Scripture Reading: Isaiah 50:4–9 | Psalm 116:1–9 | James 3:1–12 | Mark 8:27–38

​“…How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire…” (James 3:5-6).
 
Words are powerful.
 
Like fire, words can be a source of great hope, and comfort, and strength, and light… but they can also wreak havoc… causing all sorts of chaos and destruction.
 
Words can be used to create… to bring about beauty and order, and understanding… opening up new possibilities to explore, and expanding our imaginations. And words can be used as weapons… tools to tear down others… to dehumanize our neighbours… and spread deception instead of drawing us towards the truth.  
 
Words shape how we see our world… and how we see ourselves as well… wielding great influence over what we believe, and over what we do.
 
How many of us can remember a time when someone important to us lifted us up with their words? Offering just the right words of encouragement, wisdom, or even correction when it was needed the most? Or what about those poems or songs that pierce our hearts, and open our eyes to a whole new perspective?
 
On the other hand, how many of us can recall those times when someone’s words knocked us back? When instead of helping us find our way, we felt attacked, humiliated, or lost?  And looking around our world today, at all the viciousness, all the fear and hatred being thrown about… and all the division and destruction that these words fuel… we can see why St. James warns that the human tongue… our words are a dangerous force:
 
“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!” he says, “And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.” (James 3:5-6).
 
‘Talk is cheap’, some say. ‘Actions speak louder than words’… maybe. But there is no denying the fact that words can be incredibly powerful. And so, what we say really does matter… especially when what we’re talking about really matters.

In our reading today from the Gospel of St. Mark, we heard about a pretty tense moment between our Lord Jesus Christ, and St. Peter, one of His closest followers. In a way, this exchange is sort of a war of words… a conflict over the meaning of who Jesus is, and what He had come to accomplish.
 
It started when Jesus asked His disciples what might seem like a pretty simple question: “Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8:27). I mean, the obvious answer would be: Jesus of Nazareth, right?
 
So what is He getting at? What does this question mean?
Well, it’s essentially a question of purpose… of reflecting on how the crowds understood His significance.
 
Jesus had been travelling all around Judaea and Galilee, healing and teaching, performing wonderous signs, and exorcising demons… and people had noticed. They had formed their own ideas about Jesus, and what He was up to… ideas that may or may not be true. And so Jesus asks His students to tell Him what they have heard the people saying about Him. “Who do people say that I am?”

And for what it’s worth, the crowds seem to have a fairly positive impression of Jesus… identifying Him with people like John the Baptist, or the prophets of old… imagining Jesus as one of the many messengers sent from God over the centuries. Important, and powerful, but not necessarily unique or different from those who had come before Him.
 
Then Jesus turns to His disciples… those who had followed Him closely, and shared in His ministry… and He asks them: “‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’” (Mark 8:29). The Christ. God’s anointed One.
 
Not simply one messenger among many… but the One promised long ago who would bring freedom and salvation to God’s people. The One who would fulfill the promises of Yahweh to Israel, and finally bring about God’s good Kingdom. This is who Peter says Jesus is.
 
And we might expect Jesus to respond: ‘Well done Peter! You figured it out, now go and tell everyone else…’
But instead St. Mark tells us that Jesus “sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.” (Mark 8:30).
 
Why would He do this? I mean, isn’t the whole point of St. Mark’s Gospel story that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, God’s Son? Why on earth would Jesus sternly order His disciples to keep the truth about Him quiet?
 
I don’t presume to know the whole mind of our Lord, but I think one reason He did this is that the word “Messiah”, while true, and powerful, was also powerfully misunderstood. People knew the word “Messiah”… but they did not necessarily know the depths of what it meant… they had all sorts of ideas and expectations wrapped up with this word… ideas and expectations that as it turns out, were not based in reality.
 
Many imagined the Messiah would come at the head of a might army, ushering in God’s justice and judgment on the Gentile nations oppressing His covenant people. And with this popular vision in mind, some took up arms themselves, and used violence to try and prepare the way for the Messiah… serving him by slaying their enemies.

