biblical scholars call Jesus’ “Bread of Life discourse.” This is the teaching section that comes after the miraculous feeding of the 5000, where Jesus tries to unpack for us the significance of that miracle.
Last week we heard about how the people make a connection between Jesus’ miraculous feeding and that ancient story of how God provided bread from heaven – manna – for their ancestors in the wilderness.
This week, Jesus takes us deeper into this metaphor as he tells us that he himself is that bread from heaven. That his body is the manna that will sustain and nourish those who believe.
It’s not surprising that people were skeptical about this claim. I mean, this is a pretty big leap for many of Jesus’ listeners. Because they know this guy! Jesus isn’t a stranger to them; they’ve known him since he was a kid. They know where he comes from – so how can he – or any human for that matter – be THE gift from God that brings abundant life.
I would say that skepticism is an appropriate response to Jesus’ claim. And yet, when we look at where Christianity started and where we are now, what isn’t doubtful is that many people through the centuries have indeed believed that Jesus is the living bread from heaven they need.
From a small sect with Judaism, two thousand years later, Christianity is a truly global religion. And what is so incredible, is that as the gospel was transported around the globe, it mixed with all those hyper local strains of wild yeast to create unique and complex and diverse expressions of faith in every time and place.
And what is perhaps even more remarkable is that this diversity has come in spite of attempts to share a particular expression of Christianity – to try and make everyone eat the same bread you might say.
I think of the experience here in Canada where the churches were a part of that project to ‘take the Indian out of the child.’ Guided by the belief that European ways of being and knowing were superior, indigenous children weren’t allowed to speak their languages or practice their traditional ceremonies. European culture was mistaken for the gospel – and indigenous children were made to leave their culture at the door to be Christian.
And yet today, in many of our Canadian churches, we are blessed by the presence of Indigenous Christians who have taught us that the gospel AND traditional indigenous ways of knowing and being can be held together.
And that this is in fact truer to the way the gospel has always spread and taken root. Even the apostle Paul didn’t expect Gentiles to become Jewish in order to become followers of Jesus (which is what some of his peers believed since Jesus and his first followers were Jewish).
For part of my time away in July I attended the Lutheran Anglican National Worship Conference in Regina. This year’s theme invited us to open our hearts and minds to the diverse expressions of faith, being especially mindful that our way of worshiping (inherited from our European ancestors) is not the only way or the best way. We have so much to learn from others; especially Christians from other cultures/traditions.
One of the workshops I attended was called “An Indigenous Creed.” It was led by Adrian Jacobs who is Haudenosaunee from Six Nations and on the faculty of NAIITS, which is the only Indigenous designed, developed, delivered and governed graduate and postgraduate theological school in Canada, the United States and Australia.
Creeds are statements of belief; or as Adrian defines, “summations of sacred stories.” But where Western Christian creeds – like the Apostles’ Creed – express more abstract, universal ideas – indigenous ways of being and knowing always involve asking, “where are you from?” and “who are your relatives.”
In our minds, the Apostles’ Creed is a universal statement of the Christian faith – and yet it is in fact a product of a particular time and culture.
Adrian argued that an indigenous creed would certainly involve geography and genealogy – and dancing! So by the end of the workshop, he had all of us up dancing together in a circle to the song “Mary Had a Baby” by Bruce Cockburn. Certainly not a creed that I think many of us here at St Peter’s would be comfortable doing on a Sunday morning. But that’s the point!
Today Christians around the world proclaim that Jesus is the manna we need to live. Jesus is the one who comes down from heaven to each one of us, to give us what we need. But that manna – that living bread – the way Jesus comes to us – the way we understand God’s sustenance and grace – will look different in every culture, and even for individuals because we are all unique creations of God. Because every time and place has its own hyper-local strains of wild yeast that give the gospel unique texture and flavour.
For some of us it’s tangy sourdough, for others regular wheat. For those with allergies or intolerances, it’s gluten free. In some cultures this living bread is corn tortillas or rice. It’s bannock or naan or pita or injera.
Jesus, the living bread from heaven – God’s love, incarnate – has always come to us in the ways that we need and in ways that we can understand.
And what’s more, God doesn’t ask us all to become like each other. But rather, our unique flavours are a gift to be shared for building one another up. For helping one another grow in faith. As a witness to the expansive and inclusive love of God.
We have so much to learn from one another. I have a hard time imagining a more sustaining and nourishing and life-giving gift! AMEN.
1 The Gospel According to Bread. Commentary by the Rev. Victoria Larson
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Sunday August 4, 2024-Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/47SpoOaEMls
Sermon for August 4, 2024
John 6: 24-38
By Lorre Calder
When I leave here today, I am going to have lunch. And I am sure most of you will as well. Janis and I are still on vacation for a few more days, so we might go out for lunch, we might order in, or we might scrounge the fridge and make something at home. Some of you might be making plans to go to lunch together or to stop in on friends or family for a shared bite to eat. We have lots of options open to us, don’t we!
Our gospel this morning speaks to us about two types of food: physical and spiritual. Up until this point, I don’t think Jesus’ followers ‘got’ what exactly he was offering them. He had to put it into the context of something they could understand…food, and more specifically, bread. Bread was essential, basic, and pretty much available to everyone, whether they were rich or poor.
If you were poor, you might not have meat, cheese, or even fresh fruit or vegetables, but you likely had some kind of bread to sustain you. Beggars in the streets were more likely to be tossed a piece of bread, or some crumbs, as opposed to something more substantial.
In our gospel today, Jesus is once again followed by the crowds as he tried to get away with his disciples. This passage comes right after Jesus fed the five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish. So, they had just seen Jesus do this amazing thing and now they wanted more. Jesus calls them out on their single-mindedness: He says, “I assure you that you are looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate all the food you wanted.” Maybe in a roundabout way Jesus is asking them, ‘ah hungry again, eh?’
If we look back through our bibles and the stories we hold so dear in our hearts, most of them involve food in one way or another. Food is shared, bread is broken, meals are prepared. Just like our own lives, how many of our own precious memories are centred around shared food? From big meals, to small snacks, from buffet tables to teaching a child or family member how to make a cherished recipe. Food brings people together in ways that little else does. Food is essential to our lives and let’s face it, we all like to eat, right! The folks in Jesus’ time were no different.
But, Jesus was also trying to make a bigger point in our gospel passage this morning. He is trying to get them to understand that he was here for more than as a source of physical food. He was here to show them who God is through the things he was doing. The miracles, the teachings and yes, the food, was all pointing them to God. Up until this point, though, had they been missing the bigger picture? Jesus tells them, “Don’t work for the food that doesn’t last but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Human One will give you.”
We all have been approached by people asking for money for food. On the streets, at corners, in parking lots, bus stations…everywhere. I don’t carry much cash with me anymore, but even when I do, I must confess to saying no more than I say yes. I can try to justify why I say no more than I say yes and chock it up to the lack of actual cash in my wallet, but sometimes it comes down to my own judgement of their circumstance, or at times, I simply can’t be bothered. I don’t like to admit that, but there you have it. There are times when I have helped out, as I shared with you a couple of weeks ago, but on balance, I think I’m in the red on this one.
If I look to the faith I claim to believe in, I need look no further than the fact that God always fed people. When God’s people were hungry, God provided food enough for the day. Jesus always fed people. When the crowds followed Jesus and flocked around him looking for miracles, signs, and wonders, he also saw their physical hunger and he fed them. No one was asked why they didn’t have any food with them. No one was asked what they had spent their money on instead of food. No qualifications, no pre-requisites, no judgement. He fed them and then he taught them.
Pope Francis has said, ‘You pray for them, then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.’ Sometimes we get too hung up on who deserves help and who doesn’t. I’m more than guilty of that myself and believe me, I do work on changing that in my own heart. I am making progress, though, in my own understanding of what Jesus would actually do. Because he showed us, over, and over, and over. He fed them and then he taught them. He showed them who he was with compassion for their physical needs and then he taught them with compassion for their spiritual needs. It was never either/or, it was always both/and with Jesus.
My parents came up during the Great Depression and that experience formed the rest of their lives, and in turn, it impacted the four of us kids they raised. Our home was a happy one. We weren’t well-off, but we had what we needed. Mom made most of our clothes, and she took in sewing for other people. She worked shift work at Kralinators in Preston up until the time my younger sister was born when I was almost five years old. My dad worked at Eastern Steel, later Frink of Canada for about forty-two years until he retired. Their early years were hard. I recall my dad saying he would do anything to make a buck. Find something, fix it up, and turn around and try to sell it. He did welding on the side during my growing-up years. When it came to food, I remember my mom telling someone that things never got so bad that they didn’t know where their next meal was coming from, but there was nothing ‘extra’, either. Mom was good at making food stretch. She baked, she canned, she chopped and froze things like rhubarb or beans for later use. She bought items on sale to stock the pantry shelves for those times when not much was on sale, and didn’t give in to the whims of us kids who wanted all the cool breakfast cereals or snack items we saw advertised on television. (that is, when we got a TV in the early sixties).
I do know that mom and dad had friends who were not as well off as we were. Folks who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. I only heard these stories when I got older. Sometimes their situation was because of poor choices, but sometimes it was through no fault of their own. No matter the reason, people still need to eat. That is just as true today as it was back in the fifties and sixties. I know my folks helped when they could with what little they had. And, they did it without judgement because that’s just what you did. You helped. But for a few breaks in life, that could have been us.
I have begun to realize that it isn’t my place to judge people who need food. They need to be fed. Only then can their other problems be addressed. Study after study shows that school children cannot learn if they are hungry. This is the main reason why school breakfast programmes are so vital and need our support. We have offered different programmes for providing food here at St. Peter’s over the years. Years ago we would give out a voucher for a meal at the Cambridge Restaurant. We put together bags of food…cans of ready-to eat items with plastic utensils that we’d give out upon request. Our garden has fresh vegetables for the taking for anyone who is hungry. We also support the Cambridge Self-Help Food Bank throughout the year. But, it’s not enough. People are still hungry.
The root causes of that hunger need to be addressed. For sure. And the sooner the better. But in the meantime, people are going to bed hungry. They need to be fed. I spoke about Jesus’ compassion for people two weeks ago, and last week we listened as Pastor Monika told us about the feeding of the five thousand. She said, quote…“This story begs the question, “Is bread ever only about literal bread… bread that feeds the body?” If you have enough to eat … I guess you could say “yes”. But what if you don’t? What about the people who can’t sleep because they don’t know where their next meal may be coming from? Is bread ever only about literal bread? And what do we do about that?” End quote.
I freely admit that I can do much better. I can be more intentional about bringing food each week to be taken to the food bank. I can afford it. My parents couldn’t, and yet, they helped when they were able. I can be better at saying ‘yes’ when I am asked for money and keeping my judgement to myself. If I don’t have money, maybe I can take 10 or 15 minutes and take someone to the local Subway or burger joint, let them choose what they would like to eat, and just pay for it. I can do better.
And what about the other piece of our gospel reading this morning? What about the food that endures?
A few years back I came across a book entitled, Take This Bread, by Sara Miles. Sara lives in San Francisco and is a writer, journalist, and editor who covered stories across the world. She was also an atheist. But on this particular day, she walked into a local Episcopal (that’s Anglican for us Canadians) church for no reason she could think of. She took a chair among the twenty or so others who were there and tried not to catch anyone’s eye. Sara participated in the traditional service, much like our own with liturgy and singing, and when the invitation was given to come to the table, because all were welcome, she received Holy Communion for the first time in her life.
From her book: ‘And then we gathered around that table. And there was more singing and standing, and someone was putting a piece of fresh crumbly bread in my hands, saying, “the body of Christ,” and hand me the goblet of sweet wine, saying “the blood of Christ,” and then something outrageous and terrifying happened. Jesus happened to me.’ 1
Sara’s life changed that day. The bread of life that endures found a home in her life and blossomed into something no one, least of all Sara, could ever have predicted. Sara became attached to St. Gregory’s church and through learning and growing in her faith, eventually became their Director of Ministry. However, her biggest impact was food. From that one piece of ‘fresh, crumbly bread’, a Food Pantry was born right in the sanctuary of that church. She saw the need in the neighbourhood around the church for food…good, nutritious food that could truly nourish the bodies of the mosaic of folks who lived there.
From the Food Pantry’s website: “The Food Pantry, launched in 2000, offers free, fresh groceries to 400 families each Friday, right around the altar at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco.
