Today marks the fourth Sunday of Advent, a holy season where we reflect and prepare for the coming of Christ Jesus our Lord.

On this, the fourth week, the Church often reflects upon the theme of love. Here is another great video from the Bible Project exploring the how the Holy Scriptures speak about love.

This Sunday, we are also holding our Service of Lessons & Carols, where we tell the story of Christmas with alternating Scripture Readings and Songs.

​There will be no sermon this week, but stay tuned today for a special gift from our St. Luke's Choir.

Our Service of Morning Prayer and Songs for this week can be found here:

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 61:1–4, 8–11 | Psalm 126 | 1 Thessalonians 5:16–24 | John 1:6–8, 19–28

"Rejoice… always."

Today, here at St. Luke’s Church, we have many good reasons to rejoice. We can rejoice because after our region moved back into the Yellow Phase of recovery this week, we are holding in-person services of Holy Communion again; worshiping God together, and receiving His gifts of love. We can rejoice because today is the third Sunday of Advent, a day when Christians reflect on the biblical theme of joy. And if we took a moment, I’m sure, that we could come up with a pretty long list of other reasons it would be easy for us to rejoice today.
 
And yet… we also know of many reasons it’s hard to rejoice right now. I don’t think it takes much imagination to know what I am talking about. In countless ways, our neighbours, our country, our world is suffering today. Maybe we too are suffering. Maybe it’s those dear to us. And what makes it all the harder, sometimes, is not knowing when this suffering will end. Today, there are many reasons it is hard to rejoice.
 
But this is precisely when the message of joy is meant to be received: in very the face of darkness and suffering… when joy is needed most. Perhaps the words “rejoice always” mean much more than we think? Perhaps they offer us more than we could ask or imagine?
 
Of course, there is a kind of joy that is not all that unusual. The kind of happiness or joy common throughout the world. We find it in all sorts of ways, as we share in the good things in life: like time well spent with family and friends… hearing a beloved song that stirs up our hearts… in the satisfaction that comes from a job well done. These are all examples what I’ll call glimpses of joy: tastes of the goodness of life that the Living God has created to be enjoyed… gifts meant to be received with simple gratitude, and shared generously with the people all around us. These moments of joy are precious… but they’re not the complete picture. They offer us a welcome taste, but they’re not the entire meal.
 
And again, along with these glimpses of joy, also come the big challenges of life. Much of our experiences are not what we’d call enjoyable, after all: the times of deep loneliness… or when we’re confronted with harsh and ugly side of our world… or ourselves… with the feelings of futility when our efforts seem to fall short, or when they’re cut short.
 
We know these times, when the normal joys of life are overshadowed, are not the whole picture either… we know there is much that is still good all around us. But we need more than a reminder to just look on the bright side… though it can bring comfort to reflect on and remember the things that stir up our joy: the loving memories, the blessings of each day, and the hope of a brighter future; God’s salvation drawing ever nearer. It is good to keep all this in mind, but there is more being asked of us than to simply reflect and remember… we are also asked to receive. Today we are invited to see that true joy is a gift.
 
Our Scripture readings today point us to the source of this gift: to the goodness and the rescuing grace of the Living God.
 
In our first reading, from the book of the prophet Isaiah, we hear God’s word of hope and joy sent to those in darkness and suffering.
“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.”
God’s message through the prophet was good news to the oppressed. Not a call to optimism, but a message of redemption: that the Living God would not ignore the suffering of His people, but instead would come to end their sorrow, and bring about new life.  
 
Isaiah begins these words of hope with a phrase of great significance: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me.” This message, and the power of it, flows from the Spirit of God. It is God’s Spirit, God’s living presence, that shares and brings about this new life. The Good News comes to us from the Holy Spirit’s work.
 
And in our Gospel reading, we are told of that great the New Testament prophet, John the Baptist, who was sent by God to point ahead to the Greater One who was still to come. John was sent to prepare the way for the LORD’s anointed: the Christ… the One who would baptize, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit. Who would immerse God’s people with the LORD’s presence and life.
 
And so, John points us to Jesus: to the Son of God… who stepped into the place of His people in order to bring them God’s rescue at last. Full of the Holy Spirit, Jesus embodied the promise of Isaiah, transforming the lives of even those in the most hopeless suffering by graciously drawing near to them with the holy love of God… restoring sight to the blind, healing the sick, raising the dead… Christ touched people with God’s Spirit, and their sorrows turned to joy.  
 