Others imagined the best way to prepare for the Messiah was to cut themselves off from the world… to avoid all of those unholy people around them, and strive to keep themselves pure. And yet others sought to reform their fellow Israelites, teaching them to strictly observe the Laws of the Covenant… as well as the traditions of the elders… so that they would be rewarded for their obedience, and remain securely on God’s side in the Messiah’s Kingdom.
 
Jesus knew that these ideas and expectations… these words that were shared among the people were powerful. Many had built their lives and the lives of their loved ones around these visions of what the Messiah was going to do. The word, if it got out, could spread like wildfire… but because so many people were confused about what God’s Messiah was really about… what He was really going to do… if the word got out too soon that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, there could be all kinds of unnecessary confusion and chaos… and instead of bringing the hope and comfort, and strength and light of God’s Kingdom, so many people would miss the whole point… the meaning behind His mission.

And so, it’s at this moment that Jesus does something new and unexpected… turning a corner no one saw coming: “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly.” (Mark 8:31-32).
 
Jesus confronts head on all of the ideas and expectations the people and His own followers had about the Messiah… about what God’s Chosen One had come to accomplish. He tips His hand and reveals to them that His path lead to betrayal, suffering and death. And only then would He be raised and glorified. Jesus knew this would be the culmination of the whole story of God’s salvation in the Holy Scriptures, and turning point in the entire story of humanity. He knew that to save the world, God’s beloved Son would have to lay down His own life to rescue His enemies… to offer them God’s forgiveness, freedom, and new life once and for all.
 
But there was one problem: Peter could not handle it. There was no place in his imagination for a humiliated and suffering Messiah. God’s Chosen One was supposed to reign in glory, and overthrow His enemies… not willingly experience a shameful and agonizing defeat.
 
And so, Peter does the most logical thing: he tries to change his Master’s mind. He takes Jesus aside, and quietly rebukes Him… trying to guide Him… to encourage Him… to help Him see that there must be another way forward.
 
Peter tries to tell Jesus what it means to be God’s Messiah… and as we heard, it doesn’t go well.
 
 Jesus responds to the words of Peter with a rebuke of His own: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (Mark 8:33). Jesus connects Peter, one of His closest followers, with the forces of darkness… with the deceptive enemy, who’s eager to offer enticing temptations to turn our backs on God and His ways.
 
These are harsh words, to be sure. But they are words not intended to simply tear Peter down, or fill him with shame… but to shed much needed light! To powerfully drive home the danger of what was really going on here.
Even though Peter may have thought he was helping Jesus, in reality Peter was trying to convince Christ to abandon His mission… to set aside His Father’s will, and save Himself instead… a temptation that could have been disastrous for the whole world, had Jesus given in to it. Despite Peter’s conscious or unconscious intentions, Jesus can see the evil one at work in the words of even his dear friend… a fire set alight by hell… and so our Lord publicly and powerfully rejects Peter’s vision of the self-seeking Messiah.
 
How often do we Christians today follow in St. Peter’s footsteps? Offering words that seem wise, but actually lead away from the Good News that we have been entrusted to share? How often do we see Christ’s name co-opted by those who wreak havoc in our world? Spreading hate, prejudice, greed, and all sorts of other destructive forces?
 
How often do we hear people who claim to be disciples of Jesus tearing down those around them, and using their words to seek influence, and to keep themselves feeling safe and secure?
 
Jesus had harsh words for St. Peter that day long ago. And sometimes I wonder what harsh words our Lord Jesus might have for us, His people today.
 
But the Good News is, that even when His words are harsh, they are always words that flow from His gracious love… words of rebuke, not to crush or condemn, but to turn us back to the right path, and to the light. Unlike the evil one, Jesus is not our accuser… but our advocate… the One who truly has our back! Offering us another way… opening up our imaginations to God’s way, and inviting us all to share in it.
 
And so, after He says a firm ‘no!’ to Peter’s idea of the Messiah, Jesus shows us how we can all say ‘yes!’ to Him, and share in what He is up to:
 
“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:34-38).
 
