Jan 11 ~ Baptism of Our Lord / God Names Us Beloved Before Anything Else

Isaiah 42:1-9

Psalm 29

Acts 10:34-43

Matthew 3:13-17

Sermon by Joel Crouse

This week we witnessed some difficult events, First, there was the invasion of Venezuela by the United States – and the President didn’t even pretend that the key motivation was news. Despite María Corina Machado, the opposition leader winning 70 per cent of the vote in the last election and the Nobel Peace Prize last year, the White House has also alluded to her being an unsuitable leader for the country. The United States action has also made other oil -based countries in the region nervous about what might come next.

And then in Minneapolis, an American mom was shot and killed by an Immigration Enforcement officer, even though she was not the target of any investigation. Immediately the White House called it an act of self defence; a position that the video itself calls seriously into question and that the mayor of the city has soundly disputed.

Not a particularly auspicious beginning for 2026.

What has followed are all sorts of assumptions and misinformation about the people involved. But that’s what happens these days: we are offered caricatures of people, depending on which side you take, in an effort to see the human in the story, and recognize the nuance.

It happens to us too, so often that maybe we don’t even notice. This week, I was filling out an online form—one of those services that promise to make life smoother—and before I’d even finished typing, the system started guessing who I was. It auto-filled my name. It suggested my address. It offered “recommended answers.” It pulled up a profile. And for a moment it felt convenient… until it didn’t. Because underneath the convenience was a quiet, unsettling message: “We already know what kind of person you are.” That’s normal now, isn’t it? We live in a time when human beings are constantly being summarized. By metrics and categories. By comment sections. By other people’s versions of us. By our voice in someone else’s story. Even by tools that can reduce a whole human being to a handful of predictive guesses.

And not only do we do it to others; we internalize those outside categories for ourselves. We start wearing the names we’ve been given -- reliable, difficult, too much, not enough, strong, a mess, a disappointment—as if they’re stitched into us. We allow them to define our actions. We let them explain us to ourselves – and others.

That is why this day matters. The Baptism of our Lord is not a sentimental scene to move past quickly. It is a moment when the deepest name is spoken out loud, when heaven insists on naming someone before the world gets its hands on them.

Jesus comes to the Jordan. John is there, doing what he’s been called to do -- calling people to repentance, washing them in the river, preparing them. And then Jesus steps forward. John hesitates, because even John can sense that something here is backwards. John is the one who needs cleansing, the one who should be receiving -- not giving. John tries to stop Jesus.

But Jesus says, in effect, “Let it happen.” Not because he’s confused about who he is, but because he knows what he’s doing. “It is proper for us,” he says, “to fulfill all righteousness.” And he goes down into the water.

And then everything opens. The heavens open. The Spirit comes down like a dove. And a voice speaks: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

It’s easy to hear that voice as a kind of divine compliment, as if God is saying, “Good job.” But listen more closely. This voice comes before Jesus has done anything the world would recognize as success. Before a single miracle. Before the Sermon on the Mount. Before crowds gather. Before conflict begins. Before the cross.

God speaks first. God names first. Beloved. That is the word that steadies everything that follows. It is the name underneath the story. It’s the name that will have to hold when the other names come—when people call Jesus a threat, a blasphemer, a troublemaker, a fraud. “Beloved” is the name that doesn’t change when the weather changes.

Jesus is an example to us of knowing who we are – of facing all that is true inside of us, and of not letting someone else dictate that. Even Jesus, in his humanity, comes to question that he is Beloved, right at the end – as all of us do at some point in our lives.

But we are reminded in our reading that this is how he was named – above and before all of us.

That’s why, for me, the Old Testament reading matters so much alongside the Gospel. Isaiah gives us this portrait of God’s servant—this quiet, stubborn, justice-bearing figure. “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.” And then those lines that land like a hand placed gently on the shoulder: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.”

This is not the voice of a God who crushes what is fragile. This is not the voice of a God who labels people by their weakness and then dismisses them. This is not a God who stereotypes people. This is the God who delights. The God who upholds. The God who sees potential.

