November 2nd ~ Remembering Wise and Loving Saints, With Wise and Loving Actions

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Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18

Psalm 149

Ephesians 1:11-23

Luke 6:20-31

Sermon by Pastor Joel

If you are present in my house these days, you hear a lot of happy news. This is the side benefit of living with The Globe and Mail’s happiness reporter. But there is also a lot of talk about the state and definition of happiness. And on that front, Canada isn’t doing all that well. In the most recent standings in The World Happiness Report, we had a poor report, falling out of the top ten and placing 18th out of 134 countries. The World Happiness Report is based on an international survey that asks people around the world about trust, and community, and life satisfaction. But when you slice the numbers a different way, you suddenly see what’s driving that unhappiness. If you count only Canadians over 65, the country jumps right back up to 6th place. If you count only those under 30, we slide all the way down to 58th. And when researchers looked at how much happiness had changed among Canadian young people, we tumbled almost to the very bottom.

Young people are having a hard time, and we can see it. In our kids, trying to figure out what to study with AI. Or sending off resumes and never hearing anything back. Or not being able to afford a house. This week, I read about a new study that found one million Canadians now experience climate anxiety so severely they have trouble getting through their day – and anxiety at any level is highest among young people.

And yet, if you read the comments on The Globe story about unhappy findings, you will see all kinds of readers suggesting that young people are babies, or that everybody has it hard, or that, even more inexplicably, climate change does not exist. Scattered throughout are occasional notes of compassion. But the tone overall is nitpicking, defensive, and judgemental.

Is that anything like what we hear from Jesus today? I don’t want to be a downer – and this will turn around by the end, I promise you. But today is All Saints Sunday, when we remember the loved ones who died and what they mean to us and what we learned from them. The lessons I hold dear from the people I remember today are compassion, curiosity, and other-centredness. These were the people who reminded me that I wasn’t alone, that God loved me, that people loved me, and that community was the essence of life. If you are grieving today for someone in your life who died, I hope you are finding your laughter, as Jesus suggests, in the stories of those happy, comforting lessons.

Do we talk about those lessons enough? Do we remind ourselves of them when we need to? Jesus teaches us today that life is full of emotions that flip from one day to the next, that good fortune can follow bad, that pleasure can follow pain, and vice versa. Those who think they are on the top can fall to the bottom, and those at the bottom may find themselves at the top. Our enemies may suffer. They may also, with kindness, become our friends.

The inevitable fluctuations of life are not meant to frighten us. They are meant to bring us together, to reassure and unite us. Change comes for better or worse, and we get through it. We don’t lose the emotion that came before: it becomes part of us. We don’t grieve and then stop; that grief become part of who we are, how we feel and see the rest of life. To do that we need one another, to listen to and comfort us, to provide a deeper understanding, and to help us work through the more difficult moments of life. The neighbors of a community need this from one another. So do the citizens of a country, the members of generations.

And so collective unhappiness is a collective responsibility. We all share in it; we are all affected by it. The community of the wise and loving saints we remember today must be reflected here in wise and loving actions here – otherwise what is the point of remembering them at all?

In today’s gospel, Jesus, who loved a good parable, leaves us some of his most specific instructions: Love your enemy. Pray for those who hurt you. Turn the other cheek. Those ones are pretty tough. But even harder, perhaps are the next on the list: to be giving to anyone who asks, and most memorably, to do for others what you would want them to do for you.

This statement isn’t perfect, but it’s a good guide. If we are struggling and afraid of the future, what would we want to hear from our elders? I doubt judgement is high on that list. If we are old, and need help, what would we want to hear from those younger? I doubt scorn is up there. We would want to be loved, to look for a deeper understanding together, to see ourselves as one community.