The Messiah came to give His life as a gift of love… to reconcile our broken world to God. He came to bring God’s life, and hope, and grace, and love to those who are lost. To set the prisoners free. To welcome the outcasts. To lift up the broken hearted. To forgive sinners.
 
But in order to accomplish all this, He had to deny Himself… deny His impulse to save Himself, and take up HIs cross… and lose His life… trusting the Father to raise Him up again. Jesus lived out these words… faithfully holding true to His Father’s love, and dying to save the world He spoke into existence from the destruction we keep on bringing on ourselves.
 
And then He rose again, overthrowing death itself, and blowing apart all of our ideas and expectations of what is possible… and inviting us to face our own suffering with an unshakable hope… the hope that even if we lose everything… the same saving love that raised Jesus from the dead will raise us up too. 
 
The word of the Gospel… the Good News of Jesus, the Risen Lord is powerful. It changes lives when we believe in Jesus, and what He has done for us all at the cross.
 
Which is why it is always important for us to remain attentive to this word and to what it means! To do all we can to understand the significance of our Messiah and His mission of saving love.
 
Peter knew Jesus better than the crowds did… he was right about His identity, but not about His purpose and goal. And we know that many Christians know things about Jesus… but seem to miss the big picture… why He came, and what He is calling us to do too.
 
But thankfully in time, Peter’s own life would be transformed by the Good News… he would come to know the fullness of God’s forgiveness and redemption through the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Messiah.
​
And we can too! It doesn’t matter if we’ve been following Jesus for a whole lifetime, or are just at the start of our journey with Him, we can all learn more about Him. We can all draw near with faith, and humility, and curiosity, to listen to His word… striving to better understand what He has done, and what He is still doing in our world.
 
We can do this in many ways, including intentional study… both alone and alongside others… learning together… teaching each other… guiding and correcting and encouraging one another as God’s Holy Spirit brings Christ’s words to life in our midst.
 
Words are powerful. And we know that our world needs to hear the words of hope and light and life that the Good News of Jesus gives. And so, may we draw near to Jesus, God’s word made flesh, and spend our lives listening to Him, so that we all can share the hope, and comfort, and strength, and light that He is with the world. Amen.

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 35:4–7 | Psalm 146 | James 2:1–17 | Mark 7:24–37

“Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” (James 2:5).
 
Have you ever been chosen last for something?
If you have, you’re certainly not alone.
 
As a somewhat timid and uncoordinated child, I can remember many a recess starting off by being among the very last to be chosen for a team. And then there were all those middle-school dances, when it seemed like everyone else was asked to dance, and I would be among those who were passed over… trying to hide the painful feelings that come with all rejection.
 
Thankfully, in the context of my whole story so far, these memories are actually pretty mild. They weren’t pleasant in the moment… but in the grand scheme of things, these were just normal instances of disappointment… something that everyone must face from time to time… and wholly unlike the ongoing damage and destruction caused by true partiality and outright favoritism.

Partiality… favoring one person or group over another, is an incredibly common practice… but it’s one which is also at the root of so many problems our society struggles with today, such as racism, sexism, the marginalization of the poor, the elderly, and those unable to advocate for themselves. So much oppression and suffering has been caused by human beings choosing to turn their backs on their neighbours. In many ways, partiality is the complete opposite of the kind of love God longs for us to share in.
 
This is why, as we heard in our second Scripture reading this morning, St. James speaks against it so forcefully, seeing it as a real threat to the integrity and vitality of the Christian Church, and as an assault on the Good News of Jesus Christ itself.
 
James 2:1, “My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” He goes on to describe how the rich and the poor among them are being treated so differently… as if those with worldly goods were somehow more worthy of honour and acceptance in the eyes of God.
 
St. James goes on to remind his listeners that Christ has shown us another way of life… one that doesn’t simply follow the world’s patterns, but that is shaped by God’s gracious love.
 
James 2:8-9, “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”
 
According to St. James, partiality is opposed to the love of God that we have come to know in Christ Jesus… the love that calls us to extend God’s compassion, comfort, and care to everyone.
 