But we are not just watching Jesus get named. We are hearing what baptism does. We are hearing what God is like, and what God insists on saying. None of this erases our differences; it tells the truth about our worth. At the font, God does not say, “You are acceptable if you get your act together.” God does not say, “You are valuable if you prove it.” God does not say, “You are loved once you’re improved.” We are God’s people—loved for who we are right here and now.

The labels we carry can be heavy. Some of them were put on us by others. Some of them were written ourselves, quietly, over many years, and now we can hardly imagine not believing them. The problem with labels is that they start to feel like facts. They start to feel like identity.

These days, the naming comes fast. It comes through screens and systems. It comes through comparison. It comes through the little story we tell ourselves when we’re alone in the car or lying awake at night. It comes through that familiar internal voice that can be so sure of our limits. And when we do this to ourselves, we are quick to do it to others. If we accept the narrative that people say about us, why isn’t that same narrative true of people we don’t even know? This leads to a failure to think critically, with all the cost and complacency that results.

So maybe this is the invitation of this day. Not to try harder to become someone worthy. Not to scramble to fix the brand. Not to polish the image. But to listen again, as if we were standing, dripping at the edge of the river, as if Heaven were speaking over us what we too easily forgot:

“You are mine. You are loved. You are not up for debate.”

For when we believe we are beloved, we can tell the truth. We can risk kindness. We can become the kind of person Isaiah describes—someone who doesn’t break bruised reeds, someone who protects the dimly burning wick. Protected, trusted and loved, we can gain the strength to speak up and out, when wrong happens in the world – the ultimate path that our baptism, the gospel, and the ministry of Jesus calls us to walk. Amen

Jan 4 ~ 2nd Sunday of Christmas/ A Story About Light

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Psalm 147:12-20

Ephesians 1:3-14

John 1:[1-9] 10-18 

Sermon by Bishop Cindy

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ! And thank you to Pastor Joel for inviting me to share the gospel with you today.

Let me begin by wishing you all a Happy New Year! Even while the church remains in the season of Christmas, the world has moved on to New Year’s greetings and turning the page on 2025. If your house is like mine, the decorations have faded into the background. The lights and candles are extinguished. Maybe the Christmas tree is already out on the curb. The manger scene is dusty or packed away. And our attention turns to going back to school tomorrow, back to work after a few days off, back to our regularly scheduled programming. But here in the church we’re still in the Christmas season.

On Christmas eve and Christmas day we rightly focused our attention on the manger scene. At the center of our Christmas is the baby in the manger, heralded by angels, worshipped by shepherds, illuminated by a star, the promise that God is with us, born among us.

But on this second Sunday of Christmas, the evangelist John invites us to lift our eyes, to turn our gaze away from the manger, to look back to the foundation of the earth and into the fullness of time where God is and has always been with us in grace and truth.

“In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him,

and without him not one thing came into being.

What has come into being in him was life,

and the life was the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness did not overcome it.”

These words from John send shivers down my spine. They evoke images of space from the Hubble Telescope, vast galaxies in the heavens, nebula shining against the backdrop of darkest space. And the picture of earth as seen from space, a blue and green ball spinning in the light of the sun.

Looked at another way, John paints a picture that could just as well be seen through an electron microscope, the cells of organisms from earthworms to elephants, cells of every living thing dividing and forming up into tissue, and bone, and organs, growing together to form a living being, like you and me.

In the beginning was God’s Word, making light and life, and behold it was very good.

From this cosmic perspective our own lives may seem small and insignificant. Our day-to-day existence is a tiny blip in time, a blink of the eye in the grand scheme of time and space. The struggles we face to make our way in the world, to make a living, to make a family, to make a difference in our world… do they really matter to the God who made heaven and earth? And will they matter in the fullness of time?

John the Baptist thought it mattered. John the Baptist thought it mattered so much that he devoted his life to testifying to the light coming into the world. He forsook family and the comforts of home to go out to the desert to meet people who were seeking meaning, people who wanted their own lives to mean something. And so, John, in his wild ways, pointed them to one coming after him, who would bear the light of God. Light that would shine meaning on their existence.