And before His own darkest night, before He would face the suffering of the cross, Jesus spoke to His followers and shared these words with them (John 15:9-11):
“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” Facing His death for the sins of the world, Christ speaks to us of sharing His joy… by inviting us all to abide in His love… together to share in His life, bound in Him to the source of all joy: joined to the Living God.
 
Joined to the blessed Trinity; to the One who imagined, and invented, joy in all its earthly forms, as glimpses and tastes of the true joy of complete fellowship with Him… with the one Who is Himself the fountainhead of all that is right and true, and good. It is God’s own inner joy that He wants us His creatures to share in. Giving glimpses here and there of what will one day be in fullest view… tasting a few bites and drops of the full feast that’s to come.
 
But in Jesus Christ, God’s joyful life has drawn impossibly near to us, and He has poured out His joyful life in the world through the Holy Spirit, so that those who abide in Jesus are able to share in God’s joy here and now… despite all the darkness around us or the suffering within. Abiding in Christ, we can come to know the joy of the Living God… always. Even as we struggle… even as we weep… God’s joyful Spirit is a gift we can hold onto forever.
 
Christians can “rejoice always” as St. Paul urges us, not because it’s always easy, but because the Holy Spirit of God has been poured into our lives… drawing near to us with His rescuing, re-creating love, and breaking into our darkness and pain with the gift of His joyful salvation.  
 
So today, may we remember and reflect on all the reasons that we can rejoice today, whether it’s easy or not. But even more than that, may we abide in Jesus Christ. May we cling to Him in faith, eager to fully share in His joy, and through the Holy Spirit, may God’s joy be alive in us always. Amen.

​Our service of Morning Prayer, Bulletin, and Sermon for this week can all be found here:

Our Advent Lighting Video can be found here:

​And our Songs for this week can all be found here:

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 40:1–11 | Psalm 85:1–13 | 2 Peter 3:8–15a | Mark 1:1–8

When it comes to roads, Northwestern Ontario and Southern Manitoba are worlds apart. If you’ve dared to travel by car across Canada, you know exactly what I mean. In Northwestern Ontario, where I was born and raised, travelers must wind their way through some pretty rough terrain: skirting swamps and lakes, climbing hill after hill, slowly making their way through the many obstacles this beautiful and vast wilderness has to offer. But as you keep on heading West and enter into Manitoba, suddenly you find yourself crossing into the Prairies. The hills and trees start to give way to the wide-open plains, where the road is flat, and stretches straight on to the horizon. Nothing in the way, except the occasional transport truck. Though both of these landscapes have their own special charm, the straight road across the plains is certainly much easier to navigate. To build a highway as level and straight as it through Northwestern Ontario would be far beyond the wildest dreams of any engineer, and would cost far more than any government budget could afford.
For the foreseeable future, though they truly belong together, in this sense at least these roads will remain worlds apart: one is winding and wild, the other level and straight.
 
Today marks the second week of the season of Advent, the time of preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ our Lord. The theme often associated with this week is Peace; an important but sometimes misunderstood facet of the Good News. Sometimes we imagine peace to be simply about avoiding conflict… doing anything we can to avoid upsetting other people. This kind approach can easily turn into mere people-pleasing, or pacification… simply going along with the flow, even if it takes us far off course. The flip side of this, of course, is when we seek to put an end to conflict by pushing for our own way… using our power to keep others in line… intimidating them into going along with our plans. But the peace which Advent brings to mind is not simply about avoiding conflict, either through pacification, or intimidation. Instead, it speaks of the kind of peace that brings reconciliation. Restoring deep communion and wholeness again. At a time when division, distrust, and disconnection seem at work everywhere, let’s turn our hearts again to hear the message of God’s peace.
 
But in turning to our Scripture readings this morning, we are not stepping into some idealized fantasy. No, we are firmly standing within the familiar story of our world… a story of conflict, of suffering, of storms, and tragedy… where God’s people are waiting longingly for God’s righteousness to reign, and for all that is broken to be set aright again.
 