We can start with what we want, but we cannot assume that the other person wants what we would want. A Boomer may not know what a Gen Z needs, if they have forgotten the memory of being 20. And a 20-something may not recognize the true needs of their grandparents, having never been old. That is where we must talk and ask questions and create community from a place of curiosity. Every person I remember today, whose wisdom I still seek even though they are no longer with me in the same way, taught me the power of a curious community. One day we will all be joined together. But until that day, let us be that community living with lives of complexity, with all the changing emotions, treating others as we want to be treated and then asking them what they need—seeing happiness not as an individual goal but as a collective one. I hope you have a wise Saint or two stored in your heart and saved in your memory, to guide you. Amen

October 26th ~ Reformation Sunday & Celebrating 130 Years with St John

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Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46

Romans 3:19-28

John 8:31-36

Sermon by Pastor Joel

When a congregation turns 130, it’s a little like standing on the bridge over the Rideau River and watching the water flow beneath you.

You see where the river bends — the calm pools, the rapids, the places where ice once clogged the current — and you realize it’s the same water, always moving, always renewing itself.

That’s St John’s story.

In 1895, a handful of German immigrants left St Paul’s Lutheran Church on King Edward Street, to build this wooden church, pinching materials from other job sites (this pulpit is built from three doors). They gathered for their first time in this church on Reformation Sunday to hear the very same readings you just heard in their own tongue and to sing the hymns of home and to baptise their newest infant member. They were bakers, carpenters, mothers with children on their knees, fathers still smelling of sawdust and coal dust. They probably never imagined a day when their church would worship in English, partner in refugee sponsorship with people beyond Europe, or host Zoom Bible studies with four other Lutheran churches in Ottawa that were born out of this place.

And yet the same river that began in their prayers keeps flowing through us — through every baptism, every confirmation class, every hymn sung in hope or grief, every pot of coffee poured in Ebinger Memorial Hall after worship.

Psalm 46 says, “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God.” That river is grace — and the people of this church have been standing in it for 130 years.

Jeremiah 31 gives us God’s promise: “I will make a new covenant…. I will write my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” It’s striking, isn’t it? God doesn’t mail a new rule-book; God performs heart surgery. This new covenant isn’t written on stone tablets, but on the living, beating hearts of people—so many people. I’ve been here for only 24 years and I couldn’t begin to name all the people who’ve lived out this covenant with their lives.

The Poulin Boys doing everything and anything that needed doing. The Wollenschlager clan running 4 generations of faithful service. Hilda Boehmer who had more fingers in pots than I could count. Her son Ted Mathesius who was the friendly, dog-loving Elmer Fudd of the neighbourhood and St John Ambassador. Frieda Schultz who quietly paid for the new roof on the Hall. Doug Clark, Jr. who spent more time on this property than he did on his own. Joan Poulin who would decide when the pastor’s robe needed cleaning. Herb Linke who could make anything look new with leftover paint cans of every colour.

Our longest running members are here with us today: Joyce Poulin who brought music to St John, Resurrection, her husband, and now her new retirement residence. And Dalton Poulin, who was in his 80s fixing a cold air vent alone in the church basement when he realized he probably shouldn’t be fixing stuff on his own anymore. Our little church choir that has never missed a beat. Bev Mathesius and Carol Christensen who have always been like church mice minding the everyday things that needed doing. And there are so many others, and names we don’t know, the ones who helped in the background, who were there whenever the pastor or the people called, including one person who, after learning about a difficult property situation, quietly handed over thousands of dollars without a tax receipt to solve the problem, giving money they’d been saving for years.

All of these people, and legions around and before them, did what they did because love and community and generosity were written on their hearts

Every act of kindness, every can of food shared at Partage Vanier, every time you’ve chosen forgiveness over frustration — that’s God’s handwriting showing through the life of St John.

Psalm 46 was Martin Luther’s anchor in stormy times. When plague swept Wittenberg, when political powers threatened to silence him, he sang: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble… Therefore we will not fear though the earth be moved.”

Church anniversaries remind us that the earth does move. The world around us has changed faster than our founders could have imagined — electric streetcars, two world wars, immigration waves, the Quiet Revolution, the internet, pandemics, climate change. Yet through every shaking, you discovered what the psalmist knew: God is in the midst of the city; she shall not be moved.

I’m told that during the 1940s, when young men from this congregation went overseas, the sanctuary lights were left burning until they returned. During different waves, when new German immigrants arrived in Ottawa with little English, St John opened its basement for language classes. During COVID, you put the God Pod in front of the altar to bring people safely together. Every time the ground trembled, you found God still holding you steady.