At The Food Pantry, we believe in building community by empowering people to work together and share food with neighbors. The Food Pantry’s short on bureaucracy: we don’t ask hungry people to fill out forms or prove that they’re “deserving.” We’re strong on participation: most of our volunteers are folks who came to get food and stayed to feed others.” 2
Food can change lives. Jesus can change lives. How can they work together? Can they work together here at St. Peter’s? There is a lot of food insecurity in our neighbourhood. Can we help? How can we do that? I’m not saying we turn our sanctuary into a food pantry…not necessarily. But we can do something more than what we are doing, which, don’t get me wrong, is a good start. People need to eat. We are smart people here. I know that if we think about it, we could come up with a plan or a program to provide food for people. Some places offer food boxes much like the Little Libraries you see on people’s lawns. They are about the size of a newspaper box. Inside there are easy-to-open cans of food with plastic utensils, free for the taking. We could start up the bags of food program again. We can bring more food for the Food Bank each week. It could be yet another idea we haven’t thought of yet.
Our gospel this morning says, “Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
A couple of weeks ago, I said that we, you and I, are the face of Jesus. We are also the hands and feet of Jesus. We are the ones who need to reach out and feed those who are hungry. We can do much if we pray about it and work together to make it happen. Jesus can happen with something as small as a crumbly piece of bread. Amen.
1 Take This Bread, Sara Miles Ballantine Books, 2007
2 https://sara-miles.squarespace.com/the-food-pantry
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Sunday July 28, 2024-Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
You will also find the video for this service at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/OemJnCBR2Hk
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
Cambridge, Ontario
Rev. Monika Wiesner
July 28, 2024
John 6:1-21 “The Feeding of the Five Thousand”
Every three years, according to the Revised Common Lectionary that most Christian churches around the world follow, we come to a season in the church year where, for five consecutive Sundays, the gospel reading is about “bread”. This morning’s story of the feeding of the five thousand begins this cycle. Next Sunday is the “I am the bread of life” text … and so on. Pastors like to joke that if we preach all five Sundays on bread, we’ll end up gaining weight!
This morning’s gospel lesson is a well-known miracle story, one that most of us know by heart. It’s the only miracle story that is told in all four gospels, which tells us how important it was to both the gospel writers and the early church. It takes place on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, on the Jewish side of the lake, in a place that is now called Tabgha. Several years ago, when I was in Israel, I had the privilege of presiding at a Communion service in Tabgha. It was an outdoor service in the early morning hours, on the seashore overlooking the Sea of Galilee. The altar was a huge boulder, with the sea behind me. While I was speaking the words of the liturgy, I noticed a little critter on the ground, beside me. It looked rather like a big lizard! Eyeing the altar in front of me the whole time. I experienced a little anxiety, wondering if it was eying me or the real bread we had on the stone altar.
Let’s take a moment to look at the two kinds of miracles that Jesus performed during his earthly ministry. First of all there were “healing miracles”. Lepers were healed, the blind given sight, withered hands restored and even a child brought back to life. Then there were “nature miracles”. Nature miracles, like Jesus walking on water, the multiplication of loaves and fish, turning water into wine, and so forth. Now these miracle stories are not meant to be interpreted literally … we’re to find a “more than literal” meaning to each miracle story … because it’s in this “more than literal” interpretation that we will find the nugget of truth of what the story was actually meant to reveal.
To fully appreciate this morning’s miracle story, we need to take a moment to appreciate how important “bread” was to 1st Century Jewish people. “Bread”, in its broadest sense, meant “food”. Having “enough food” was a sign of the kingdom of God here on earth, how God wanted the world to be for all of us. So we frequently hear Jesus imaging the kingdom of God as a huge banquet table where everyone was welcomed … and where there was enough food for everyone. So we know “bread” is more than just “bread” … and the “banquet table” is more than just a banquet table.
German theologian and author, Dorothee Soelle, sums it up beautifully as she writes, “At the core of the gospels were stories about how Jesus filled people with food. His vision of the kingdom of God was metaphorized as a huge banquet table where everyone was welcome … and everyone had enough to eat. These stories are not to be read as historical facts, but as ‘visionary narrative’ … they came out of the reality of the harsh conditions under which the people around Jesus were living.”[1]
In this morning’s miracle story, thousands of people were fed with five loaves and two fish … with leftovers to spare. Of course that’s impossible to do! These high numbers – 5000 men, not counting women and children … these high numbers were meant to express the fullness of God’s kingdom … the extravagance, the plenty. In God’s kingdom there would be more than enough for absolutely everyone … and not just a chosen few.
Over the next several weeks, we will hear stories about Jesus saying he is the “bread of life”, in other words “food for the soul”. But today, “bread” is about “literal bread” … food for the body … and it is God’s great desire that each person have enough bread for the day. It is God’s desire that no child need ever go to bed hungry again.
The story has been told that at the end of World War II, the Allied armies gathered up many hungry orphans. These children were placed in camps where they were well fed. Despite excellent care, they slept poorly. They seemed nervous and afraid. Finally, a psychologist came up with the solution. Each child was given a piece of bread to hold after he/she was put to bed. This particular piece of bread was just to be held – not eaten. The piece of bread produced wonderful results. The children went to bed knowing instinctively they would have food to eat the next day … and so they were able to have a restful and contented sleep. [2]
This story begs the question, “Is bread ever only about literal bread … bread that feeds the body?” If you have enough to eat … I guess you could say “yes”. But what if you don’t? What about the people who can’t sleep because they don’t know where their next meal may be coming from? Is bread ever only about literal bread? And what do we do about that?
I invite you to take some time this week and reflect on today’s miracle story. For whom is “daily bread” absolutely everything? And what are we, as people of faith, called to do about it? Pray about it each day this week – and see what thoughts the Spirit puts into your hearts.
Amen
[1] Soelle, Dorothee: Jesus of Nazareth, p 84
[2] Charles Allen: God’s Psychiatry
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Sunday July 21, 2024-Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
You will also find the video for this service at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/6z3TO8cn9qQ
Sermon
Mark 6:30-34; 53-56
By Lorre Calder
You will recall that prior to this particular passage, Jesus had sent out his disciples in pairs to teach, preach, and heal in his name. He gave them his authority. You will also recall that they were told to take nothing with them, no money, no extra clothing, and no food. So, we come to this part of the story and they have come back to Jesus and are eager to report back on everything they did. Picture it…all twelve, trying to tell Jesus of their experiences…all at once. I’m sure you can all relate to someone returning from a trip or a work term and they want to tell you all about it….right now. They didn’t even take time to eat! Jesus recognized that they were hungry and probably pretty tired so he suggested a time of rest and relaxation.
But, like so often in our own lives, things don’t go according to plan. Jesus and the disciples did manage to get away, but the towns people found out where they were going, and followed them. Some even got there ahead of them. Our scripture tells us that when Jesus saw the huge crowd, he had compassion for them. The Message translation of verse 34 reads: When Jesus arrived, he saw this huge crowd. At the sight of them, his heart broke—like sheep with no shepherd they were. He went right to work teaching them.” His heart broke for them.
Jesus saw the people. He looked at them and saw them in all their humanity, in all their frailty, in all their need, and in all their pain. When those regular folks looked at Jesus, he reflected back the face of God. Did the disciples realize that when he sent them out two by two just before this incident that when they preached, and taught, and healed that they were the face of Jesus for everyone they encountered? We have no way of knowing whether the people that received the disciples realized that they were being gifted with the face of Jesus through each of those disciples or not.
In whom do you see the face of Jesus? Earlier this year I had a pretty bad illness and spent quite a bit of time in the emergency room over a couple of days. In the months since then, I have also had to undergo a number of tests to both rule in and rule out whatever it was that caused me to become ill. By my scorecard, we are not quite finished figuring that out yet, but I’ll keep you posted. Anyway, I encountered nursing staff, technologists, doctors, porters, and administrative staff in my medical journey, as I am sure many of you have. Looking back, and I can only speak to my own experience these last six months, I can tell you that while I was feeling my worst, each person with whom I came into contact was the face of Jesus for me. I was shown care and compassion. I was treated with respect. Hands were gentle and tender as I was poked and prodded. Instructions were simple and clear. Janis was allowed to accompany me throughout the process and could ask and answer questions for me when I couldn’t. And it wasn’t just me. I watched how other patients waiting for hours in emerge were treated as well. From everything I saw, the face of Jesus was reflected from each of those staff members to each person. As I’m sure we are all aware, these health care workers along with so many others are being forced to deliver this care with fewer resources and fewer staff.
Jesus felt compassion for the people who flocked to him. Here he was trying to give his best buddies a little R & R after their adventures, when this crowd of needy people show up, all wanting some of Jesus’ time. So, Jesus basically tells his guys to sit tight while he meets the needs of all those who thronged around him. This is almost exactly how the hospital staff functioned during the many hours I spent there. They grabbed a bite to eat when they could, took the opportunity to get off their feet for a minute or two, get a cold drink of water, stretch their tired neck and back muscles and then turned their attentions back to all of us sick people who needed their skills. The face of Jesus…compassion.
I could think of a lot of situations where I saw the face of Jesus in other people. I found it much more difficult to find examples of times when I had been the face of Jesus for someone else. I am sure I have been, but I guess I don’t think of myself as having that kind of impact. But, I believe if we really assess ourselves and our lives honestly, we can come up with more times than we realize when we have been that face of Jesus for someone else. For myself, I did come up with one incident where I, or rather Janis and I, were the face of Jesus for someone else that I will share with you.
One evening Janis and I went to see a movie. It was during the winter and it was snowing when we came out of the theatre. It wasn’t cold, but it was snowing with those big, fluffy, sticky flakes. The snow was starting to accumulate when we came out of the theatre and we began to make our way to our car. A woman with a walker, much like the ones that Sherri and Carol have, approached us. She had some plastic bags attached to it and she was dressed rather shabbily. She stopped us and asked us for some money. Janis and I looked at each other and kind of shrugged and nodded. So I took out my wallet and gave her twenty bucks. She took the money and thanked us with gratitude. We told her she was welcome, and we turned to make our way to the car.
Then she said to us, ‘you wouldn’t be able to give me a ride to my daughter’s house, would you?’ Janis and I looked at each other, both having the same thought…that we had to get up for work the next morning, but we shrugged again, and asked her where her daughter lived. When she told us, we realized that it wasn’t terribly far by car, but it would be a pretty long walk with a walker, especially on such a snowy night. She could perhaps have waited for the city bus, but as I recall, it might have been a Sunday evening and the buses run on a lighter schedule on Sundays, in which case she could have had a pretty long wait. So, we agreed to give this woman a ride to her daughter’s home. We collapsed her walker and put it into the car, taking care not to lose any of her belongings as we did so.
During the drive to her daughter’s neighbourhood, she told us much about her life. I don’t remember many of the details, but I do recall that she had quite a number of health issues, and she had endured a lot of bad breaks during her life. We felt compassion for her and in the end, I think both Janis and I were glad we ‘walked the talk’ and helped this lady out. The money and the ride home in a warm car were tangible things, but I hope she felt listened to and cared about in those few moments we shared on that snowy evening. Whether this woman was a believer or not, I hope we were the face of Jesus for her.
For whom are you the face of Jesus? I know I don’t get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m going to be the face of Jesus today! Look out world, here I come!’ Nope, not even close. What I am more likely to do is look myself in the mirror and say that I’m going to show love, kindness, patience, gentleness, and hope today. In doing so, I hope the face of Jesus would show through my actions. Trust me, some days this goes much less smoothly than others, but I keep trying. Maybe you feel this way too. I also work in healthcare and some patients we deal with receive good news and some receive bad news. We deal with patients at their best and at their worst and their saddest and their most disappointed. I can pray to do my best to treat them with as much compassion, dignity, and respect as possible and hope that I reflect the face of Jesus in the midst of the good and the bad.
For whom are we, St. Peter’s, the face of Jesus? I think we do a number of things that show the face of Jesus to our community. Our blossoming Jesus Garden is an obvious example right now in all its bright, green growth, bursting with fresh vegetables waiting to be picked by anyone who needs something to eat. During the winter months we place bags of hats, mitts, and scarves out on our railings free for the taking for anyone who needs some warmth from the cold. Our ongoing support for The Bridges and the Food Bank reach the wider community as we add our gifts to those brought by others to help people who need a bed for the night or some nutritious food for their family.