But how does this all fit with those parts of the Scriptures that seem to suggest that God Himself plays favorites? If partiality is opposed to God’s love, than how are we to understand the role of Israel as “God’s Chosen people”? Or even more puzzling, how Jesus our Lord responds to the pleas of the Syrophoenician mother in our Gospel reading this morning? Is God actually showing partiality? Or is something else going on?

 Before we dig into this important question, I just want to make an important point: When we as Christians ask these kinds of questions, the posture of our hearts really matters! We can ask them in faith… seeking to grow in our understanding… humbly acknowledging the limits of our own insights, but still desiring to learn more about our Lord, and how to walk in His ways. Or we can ask them assuming that we can somehow pass judgment on our Creator… trusting that we are the ones who can rightly assess what is best, and that God must measure up to our standards.
 
One of these ways leads to wisdom. The other way leads to pride and foolishness. The Living God is not answerable to us. Nor does He ever need to defend Himself before mere mortals like you and I. And yet, in the Scriptures He shows us, again and again, that He wants us to know more about Him… to wrestle with deep questions about His character, and come out the other side with confidence in His goodness, His justice, His compassion, and His great love for our world.
 
And so, even though our Scripture readings today leave us with some challenging questions, they are there for our own good… inviting us to draw near to God in faith, to search Him closely for a deeper understanding of our Lord, and to learn how we His people today can faithfully walk in His ways.
 
Our Gospel reading today is from nearly halfway through the Gospel of St. Mark: the story of Jesus, the Christ… Israel’s Messiah, the Chosen anointed One… the Son of God. And throughout the first half of St. Mark’s Gospel, we can see Jesus engaged in a clear struggle… a campaign against the forces of darkness, the spiritual evil at work in our world, that has brought pain and oppression to so many, for so long.
 
He heals the sick. He casts out demons. He gathers disciples to share the Good News of God’s Kingdom at work in Him. He travels from town to town, changing lives as He goes… never settling down for too long. He forgives sins. He teaches in parables. He confronts religious hypocrites. To the amazement of His disciples, Jesus performs miracles that reveal God’s power at work in Him, like calming the waves of the storm, feeding thousands with a few fish and loaves of bread… and even raising the dead.
 
All of these acts were a part of His ministry… His mission… being sent from His Father to His people Israel… to the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, whom God had chosen long ago to be a people set apart to share in His holy life up close and personal… blessed in order to be a blessing… so that all the families of the world might be blessed through them.  
 
In short, Jesus was not simply wandering about the ancient world doing random acts of kindness. Jesus was at work bringing God’s Kingdom into the world, as Israel’s prophets like Isaiah had promised long ago.
 
Listen again to the words of Isaiah Chapter 35 which we heard read this morning. It is promises like these that Jesus was pouring all of His efforts into fulfilling. Isaiah 35:4-6,
 
“Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
‘Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
He will come and save you.’
 
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;”
 
Despite the very sketchy devotion of Abraham and Sarah’s descendants spoken of all throughout the Scriptures, Yahweh, the Living God, would not go back on His promises to them. He would not forsake His people, even when they kept rejecting Him. And so, God sent His Son to save His covenant people, and turn their hearts back to Him.
 
But here in Mark Chapter 7, Jesus is approached by someone outside of Abraham and Sarah’s family… a Syrophoenician woman… a Gentile mother, desperately seeking aid for her daughter.
“Gentile” is one of those words we might hear in Church, understand it’s basic meaning, and forget it’s deeper significance for the bigger story that’s being told. In a basic sense, it means someone who was not Jewish. A member of “the nations”, in a vague, general sense. A Gentile was simply not ‘one of us’… they were ‘one of those other people, out there somewhere… doing who knows what.’ For most Israelites in Jesus’ day, Gentiles were the people out there in the darkness… while God’s people on the other hand, were the ones living in the light.
 
It's all a pretty common way that we humans keep organizing the world, even today: ‘Us vs. Them’.
 
Who are we tempted to see as ‘those other people’ today?
The people we’d rather not have around? The people we dismiss as backward, or ignorant, or downright evil?
 