When Luther read Romans 3, he heard thunder in his soul: “They are now justified by God’s grace as a gift.” Luther spent years terrified that he wasn’t good enough — and then he discovered grace, the scandalous news that God’s love is not earned but given.

Grace was the spark that lit the Reformation, and it’s the same spark that keeps the mission of the church alive long after their founding members are gone.

A few decades ago, St John could have closed its doors when attendance dipped. In fact, I was told at a call committee meeting that I had a 50% chance of having a job after 3 years. Instead, you chose to open them wider. You sponsored refugees from war-torn countries. You became the second Reconciled-in-Christ congregation in the Eastern Synod under the direction of Bob Pierce. You started a community playgroup and children’s choir. With a heavy push from Heidi Geraets you sent offerings for a well in Liberia and then built a 10-room school house there. None of that was done to impress God — it was done because people already knew they were loved.

That’s the difference between religion and grace: religion says, “Change, and God will love you.” Grace says, “God loves you; now watch how that love changes you.”

In John 8, Jesus says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” And the crowd protests, “We’ve never been slaves to anyone.”

We might protest too — we who pride ourselves on being decent, law-abiding Canadians. But Jesus isn’t talking about Roman chains; he’s talking about the subtler slavery of fear, resentment, and self-righteousness.

Freedom, the way Christ sees it, is not the ability to do whatever we want. It’s the power to love even when we’re hurt, to serve even when no one notices, to live without pretending.

Herb Linke was days from death lying in a hospice bed when he said, “Pastor, after all these years I still can’t believe it’s free — all of it. I spent my life thinking I had to earn God’s love. Now I finally get it: it was mine all along.”

That’s the truth that sets us free.

Luther never meant for “Reformation” to be an anniversary on the calendar. He believed the church should always be reforming — semper reformanda — according to the Word and the Spirit.

If the Reformers once translated the Bible into the language of the people, perhaps today the Spirit is asking us to translate the Gospel into the language of a generation that speaks through podcasts and protests, climate marches and questions.

Reformation is what happens when a church asks, “Who is missing from our table?” and then pulls up more chairs.

It’s what happens when we realize that the Gospel is bigger than our comfort zones.

St John’s future won’t look exactly like its past, but change doesn’t have to be a loss; sometimes it’s a promise. The same Spirit who re-formed Luther’s church in the 1500s is re-forming ours today.

Let me tell you one more story.

15 years ago, Greta from our confirmation class was asked to sum up the Gospel in one sentence. She thought for a moment and said, “God never gives up — even on me.”

That’s it – 130 years of sermons, hymns, potluck suppers, and loving service outside these doors, distilled into four words: God never gives up.

That’s Jeremiah’s covenant. That’s Luther’s discovery. That’s the truth that makes us free.

And that’s the story we’re still telling — in our worship, our service, our welcome, our laughter, our transformational hope.

Anniversaries aren’t just for nostalgia; they’re for re-commitment.

The founders of St John built for their children. Now we are the founders trying to craft a viable expression of Progressive Lutheran Christianity for the future.

Ask yourselves: What does God want written on our hearts today? Where is the Spirit nudging us to cross boundaries, to rebuild trust, to share grace in new ways?

Perhaps it’s in caring for creation more intentionally. Maybe it’s mentoring young leaders. Perhaps it’s becoming an even bolder voice for justice in Ottawa — for housing, for reconciliation, for inclusion.

Whatever it is, the same God who began a good work in 1895 is not yet finished.

So be still and know. Know that the Lord of hosts is with us. Know that Christ’s grace is still enough. Know that the Spirit is still reforming hearts.

And when we leave this place today — when the cake has been cut and our bellies are full with schnitzel and red cabbage — remember that you are living letters of the covenant, walking testaments to a God who keeps creating something new from the flowing river of time, and never gives up. Amen

October 19th ~ Persist in Prayer and be Open to God's Answer

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Exodus 17:8-13

Psalm 121

2 Timothy 3:14—4:5

Luke 18:1-8

Sermon by Pastor Nelson

In our psalm today we said, “our help comes from the Lord,” and then at the end we said, “the Lord will watch over our going out and our coming in, for evermore.”  What do we mean by that?  The framers of the lectionary we used today, paired today’s selection from Exodus with Jesus’ parable of the widow and the unjust judge.