The disciples were able to be the face of Jesus to those they encountered because they knew Jesus. They shared Jesus. They reflected Jesus. I also truly believe that lives were changed by those initial interactions and that those folks in turn shared the Good News of Jesus with friends who had never met Jesus or the disciples.
We see the face of Jesus when we look for it and sometimes not until we look back on it. The face of Jesus…the people in Newfoundland in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 opening their lives and their homes to the thousands of airline passengers stranded when the planes were grounded. Volunteers who pass out food and water to people in shelters following natural disasters like hurricanes and floods. Someone who helps an elderly or disabled person across a street or by carrying a bag of groceries. People who rescue and foster animals.
Friends, we are able to be the face of Jesus because we know Jesus. We are called to be loving, kind, caring, and compassionate. That’s how Jesus behaved, even when he was tired and needed rest. That’s how he calls us to live so that others can see him through us. Folks outside our walls, in our community, on our own block, in our lives need to see the face of Jesus in each of us. If not in you and me, then who? Times are hard for a lot of folks. The very least we can do is show them that someone cares. So, this week as you go about your days, look for ways to be the face of Jesus for someone else, but also take notice of the face of Jesus in those with whom you come into contact. Because you will find it. I promise you. Amen.
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Sunday July 14, 2024-Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
You will also find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/blMmIacqSwk
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
Cambridge, Ontario
Pastor Monika Wiesner
July 14, 2024 Baptism of Fletcher (Eddie) Hemmons
Matthew 19:13-15 “Jesus Blesses the Little Children”
Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.
Homily
I read a story several years ago about a little preschooler named Jonathan. J Little Jonathan was trying to learn the Lord’s Prayer. He was learning it by listening attentively in church on Sundays. One day his mother heard him praying at home, [fold hands], “Our Father, who art in heaven … I know you know my name.”
I know you know my name. Isn’t that the truth? Little Jonathan had it right. Perhaps this is the single most important thing we can teach our children about faith. The God who created us calls us each by name. Not by our religion or our tribal identity … but by our own personal name.
In this morning’s gospel story, children are being brought to Jesus. We don’t know by whom … but we know it was with the intention that he might pray with them and bless them. The disciples want to send them away … but Jesus says “no”. He welcomes the children … and uses this as a teaching moment for the adults. “It is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs,” he tells them. And only then does he gather up the children to pray with them … and to bless them.
This is a beautiful story in so many ways.
Several years ago, I was privileged to attend a lecture in Guelph, given by the well-known Scottish writer and theologian, John Philip Newell. Newell is a Presbyterian minister and was the former warden of the beautiful Iona Abbey in Scotland. He is the author of several books on Celtic spirituality. At his lecture in Guelph, he told the story that, at the Last Supper, when the disciples were gathered around Jesus, tradition says that John, the one known as the Beloved Disciple, sat with his head resting on Jesus’ chest. Newell said that in that moment, John would have heard the heartbeat of God!
I like to believe that the children whom Jesus gathered together in this morning’s gospel story would have rested their heads on his chest … and also heard the heartbeat of God.
“Let the children come to me … for to such as these the kingdom of heaven belongs.” A deeper understanding of this story, of course, reveals that Jesus wasn’t just being a nice guy here. He lived in a society where women and children, although they were loved, often found themselves at the bottom of the social pecking order. Jesus lived in a society that was very much oppressed by Roman Imperial occupation. Through heavy taxation and other injustices, the Roman Empire controlled the Palestinian farmers and landowners. To pay for these exorbitant taxes, farmers needed to give up most of their harvest. Which meant that their crops now went to their oppressors … while their own children often went to bed hungry.
Jesus invited his listeners to see these little children as he saw them – to see their purity of heart … and their innocence … and their vulnerability. Because of the disequilibrium of power under which they lived, these children lived in fear or died as collateral damage. This was not God’s dream for the world! In God’s world, there was to be no more violence … and there would be enough food for everyone. These children, Jesus says, are the emblematic members of God’s realm here on earth.
When we say “yes” to baptism, we say “yes!” to helping create that world! This is the blessing we offered Eddie today when we baptized him into the name of the Triune God … the God who already knows him by name … and who has loved him into life!
There is nothing more beautiful than a child being blessed. And blessings can come in many forms. Several years ago, at our Lutheran Church’s national convention in Ottawa, the guest speaker was Dr. Marie Wilson, a commissioner on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at that time. She told the story that here on Turtle Island, when an indigenous child is born … and when the baby’s head is still wet from the birth … the child’s head is gently touched to the earth, to the soil … so that Mother Earth can welcome (and bless) her newest member.
This morning we blessed a little boy, pouring water on his head … and anointing him with holy oil … and we welcomed him into God’s great family. Eddie, you stand in a long line of good, faithful people. Countless people have been baptized here before you, many by your own great-grandfather, Norris … right here in this baptismal font! Each child being called by his/her own name.
I think little Jonathan got it so right … don’t you? “Our Father in heaven … I know you know my name.”
Blessings, little Eddie, from all of us! Never forget that God knows you by name!
Amen
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Sunday July 7, 2024-Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
You will also find the video for this service at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/dwMkL2a49wo
Sermon – Mark 6:1-13
Every time I hear Jesus’ sending of the disciples, I can’t help but wonder: who would actually sign up for this job? Did the disciples have any idea of what they were getting into when they answered Jesus’ call to come and follow him?
Maybe not. And yet, maybe they did. Maybe they knew exactly what they were signing up for when they decided to leave everything and follow Jesus – at least to a degree.
Our gospel lesson this morning presents us with two snapshots. In the first, Jesus is back in his hometown teaching in the synagogue. He’s surrounded by friends and neighbours and family who are surprised by his wise teaching. But rather than people cheering on the hometown boy, they’re offended and repulsed by the authority with which he teaches.
After this rejection in Nazareth, the scene changes to Jesus sending his disciples out into the countryside to offer healing. They are to travel light; to accept whatever hospitality is offered first; to expect rejection, and not to sweat it.
I wonder, where do we (not necessarily as individuals, but as the church) see ourselves in these two stories? Those who are ready to venture out into the world wherever Jesus sends us? Or those who feel threatened and confused by changes around us?
I think, more often than not, we are most like those neighbours in the synagogue who don’t know what to make of Jesus. Who are happy with the way things already are, and not so happy when things get shook up or challenged. Who in fact are even offended and threatened by his teachings.
The fact that Jesus is rejected by his home community is something that ought to move us to humility. This is a story where “presumed insiders expect the wrong things from Jesus and [in doing so, actually] turn out to be outsiders.”1 Just because we are sitting here this morning, we ought not to assume that we are the ones who understand Jesus. That we have it all figured out or have a claim on the gospel.
This is a time of major transition for the church. Often we talk about this transition in terms of decline. This narrative of decline is the story we’ve been telling about ourselves for decades now. It’s a story that doesn’t make us feel very good about ourselves – especially in this culture that values growth as the ultimate good.
The truth is, as the church, we’re at a point of significant change and opportunity. And the story we choose to tell about ourselves matters. The story we tell about who we are and what we are about will shape our decisions and our future. So what story do we want to live by?
A story of decline that laments that things aren’t what they used to be? A story that focuses our attention on nostalgia for the past?
Or do we want to step into a different story? A story that calls us to step out in faith? That might ask us to leave behind our security and resources, but that promises something real and true and new. A story that invites us to look forward instead of only back.
I can’t help but wonder that Jesus’ disciples did know what they were getting into with Jesus. They maybe didn’t know exactly where Jesus would lead them, but they knew it would be real and true. They had that sense that the way things were just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Because to leave everything behind and follow Jesus, they must have believed they were a part of something that was going to make a real difference; that was going to change hearts and lives, including their own.
What is so important to notice about this second story is that Jesus doesn’t just send the disciples to fend for themselves. “Jesus sends [the disciples] and empowers them.”2 They go with Jesus’ authority to change hearts and lives.
“This [sending and empowering is] a strange blessing for a disestablished church today in a place of privilege and growing vulnerability,” preacher David Schnasa Jacobsen tells us. “Ministry in Jesus’ name goes on. However, success is not guaranteed. What is promised is a living word and the means to persevere. It is, in its own modest and mysterious way, good news.”3
What is our measure of ‘success’ as a church? What does success look like? What kind of life are we called to live? What kind of witness are we tasked by Jesus to offer?
As I think about this, and where we are as a church, I’m drawn to Paul’s words in 2nd Corinthians where he writes: 9[The Lord] said to me, “My grace is enough for you, because power is made perfect in weakness.” So I’ll gladly spend my time bragging about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power can rest on me. 10 Therefore, I’m all right with weaknesses, insults, disasters, harassments, and stressful situations for the sake of Christ, because when I’m weak, then I’m strong. (2 Cor 12:9-10)
The promise of the gospel is not a promise of security – at least not in the sense that most of us desire.
The promise of the gospel is that we will be transformed. That this transformation will bring the possibility of new life, of freedom. But that this freedom – this new life – cannot come without something old dying away. The old self. The old church. It cannot come without first stepping out in faith and trust.
We don’t know what the future holds for the church. And this is terrifying and exciting and hopeful all at once.
I know we don’t always feel particularly empowered for ministry these days, but the gospel promises that we need not ever doubt that Jesus’ love and power is with us. Because even if we go out only two by two, with only a walking stick and the shirts on backs, we are promised that in our weakness, Christ’s power is with us; that in our weakness, Christ’s power will be made known. May it be so. AMEN
1 Matt Skinner https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-14-2/commentary-on-mark-61-13-6
2 David Schnasa Jacobsen, commentary on Mark, page 86.
3 Ibid.
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Sunday June 30, 2024-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for the service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/9QrdwVznS9A
Sermon-Mark 5:21-43
As Jesus arrives on the shore, back from his visit across the lake into Gentile territory, he is swarmed by a large crowd. Word is clearly getting out about his insightful and provocative teachings; about the miraculous healings and his command over wind and waves; about his fearlessness in challenging the rules and social values that make life difficult for so many. So many people want to be near him, and so many of them need his help.
People like Jairus, whose young daughter is gravely ill, and who begs Jesus to come and save her. People like the woman who has been bleeding for twelve years, and as a last ditch effort pushes her way close enough to just touch Jesus’ clothes. So many want a moment of Jesus’ attention that he is swarmed by the crowds as he makes his way up the shore. A powerful image of all the pressures and demands on Jesus. But how can he – just one person – ever meet all of these needs?
And in fact, when he pauses to ask who touched him and has this conversation with the now no longer bleeding woman – as Jairus is most certainly trying to hurry him along – they receive word that Jesus doesn’t need to bother coming after all because Jairus’ daughter has died. It seems that at least one need will not be met this day after all. And who could really blame Jesus. It’s terrible that a young child died. But who can be everything to everyone? Who can be in two places at once?
I wonder, how many of us know that feeling of being stretched thin. Of having more demands on our time than we know how to manage.
Certainly those who are sandwiched between the needs of aging parents and the needs of young children. Or parents feeling stretched to meet the obligations of work and spend time with their families. Students wanting to serve others but feel pressed to just get their own work done. Or just not knowing how – or feeling able – to say no to one more request to help with this worthy cause or that important event.
We live with these tensions all of the time. And if we are to be healthy and well, we really can’t do it all. We have to make choices. And often these choices mean something is left undone or someone is let down.
Seemingly, this is what happens for Jesus too. He wanted to be there for Jairus’ daughter – he was on his way to help her – but he pauses to respond to another need, and in that pause the worst outcome imaginable happens. Jairus’ daughter dies.
But as we also know, this is not where this story ends. As we will see, with Jesus, it’s never an either/or proposition. With Jesus it’s always both/and – there is always more than enough compassion and love to go around.
Jesus has the time, the energy, the desire to pause and engage meaningfully with the unnamed woman who touched his clothes. It’s important to him that not only is she healed, but that she hears from his mouth the promise that her reaching for what she needed – was more than ok; that it was a sign of her faithfulness.
And when Jesus has given her the time he needed to give her, he goes on to offer the same kind of connection and compassion to Jairus and his family. Raising Jairus’ daughter back to life. Breathing hope where there was only sadness and despair.
With Jesus, there is no limit to his compassion or his power to save. Jesus’ power is enough to provide new life to both the rich man’s daughter AND the poor woman.
This is our promise too – that when our resources are at an end, God’s abundant grace and love and goodness is more than sufficient. For me, for you, for every person and community crying out for help.