The Gospel of Mark introduces us to a man called John the Baptist, living in the Jordan wilderness in the early first century. John was no ordinary man, but rather he was a man with a mission, a message from the Living God, like Israel’s prophets of old. In fact, the author of Mark makes this connection explicit, introducing John’s ministry by calling to mind the prophet Isaiah:
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’” (Mark 1:2-3)[1]

As we heard in our Old Testament reading today, Isaiah’s message goes on to describe what it means to prepare the way of the LORD. Isaiah 40:3-5 says,
A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
5Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
 
Valleys raised, mountains leveled, rough places made into plains… the imagery is one of dramatic and powerful transformation… which all fits nicely with how Mark wants us to see John’s ministry: not as words of pacification, or of intimidation, but of seeking peace with God through wholehearted repentance… with a sincere commitment of true life-transformation. John came calling for all of Israel to remove the obstacles in their lives, and to urgently prepare for the arrival of God’s good Kingdom. In his preaching and practice of baptizing his fellow Israelites, John was inviting God’s people to recognize their deep need for forgiveness and rescue, and to turn back to the LORD their God with their entire life.
 
NT Wright describes it all like this:
“They were to come through the water and be free. They were to leave behind ‘Egypt’—the world of sin in which they were living, the world of rebelling against the living God. They, the Israel of the day, were looking in the wrong direction and going in the wrong direction. It was time to turn round and go the right way (that’s what ‘repentance’ means). It was time to stop dreaming and wake up to God’s reality.[2]” John was proclaiming that it was time for God’s people to pursue true peace: Not simply to try and appease God by making some surface-level changes… or to keep on pursuing their own ideas and agendas… but to prepare for the coming of God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed King, by humbly and wholeheartedly turning over their lives to the LORD.  By being baptized in the Jordan river, they were seeking forgiveness and reconciliation with God. They knew they had been living worlds apart from what God had wanted of His children, and so they were looking to close the gap… to be reunited to their LORD.
 
This is all well and good, but it is not the whole story. But there is so much more to the Good News, the Gospel, then even our wholehearted repentance. The focus of our readings today was not on what the people themselves did: their acts of repentance. It’s not even on John’s ministry, as vital as both of these things might be. No, the focus is all on the One that John, and the prophets, had promised was on the way… the One who would baptize God’s people, not simply with water, but with the Holy Spirit… the One who was coming to rescue God’s wayward people, once and for all.
 
John was serving as a signpost pointing us onward to Jesus, to the Son of God Himself, sent to bring about God’s peace. To establish restoration and reconciliation far beyond our wildest dreams, and to reunite humanity with the LORD once again…fulfilling the message of hope which Isaiah had written of long ago. Isaiah 40:9-11:
“Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
10 See, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
11He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.”
 
He came, not simply to teach us how to be good, and how we can try our best to appease God and keep Him happy, or to give us the moral fortitude to make ourselves fit for the LORD… but rescue us, and fill us with the Living God’s own presence and life-changing power, so that His reconciliation and restoration can take root within us, and our community. So that the saving, life-changing peace of the LORD might be shared through the Church with our broken, wandering world. 
 
As the rest of Mark’s Gospel will highlight, this peace all came at the highest cost. God’s Son, Jesus Christ, paid for our peace with His precious blood. Christ gave His entire life; was born, lived, died, and rose again, to bring God’s peace to our fragmented and fractured world; beginning in the Church, but overflowing everywhere.
 
Advent calls us to remember that Jesus Christ Himself is our Peace. He removes all the obstacles between us and the Living God. Though in our sins we had become wild and treacherously winding… worlds apart from how God wanted His children to be… at the cross, Christ has made straight the way for us to be reunited to God at last. He graciously binds the Church to Himself in faith, through baptism, sharing His new life with us, and through us, with the world. He immerses us in the Holy Spirit of God, who remains at work, empowering us to truly live as God’s peaceful people, even in the midst of conflict and tragedy.
 
By His power working in us, through the Holy Spirit of God, may our lives be shaped more and more by the truth of Christ's saving peace. May we give ourselves to the work He has begun in us through baptism, that we can faithfully serve as agents of His reconciliation. And in the midst of all the conflicts and storms we see around us, may we eagerly and patiently look for His arrival, bringing about God’s New Heavens and Earth, beyond our wildest dreams, where His righteousness and peace will be at home forever. Amen.   