As always, the Hebrew scripture selected to accompany the gospel functions like an editorial comment.  In the Exodus story, Moses’ people succeeded in battle when they could see Moses holding up the staff of God, whether by his own strength or with a ‘little help from his friends.’  For me, I am again amazed how the texts from thousands of years ago speak to us today. Quite simply, “there is nothing new under the sun.”  When we meet the judge in today’s parable, we are quickly informed that the widow cannot appeal to the judge’s good side.  Why?  Because he does not have a good side!  [if that is not an explanation of Trump and his gang, I do not know what is.]

A letter to the editor of the globe and mail published on September 1, 2025, said this: “I am an American married to a Canadian, living in Canada.  I had trouble choosing sides- until now.  I was surprised and disappointed when my fellow Americans voted Donald Trump into office the first time.  I was shocked and angry when they voted him in again.  Now I only feel embarrassed and ashamed.  I am no longer ambivalent.  I am not troubled about choosing sides.  I choose Canada.”  That was actually written by a woman living in Victoria, BC.  I say, amen.

Just imagine our leaders facing Trump and then look at our biblical stories today.  The woman in our story faced “a judge who neither feared God nor had any respect for any human being.”  She became the water that dripped incessantly until something is worn away.  To understand this parable, we should pay careful attention to Luke’s editorial comment. This is a parable about praying always and about never giving up. It is important to recognize that those are two interrelated ideas. We must be constantly mindful of our relationship with God, and to persist in faith.  The woman is like a “squeaky wheel.”  The song I now mention was referring to love and marriage when it was written, it might be out of date, but I still like the words; “you cannot have one without the other.”  Yes, we need God and we need faith. The widow in this story represents the praying disciple, while the judge presides over injustice.  What is the widow to pray for?  For whom does Jesus tell us to pray for?  It is interesting but I do not think the gospel of Luke has Jesus saying, “pray for one another.”  Instead, Jesus says, “pray for those who mistreat you.” [Luke 6:28] Think about that!  Yes, Jesus did pray for peter but what he said was, “I have prayed that your faith may not fail.” [Luke 22:32] The implication seems to be that in a situation of seemingly interminable injustice, especially when we have no power to change it, we are called to pray for those who have the power, as well as for the perpetrators.

Now I have to be honest, praying for Trump and his gang of thugs, just goes against my very being.  But in this gospel story we have this woman who keeps praying.  No magic wand, she just kept pestering the judge who finally ruled on her behalf, not for any good reason, but because his discomfort at her persistence overpowered his laziness and prejudice that had allowed him to ignore her in the first place. She does not do it in private.  The widow’s persistence is obvious to the judge.  Someone said, she is like the energizer bunny.  She just keeps coming and coming with her demand for justice.  Her circumstances were such that she would probably die if she did not get her demands met.  The judge would not move for love of God or human respect, so what did the widow get?  Yes, this is a story of salvation, but not as it appears at first glance.  Yes, the widow finally got her due, but in the process, you see, she also saved the judge.  In the end the widow made it easier for the judge to do the right thing.  Is this what Carney is doing with Trump?  In spite of what everyone knew and said about the judge, the widow would not stop believing that God can transform hearts.  Even the judge in the story.  She refused to give in to the idea that the judge would never change. Like Moses, holding up his staff, she refused to give up.

There was no earthly reason to expect success in either case, but if there had been, she would not have had to pray and Moses would not have had to hold up his staff.  You see, if we can get beyond our own sophistication we can laugh at both stories.  Jesus’ last remark in our story was designed to bring the disciples up short.  Jesus’ last remark in our story should bring us up short.  “When the son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  Are either of these stories factual?  Who knows and probably more importantly who cares?  What is then the question being addressed to us by these stories?  Do we really believe God’s kingdom is germinating among us, even now in 2025?  Then secondly, how far are we willing to cultivate the story.  Are we faithful enough to pray for those who mistreat us and even more importantly, to pray for someone like a Trump who mistreats the world and promotes injustice?  Do we have or desire to have the kind of faith that leads us to persist as II Timothy suggests, whether it is convenient or inconvenient?