These two intertwined stories of healing show us that Jesus “responds instinctively to human need.” And Jesus calls us to do the same. To respond instinctively to the human needs around us, even in this world where “safety seems all too often privileged over compassion; and fear and hate, rather than hope and love, are offered as the motivating impulses of this life.”1
Today we are wrapping up our seven-week series on the seven sacred teachings of truth, love, humility, honesty, respect, bravery, and wisdom. This has been an opportunity to learn about one strand of indigenous spirituality, and to live into the TRC call to action #60 which invites churches to respect Indigenous spirituality in its own right.2
Coming to terms with the truth of our history is painful work; especially as we open ourselves to learn and understand about the ways these injustices and atrocities carry through to the present moment. But this is important and necessary work as we seek to live into the values of fairness and inclusion that we hold as Canadians.
And this is work that is happening – however imperfectly. Alongside Canada Day, since 1996 we also now recognize National Indigenous Peoples’ Day on June 21st. More recently, we also mark Orange Shirt Day in September (to honour the survivors of Residential Schools) and Red Dress Day in May (to raise awareness of the devastating epidemic of violence against indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit peoples).
This is not yet enough, but it is movement in the right direction as our indigenous siblings demand justice and equal treatment. As we seek to listen and believe and respond to indigenous stories and experiences.
In Jesus’ way, this is what we are called to do. To respond to the human needs before us. To listen to the voices of our indigenous siblings when they call for their rights to be respected and honoured. To listen to the voices of all who cry out in need.
We may not always know or understand how these needs can be met. But we pause, we listen, we seek to learn, and we trust that with God, there will always be a way; there will always be enough love and forgiveness and grace to make us whole. Because with God, it’s never an either/or proposition. It’s always both/and, with more than enough compassion and healing to go around. May it be so. Amen.
1 David Lose https://www.davidlose.net/2018/06/pentecost-6-b-on-vulnerability-need-and-hope/
2 https://www.indigenouswatchdog.org/cta/call-to-action-60/
Sunday June 23, 2024-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for the service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/mD8rArC6b2Q
June 23, 2024
Mark 4:35-41
Bishop Larry Kochendorfer
Synod of Alberta and the Territories
Mark 4:35-41
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”
And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other
boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that
the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and
they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He
woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased,
and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even
the wind and the sea obey him?”
Welcome to this summer sermon series that our Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada is
providing for congregations. I am Larry Kochendorfer and I serve as the Bishop of the Synod
of Alberta and the Territories.
It is great to be with you this Sunday and to be able to give your dear pastor or deacon and
lay leaders some much welcomed relief. Our rostered and lay leaders offer an incredible
ministry but it’s hard work and we need to do everything we can to give them our
encouragement and support!
As I prepared today’s sermon, I want to acknowledge my appreciation for the writings of
Karoline Lewis, David Lose, and Ted Wardlaw, and the preaching resource, Feasting on the
Word. I have significantly used their wisdom and insights, and their words, in the shaping of
today’s sermon.
In the spirit of respect, reciprocity, and truth, I honour and acknowledge that I live and work
and pray on traditional and ancestral territory of the many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit
whose footsteps have marked these lands for centuries. I am speaking to you today from
Treaty 6 territory and Metis Nation of Alberta, Region III, in Edmonton. I invite you to hold a
moment of reflection for the ground under your feet where you are today, giving thanks for
the peoples who have come before us and in a spirit of care for this land on behalf of future
generations.
Prayer:
Into your hands, almighty God, we place ourselves: our minds to know you, our hearts to
love you, our wills to serve you, for we are yours.
Into your hands, incarnate Savior, we place ourselves: receive us and draw us after you, that
we may follow your steps; abide in us and enliven us by the power of your indwelling.
Into your hands, O hovering Spirit, we place ourselves: take us and fashion us after your
image; let your comfort strengthen, your grace renew, and your fire cleanse us, soul and
body, in life and in death, in this world of shadows and in your changeless world of light
eternal, now and forever. Amen.
(Evangelical Lutheran Worship: Additional Prayers – Commitment. ©2006 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Augsburg Fortress, p. 86.)
There is danger in the water. There is danger in the water. That’s the point of today’s text
and of this sermon, and on at least one level, we understand that point well.
Oh, sure, there’s also beauty in water. There’s a fascination with water whether it be the
mud puddle in the back yard stomped in by a two-year-old adventurer, or the sound and
sight of the rolling of ocean waves toward the shore. There’s something about water that
beckons us—especially at this time of year!
We make our plans to go to the beach, we head for that mountain getaway and a familiar
canoeing spot, or we get our fishing tackle ready for that fly-fishing trip at a favourite
stream. That’s the beauty in the water! We love it. Even the domesticated water of a
swimming pool has its appeal, it is inviting on a hot, sweltering day. Or think about water
that comes in a gentle summer rain—we watch it and smell it and listen to those big,
beautiful drops falling out of the sky to nourish the parched earth!
And yet, for all its beauty, we know enough about water to be cautious—to have a fear of
it—for we know that there’s danger in the water, too. That’s why we build fences around
pools and put life jackets in our boats and fortify our children with swimming lessons.
There’s something dangerous about the water that we ought to fear.
So, we are sure this morning that we understand the fear of those disciples when we hear,
once again, this familiar story. They are crossing the Sea of Galilee—an area of water some
700 feet/213+ meters below sea level where unexpected, violent storms develop quickly on
the warm surface of the lake and where waves can easily reach thirty feet/9 + meters. The
danger is not moderate, it’s deadly.
The disciples are afraid because they know something about the danger in that water—the
danger of what can happen in a storm: the danger of capsizing, of being overwhelmed by
the wind and the waves, of drowning.
And we know the story backwards and forwards, we tell ourselves, so we are sure that
that’s the danger in the water that they fear. As a result, we often spiritualize this danger in
the water—applying this story to all the things about life that we fear. We look at this fear
of the disciples and we relate that fear to the fear we have of the storms that surround us.
The storms of life, the storms that trouble the church.
This is how we are often tempted to interpret and apply today’s reading. So sure, of what
it’s saying to us in fact, that we go tramping around in it until it is thoroughly sanitized of
its—real—terror.
To understand the disciples’ fear only in this way, it seems to me, is to misunderstand the
text. It’s not just the storm that blows up on the open water that causes the disciples to
fear—because the storm, after all, isn’t the real danger in the water. You might be
surprised, but I don’t think this is the real danger at all. No, the real danger in the water is
Jesus!
Look at what happens in this text: Jesus travels with the disciples out to sea, “Let us go
across to the other side,” he says, a storm blows up, he wakes up and he rebukes the wind
and says to the sea, “Peace! Be still!”, and the wind ceases, and there is a dead calm.
“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Jesus asks. Unfortunately, the English
translation masks the disciples’ fear. “And they were filled with great awe”—would perhaps
better be translated— “they feared a great fear.” They feared a great fear.
The real danger in the water is Jesus!
“’Who is this,’ they question, ‘that even the wind and the sea obey him?’” They sense that
there’s something about this One that is dangerous. For if Jesus can do what he did with the
great windstorm and the beating waves, then what might he have in mind to do with them?
It’s an important question: “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
It’s the kind of force—of authority—that can turn not just a storm inside out but can also
turn us—you and me—inside out and upside down. And who wants to be turned inside
out? Who wants to be turned upside down? This is the kind of power that makes people
tremble down to their toes, however seaworthy the boat they're in.
No, there’s something about the power of God that calls for distance. And it’s not a lack of
faith, but rather a sign of faith—of trust—when you recognize it.
Pastor and teacher, Fred Craddock, tells the story of a pastor who went to visit one of his
parishioners in the hospital. The congregational member was suffering from a terminal
illness, and the pastor went to visit her knowing that, at the end of that visit, he would pray
one of those prayers that acknowledges the desperation of the situation, and that accepts,
as fact, that not much is going to change. These are honest and pastorally sensitive prayers,
and often they are the only appropriate kind of prayer to pray.
The pastor went there prepared to pray that kind of prayer, but the woman prevailed upon
him to beg God to heal her. And so, against his better judgment, the pastor, as Craddock
tells the story, prayed a different kind of prayer altogether. He prayed fervently, even while
he understood what a long shot that prayer was. And then when the prayer was over, he
left the room.
A few days later he was back for another visit. The woman was sitting up in the bed. The
tubes had been removed, and the curtains were open. She said to him, “You won’t believe
what has happened. The doctors noticed some changes the other day, and called for more
x-rays, and they have told me that they can no longer see any sign of a tumor! I'm going
home tomorrow.”
The pastor said later, “When I got out to the parking lot, I looked up into the skies and said,
‘Don’t ever do that to me again!’”
There’s something about the power of God that ought to make us fear because it’s that
unmanageable.
Maybe the disciples knew that—there in the boat looking face to face with Jesus—looking
at the danger in that water. Jesus Christ, that mysterious One, that disturbing One, that
demanding One, had done the unlikely thing with that storm, so what unlikely thing was he
about to do with them?
And what unlikely thing does Jesus desire to do with us?
We are in the midst of Synod Convention season. This weekend the BC Synod, the Eastern
Synod, and the Synod of Alberta and the Territories are meeting. Already the MNO Synod
and SK Synod have met.
What unlikely thing does Jesus desire to do with us? To turn us inside out and upside down.
Re-focus on faith formation and discipleship rather than holding on tightly to the
institutional church? Celebration of diversity and welcome of strangers and neighbours
beyond our familiar circles? Working together in interfaith partnerships for justice and
peace? Living out our baptismal promises in grace widely cast?
We look at water, sitting in a baptismal font so placid and serene as it is cupped in the hand
and splashed upon some unsuspecting child, and we are tempted to think that it’s so tame
and so comfortable. Moreover, we are tempted to think that baptism itself is so respectable
and proper until being shaped by that water, being formed by it and living under its
terrifying challenge, becomes a radical and necessary calling.
The Affirmation of our Baptism calls us to return again and again to this challenge:
remember the covenant God made with you in holy baptism? To live among God’s faithful
people, to hear the word of God and to share in the Lord’s supper, to proclaim the good
news of God in Christ through word and deed, to serve all people, following the example of
Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth?
There is danger in the water for we are called to lives turned inside out and upside down—
to live our baptismal promises in grace widely cast.
Remember that wonderful conversation in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe, when the children are asking the beavers about Aslan—the great lion: “Is he
safe?” they ask. “No,” the beaver responds, “but he is good.”
The promise of this text, the good news in this text, is that Jesus is with you, but it is not
only that Jesus is with you. Notice that Jesus does not say “You go over to the other side,”
but “Let us go over to the other side.” Jesus was there all along, no matter what Jesus was
doing, whether that be preaching about parables or sleeping on a pillow or stilling a storm
or stirring up conversation and decision-making on a synod convention floor.
The promise of this text is also that there is something on the other side that Jesus knows
about—and needs to get us to. Of course, the reality for the disciples, and for us, is that the
other side is unknown, unfamiliar, it will require change and transformation and letting go.
It has its own set of challenges—the disciples have to see Jesus differently—see themselves
differently. It means living into a new reality.
Perhaps the act of faith is not just the trust that Jesus will still the storm. The act of faith is
taking Jesus’ invitation to heart. The act of faith is getting into the boat. The act of faith is
believing—trusting—that another side is not only possible—it is essential.
Prayer: (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, pg. 76)
O God, where hearts are fearful and constricted, grant courage and hope. Where anxiety is
infectious and widening, grant peace and reassurance. Where impossibilities close every
door and window, grant imagination and resistance. Where distrust twists our thinking,
grant healing and illumination. Where spirits are daunted and weakened, grant soaring
wings, and strengthened dreams. All these things we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, our
Saviour and Lord. Amen
Sources:
Rev. Dr. Karoline Lewis, Working Preacher, 2015
Rev. Dr. Davis Lose, …in the Meantime, June 15, 2015
Rev. Dr. Ted Wadlaw, Day 1, 1997
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Sunday June 16, 2024-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/WIY4Lhi4IEw
Sermon-Mark 4:26-34 – RESPECT
Jesus loves to teach using parables, these stories with a lesson or moral, and this is both wonderful and frustrating. It’s wonderful because who doesn’t love a good story, especially when you can learn something important from it. It’s frustrating because Jesus’ parables aren’t always easy to make sense of; they’re open to interpretation and Jesus rarely explains them to us. They usually leave us with more questions than answers.
Jesus tells two parables about the kingdom of God. And by kingdom of God he’s not talking about heaven or any geographical place; he’s talking about God’s reign here and now; he’s talking about God’s presence and activity in the world.
Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed. In Jesus’ day, mustard wasn’t the commercially grown crop we know today – it was a weed. It was the one thing you didn’t want growing in your fields because it pops up everywhere and it’s near impossible to eradicate.
Which makes me think that if Jesus were here today speaking to us he might have said something like this instead: the kingdom of God is like a dandelion, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’
Now if you’re raising your eyebrows a little or thinking “well that makes no sense at all – no dandelion is big enough to shelter a bird,” then you’re in good company. Jesus’ listeners would have been doing the same because mustard doesn’t grow big enough to shelter birds either. At most, it’s a 3-foot-high shrub.
They likely would have been expecting Jesus to say something like what Ezekiel said to his listeners about that tender shoot growing into a lofty tree with broad, shady branches in which birds may build nests for their babies as a symbol of God’s protection of the vulnerable.1
That would have made more sense, but Jesus has this habit of saying shocking or absurd things to get his listeners to pay attention, ask questions, and keep on wondering what in the world he might have meant long after the story’s been told.
Maybe Jesus means that we are to pay attention to those who don’t have a home. Or maybe he means that no matter what it may look like or feel like at times in our lives, we have a home with God. We don’t know for sure because Jesus doesn’t tell us what the parable means, and that’s probably part of the point. Jesus is inviting us into a conversation; a relationship. And this is what it means to have faith – to be continually seeking after meaning and truth, always wanting more, to keep asking questions, knowing that God is with us along the way.
This is also where I see a connection today with the sacred teaching of respect. Those who participated in the zoom sessions during Lent & Easter for our book study “Praying the Catechism” know that I like to start with my dictionary definitions when I’m reflecting on a particular word. In my definition search this week, I learned that the English word ‘respect’ comes from the Latin word ‘respicere,’ which can mean “to care for, to provide for, to consider, to gaze at, or to look back at.2
These final two meanings – to gaze at or to look back at – grabbed my attention. It brings to mind this image of sitting back, pausing, pondering, regarding something. With curiosity, with admiration. Recognising in that thing something that is more than our own ability or understanding.
And where I’m going with all this is this: when it comes to Jesus’ parables, this is exactly the kind of posture we’re asked to take: to sit back, to pause, to ponder. To remember again that we may never fully “get it” and that’s ok. Because God is God, and we are not.
We will never have all the answers to the hardest questions about God and faith, at least not in this lifetime. Which is why we walk by faith and not by sight. We trust that no matter what, God is by our side because that is what God has promised again and again, through the witness of Scripture.
And, because of Jesus’ example – because of Jesus’ parables, we know that God invites our questions and our seeking. These parables about seeds and God’s kingdom don’t have one clear message or meaning; but what they do teach us is that God’s activity in the world always undermines our human notions in the most absurd and unbelievable manner.3 And this is something that ought to command our respect, and humility.
We are promised that mustard plants – and dandelions – will take root and grow in places we would never expect. We are promised that signs of God’s presence and activity will keep on popping up in our lives and in our world, as weeds do – persistent, surprising, abundant – giving assurance that we are never alone and that something greater is at work in our lives.
And amazingly, even though we can’t get our heads around it and ultimately God is in charge, God partners with us to do this work of planting seeds and sharing unconditional love and grace. It’s humbling to realize that we too are mustard plants, signs and agents of God’s love and grace and peace in this world as we seek to follow in Jesus’ way of love and service.
May the Spirit help us each day to do just that. To follow in Jesus’ way with humility and with respect and with abundant faith in God’s power to bring life and goodness in the most unexpected of places and in the most unexpected of ways. AMEN.
1 https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-11-2/commentary-on-mark-426-34-6
2 https://latin-dictionary.net/definition/33454/respicio-respicere-respexi-respectus
3 https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-11-2/commentary-on-mark-426-34-6
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Sunday June 9, 2024-Third Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/zDR3UHa27pA
Sermon – Mark 3:20-35
Even though I was raised in the ELCIC (the Lutheran denomination to which our congregation belongs), when I was discerning my call to become a pastor, I wanted to take the opportunity to study at a seminary that would get me outside of my Lutheran bubble. Which is how I ended up doing my Master of Divinity degree at Emmanuel College – a United Church of Canada theological school, and part of the Toronto School of Theology.
My very first week there, as I was meeting my new classmates and professors, more than once, when someone found out I was Lutheran they said, “You have to meet Ralph. He’s Lutheran too!” So probably that week, or shortly after, I did meet Ralph – who also happened to be from Saskatchewan, so we had two things in common.
As it turned out, Ralph wasn’t actually Lutheran; at least not officially. At the time when I first met him, he was one of the ecumenical chaplains at the U of T and a United Church minister. But Ralph had been a Lutheran pastor. He was ordained in our Lutheran church in 1978, but was forced out in the 1980s when he came out as gay.
Ralph wanted to live authentically, and he never wanted to leave the Lutheran church – in his heart he remained Lutheran, which is why all the United Church folks continue to refer to his as Lutheran – but he wasn’t given a choice. He eventually found a new home in the United Church which had voted to allow for the inclusion of gay clergy in 1988.
Some of you may know Ralph Carl – as he now prefers to be known – and his story. And if you do, it may be because in 2020, he was the first pastor to officially be reinstated after we changed our rules in 2011 to include 2SLGBTQIA+1 pastors.
Ralph’s reinstatement was a momentous occasion and was even reported on by CBC so you can read more of his story on their website.2 Ralph Carl currently serves as pastor of First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Toronto, and we are blessed by his grace and presence in our church. For it’s folks like him – those who have stayed and those who have come back amidst all the pain and harm – who show us what mercy and grace look like in practice.
Sadly, Ralph Carl’s story of exclusion is not unique. The experience of being excluded by family and community, by church, is something many 2SLGBTQIA+ folx have experienced and continue to experience. And it’s especially painful and damaging because it’s an exclusion that is about who you are, which isn’t something any of us can change or control.
The pain of exclusion is something Jesus experienced firsthand too. These two stories sandwiched together in Mark’s gospel tell about a fracturing between Jesus and his family; and a fracturing between Jesus and his religious community.
Right from the start of his ministry, Jesus pushed boundaries and broke barriers. He didn’t stand for any rules or social norms that came before the wellbeing, or at the expense, of people. Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors; he had women disciples; he wasn’t afraid to touch people who were sick; he hung out with those who had been pushed to the edges, excluded.
For Jesus, this is what it looks like to live in God’s kingdom. To stand against any and every system, rule, or person that would seek to harm, destroy, or demean another human being. It’s including everyone at the table, with no requirement that they leave any part of themselves at the door.
And this kind of behaviour made people uncomfortable. His family doesn’t understand it. They’re embarrassed by him and try to distance themselves by claiming he must be mentally unstable. And the religious leaders are afraid of him. Jesus is pushing boundaries and even breaking the socially agreed upon rules that give order and stability to community life. But the attempts to control Jesus by his family; the attempts to undermine authority by the religious leaders don’t work.
Jesus stands firm because he knows who he is and what he’s about. Jesus embodies the sacred teaching of honesty. He stands firm in that promise that was spoken at his baptism; that moment when his mission and purpose was declared by God: “You are my Beloved child. With you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:11)
Jesus knows how essential it is for everyone to know that God loves them. How essential it is to know that there is a place for me and for you and for everyone in God’s family. Which is why Jesus redefines family to include all those who do the will of God.
Jesus and his biological family didn’t always have the closest of relationships, and so his chosen family was so important. Something that many in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community understand; or anyone who’s not had a good or loving family of origin for that matter.
As a church we’re on a journey. We have caused so much hurt and harm in the past to 2SLGBTQIA+ folx. And thanks be to God, we’re on a path of acknowledging that harm, and seeking to do better.
At our special National Convention in 2023, delegates unanimously adopted a public statement of apology to 2SLGBTQIA+ folx who have been harmed by our church.3 Prior to that, in 2019, our church established a national task force to guide and encourage the church in addressing ongoing issues of homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia;4 work that is ongoing.
As a church we now understand that extending love and welcome and inclusion to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities is part of Jesus’ kingdom ministry. And that this is essential work because even with the strides that have been made towards equal rights and full inclusion of 2SLGBTQIA+ folx, those rights and their safety continue to be under threat. We also know that 2SLGBTQIA+ youth have higher rates of mental health issues – and not because of their identity, but because of the stigma and discrimination that still exists in society and in the church.5
Speaking to his decision to come out as gay, Ralph Carl said in an interview: "What is the cost of discipleship? What is the cross that I'm supposed to bear? Is it to stay in the closet, or is it to come out and pay the price of being truthful, honest and authentic? I chose the latter, and I've never regretted it."6
Jesus calls us to be a community that does God’s will. That loves one another. That upholds honesty for all people.
To be honest with ourselves – about who I am – who you are – as a beloved child of God. In our uniqueness; with all our gifts and all our flaws; no matter who we love or how we identify.
And to seek to be a community where everyone can safely and fully and freely live their honest, authentic, true life – without fear, without shame. For only then do we have a taste of what it’s like to live under God’s reign. May it be so. Amen.
1 This acronym stands for Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, and the ‘+’ symbol stands for all the other identities not encompassed in the short acronym.
2 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.5433234/gay-pastor-forced-out-of-lutheran-church-in-the-80s-becomes-1st-to-be-reinstated-1.5433241
3 https://elcic.app.box.com/s/nn6sf63770rrso3l6fqaxgdszg9n09te
4 https://elcic.ca/2024/03/20/national-bishop-susan-johnson-writes-to-the-church-on-the-call-to-uphold-dignity/
5 https://thechildrensagenda.org/2021/06/21/pride-and-affirmation-saves-lives/
6 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.5433234/gay-pastor-forced-out-of-lutheran-church-in-the-80s-becomes-1st-to-be-reinstated-1.5433241
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Sunday June 3, 2024-Second Sunday after Pentecost
You will find the video for this service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/EjI6hBNbPqg
Sermon – Mark 2:23-3:6
From the very start of his ministry, Jesus’ teachings, miraculous healings, and the company he kept (hanging out with sinners and tax collectors) had him courting controversy. In particular, the pharisees are keen to butt heads with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees were a reform movement within first-century Judaism, dedicated to following the Torah faithfully and closely in all areas of life.1 In this way, they actually had a lot in common with Jesus, who also was concerned about faithful living. But as we see throughout Scripture, they didn’t always see things eye to eye.
Here we have them challenging Jesus about letting his disciples glean and travel on the Sabbath. The issue isn’t that the disciples are stealing – they weren’t. It was permitted by Jewish law for individuals to pluck ears of grain by hand from someone’s field.2 For the pharisees, the issue is that they were doing these things on the Sabbath. To borrow the words of biblical scholar Matt Skinner, “They should have stayed put and prepared their snacks on the previous day.”3
The pharisees are also looking to catch Jesus doing the work of healing on the sabbath. Something that Jesus was aware of, and so he does it anyway. He heals a man’s withered hand.
But knowing that he’s being watched, Jesus finds a way to end any argument before it’s even begun. When he asks whether it’s legal to save life on the Sabbath, Jesus already knows the ancient Jewish teaching that says saving life overrules the Sabbath.4 The reason the pharisees stay silent is that Jesus performs this healing in a way they can’t argue with.
The Pharisees are often painted in a bad light. And it’s true that they didn’t always understand or agree with Jesus’ message of liberation and transformation. But these disagreements about how to live within Jewish law aren’t the problem. In fact, these kinds of disagreements and debates were – and are – common in Judaism.
What is troubling is how these disagreements escalated so quickly “into hostility, a hostility that will eventually lead some — but certainly not all — of the most powerful religious authorities to seek Jesus’ debasement and death.” 5 For these Pharisees at least, it became personal. It was no longer about what Jesus said and did, but who he was, that was the problem.
Disagreements and debates aren’t a bad thing. In fact, disagreements and debates can be enlivening. They’re a sign that people are invested. That we care. And engaging with others who see things differently than we do can help us clarify our own beliefs; it can help us to grow in good ways.
Unfortunately, in our time too, all too often disagreements lead to hostility rather than understanding. We see in our leaders, on social media, how quickly disagreements escalate into hostility. How quickly disagreements devolve into personal attacks. How quickly things can even turn violent.
And I get it. It can feel very threatening when someone’s values don’t align with our own. It feels especially threatening when someone’s values seem to go against the values we hold. It can feel like there isn’t the space for both to co-exist. And when we feel afraid or threatened, the instinct is to destroy that which we don’t understand or that which frightens us. But conflict doesn’t have to lead to destruction.
