Jan 18 ~ Faith is the Courage to Stay Human when the World Pressures Us Not to

Isaiah 49:1-7  

Psalm 40:1-11

1 Corinthians 1:1-9  

John 1:29-42  

Sermon by Joel Crouse

What are we looking for?

That is the question Jesus asks the two disciples who begin to follow him. It is a question that feels almost too heavy this week — because we do know what we are looking AT in the world right now: deep fear, deep division, and the creeping sense that something powerful and unaccountable has been unleashed.

We know a 37-year-old woman, Renee Nicole Good, was tragically shot and killed by an ICE agent. A video captured what happened, and yet the story told by those in power defies what our own eyes can see. The stories have continued – people being hauled out of cars, guns pointed at protestors, threats of invasions, and actual invasions of sovereign nations as if they were part of a map on a Risk gameboard. We see the resistance to this increasing random violence, the blasting whistles, and the crowds on the streets, and we wonder if it will be enough or if it is already too late. Watching from across the border, we weep for our neighbors, ourselves, and the world.

Across social media and in conversations, people express fear — fear of unchecked power, fear of militarized law enforcement, fear that no one is accountable when someone’s life is taken. This is the lingering fear of not knowing where things are going, or whether anyone can slow them down.  This week I sat with one of our elderly members who, with seasoned fear in her eyes said, “Pastor, it’s happening again”.

So, what does the gospel have to say to this kind of fear?

One of the quiet lies we sometimes believe is that faith should make us certain. Certain about outcomes. Certain about who is right. Certain that things will work out.

But the gospel doesn’t begin with certainty. It begins with people who don’t know. John says, “I myself did not know him.” The disciples don’t truly know who they are following when they decide to follow. They don’t yet know what kind of Messiah Jesus will be. They don’t know where this road leads.

They only know that something in them says: “Pay attention.” And that matters, because fear often comes from the belief that if we don’t have answers, we have failed. The gospel tells a different story: uncertainty is not the opposite of faith. Sometimes it is the beginning of it.

Jesus does not respond to uncertainty with instructions or guarantees. He responds with presence. “Come and see,” he says. “Stay with me. Walk with me. Learn with me. Pay attention to what unfolds.”

While our fear is uncomfortable, it also tells the truth about who we are.

Of course, some of the fear we are experiencing right now is for ourselves, and what it will mean for our lives. But we are also afraid because we care about human dignity.  We recognize when power goes unchecked.  And because we know, deep down, how fragile justice and freedom can be.  This kind of Fear isn’t always something to get rid of. It is a voice to heed.

In our first lesson, Isaiah gives voice to a people who feel exhausted and ineffective.  “I have labored in vain,” the servant says. That is the voice of activists who feel unheard. Of citizens who protest and vote and still feel powerless. Of people who wonder whether kindness and restraint still matter in a world that seems to reward cruelty.  And God’s response to Isaiah is not to try harder, or to chastise him for being week. God says: You are meant to be light.  

Paul, writing to the deeply imperfect church in Corinth, does something similar. He does not start by scolding them. He starts with gratitude. “I give thanks to my God always for you,” he says. Even knowing their divisions, their egos, their conflicts. He reminds them that God is faithful—that they are not lacking in any gift needed to live out the gospel in their own complicated time.

That matters, because one of the quiet temptations in times like this is despair disguised as realism. The belief that the problems are too big, the systems too entrenched, the divisions too deep—and that our small acts of faithfulness cannot possibly matter. But the gospel never asks us to save the world. It asks us to follow and do our best.

What are you looking for?” Jesus asks.  If we are honest, many of us are looking for relief. For safety. For assurance that kindness is not foolish. For proof that hope is not naïve. The answer the gospel offers is not certainty—but presence.  And our presence in the world matters.  How can we show it when we leave this place today for an uncertain world? Surely, we do not let fear make us cruel or silent or indifferent or cynical.  Instead, we might bear one another’s burdens. When we hear stories of fear — whatever that fear is for our neighbour— we do not turn away. We stay present with them.

We seek justice with humility and courage.  Advocate for transparency, accountability, and dignity for every human being. Speak truth to power, not out of anger, but the way Jesus did: listening more than shouting,  refusing language that dehumanizes other people.  Having hard conversations, rooted in compassion. 

And we may even try to live out that baptismal promise we talked about last week. “We are called to life in community…to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” That is not a vague ideal. It is a daily practice of compassion and courage.  It requires showing up, when the path is uncertain.

Faith does not give us control; It gives us courage to stay human when the world pressures us not to be.  The gospel today does not end with certainty. It ends with relationship: One person tells another, “Come and see.”  And in following, they call others to join.

And sometimes that is how hope starts: not with power and perfect answers, but with presence and faith.  Because we are not asked to fix the world alone. We are asked to witness — to point, as John did, especially in these fearful times, toward a way of being that chooses life, dignity, and love.  Amen

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