During his teaching ministry, Jesus taught his followers about how much their life means. Jesus told his followers that God numbers each and every hair on each and every head. Science teaches that every one of us is made unique. Consider our fingerprints, so personal that they can identify who we are when we leave our mark behind. Look at the eyes of the person beside you. Everyone with a different color – blue, brown, grey, green – but more so, that colored part, the iris, has its own pattern, enough to make a biometric signature that can unlock a door.

But that’s only biology. Think of the patterns of experience that make up each life. Parentage, the place were born, schooling, the people who love us, the nurture we receive, the opportunities for travel, work and leisure. Who we are and who we become is a story unique to every individual. It’s like a spark of light within us. When it’s nurtured, fed, tended, that spark of light grows into the person we become.

And in the mind of God, by the Word of God, from the foundation of the world, there was light and life. And in time, the light of God, the Word became flesh and lived among us. God came down from the heavens, and up from the smallest building block of life, to take on human life, with every messy nuance that life includes. God’s own Son came into the world bearing God’s own glory and conferring God’s own grace to all who will receive it.

In Jesus, God experiences all of human life, from birth through the growing pains of childhood. Through the ministry of Jesus, God knows the joy and frailty of human relationships. Through the life of Jesus, God knows the uncertainty we feel when we aren’t sure which way to go. And in Jesus, God experiences the agony of suffering and the finality of death.

And when God takes on human form, God blesses all humankind with the power to become God’s own children, sisters and brothers of Jesus, siblings of one another. We are able to know God in grace and truth because we are God’s children. And the spark of light within us is nurtured as we grow in faith and love.

Through our relationship to Jesus, we receive grace upon grace that fuels that spark of light until we are like beacons in the world, shining the light of God’s love into the dark places we encounter. We don’t have to go out into the desert like John the Baptist. We don’t have to paint amazing word pictures like the evangelist John to let our light shine. We have only to be the people God made us to be, children of God, children of the light, shining hope and justice and kindness and love through our daily lives.

What else can it be but the light of God shining when our congregations gather food and mittens and furniture and funds to help people in need? What else can it be but God’s light that shines through the music of our liturgy, the preaching of our pastor and the hospitality of all who welcome others and feed us in this place? It’s clearly God’s light that shines in advocacy for creation, for peace in our world, for shelter for the unhoused, for care for those who cannot care for themselves. And in our own homes and communities and workplaces and schools, we continue to be beacons of light when we practice kindness in our everyday encounters.

As we begin a new year in God’s grace, we pray for light in our world and light in our lives. We pray that the darkness we may have experienced in 2025 will be lightened and that the new year will be one of good health, joy and peace for each of us, for those we love, and for our world.

May God make it so. Amen

Dec 28 ~ 1st Sunday of Christmas / Where Have You Heard an Angel Speaking to You?

Isaiah 63:7-9  

Psalm 148  

Hebrews 2:10-18  

Matthew 2:13-23  

Sermon by Pastor Joel

A few weeks ago, I happened across a story I read, while preparing my sermons for Christmas. It was an experience shared by a reader in the New York Times, seeking advice. 

At a party, the writer observed a nasty exchange between two children, a 12-year-old boy and a younger girl, around 8. The boy had taunted the girl, who was Latina, saying, “You better pack your bags. Cause Donald Trump is going to send you home.” The girl in tears went to her mother, who confronted the hosts, who then asked their son. He denied that he had said anything. And with the classic he-said, she-said, nothing was resolved – the liar wasn’t chastised, and the victim’s voice went silent.

The reader explained, she said nothing. She didn’t intervene. She didn’t want to make a conflict between children into the centerpiece of a party. So she went home, having stayed silent, and yet wrestling with it enough that she wrote to a stranger to ask if she had done the right thing. (And let’s be honest: usually when we are asking that question, we are hoping to be absolved of our guilt.) 

So what would you have said? What would you have done?