Jesus wasn’t afraid of conflict. In fact, he often was the instigator of conflict because he knew that’s what was needed in that moment for transformation and change to happen. But even in the midst of conflict, Jesus never seeks to destroy. Instead, he models for us a way of love and connection and humility.
For me, this week’s sacred teaching embodies the kind of servant leader Jesus was. “The wolf is strong and powerful alone, but finds its greatest strength when part of a pack. Humility is to know that you are a sacred part of creation. To live life selflessly and not selfishly. To respect your place and carry your pride with your people and praise the accomplishments of all. To not become arrogant and self-important. And to find balance within yourself and all living things.”6
As disciples – as followers of Jesus, we are compelled to care about liberation and life for all people, as Jesus did. To value life above all else. To make sure that everyone has food to eat. To make sure that everyone has access to healthcare. To make sure that everyone – even the natural world – gets to have the gift of rest. To respond, as we can, to every outstretched hand in need. To remember that our own needs are not any more important in God’s eyes than the needs of our neighbours – including those we would call enemies.
Doing Jesus’ work will lead us to places of conflict. When it does, the challenge before us is not to fall into fear – which will only lead us down the path to hostility. Instead, even in the midst of conflict, we are called to be humble.
To follow in the humble and self-giving way of Jesus which, as he has shown us, is the only way to transform fear into love. This way won’t always be safe – it certainly wasn’t for Jesus – but we don’t walk it alone.
We walk this way together in community; we are part of a “pack” – a community that does this work together. A community whose strength in numbers enables us to better care for and speak up for the most vulnerable in our world.
And we walk this way with Christ, who is always with us; our security and peace. Whose unconditional love and grace are ours, and that nothing in this world can ever threaten or destroy. AMEN.
1 C. Clifton Black “Commentary on Mark 2:23-3:6” https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-09-2/commentary-on-mark-223-36
2 Deuteronomy 23:24-25
3 Matt Skinner “Commentary on Mark 2:23-3:6” https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-09-2/commentary-on-mark-223-28-31-6
4 Skinner.
5 Skinner
6 https://easternsynod.org/wp-content/uploads/Seven-Sacred-Teachings.pdf
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Sunday May 26, 2024-The Holy Trinity
You will find the video for the service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/SUeYocoBnjg
Engaging with the Story
Sermon – John 3:1-17
Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, seeking answers to his questions. Nicodemus is a religious leader and teacher, and clearly a seeker. He’s seen Jesus around Jerusalem, drawing crowds and performing signs, and his curiosity has been piqued. He thinks there might be something special and different about Jesus, so he seeks out a private audience with him.
Nicodemus is often portrayed as ignorant or stupid. Because he’s a rabbi – a teacher of Israel – he’s one who should understand exactly what Jesus is about. He should get it! But as the conversation that unfolds, he just can’t seem to follow Jesus’ line of thinking. Poor Nicodemus seems to ask all the wrong questions.
Nicodemus often gets a bad rap. But I wonder, would any of us have fared any better in this situation? Would we have known the right questions to ask? Was it even about the particular questions he asked? I almost feel as though it wouldn’t have mattered what Nicodemus asked, Jesus was intentionally being a little tricky with him.
Hearing this story on Trinity Sunday, it makes me think of the knots we tie ourselves in trying to understand and explain this central teaching of our faith. This belief that God is three and yet only one. I’m pretty sure if we showed at Jesus’ doorstep to ask about the Trinity, Jesus would lead us down a similar path of confusion and perplexity. You call yourself a Christian and yet you don’t understand the Trinity? Somehow, like with Nicodemus, I don’t think we would get the answers we would want.
And I don’t think that’s because Jesus is being mean or unkind. The more time I spend with this story – and the more times I preach about this story – I’m convinced that what Jesus is doing here is challenging Nicodemus – and us – to go deeper.
The minute we start talking about a doctrine like the Trinity – the minute we try to figure out how all this can possibly work – we end up in our heads. But faith isn’t an intellectual exercise. Faith is about our hearts.
The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus is confusing to say the least. But what is not at all confusing are the final verses in our reading. The original Greek manuscripts – the oldest versions we have of the Bible -don’t have punctuation. So it’s actually not entirely clear whether Jesus speaks these words, or whether part of the narration by the gospel writer John. But either way, the meaning is the same.
There may be a lot about God that we will never fully understand. But the only thing we really need to know for certain is that God loves this whole so much that God came to live among us, like one of us. Not to condemn, but to bring life, liberation, freedom, and wholeness.
Love is the starting place for everything.
God who created the world and all that is in it, in love.
Jesus, who made God’s love real in our world.
The Spirit of Love that even now, flows in and through people and communities and creation.
One of the most amazing mysteries to me is how God can be so much bigger and grander than we can ever imagine – like our Psalm for today reminded us – and that God can also be so close and intimate with us – with us in every moment of life.
We can get really abstract and intellectual about love too, so I want us to pause here for a just a moment and invite you to place a hand over your heart. Feel the weight of your hand on your chest and hear these words: You are enough, you are whole, you are holy, you are loved.
Before we can ever think or talk about love, love is something we feel and experience. It’s something that we give and receive. It’s something that we know because we’ve hopefully been lucky to have at least one person in our life loves us unconditionally, however imperfectly.
Love is at the core of who and what God is. And love is the core of who we are – of every human being – as beloved creations of God. And because of this, we’re called to look at everything through the “lens of love.”
Love can seem like a foolish thing in our world a lot of the time. In a world where might makes right and only the strong survive. Even so, in everything thing we do – every action, every word – we’re to start from that place of love and compassion. To love like the eagle, who has the ability to fly high and see all the ways of being.
As author Diana Butler Bass says so powerfully, “Love must be our answer — loving God, our neighbors, and creation. [And] love is far more than good feelings or emotions. Love must be organized, active, and committed to the full dignity and worth of everyone.1
We don’t hear much from Nicodemus again after his nighttime encounter with Jesus. He seemingly, silently slips away that night. But he makes one final appearance right near the end of John’s gospel. Along with Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus takes Jesus’ crucified body and prepares it for burial. In Jewish tradition, it’s believed that this is one of the greatest acts of love because the recipient can’t ever repay the kindness.2
Nicodemus came to Jesus seeking answers; seeking wisdom and truth. Instead, he received something far greater. In Jesus he encountered a love that rippled through his life in mysterious and beautiful ways. May it also be so for us. AMEN.
1 https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/when-love-isnt-quite-enough
2 https://www.houstonjewishfunerals.com/resources/jewish-funeral-traditions
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Sunday May 19, 2024-Day of Pentecost
You will find the video for the service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/4XLWBuhm4NE
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Engaging with the Story
Sermon – Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
As we celebrate Pentecost, the birth of the church, we look to the stories of our faith to ask: What do they have to teach us about being the church here and now? What does this wild story about the Holy Spirit possessing the apostles and giving them the ability to speak all these different languages – what does it have to say to us today?
According to New Testament scholar Matt Skinner, one of the things this story in Acts teaches us is that the first act of the church was communication, not domination.1 As people are drawn in by their curiosity; as they hear the good news of Jesus shared in their native languages. It’s this beautiful moment of the Spirit drawing people together in mutual understanding and curiosity. The first act of the church was communication, not domination.
This insight really hit home this week as I was also thinking about the sacred teaching of Truth that we’re honouring in our worship time today. It got me thinking about the history of colonization and settlement in this place we call Canada. A history that has been predominantly about domination, and not communication. A history of domination that has caused deep harm to the first peoples of this land; harm that ripples across generations.
Treaties were not entered into in good faith. Government policies stripped away access to land; they didn’t grant indigenous peoples the same rights and freedoms as settler Canadians. Policies of forced assimilation – like Residential Schools – undermined culture, language, spirituality, and family and community bonds. And painfully, the church was a big partner in this history of domination, through the residential school system in particular. Equating a culturally European expression of Christianity with capital “T” truth, churches actively participated in that work of assimilation – of seeking to make indigenous children in our own image.
Too often, throughout Christian history, it has been understood that Jesus is the only truth, to the exception of all others. And yes, Jesus does tell his followers that he is “the way, the truth, and the life,” but it doesn’t automatically follow that those who believe in Jesus are right, and all others are wrong – even though that’s how many Christians choose to interpret these words. I would argue, the truth that Jesus speaks about isn’t so much about believing certain things as it is about relationship. Something we see lifted up in our gospel reading for today.
Our gospel reading comes from the final conversation Jesus had with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion. Jesus knows what is going to happen in the days to come, and so he’s taking time to pass along final words of wisdom he knows the disciples will need in the days ahead.
One of the things he promises is that he will not abandon his friends. Even though he must leave them, he will send the Holy Spirit – which he calls the Paraclete – or in our translation, the Companion – to be with them. The Paraclete is a name for the Holy Spirit that only shows up in the gospel of John. It can be translated in different ways: advocate, comforter, aide, intercessor, companion, witness, guide, teacher.2 This is a power, this Spirit of Truth, that will be with them and will walk alongside of them when Jesus no longer can.
What a powerful and beautiful image. It brings to mind a walk with a good friend. That side-by-side conversation and wisdom and support as you journey together. It’s a promise that the relationship the disciples share with Jesus will not end with his death.
The Spirit of Truth who we celebrate today. Our companion who walks alongside us – brings Jesus’ truth close to us. This truth isn’t ideas about Jesus, but Jesus himself – who is God’s saving love made real in the world. And as this companion walks alongside us, she teaches us Jesus’ ways of patience, humility, curiosity, openness to walk alongside and learn from others if we are willing to listen and learn.
Our Canadian and Christian history is filled with so many examples of domination. But as we learn our history anew, particularly through the stories that our indigenous neighbours have remembered and are teaching us again, we see that domination isn’t the only story. We see that our shared history includes stories of communication and cooperation that we can lift up as we seek a different future together. Stories like the two-row wampum belt.
“In 1664 the British sought and secured to have the same agreement for Peace, Friendship and Respect as the Dutch had secured in 1613 with the Five Nations. The 1613 treaty, the first treaty between Indigenous peoples and Europeans, was recorded by the Haudenosaunee in a wampum belt known as the Two Row Wampum. The pattern of the belt consists of two rows of purple wampum beads against a background of white beads. The purple beads signify the courses of two vessels -- an Indigenous canoe (for their laws, their customs, and their ways) and a European ship (for their laws, their customs, and their ways) -- traveling down the river of life together, parallel but never touching. Neither interfering in the affairs of the others; neither trying to steer the other’s vessel. The three white stripes denote peace, friendship, and respect. This wampum records the meaning of the agreement, which declared peaceful coexistence between the Haudenosaunee Peoples and Europeans.”3
And we have within our own tradition, the Holy Spirit who walks alongside us. Who invites us to walk in the same way with others. For this is what it means to seek truth. We’re invited to recover and reclaim that gift of communication. To repent from and seek to repair the harm caused by domination. To understand that truth is something we seek together. Truth is not something that I have, and you do not. That with Jesus, truth is always relational. We come to truth through relationship with God and in relationship with one another.
As we seek to live in Jesus’ truth today, accompanied and guided by the Spirit of Truth, may the stories we tell with our lives, honour the truth we know in Christ – a truth that is never forceful or coercive, but a truth that liberates us all to live in peace, friendship, and respect. May it be so. AMEN
1 Podcast: “Sermon Brainwave 965: Day of Pentecost – May 19, 2024” https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/965-day-of-pentecost-may-19-2024
2 https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/day-of-pentecost-2/commentary-on-john-1526-27-164b-15-2
3 https://www.sixnations.ca/LandsResources/SNLands-GlobalSolutions-FINALyr2020.pdf
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May 12, 2024 – Seventh Sunday in Easter
You will find the video for the service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/-9crok_OD7g
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Engaging with the Story
1 Corinthians 15:1-4, 12-26, 51-57
Although we don’t have the whole story, it appears that among their many sources of disagreement, another area of division is the idea of resurrection. Based on what Paul says, some in the Corinthian church have been denying or questioning whether the resurrection of the dead is real.
Now I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t surprise me at all that the resurrection of the dead is something people would question or even deny. And that’s because resurrection is not something many of us have witnessed (us and the Corinthians). On the other hand, we’re pretty accustomed to dealing with death. We know the pain of death when we lose someone we love. We know how final death feels when the person we loved is then gone. And yet, perhaps resurrection isn’t as uncommon as we might first believe. Let me tell you another story…
“There once was a mother whose child tragically died only a few months after birth. The woman was so distraught by what had taken place that she carefully wrapped the infant’s body in cloth and went in search of someone who would be able to resuscitate her.