Timothy is told to be persistent whether it is favourable or unfavourable.  Timothy was told to convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.  The writer of the second lesson wants Timothy, wants us, to do everything possible to encourage ourselves and others to live the gospel.  The widow at the judge’s door got what she needed because she would not stop.  She shook the judge out of his apathy.  She did not quit until, in desperation, the judge did something righteous.  The judge may have not changed himself deeply, but it did bring him to do at least one thing.  As we look at our political situation, at the injustice and violence that plagues our countries and the world, is there any earthly reason to believe that people and countries can change?  Well, that is precisely why our widow friend is held up to us as an example.  Prayer will awaken our memory of God and remind us that God’s reign does not operate on the rules of the world.  Prayer opens us to the grace to overcome the inevitable disillusionments we meet in life.  Yes, prayer can open us to the inspirations that will keep us going just like the energizer bunny, until justice reigns.

Do we find answers in asking God to transform cruel and dictatorial people into good, loving individuals?  If so, just how do we expect God to do it?  If God could intervene like that, why do we see all the suffering we see?  Let us consider the idea that Jesus was talking from his experience of trying to convince the dubious and to hearten people who thought his message would cost them too much.  Jesus’ most basic prayer was, “Your will be done.”  That followed what his mother had taught him in her prayer, “let it happen to/through me according to Your will.”  We do not look for magic in our prayers.  When we long for the right outcomes in our world, sincere prayer needs to spring from a longing for God’s will, combined with our readiness to carry it out.  Our story today from Exodus backs up the gospel for today.  The people had escaped pharaoh, and God had provided them with manna and water.  But now they were being attacked again.  Moses orders Joshua to pick out a group who could meet the Amalekites on their own terms.  While Joshua and company were on the battlefield, Moses would be standing in the place of God watching it all happen.  The staff would be symbolizing God’s saving power.  This is similar to the earlier Exodus story.  Again, how factual are these stories?  Probably not at all, but what the message is, that their future, our future, was/is unpredictable in every detail except that the struggle to get their/our will shall always needs God’s help.  The story of Israel’s triumphs over their enemies is never a case of getting God to do our will.  Scripture never says, “God helps those who help themselves.”

This story and many similar ones is about the struggle we enter into in collaborating with God to bring God’s plans to fruition.  We use these scriptures to help us see that we, like the Israelites, can be certain that God’s grace and strength is with us as long as our hearts are set on the mission to which we have been called.  We often say and hear, “hang in there.”  Today’s readings remind us that the call to be persistent in prayer is not new. The Israelites needed to hear it, and the disciples were told by Jesus to “pray always.”  We do not need endless harangues, or sophisticated words or lofty arguments.  The God of mercy does hear us.  Our challenge is to be open to God’s answer.  When we long for the right outcomes in our world, sincere prayer needs to spring from a longing for God’s will, combined with our readiness to carry it out.  Now let us be clear, persistence in generous prayer will cost us our lives.  The good news is?  There is no better way to spend one’s life.  “semper fi”, “always faithful.”  God is persistent in planting good desires in us. 

Let us be ever more persistent in offering ourselves to carry out God’s loving will. 

Ask the complicated questions.

Do not fear to be found out,

For our God makes strong our weakness,

Forging faith in fires of doubt.

Seek the disconcerting answers,

Follow where the spirit blows,

Test competing truths for wisdom,

For in tension new life grows.

Knock on doors of new ideas,

Test assumptions long grown stale,

For Christ calls from shores of wonder,

Daring us to try and fail.

For in struggle we discover

Truth both simple and profound,

In the knocking, asking, seeking,

We are opened, answered, found.

[ACS 1005]

Merciful God, we are grateful that You have always heard the prayers of your people.  Show us how to trust in you when we grow impatient, and grant us the gift of persistence.  We humbly “pray” as you say, “always.” Amen