[1] Both Isaiah and Malachi are being quoted in these verses, but the author of Mark only references Isaiah.

[2] Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 2.

​At St. Luke's we take time each week in Advent to light the candles in our Advent Wreath. While we are not gathering together in our Parish Church at this time, we can still carry on this tradition from our homes.
​
The Candle Lighting liturgy can be found in our Service of Morning Prayer. If you have candles at home you can light them during your practice of these home prayers, or you can follow along with our Advent Lighting Video. 

Many blessings to you this second week of Advent, and may the Holy Spirit fill us with God's Peace.

Rob+

​Our service of Morning Prayer, Bulletin, and Sermon for this week can all be found here:

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 64:1–9 | Psalm 80:1–7, 17–19 | 1 Corinthians 1:3–9 | Mark 13:24–37

Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.  And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”
 
Hear we are again.
As the second wave of this pandemic seems to have finally reached our region, again we are faced with many hard choices, and quickly changing plans. For a long while, we had done fairly well here in southern New Brunswick, and even now things are certainly not as bad as they could be. We had several months of relative stability, where it almost seemed like things were staring to get back to normal. But now we’ve had our wake-up call. Cases of COVID-19 are on the rise. Safety measures have needed to be stepped up again, and we have all been urged to be vigilant… acting for the good of ourselves, and those all around us. Not simply driven by our fears and (understandable) anxieties, but spurred on to do our best, even in taking the smallest steps, to be a people of compassion, of longsuffering patience… a people who love their neighbours, and who point them towards the light. For as disruptive and (in many ways) disappointing as this year has turned out to be, the darkness is not complete, nor will it always endure. Though here we are again, we will not be hear forever.
 
But what would we have done differently, how would we have behaved, if we knew this time last year how 2020 would unfold? If we knew for certain that this pandemic would upend our entire world, and bring so many changes… what would we have done with that knowledge? Visit more of our family and friends? Get out and do some traveling? Maybe invest some money in a little-known company called Zoom? But seriously, we know we all would have done some things differently, had we known what was coming. But like the rest of the world, we too were caught off guard.
 
Today marks the beginning again of the Christian year, which starts off with the holy season of Advent: the time of expectation of the coming of Christ… re-entering the scriptural story in anticipation of His birth at Christmas; the incarnation of the One who alone is God-with-us. But just as importantly, it is the season of anticipation of His final return, not in a humble manger, but in glory… to bring an end to our world’s sin, our sufferings, and strife, and to ultimately unveil the blessed Kingdom of God. The current time of waiting will then finally be over. Every tear wiped away. Every wound mended. Every knee bending at the blessed name of Jesus.
 
It is fitting that on this first week of Advent that we often focus on hope, for from the beginning, until the final day when the Lord Jesus returns, the Church is urged to be a people of hope, through and through. Not simplistically optimistic, trying to only see the ‘sunny side’ of life, while denying the darkness all around. And not driven by anxiety to desperately ‘do something’, trying to fend off the darkness by our own urgent efforts alone. No, Advent reminds us of the Christian character of our hope: that is, waiting… faithfully enduring the present times of tension by trusting in the Risen Lord, through His strength given now by His Spirit, and in the end, looking for the fulfillment of the promise of His salvation. What’s more, Advent urges us to wait by taking action. By acting in all things in the light of what we’re waiting for.
 
Our Gospel reading today is from the thirteenth chapter of Mark, and this whole chapter contains much for us to carefully contemplate: many dire warnings, and unsettling imagery… of nation rising against nation, families against their own kin, and even the powers of earth and heaven being completely upended and shaken. Given the dark and dramatic words Christ speaks to His disciples here, many have come to see this passage as only speaking about some cataclysmic catastrophe at the end of the world. But it seems from the text itself as though there is another situation being spoken of, first and foremost, a crushing event which would soon change everything for God’s people: the destruction of Herod’s Temple, and the obliteration of all Jerusalem by the Roman legions, all in the not too distant future. For Christ’s disciples, who at this time were all part of the Jewish community, they were being warned that the world they knew would soon be gone forever.  
 