She travelled far and wide to see doctors, magicians, and wisdom teachers, but none could offer any help. However, during her search, she heard rumours of a holy man who lived high up in the mountains, a man who possessed great powers. And so she went in search of this great saint, eventually locating his small dwelling in an isolated patch of land high above the city. Upon meeting him, she relayed her story through tears. After she had finished, the old man though for a moment and then spoke with compassion, saying, “I can help you, but in order for me to do the appropriate spell, you first need to bring me a handful of mustard seeds from the home of someone who has not suffered the pain of loss.”
The woman immediately left that place and traveled throughout the city in search of a home that had not been overshadowed by this pain. However, she could not find a single place. Yet as she heard the stories of others’ suffering, she slowly began to come to terms with her own, until one day she was able to give her beloved child a proper burial.”1
The resurrection of the body – which Jesus underwent after death – and the resurrection that we are also promised, is a hard thing to grasp. And yet, in this life right now, there are glimpses of resurrection all around. And for me, this story reveals something of what it is to experience resurrection in this life.
In this story, the holy man knew that there was nothing he could do to bring this child back. He also understood that if this woman was to carry on living, she would need to work through and release the pain that had consumed her. This woman was spiritually dead, and as she connected with other people who could share in her suffering and connect with her story, in all of its darkness and distress, she came to realise that while story was unique, her pain was not. These connections freed her to live again in a new way. Her circumstances hadn’t changed – her child was still dead – but through the love of strangers, she found new life in the midst of pain and death.
Philosopher and theologian Peter Rollins, from whose book I borrowed this story, talks about how resurrection, how “this new mode of living, is not one in which the anxiety of death, meaninglessness, and guilt are taken away; it is one in which they are robbed of their weight.”2 It’s the promise, as Paul writes, that the sting of death is no more. To believe in the resurrection means to embrace life in its fullness. To face up to our pain, to find joy in the simplest of things, and to embrace this broken and hurting world. To witness to our belief that in spite of what it looks like most days, “love is stronger than hate, goodness is stronger than evil, and life is always stronger than death.”3
Resurrection is a reality in as much as we live it out every day. And how to we do this? We live the resurrection by being faithful to the way of Jesus. By loving others as Christ loved us. By fully embracing life together in all its joy and its pain. Every time we share love with one another and with the world we are saying “yes” to the power of resurrection.
Today at St Peter’s we are lifting up and celebrating the prayer shawl ministry that has been an important part of our ministry for many years now. And what a beautiful witness these shawls are to the resurrection. To those who receive these shawls as gifts, they embody the promise that you are not alone in your suffering; your pain; your loneliness. God is with you. We are with you. Whatever difficult path you are journeying right now, it doesn’t get the final word. Suffering is not the end of your story.
The world will never tire of teaching us that the crucifixion is real. Our witness is to proclaim the truth that so is the resurrection! And resurrection always gets the last word!
As a pastor, I’ve been blessed to see firsthand what a difference these prayer shawls can make for someone who is hurting. These shawls that are knitted or crocheted with love and prayer, are a tangible, tactile, cozy, embracing expression of love and care. On my visits I’ve seen them on hospital beds and on the laps of wheelchair users.
As someone who didn’t really know much about prayer shawls before – were they something you prayed with? I’ve come to understand that the shawls themselves are a prayer. Like the folks who shared their stories of suffering with that grieving mother, these shawls honour the pain people are going through. They are a physical embodiment of the promise that you are not alone in your pain.
In this life, this is about as close to resurrection life as any of us will get. Being present and there for one another in times of struggle and pain.
On the one hand, it might not seem like much. And yet, for those who’ve experienced it – like the woman who desperately wanted to resuscitate her child – it is the path to life. Holding one another in our vulnerabilities; being present to one another in our suffering; can open a path to living even when our circumstances haven’t otherwise changed.
You are invited today, at the end of service to take a prayer shawl for someone who is sick or struggling. To take one for yourself if you are needing some extra love and prayer and resurrection promise. And for those on zoom (or are reading this sermon at a later date), please contact the church office at any time if you would like one for yourself or someone else.
May these shawls, and may our very lives, be a witness to God’s promise that resurrection is real and always get the last word. AMEN
1 Adapted from an ancient Buddhist parable in Peter Rollins’ book Insurrection, page 163-64.|
2 Peter Rollins, Insurrection, page 111.
3 Adaptation of a quote from Bishop Desmond Tutu: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/570684
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May 5, 2024 – Sixth Sunday in Easter
You will find the video for the service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/QQ7BVtAj_Bk
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Engaging with the Story
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Paul wrote these beautiful words about love to a Christian community that was divided. They were picking sides and setting up camps. It seems they were also arguing about spiritual gifts like wisdom, prophecy, healing, teaching, speaking in tongues. About which gifts are the most important. And rather than recognizing that all these gifts are intended for the building up of the community, they were using their gifts to build themselves up. They’d lost sight of the truth that any and every gift we have comes from God.
The members of the Corinthian church seem to think they’ve got it all figured out, but Paul is quick to remind them that they don’t. As he says, in this life they see through a mirror dimly and can only ever know in part.
Now I can’t imagine any of us ever having been guilty of thinking we have it all figured out – that we know best, right? Of course that’s not true. I will be the first to admit that I suffer from this affliction.
It’s simply part of human nature to think that our way of seeing things is the right or best way. For some of us, this is a real growing edge – we really struggle to allow for the possibility that there can be more than one right way to do something.
But this tendency to have it all figured out can also be more innocent. We can only know what we know based on our lived experiences. Our experiences shape what we believe about the world. But none of us have the exact same set of experiences in life. And none of us ever have the full story. It’s when we think we do that when problems start to arise. When factions and divisions creep in.
It happened for the Corinthians, and 2000 years later it still happens to us. Our world is becoming increasingly polarised and in this age of social media and the internet, some days it feels harder than ever to engage with people who see the world differently than we do.
There’s no easy or uncomplicated solution to this problem. And yet, there is. When it comes to the Corinthians, in their division, Paul refocuses them on the core value that centres any faithful Christian community: love. A simple word. A word we use all of the time. And yet, a word that carries so many meanings in our English language.
This passage from 1st Corinthians is one we often read at weddings. And when we think of love, we often think of those feelings of desire or affection we have for someone. But the love that Paul speaks about here is not a feeling.
For Paul, Christian love is something we do. He wants to know, what does it mean to love someone you disagree with? What does it mean to love someone whose values differ from my own? What does it mean to love someone who annoys you?
Which is why Paul takes it upon himself to spell out what Christian love looks like; AND what it doesn’t look like. Love is patient, it is kind. It is NOT envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. This is what love looks like when it’s lived out.
Love is not always warm & fuzzy; in fact, it’s often the complete opposite. Often love looks like doing things that are a huge pain for us personally – but these are things we do because of our care and concern for others. Because we value community and the common good.
Love is caring for someone with a terminal or chronic condition. Love is getting out of bed for the umpteenth time to help your kid get back to sleep. Love is cleaning up when your cat or dog or kid pukes.
Love looks like listening and seeking understand one another, and not just making our point of view heard.
Love is making sure that all of God’s children have their basic needs taken care of; even if that means we have to give up some of our privilege and comfort.
Love is imagining ways of sharing our building and land that will benefit our neighbours, even though it might mean loosening our claim on this space.
And the reason we choose to do love; the reason we show care and concern for others, is because God first loved us.
I do want to say a word about “putting up with” all things (verse 7) because I think something gets lost in translation here. The word here has more of meaning to bear up against or hold out against something. This isn’t about putting up with or tolerating abuse or behaviour that dehumanizes. That is not ever loving. But love is a force that enables us to “bear up against” the most trying of circumstances.
This vision of love that Paul lays before us is not something that any of us will ever do perfectly. We will never be perfectly patient and kind and compassionate and self-giving. But as followers of Jesus, these are qualities that each day we try again to live into, to the best of our ability. And we so with the power of the Spirit, because often – perhaps most of the time – we just aren’t able to do so by our power alone.
Today we will be blessing our community garden – our Jesus garden – and some of the seeds that will be planted in it. I can’t think of a more beautiful or powerful image of love for our community. By no means does our little garden solve the problem of food insecurity in our neighbourhood, but it’s a tangible, embodied expression of our love for our neighbours.
I also can’t think of a more beautiful or powerful image of love for each one of us. I imagine those seeds of love planted by God in our own hearts. Seeds that the Spirit nurtures daily. Seeds that we can nurture for one another as we seek to embody the love that Paul describes for us. Seeds that make the world a more loving place for everyone.
As we seek to share the good news of the gospel; as we seek to be witnesses for Christ in our community; we do this by planting seeds of love – literally/physically and spiritually. May our prayer today and always be that by the power of the Spirit, these seeds of love will take root and grow and bring a little more love into a world longing for love. AMEN
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April 28, 2024 – Fifth Sunday in Easter
You will find the video for the service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/gNpd25B1utQ
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Engaging with the Story
Pastor Laura did not prepare a sermon text for this service. Instead we did some group sharing about how we moved through Earth Week with the checklist/homework she gave us last week. We also worked in small groups to answer the following two questions:
1. What did you do this last week to act, learn or pray? OR What is something you already do to care for creation?
2. What is one new learning, insight, hope, or question you want to hold on to in relation to the climate crisis or care for creation?
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April 21, 2024 – Fourth Sunday in Easter
You will find the video for the service from this past Sunday at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/mIL_wowkUXc
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Engaging with the Story
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
After Jesus’ death, his message of liberation and grace continued to spread thanks to the followers he left behind. Through the power of the Spirit, they continued to teach and preach and heal. And through the power of the Spirit, new apostles were called and commissioned – including some surprising and unexpected folks – people like Paul. Once a persecutor of Christians, after a spiritual experience on the road to Damascus, Paul becomes one of the most important missionaries and evangelists for the gospel.
In his lifetime, Paul travelled throughout the Roman Empire with other missionaries to share the good news of Jesus Christ. In many of the places they, travelled they also founded churches. The letter we read in worship today was sent to one of these Christian communities – the church in the Greek city of Thessalonica where Paul founded a church with the help of his co-worker Silas.
Paul’s trip to Thessalonica is also recorded in the book of Acts, chapter 17. There it tells us that while some people of the city – both Jews and Greeks – received their message, others did not. And those who joined Paul in professing that Jesus was the Messiah encountered resistance from the wider community. In fact, several of the new church members were hunted down by an angry mob and dragged before the city authorities. The accusation? That these Christians “were turning the world upside down.” (Acts 17:6)
What an accusation. “Turning the world upside down.” And what were the early Christians doing that was so dangerous and disruptive but loving one another – and loving their enemies. Treating slaves as equal with free citizens, and women equal with men. Upholding values that challenged the hierarchy and militarism of Roman culture – values like collaboration and non-violence and humility.1
Collaboration, non-violence, humility, unity, mutual care, care for those who are different than us/who perhaps don’t agree with us. These are all things we could use a whole lot more of in our world today. In this world that is already turned upside down by the human made climate crisis. Unseasonal temperatures, extreme weather events, rising sea levels, declining biodiversity – these are all nature’s way of telling us just how much human activity is turning the natural world upside down. It’s a daunting challenge to say the least. And a reality that quickly feels like too much and a problem that is too big to solve on our own.
We know that to address the climate crisis, we – as a global community – need to radically change how we live on this planet. Human action has turned the natural world upside down, and so only a turning upside down of current human patterns of behaviour and consumption will make a difference. But we can’t fix this on our own in isolation from one another. And yet, don’t we feel so alone when we face daunting challenges.
I’m certain this is one of the reasons Paul and these churches sent letters to each other. Certainly they wanted to stay in touch and catch up, but as we see in Paul’s words to the Thessalonians, it was also about encouragement. It was about holding each other in prayer. It was about reminding each other that they are in this together; and that they are stronger together as they seek to be a positive disruptive force in their time and place.
Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us that ‘when we come together as a group, with a common purpose and commitment to mindful action, we produce an energy of collective concentration far superior to our own individual concentration...Together, we can bring about real transformation for ourselves and for the world.’”2
Cartoon by Brenna Quinlan, an Australian illustrator and educator specialising in climate justice, sustainability and permaculture.3
We cannot wait to act. And we are stronger when we act together, which is why we are joining with other faith groups across Canada this week to act, learn & pray for the love of creation. As a community here at St Peter’s, we are committing to pray for creation today and next Sunday. We’re also asking you as individuals and families to participate at home this week in acting, learning, and praying for the love of creation. To help get you started, we’ve created a handout with some ideas for acting, learning, and praying. (included at end of sermon)
Also, there will be a test – sort of. I’m challenging all of us to come next week prepared to share one thing that we did to act, learn or pray for creation. And the purpose of this isn’t to put you on the spot, but for us to teach one another something we’ve learned, to encourage one another, and to feel just a little less alone – to see how our individual actions when we add them all together, can begin to amount to enough.
For in all that we do together, we remember that our work comes from faith, our effort comes from love, and our perseverance comes from hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God, our Father and our Mother. For we – and this whole creation – are loved by God, and God has chosen us to be witnesses of this same love.
Which is why this Earth week, along with countless others around the globe, we join our efforts for the love of creation, living out our hope that with God’s strength, another way is possible. AMEN.
Earth Week 2024 – April 21-28
St Peter’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Cambridge/www.stpeterscambridge.com
ACT
Spend time outdoors or in nature; Go for a walk!
Pick up trash/recycling in your neighbourhood
Take public transit or bike/run/walk somewhere you would normally drive
Stop drinking bottled water. Buy a reusable water bottle if you don’t already have one.
Plant a tree
Repurpose an item or donate unneeded items to a second-hand store.
Buy something second hand rather than brand new
Calculate your plastic consumption. Are there ways to reduce this?
Join or volunteer with an organization that cares/advocates for creation/climate/environment
Other: __________________________________________
LEARN
Attend “Watershed Re-Orientation” (Zoom event) on Tuesday, April 23rd at 12PM (https://www.wellingtonwaterwatchers.ca/watershed_re-orientation)
Attend Earth Week Event on Plastics at Trillium United Church (450 King St E.) on Tues, April 23 at 7PM
Attend Webinar on “Climate Change, Eco-Anxiety, and Habits of Hope” on Thursday, April 25 at 1PM (https://presbyterian.ca/2024/03/12/upcoming-webinar-climate-change-eco-anxiety-and-habits-of-hope/)
Borrow a book from the library about climate change, nature, or the environment
Watch a documentary about climate, nature, or the environment
Do some self-directed research on an environmental topic or question that’s of interest to you
Visit https://fortheloveofcreation.ca/ to learn more about his initiative and available resources
Other: __________________________________________
PRAY
Take a sacred pause outdoors or near a window. Find a spot to sit for 10 minutes and be still: what do you hear? What do you see? What do you smell? What do you feel?
Get your hands dirty by starting to prep your garden or flower beds. Remember how God created humans from the soil.
Create something – art, music, poetry, food, crafts, etc. Consider how we are made in God’s image to be creative.
Other: __________________________________________
God, creator of all living things, you fashioned a world in which lands and waterways, planets and animals, together meet the needs of all that you made. We pray that such vitality may flourish around the globe. Bless those who work the soil and who manage animals. Uphold their towns and villages. Nurture bees and other pollinators. Protect farmlands and ranches from drought and flood. Free children from forced labour in the fields. Grant an economy that can sustain those families who treasure a rural life. Teach us how to share with everyone the benefits of each harvest, and accept our gratitude for all sustenance you provide, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen (All Creation Sings, 47)
…for the love of creation
1 Dennis Edwards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1iQCcnTiPY
2 FLC Earth Week 2024 email. Sent April 17, 2024.
3 https://www.brennaquinlan.com/
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April 14, 2024 – Third Sunday in Easter
You will find the video for last week’s worship service at the following link:https://youtu.be/WFi01l1wUIQ
PLEASE NOTE: Our guest speaker from last Sunday, Deborah McCracken from The Olive Branch for Children didn’t speak from a prepared text, but you can watch her message at the following YouTube link, https://youtu.be/WFi01l1wUIQ and you are invited to check out their website for more information about the mission and ministry of The Olive Branch for Children. https://www.theolivebranchforchildren.org/
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Engaging with the Story
Acts 3:1-10
As we follow the story of the early church as it’s recorded in Scripture, once again the Narrative Lectionary has skipped us over a very important story in order to keep things matched up with the church year. Acts 2 tells the story of Pentecost – of the coming of the Holy Spirit among the apostles – which we’ll jump back to hear in a few weeks’ time on Pentecost Sunday.
What’s important to know for today’s story (and in the coming weeks) is that the Holy Spirit has already come – as Jesus said she would – and is already moving among the apostles, enlivening the ministry of the early church, which – as today’s story shows – includes carrying on Jesus’ ministry of healing.
Peter and John meet a crippled man panhandling at the temple gate. They don’t have any money to give him. Instead, Peter offers a different gift. He raises the man up to walk. And to be clear that this healing comes not by his own power but by the power of Jesus, as he raises the man up, Peter invokes the name of Jesus Christ.
It’s hard sometimes to know what to do with these stories of miraculous healing. Especially when our own prayers for healing – for ourselves and for our loved ones – have not been answered in the way we hoped for. And yet, if healing is supposed to be a part of the church’s ministry, it’s important to think about what this means for us and our ministry.
One helpful starting place is to talk about the difference between curing and healing. Curing is when an illness or injury or impairment is eliminated. Healing, on the other hand, is about coming to a place of integrity or wholeness in response to an injury or disease. What this means is that it’s possible to be healed, even without a cure. And it’s possible to be cured of a condition without ever experiencing healing.
The way it helps me to think about it, is a cure is just about the body. Healing is about what happens in the heart, mind, and soul, and sometimes also the body. A cure is a one-time event; healing is a process.
In his ministry, Jesus’ healing often involved curing, but it was also always about restoring people to wholeness. And this is a really important distinction to make because it helps us remember that disabled people are already whole people. There are disabled folks who do long to be cured, and there are those who are content just as they are. Who know that they are not the ones in need of healing, but ableist attitudes and structures that need to be healed.
When we expand healing to be about more than physical conditions, we soon realize that we are all in need of healing. Each one of us need the gift of wholeness that only Jesus can offer because it’s impossible to go through this life without experiencing hurt or harm; without experiencing pain or suffering. Which is why our service today will include the order for healing. In just a moment you will be invited to come forward and receive a blessing and anointing.
As the intro in our hymnal states, the order for healing is not a replacement of the gifts of God that come through the scientific community, nor does it promise a cure. Rather, it’s a remembrance and celebration of “God’s presence with strength and comfort in time of suffering, God’s promise of wholeness and peace, and God’s love embodied in the community of faith.”1
I want to offer this for our community today because as we live into our vision statement of “realizing a healthier world through Jesus,” we too must recognize our own need for Jesus’ healing power.
Wholeness is a gift that is offered to us, so that in turn we can offer this gift to others. So like Peter, we can join in that ministry of raising people up. By using the resources we’ve been entrusted with to help our neighbours. By using our voices to advocate for equality and justice. By using our bodies to be present with people in pain – listening, encouraging, accompanying. And as we have received, to offer others the assurance of God’s presence in time of suffering, God’s promise of wholeness and peace, and God’s love embodied in the community of faith.
Whether you have a particular desire/request, or simply recognise a need within yourself for the healing power of the Spirit, you are invited to come.
Service continues with the order for healing (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, page 276).
1 Evangelical Lutheran Worship, 276.
Order for Healing:
P: Our Lord Jesus healed many as a sign of the reign of God come near and sent the disciples to continue this work of healing—with prayer, the laying on of hands, and anointing. In the name of Christ, the great healer and reconciler of the world, we now entrust to God all who are in need of healing.
Siblings in Christ, I invite you to come and receive a sign of healing and wholeness in the name of the triune God.
Those who wish to receive prayer and anointing are invited to come forward
Name , in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ,
be strengthened and filled with God’s grace,
that you may know the healing power of the Spirit.
Amen.
*From Sundays and Seasons.com. Copyright 2024 Augsburg Fortress.
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April 7, 2024 – Second Sunday in Easter
You will find the videos for the Holy Week & Easter Services at the following links:
Maundy Thursday: https://youtu.be/kzEW1qyfe9s
Good Friday: https://youtu.be/zVEBjVubv64
Easter Sunday: https://youtu.be/wxiYFPAV-yY
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A special welcome to Deborah McCracken who is our guest speaker today from The Olive Branch for Children.
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Guest Speaker: Deborah McCracken – The Olive Branch for Children
(Deborah doesn’t speak from a prepared text, so there is no sermon to share this week. You can watch her message at the following YouTube link, https://youtu.be/WFi01l1wUIQ , and you are invited to check out their website for more information about the mission and ministry of The Olive Branch for Children. https://www.theolivebranchforchildren.org/ )
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March 31, 2024 – Resurrection of Our Lord: Easter Day
You will find the video for March 24th, 2024, at the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/T-O7usoGp4g
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Engaging with the Story
Mark 16:1-8 – “Sharing Good News”
Endings matter. How a story ends makes a huge difference in how we feel about the whole thing. A good ending usually makes for a good story. And a good story with a bad ending can leave us feeling frustrated and unsatisfied.
One of the things that make for a good ending is whether acceptable answers have been provided to all the questions raised in the story. In other words, a good ending is one that ties up all the loose ends and doesn’t leave us hanging.
Now when it comes to Mark’s gospel, I think many of us would agree that his ending leaves us hanging.
“Overcome with terror and dread, the women fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” THE END.
It leaves so many questions unanswered. How do we know Jesus really was raised from the dead? Can we just take the young man’s word for it? How did the story get out if the women didn’t tell anyone what happened?
If the ending of Mark’s gospel feels a little unfinished to you, know that you’re in good company. At some point, new endings were actually written Mark’s gospel (and if you go home and pull out your Bible you’ll probably see either one or both of these endings in your version).
In an attempt to “fix” Mark’s “bad ending” a short ending and a long ending were added at some point; both versions attempt to tie up some of those loose ends by describing how Jesus did in fact appear to the disciples and sent them out to continue his ministry and mission in the world.
These endings may make the story seem more complete, but Biblical scholars are confident that the original version of Mark’s gospel didn’t include these verses. So if Mark ended his story with verse 8 on purpose, the big question of course is why? Why leave us hanging? Why end the greatest story ever told with fear and silence?
Mark’s ending may not be as satisfying as Luke’s story about Jesus appearing to two disciples on the road to Emmaus; or John’s story about Jesus having a fish fry on the beach with the disciples. But the truth is, but Mark’s ending fits perfectly with his gospel.
And to see why it fits perfectly with his gospel we need to go back to the very beginning. When we go all the way back to the start of Mark’s gospel we see that Mark introduces his gospel in this way: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1)
Taken on its own it sounds like a pretty basic introduction – but when we put it side by side with what seems like the unfinished ending, I think we can see something else happening.
You see, for Mark, his entire gospel is just the beginning of the good news – and it doesn’t have an ending because the story is not over yet. Mark writes this open-ended gospel that threatens to end in failure precisely to place the burden of responsibility for telling the good news squarely on our shoulders. Mark shows us the empty tomb, tells us that Jesus is risen, and then leaves the rest up to us. It turns out, Mark isn't terrible at endings; he's actually kind of brilliant.
By ending his account the way he does, he invites us into the story. He invites us to pick up where these women left off. He invites us to be the ones who go and tell that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, has been raised, and is going ahead to meet us, just as he promised. Mark’s loose ends draw us into the greatest story ever told, inviting us to be the ones who share the good news of how God transformed death into life.
We are the ones called to share how the risen Christ has breathed hope and life and love into our hearts; to share how the gift of faith has made a difference in our lives; to share how Christ gives us strength when we’re feeling weary and worn and afraid; to speak a word of hope and life into dark and hurting places – to those who desperately need to hear it. To be Christ’s hands and feet, bringing compassion and understanding and generosity and kindness and equality to our communities and the world.
Like the women, this will at times make us feel frightened and overwhelmed. At times we won’t feel we have the words or the courage to do justice to this powerful truth. And yet, we are the ones; it’s been left to us. And the hard truth is, if we don’t do it, who will?
It’s an awesome and wondrous and holy calling we’ve been invited into. And we don’t do it alone. For one, we are all in this together. And more importantly, we go with the Risen Christ before us, behind us, within us, giving us the courage, the strength, the words, the love, the compassion to share this good news.
In this way, the story carries on.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
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