This morning in our gospel, we hear the angels who came to deliver advice and warning to Joseph. The first angel appears to warn Joseph that Herod is looking for Jesus -  Mary and Joseph pick up and flee to safety, and barely escape Herod’s horrific atrocity – so fearful is he of Jesus, still a baby, that he orders the massacre of children. A second angel appears and tells Joseph to move again. And finally a third. The family finally lands in Nazareth where they stay. 

The angels that spoke to Joseph were not telling him anything he wanted to hear. The last thing I imagine he wanted to do was uproot his family – again – and take another trip to a strange place. All through the Bible, we are presented with examples of angels – serving as the bearer of news, usually the kind that unsettles the person receiving it, and forces them into action. The angels are the divine engines of the Christmas story: telling Mary how much life is about to change, urging Joseph to stand by her, pushing the shepherds out of their comfort zone. The angels are the voice that tells each of them to act when they might have stood waiting on the sidelines. They are the voice of challenge and change, neither of which are always comfortable or easy. They tell us to open our eyes and prepare for what is coming. 

We have gotten away from talking about angels. They are the pretty shape of ornaments. They appear on Christmas cards. But they somehow seem too fantastical, and maybe a little hokey for these modern times. We call people angels when they do good, when they act with kindness. But if somebody told you that they were hearing the voices of angels, you would probably tell them to see a doctor. 

But is it really true that you have never heard the voice of angel, a messenger of your faith speaking to you? Have you never heard a voice that said – Speak up! Or Wake up! Or Get up! I bet you have. I know I have.

Here is the part I left out of that writer’s story: She wrote in seeking advice five years ago. Five years - that’s before the pandemic. Before the lockdowns. Before the trade war. And yet, that letter could have been written exactly the same today. In the United States, the rhetoric and racism around immigration has worsened, become more dangerous, more violent: university students walking to class are being taken aggressively into custody, even Canadians are landing in detention. What did silence for the sake of momentary peace at parties, between neighors, in our advocacy for human rights change five years ago? We see for ourselves: it changed nothing. 

Have we even needed out better angels more than right now? Right-wing, anti-democracy rhetoric is only getting louder. Lies are presented as truth. The world feels thrust back to a time when racists could be outspoken, when tyrants rule the day, when honorable values of tolerance and justice are being erodes, when the good order - much of it created out of Judeo-Christian principles and ethics - seems to be collapsing into chaos. We could use a few angels to blast us with a trumpet or two and remind us to stay awake.

In the case of the advice-seeker, I went back and looked up the response. She was told, categorically, that she had failed herself, the children and society by staying silent. She has passed on her responsibility as a bystander, to stand by the victim, and to teach the bully. She was advised to call both sets of parents and report what she had seen, in the hope that reparations might follow. 

She was, in effect, chastised for not hearing the angel when she should have. At least, however, she was told, she could still hear the angel enough to have been bothered by her failure to act.

We will all end up in her situation someday; life is inevitably filled with these moments, where we bear witness to unkindness and injustice and must decide what to do about. Maybe, when that has happened, you heard your inner angel and acted. And maybe you chose to pretend you didn’t hear that better angel. Maybe you will act in the future. Maybe you won’t.

But our second lesson reminds us of the most important teaching of Christmas. Jesus didn’t come to earth to rub our nose in our failing. He wasn’t about final judgements, and he didn’t even spend a lot of time on sin – the church of history has done that work for him.

As we are reminded in our reading, Jesus came not to help angels, but to the descendants of Abraham. That is – us. “Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service to God.” 

Because Jesus was also tested, he can understand when we are tested. Jesus came to understand people by living among people, by hearing their complaints and concerns, and by experiencing those same complaints and concerns. 

asks that we see and listen to the little girl in the story, received the wound. But also see and listen to the little boy in the story, who wielded his words like weapons. And the to ask: how can we with our own actions and choices, fill the space between them with love and kindness and understanding so that they might cross? In this way, we are not only to listen to our inner angel, Jesus sets the example of listening to each other.

Wake up, angels said to Mary and the Shepherds and Joseph. Wake up, the angel says to us. 

Wake up so we can be kind when we need to be. So we can be strong when we have to be. Wake up so we can hear the voice of God. 

Amen