Feb 9 ~ We are Defined by Our Choices

There is no recording of the sermon for this week.

Sermon, by Pastor Joel

February 9, 2025

Isaiah 6:1-8 [9-13]

Psalm 138

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Luke 5:1-11

The context of this sermon is

100% written by a human

I am sure we all felt the mood suddenly change in Canada this week. After weeks of threatening 25-per-cent tariffs that would devastate the Canadian economy and harm his own country’s as well, President Trump announced he was going through with them on Saturday. On Monday, following a visit from our Prime Minister, he postponed them for a month.

But in Canada, the shift had already happened. Here, we felt the shock and betrayal of our closest friend attacking us for exaggerated and manufactured reasons about drugs and trade imbalances. This weekend, we learned that Trump talk of using economic aggression to make us the 51st state is no longer being laughed off as a joke by our government, but as a threat – after the President of the United State told our Prime Minister to take a look at a 1908 treaty that drew the lines of our two country’s borders.

We felt understandably insulted – responding with many of us cancelling trips to the United States. We have begun intentionally avoiding American products and prioritizing home-grown products. I know I have felt good asking in the pet store whether that bone I am getting for my dog was made in Canada, choosing Canadian condiments, and Canadian chocolate. When Erin sent me a video of that old beer commercial of the Canadian being mocked at a bar by Americans, and producing his attack beaver – I felt a swell of emotional patriotism.

Indeed, we have become angry and overtly patriotic in a way the world will see as out-of-character for our country. As I know from when my son Samson travelled – as the Globe and Mail pointed out in a story this weekend – he wore the Canadian flag, and announced his Canadian citizenship not so much as an act flag-waving patriotism in a foreign land, but to signal that he would be a respectful and considerate guest in the country.

Now, we are waving the flag, metaphorically and literally, as many of us haven’t since the convoy took over Ottawa several years ago. Our best friend has summarily cut ties over a small issue that we could have talked through, as our envied relationship should have demanded. Has that best friend forgotten all the support we showed after 911, on the ground in Afghanistan, during Hurricane Katrina and the forest fires in L.A. and picked a fight for the fun of it?

Who wouldn’t be angry? And we showed it – in our comments online, and at hockey games, where the booing of the national anthem continues.

As Canadians we long prided ourselves on our modest patriotism (hockey excepted) and our ability to openly discuss the flaws of Canada, while allowing the many, many brilliant aspects of our nation to speak for themselves. So this angry unity – this national call to arms – feels empowering. Many of us are wondering why we waited so long to let it out.

But in this moment of anger and outrage, we must also remember that we are not slaves to our emotions. Through of all this, we have a choice: our actions will decide who we are, as a country, and as citizens, in this moment.

This idea of choice comes up a lot in my sermons. But that’s because it is among the most powerful gifts that we receive from God. We are not commanded – despite those Ten Commandments – we are called as people of faith. We are not ordered to follow, we are asked to do so. The choice, every day and at every stage of our lives, is ours to make.

We hear that so plainly in our gospel this morning in the famous story of how Jesus met his early disciples, a group of fishermen. Jesus befriends them. He does not win them over with fear and negativity. He goes out on the water with them and fills their nets. In their moment of fear, he soothes a storm that threatens to sink their boat.

Jesus shows them who he is – by helping them, by protecting them and by teaching them. And then, in that fateful moment, he says: “Come, and I will make you fishers of people.” And we understand, because of who Jesus is and how he speaks the words from the gospel, that he does not mean: Come – or else. He means it as a question: Will you not come, and follow me, and do noble and kind deeds in the name of the gospel?

It is a big ask, no matter what, but we also know that the disciples have a choice. No one will drag them along behind Jesus. They will decide for themselves: remain by the sea, keep fishing, and continue their current lives comfortably. Or abandon all they know, and go with Jesus, into an uncertain future. We know what they chose – to take the risk. In doing so, they faced danger and gained wisdom and peace that comes from a life of meaning and purpose.

But the choice did not end there: they faced it every day. They often stumbled. When they were skeptical how Jesus was going to feed the 5,000, they made a choice. When they told Jesus to stop talking to poor women and tax collectors they made a choice. When they all but abandoned Jesus at the end, they made a choice.

And yet, they also made a choice to heal people with Jesus. To gather crowds for Jesus. To confront the powers that be with Jesus. They made a choice to be the companions of Jesus, and to follow him to Jerusalem. And when he was gone, they made a choice to believe and teach the gospel in his absence.

The point is not all our choices are good and pure and selfless. But if we are careful in making them, many of them, enough of them, will be.

And so, in this current situation - and really every tense or difficult situation – we choose. Faced with this existential and economic threat to our country, we may choose to do nothing – to remain with what we know just as the disciples might have done. Or we choose to unite, to buy Canadians goods, and push for more open trade across provincial borders. We choose to stand together and reflect on what it means to be Canadians.

Of course, we can also go to a hockey game and boo an anthem. We can choose, as has happened, to boo young American kids playing hockey in our country. And we can choose to respond with humour – by lining the hockey sticks along the border, as an act of quintessential Canadian pointed humour.

But we should be careful – for our choices, however imperfect, define us. On the one side of choice, the disciples appear selfish and undermining, judgmental and cowardly. On the other side of choice, they appear welcoming, selfless, brave, and loyal.

In each one of us, all these qualities may be true at one time of another as well. But who are we in the end, when we look back at the sum of our choices? Did we let anger and betrayal rule our days? Or were we guided by reason and unity?

That is a personal decision – one hopefully guided by the gospel. In this case, we have the benefit of being able to take individual action that will collectively make a difference. That alone should ease our frustration.

What’s more we have one another– we can be in it together. We can channel our anger into positive action. And hope that moments like this will clarify our own priorities and values.

Let me ask you this: How do you feel when you hear the crowds booing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Canadian hockey games? And how do you feel when you hear that American fans cheered “Oh, Canada!” in San Jose. Is it insults hurled across the border, or homegrown pride for our country that lifts your spirits? Is the boos or the cheers?

I know the answer for myself. I know that when I hear my fellow Canadians rallying together, I feel calm, collected and part of a community. I know I feel less alone.

On that day on the shore, Jesus reached out his hand and said, “Come, and I will make you fishers of people.” And the disciples made a choice that shaped their lives. May it guide us in these stressful weeks to come.

Amen.