“Jesus’ main concern” in this chapter, the Bishop and scholar N.T. Wright maintains, “is to warn his followers of the signs that will immediately herald the end—the end of the Temple, the end of the Jewish national way of life up to that point.[1]. Indeed, Mark 13 begins with the disciples pointing out how impressive and magnificent the Jerusalem Temple looked, with Jesus responding: “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:2). The shocked disciples then ask Him about when this unthinkable event would happen, leading our Lord to lay out a grim vision of violence and terror to come, which did in fact come in the year 70 A.D. when Caesar sent his armies to crush a Jewish rebellion centred in the holy city. The ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, described the aftermath of this Jewish-Roman war like this: “Now as soon as the army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury, (for they would not have spared any, had there remained any other work to be done,) Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple”, and apart from some towers and sections of wall the Roman armies preserved, “it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited.”[2] For the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and for all of the people of God who had built their hopes and lives upon their  ongoing connection to God’s Holy Temple, Jesus was truly describing the end of their world… the upending of everything they knew. But alongside this warning He also held out another source of hope: the enduring Kingdom of God they had come close to and had found in Him. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” He tells them, “but my words will not pass away.”
 
This relocation, this recentering of hope is not meant just for those who heard Him speak these words about two thousand years ago. They remain His words to us, speaking to us all as well. The things they had taken for granted about the world all those years ago, like the Temple, their traditions, their nation, would all soon come to an end, and we know the things we build our lives upon will have their endings as well. How quickly the things that seem so steady and sure can be swept away! But the hope of all the Church, from the beginning, through today, and until the very end, belongs firmly in the hands of our faithful Master, Jesus: in His resurrection, His victory, and in His coming again. Our hope truly belongs, from first to last, in Him.
 
In light of the destruction of the Temple and all Jerusalem, Christ did not tell His disciples to try and look on the bright side… to deny the traumatic impact of the suffering shortly to come. Nor did He urge them to do everything possible to prevent it from happening, or to plan ahead for ways to retrieve everything that would be lost. No, we heard today that Jesus urged His followers, then and now, to be vigilant. To stay awake. To be diligent in doing the vital work of God’s Kingdom… wholeheartedly devoted to God, and actively loving those around us. Christ urges us all to faithfulness, knowing that as dark as things may seem, the tensions and suffering we face will not be the end of our story. “Keep awake”, Jesus implores us, keep following Him diligently… don’t give in to despair, or desperation. Keep up hope, and keep going.
 
Despite all of the upheaval, and uncertainty we have encountered, we know ultimately where the story of our world is heading: Christ Jesus, the Risen Lord will return to judge the living and the dead… to establish justice, to end all strife, and to finally bring to fulfillment God’s good Kingdom of life and light at last. In light of this future hope, which through the Holy Spirit, is present among us even now, how are you and I being called to respond? What are we going to do differently? Though the world may be caught off guard by the coming of Christ’s Kingdom, how are we going to live in line with our Master’s reign today?
 
With the hope of Christ before us, and with God’s help let us stay awake, both in spiritual devotion, and in acts of loving service. May we not give in to despair, and give up on living as His people. May we not get overly comfortable with the current status quo, which we know at any time could come to an unforeseen end. But rather, may we grow more and more as diligent disciples of Jesus; putting into practice all that He has asked of us, and praying in certain hope for His rescuing return. Amen.

[1] Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 186.

[2] Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews VII.I.I. Accessed through the online source: “Christian Classics Ethereal Library” https://ccel.org/ccel/josephus/complete/complete.iii.viii.i.html

Today we enter the holy season of Advent, where we reflect and prepare for the coming of Christ Jesus our Lord.

This first week, Christians often reflect on the biblical theme of Hope, and the folks at the Bible Project have put together a great animated video exploring how the Bible treats this vital gift. 

​At St. Luke's we take time each week in Advent to light the candles in our Advent Wreath. While we are not gathering together in our Parish Church at this time, we can still carry on this tradition from our homes.
​
The Candle Lighting liturgy can be found in our Service of Morning Prayer. If you have candles at home you can light them during your practice of these home prayers, or you can follow along with our Advent Lighting Video. 

Many blessings to you this first week of Advent, and may the Holy Spirit fill us with His hope.

Rob+

​Our Advent Lighting Video can be found here:

​And our Songs for this week can all be found here: