Dec 21 ~ On the Threshold of Fear, Faith is Freedom / 4th Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 7:10-16

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

Romans 1:1-7

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon by Pastor Joel

Recently we have been hearing the kind of headline that makes your stomach drop. Reports out of Sydney have described a deadly attack at a public Chanukah celebration at Bondi Beach—an evening that began with families gathering for light and song but ended in terror. And then, almost as moving as the tragedy itself, were the responses closer to home: rabbis and communities in Canada saying, in effect, we will keep gathering; we will keep lighting candles; we will not give in to fear—choosing light over darkness, even while grieving. 

We all know this kind of fear. Maybe not from that exact event, and maybe not from violence at our own doorstep, but we know the fear of being confronted by the unknown—of realizing how quickly “normal” can fracture. To be human is to learn to live with uncertainty. 

No one could know this kind of fear better than the woman behind today’s gospel. Mary’s situation could not be worse. In her world, she lives under layers of vulnerability and powerlessness. And now she is pregnant. And not only pregnant, but pregnant in a way that will invite suspicion, shame, and danger.

On top of all of this, she is confronted with news that will change everything. Not only does she have to tell Joseph that she is pregnant—knowing very well that he knows he is not the father—but she also has to speak words that sound impossible: that she was “found with child from the Holy Spirit.” Not an easy thing to say. Not an easy thing to hear. And it will no doubt change the direction of her life.

Joseph’s response is crucial. He could have reacted severely to Mary’s apparent unfaithfulness -- a reaction that could have led to her ruin. According to the law and the customs of the time, Joseph had the right to divorce her, and Mary could have faced public punishment and even death.

So here they are: two people caught in a moment of uncertainty. And anxiety. One that requires a time-sensitive response. Joseph likely ready to dismiss Mary quietly, Mary trapped by circumstances she cannot control. Both worried about the shame of public disgrace. Both struck by anxiety over a radical change in their lives. Both facing the uncertainty of standing on the threshold of a new life.

And then something amazing happens. God breaks into the situation and says: “Do not be afraid.” It is revealed to Joseph -- and even more profoundly in Luke’s telling, to Mary -- that God is with them.

This is the hinge point of our gospel lesson today. It is not about the mechanics of how it happened, or the arguments that try to pin down the mystery. The focal point is faith—and what faith does to a life on the edge of fear. Into this situation comes good news: that God has broken into our world, and the message is no longer one of fear, but of rejoicing.

In a sermon Martin Luther wrote on this text, he said that the three wonders of Christmas are that God became human, a virgin gave birth, and Mary believed—and that the greatest of these is that Mary believed. Mary and Joseph stood on the threshold of fear and change, and they were freed by faith.

People throughout the story of our faith -- from Abraham in Genesis to the shepherds in Luke, to John in Revelation -- were confronted by fear. And to each of them God’s response was the same: do not be afraid. As soon as they sensed that God accepted them and loved them, their fear subsided. God had given them freedom.

And that story isn’t over. It continues in each one of us. God seeks to give us the same freedom. We, too, stand on the threshold of new things—in our lives and in our world. We want to believe that our story—the story of a creator God, a loving and forgiving and redeeming God, a sanctifying and nurturing God—can still speak through each one of us. Even -- and especially -- in times of uncertainty.

When we sing in our sending hymn for today, “O come, O Wisdom from on high, embracing all things far and nigh: in strength and beauty come and stay; teach us your will and guide our way,” we are announcing our belief that God’s story in Jesus still has meaning and relevance and purpose.

And that is why those words from the news this past week landed so heavily: people who had every reason to retreat, to hide, to cancel, to go silent -- choosing instead to gather, to light candles, to sing, to say: we will not be ruled by terror; we will choose light. 

Because here is the truth: standing on the threshold of fear, we always have choices. We can meet fear with fear—tighten our fists, harden our hearts, close our doors, narrow our compassion. Or we can meet fear with faith—not naive faith that pretends nothing hurts, but courageous faith that refuses to let the worst moment define the next moment.

That kind of response does not come from binge-watching crime shows or doom-scrolling headlines. It comes from people like Mary and Joseph. It comes from the meaningful and relevant story of our faith—this persistent, stubborn message that, when we are most afraid, God speaks the words we most need: “Do not be afraid.”

We are gathered here today to tell and to hear a story—the story of God breaking into human history and into human lives. By coming together, we are saying that this story gives meaning to our lives and has purpose for our present and our future. We are saying that this story needs to be shared with others. We tell it in song, in laughter, in tears, in words and in actions.

For us today, it is told in the promise wrapped inside this gospel: Emmanuel—God with us. God with us in fear. God with us in uncertainty. God with us in shame and danger and disruption. God with us when the world shakes. God with us when we are tempted to retreat. God with us—calling us not to be afraid of the barriers and impediments to participating in the reign of God. God with us—calling us to do miracles of courage and love.

Is not our life of faith itself a miracle—a sign of what is yet to come? As we live in God’s grace, in openness to God’s forgiveness and love, we become a sign for others. Is not our living—no matter how small it may seem—part of the network of communication God is spreading across the face of the earth? That we should live by grace. That we should show love. That we should come with the words “fear not” to lives closed in on themselves, barricaded by fear and anxiety, trapped by anger and doubt.

In the Bible, the message “Fear not” is heard over 600 times—more than enough for each day of the year. Enough for each day we wake up to headlines that unsettle us. Enough for each day we stand on the threshold of change.

Do not be afraid. Rejoice in the gift God gives us this Advent: not the promise that nothing will ever go wrong, but the deeper promise that God will not leave us alone when it does. 

Amen

Dec 14 ~ We Hear the Gospel More Clearly When We Hear Different People Deliver its Message / 3Rd Sunday of Advent

Due to the Youth Christmas Pageant, there is only the printed version of Pastor Joel's sermon this week.

Isaiah 35:1-10

Psalm 146:5-10

James 5:7-10

Matthew 11:2-11

Sermon by Pastor Joel

Think back to a moment this week, when you saw someone and instantly decided you knew their story. Maybe it was the brusque young woman in line in the grocery story, or the teenager with purple hair behind the cash at the gas station, or the dirty-looking guy at the Dollar Store. Maybe you were the one whose story was being written by some stranger and you didn’t even know it. Those of us who are white, sitting here in the pews, may never really experience this. But there is a reason why Black Canadian mothers warn their kids to be extra careful when shopping or driving; they worry about the story being written before anyone even asks their son or daughter a question.

Our brains can’t help it: we are guilty of unconscious bias, we remember the details we heard more recently, we are influenced by falsehoods presented as facts. Our brains naturally want to categorize. Don’t we learn that as young children? To sort the red blocks from the blue? The circles from the squares? The very way we learn is by dividing items up by difference. Is there any wonder that we also do it with people?

The danger of the stereotype is our gospel lesson this morning, presented to us by the questions that Jesus poses to the crowd about John the Baptist. John is in prison, and he has heard about Jesus; he sends a message to find out if it is true. Jesus sent back word to let him know of the miracles and healing he is performing, that what John predicted is coming true. “And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me,” Jesus concludes in his message to John.

But then Jesus turns his attention to the crowd, asking them specifically about John himself: What did you go out to see in the wilderness?  A reed that sways in the wind? Did you think that John was someone who would abandon his belief, or reject his own values when his life was in danger?  We can imagine the crowd shaking their heads to say “no”, because Jesus asks another question: Then what did you go out to see? Someone in fancy robes who lives in a kingdom?  In fact, Jesus says, the crowd met a prophet. Whether they thought John fit the image of a prophet or not, whether he was what they expected to find, Jesus is saying that John wasn’t only A prophet; he was THE prophet.

So much of Advent and Christmas is about challenging our stereotypes. In this case, the one who paved the path for Jesus was not an educated man, or even a fisherman. He was a wild man from the wilderness. He was the last person you would expect to have a line to God, or to be the opening act for Jesus. What is the lesson there for us? Surely, we, too, need to question all the times we make assumptions about people. When we assess their character by who they are, or what they do, or what they wear. Had we done that in the crowd listening to John, we would have been so busy scoffing at his smelly clothes and eccentric ways we would have missed what he had to say.

What’s more, if John is lifted first above everyone, then he is a role model for us. We don’t have to be like him in his style of shouting, angry oratory – we can choose to be soft-spoken. Those are qualities only on the surface of John: the part to emulate is his character. And most specifically what was mentioned: he was not someone who bent to the will of others in a way that dismantled his own faith.

It seems as if every few months I find one post or another by a church leader, deciding that what John really meant – in his words of last week – was that some people are good enough for God and some people aren’t. But how are we supposed to know who is who – and why does the Advent and Christmas story basically upend every stereotype? Maybe that’s the point: we can’t know, and we shouldn’t try. And really, does the gospel suggest that God is so lacking in nuance? 

The “probably good enough” and the “not good enough,”  “the “accepted” and the “rejected,” are the conclusions we arrive at when we get in the gospel’s way by presuming to be God. For example, I am your pastor; I try to lead you, just as I am so often led by many of you.  That is our role for one another. When someone decides God also sorts people, it encourages us to the do same. Why shouldn’t we get started at what will happen in heaven anyway? What’s more, it often puts us in some kind of competition for God’s divine attention, as if there were a finite number of spots in heaven. In that case, I had better raise issues about my neighbor’s flaws so that I look better. Why would I help my neighbor, if it cost me a spot? For there to be so-called “worthy” people, there must be those who are “unworthy.” And the only way we can decide that is a shortcut kind of way with stereotypes. Otherwise, we would have to truly get to know someone, and we might find out they aren’t who we thought. We have been raised in a society that teaches us that this is how progress happens: by one person stepping over another, and so on. But is that how society really works? Or has it just created a world where we are so busy stepping up and trying not to get stepped on, that we’ve become much less likely to reach out our hands to help one another? 

We should heed the caution in our second lesson: “Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the judge is at the door!” The judge is God. And we cannot presume to know what God sees in someone else.

Think of what our stereotyping does each day, even aside from the great tragedies of history. I think I have told you the story about the summer between university years when I worked as a plumber. If so, indulge me again. After work, dirty and in construction boots – probably doing my best version of John the Baptist’s style – I went to cash a cheque. I was turned down because I didn’t have enough money in my account and was told I’d have to wait five days. I went home, got dressed in my suit, and went back to the bank. (I wasn’t going to make it 5 days without money) And guess what? They did it, no questions asked. It was the exact same cheque. I was the same person. But they saw me with different eyes.

I learned a huge lesson that day, which is probably why I remember it so clearly, and love to keep sharing it. I learned that when I present myself in a different way, people decide my story before I have a chance to share it with them. Sometime the joke’s on them – like when I used to accompany Erin to prenatal appointments with my collar on, to raised eyebrows. Sometimes it makes you angry for the sake of others –as it did when I was judged at the bank. What of the person who can’t go home and put on fancier clothes? Sometimes it is dangerous – as marginalized people in Canada have too often learned.  

We are in a time in North America when we need to begin asking ourselves, and one another, to think about the stereotypes we hold – sometimes without even knowing it. And we need to resist any law that treats people like red or blue blocks to be so easily sorted.

The next time we go looking for a prophet in soft robes, Jesus might suggest we recall John the Baptist. We can hear the truth of the gospel more clearly only when we are more open to hearing different people deliver its message. The message is coming:  Advent is the time for us to think deeply and look broadly to receive it. 

Amen

December 7th ~ Every Time We Respond to Need, We Have Cleared the Path / 2nd Sunday of Advent

Click above to listen to a recording of Sunday's Sermon

Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Romans 15:4-13

Matthew 3:1-12

Sermon by Pastor Joel

This week a friend of mine fell and broke her wrist. She went to Emergency with my wife, Erin. And if any of you have been to Emergency recently, you can guess what happened next. It took more than an hour to be seen, and then another hour after that to get an X-ray, and then 17 hours after that to be seen by a doctor about the X-ray. They had gone in at 3 p.m. Erin went home to sleep at 11. And I saw our friend at 6:30a.m., just as she was finally getting her wrist frozen so they could adjust it for a temporary cast. She’d been up all night. All three of us discussed the experience chatting with people, making another visit to the waiting room, the loud and aggressive patients brought in by police in the middle of the night, the weary nurse who had to clean up when someone went to the bathroom in their pants, and then smoothly pilfer away the vodka mickey he’d hidden in his jacket. By the time Erin and our friend came home around noon the second day, she left the hospital without socks. She’d met an elderly man with cold feet and had given them away.

I spend a lot of time in hospitals, and they are places that represent the worst and the best of humanity. Sit in emergency long enough, and you see everything: kindness and cruelty, pain and relief, weariness and perseverance. And often, over all of it, I can feel loneliness. The act of wanting, desiring comfort, and reaching out only to find empty air.

Whenever I am exposed to this side of humanity – the evidence of our rich and yet flawed society failing our own humanness – I am also reminded of John The Baptist, who might have been more easily mistaken for the barefooted, dishevelled man brought in by the police, than the wise and self-sacrificing prophet that he was.

How clever it was, I have always thought, for the gospel and the Holy Spirit to wake John the Baptist up to pave the way for Jesus – and thus, to wake us all up. There is no other character like John the Baptist in the gospel. From every other disciple, I have always felt a sense of tidiness and propriety. But that is not John. He wore camel hair clothes, he probably rarely washed, and he ate locusts. He yelled at everyone. He would have been the last person you’d choose to sit beside in an emergency room. Maybe that’s what saved him for so long: the Pharisees may indeed have been a brood of vipers, but John was the meanest, most God-fearing rattlesnake they’d ever seen.

And yet who else but John could have avoided getting caught up in the fame of it all? No amount of adulation appears to have tempted him to take any credit. If anything, it just made him meaner. You ain’t see nothing yet, he told the people. I am not worthy even to carry the sandals of the guy coming next.

But most importantly, John said this: “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make the path straight.”

And that’s the crux of John. He wasn’t a ditherer or debater. He wasn’t going to strike a committee to solve a problem. Faced with a crooked path, he wasn’t going to consult or conduct a pilot project. If a path needed straightening, he straightened it. If a person needed food, he fed them. If an old man needed socks, he gave him the socks off his own feet. We don’t need that written down in the gospel to know it. This is just who John the Baptist was – the rebel who never met a rule he wouldn’t step over for the right reason. And what a great role model he is for us all.

We spend a lot of time – and I include myself here – thinking of what happens after we act. What happens if I talk to that the lonely neighbor? Will I have intruded? Will I have taken on too much? What happens if I offer my socks? Will I have offended? Will people just want more from me afterwards? And we think so much about doing that the moment passes, and we never do what we were thinking about.

But John sees a need – or a Pharisee in need of a good comeuppance – and he acts. He acts upon the need because his response in that moment is what matters; his response to what happens next is an entirely different issue – a problem or solution for later. John understands who he is and what his role is; and he does not bend on either to suit anyone else.

Now that’s a hard act to follow. So, it’s a good thing the next act was Jesus. But what can we learn from John heading into Advent? How can we make the path straight? We can think very clearly about what is most important to us, the quality that we want to define us. We can then find ways to transform those qualities into actions We can muffle the Pharisees of our day—consumerism and competition and materialism – and hold them at bay. We can heed the message of John the Baptist and use this season – this time when everyone’s hearts are open just a little wider, to create a straighter path - one pebble, one act of charity, one pair of socks at a time. Every time we respond to need, we have cleared the path. The next generous deed clears it a little bit more. Until one day, we are at our final destination, and we can look behind and see a great distance, and know that all this time, we were only making way for the gospel and God; we were clearing our own path to a spirit-led, gospel-infused meaningful life. Let this be a practice of ours in the weeks ahead—to prepare the way of the Lord and make the path straight.

Amen