Who are we willing to pass over, and who do we easily show partiality to, without even thinking about it? Uncomfortable questions we need to ask ourselves from time to time, and which this passage calls us to ponder.
 
Back in Mark Chapter 7, this desperate mother comes to Jesus and pleads with Him to do what? To do for her daughter what Jesus had already been doing for so many others: to set her free from the forces of spiritual darkness that were oppressing her. To cast out the demonic powers opposed to God’s Kingdom, that were making her life into hell.
 
Would Jesus help her? Or would He turn her away? If He came to bring God’s Kingdom into the world, was it only for a chosen few to enjoy, or for all? Was the saving love of God only for Israel, or was there room for ‘those other people’ as well? These are the questions that this passage calls us to ask, and wrestle with too.
 
Not just in these pages from the distant past, but in our own context. In our lives. With our own prejudices and partiality on the line. Imagine ‘them’ in this woman’s place. How would we want Jesus to respond to ‘their’ desperate pleas for His help?
 
However we may have wanted Him to respond, this is what Jesus actually says:
“Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” (Mark 7:27).
 
Notice… He doesn’t say no.
What He says is challenging… but He doesn’t say no!
 
He says “Let the children be fed first…”
He has a responsibility… a mission to fulfill. He has come to bring the Kingdom of God to light in the midst of Israel, and His focus needs to remain on accomplishing this work. But He doesn’t say no.
 
He says “it is not fair to take the children’s food”… it’s not right to divert His energies and efforts that are intended to nourish the faith of those who are set aside as God’s own people… “and throw it to the dogs”, that is, to take something precious and treat it like garbage… left to be swallowed up by those who will eat anything… those who can’t see the true significance of what is being offered.
 
And yet… Jesus doesn’t say no to her. He doesn’t refuse to help. He makes plain the barriers already between them… but He doesn’t say no.

And she doesn’t give up. This desperate Gentile mother persists. She says in reply, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” (Mark 7:28). Sure, the dogs might not fully appreciate or understand the meal being offered… but neither do the children… and is it not right for the dogs to be nourished by what the children themselves treat carelessly?
 
This woman was not attempting to overthrow Jesus’ priorities, or get in the way of His mission… but she believed Him to be the best hope for her suffering daughter. She believed that Jesus had the power to rescue her child… and she believed in His willingness to do so… to offer compassion and mercy in her hour of need.
 
And she was right to believe all this, because when Jesus sees her faith, He sets her daughter free from the spirits that troubled her.
 
Why does St. Mark include this story in his Gospel account? What does he want us to see in this encounter between Israel’s Messiah and this desperate Gentile mother?

I won’t pretend to know everything it has to teach us, but I think part of its message for us today is that God doesn’t play favorites, but in His compassion and mercy He makes room for all who will draw near in faith… even those we tend to overlook or dismiss as insignificant.
 
This passage takes place at a crucial moment in the bigger story that St. Mark is trying to tell: the story of how Jesus, the Christ, Israel’s Messiah, the Chosen One… the Son of God was being sent to offer His life to His own chosen people… but most of them would end up throwing this precious gift away… rejecting Him like crumbs swept off from the table.
 
In short order, St. Mark will make plain that Jesus knew exactly where His mission would lead Him. Mark 8:31, “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
 
He knew that in order to fulfill the work the Father had sent Him to do… in order to save Israel, and bring about God’s Good Kingdom in their midst, He would have to die… to be betrayed by His own, and crucified as an outcast. Rejected completely. His body broken, and blood poured out at the cross. Jesus knew exactly how painful in mind and body and spirit all of this rejection would be… but He didn’t say no.
 
He didn’t say no, because He also knew that this is exactly how God would share His saving love, not just Israel, but with the world!
 
From the start, Jesus’ mission was much wider in scope than even His closest followers imagined. Though His focus was on reaching God’s chosen people, it was not out of favouritism, or partiality, but as the way God’s salvation could break through every barrier that we humans keep setting up between ourselves… working through one family in order to bless every family… every people and nation. 
 
God’s Son gave His life to the world through the rejection He faced from His own chosen people at the cross, so that God’s compassion, mercy, and saving love might be shown to all… Jew and Gentile… without distinction.

Jesus’ encounter with the Gentile mother in Mark Chapter 7 is then an early glimpse of what He was doing all along: first going to ‘the children’ of Israel, so that God’s saving love could be shared with all the nations. But by her persistent faith, this mother gave Jesus a chance to reveal His compassion and saving love ahead of time. Unlike His own people who would miss all the clues, she could see what He was really about: bringing God’s saving power and light into our darkened world. And in telling her story twenty centuries later, we are reminded that the Living God Christ reveals to us does not play favorites, but reveals His saving love to all who trust in Him.
 
But even more than that, this story calls for a response… challenging us all to reexamine our own assumptions about the limits of God’s compassion and care, and how we are to take part in sharing it. Who are we more likely to show partiality to, and who do we tend to ignore? How might God’s compassion and love set us free from these traps, so that we can truly love our neighbours?
 
Or maybe we needed to be reminded that even when we feel like an outsider… rejected or insignificant, Jesus invites us to draw near to Him in faith, and trust in His mercy and love for us as well. Maybe we need to be reminded not to give up on His mercy and rescuing love.
 
However the Spirit of God may be at work in our hearts this morning, may we all find fresh comfort and hope in the Good News that Jesus Christ God’s Son came to save not just some… but to give His life to save everyone and anyone who will trust in His love. Amen.

Scripture Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1-9 | Psalm 15 | James 1:17–27 | Mark 7:1-23

​“But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” (James 1:22).
 
There’s a saying that seems to reflect a certain spirit of the age these days: that ‘rules are made to be broken.’ The basic idea behind this saying is that any kind of command, restriction, or limitation we face must simply be an oppressive obstacle to our ‘freedom’, which we should feel free to overcome, or just ignore.
 
Of course, rules really are restrictive by nature. They are meant to narrow down the possibilities of our actions,
but in doing so they can also bring to life many other possibilities that cannot exist apart from these necessary limits.
 
For all those bakers and cooks among us, think of how recipes… rules about ingredients and measurements… can help us construct even very complex meals… but only if we actually try to follow the directions.
 
For those of us who follow sports, what good would a game or a competition be if the athletes involved just ignored the rules of how to play and did their own thing?
 
Imagine living without rules… no traffic laws. No expectations for how to treat our neighbours. No safeguards to protect those of us who are most vulnerable? No one to say no to those with no concerns at all about the damage they will cause by chasing after their desires.  
 
Of course, sadly this is not totally hypothetical. There have been times and places throughout history when all the rules have been set aside… scenes of war and chaos… and it isn’t pretty! Rules are restrictive, yes. But the limits they offer us can be a real gift to us… helping us experience truly life-giving possibilities… that is, if the rules themselves are leading us into life.
 
Not all rules do that, of course. Some rules are actually intended to keep people trapped… or to oppress us, instead of leading us to the peace and freedom they claim to offer.
 
The truth is, it can be hard to know which rules are good for us in the long run, and which rules should really be left behind. So many of our ongoing and divisive political disputes today boil down to disagreements about which rules our communities should follow… which goals we should all be striving for… which ways of life are worth protecting and preserving, and which should be resisted instead.
 
We know sorting through all this isn’t always easy. But as Christians, we are not just starting from scratch either. We have already been entrusted with a way of life… a vision for the kind of life the Living God intends for His creatures. Yet we too can resist the restrictiveness of the rules God has given to us… seeing them as a burden and a barrier to a fulfilled life, instead of as pointing us down the path that leads to God’s blessings, for us and our world, that we could not experience alone.
 
Thankfully, our Scripture passages today call us to reflect, not simply on a list of rules we can either accept or reject according to our own wisdom, but rather they call us to reflect on the overall role that God’s commands play in our lives as His people… reminding us of what it means to respond to them faithfully… and the fruit that this obedience will bear in our own lives, and in the world around us.
 
In our first reading today from Deuteronomy Chapter 4, we hear the words of Moses, addressing God’s people, and reflecting on the covenant the LORD had made with them at Mt. Sinai… the clear parameters… the rules of this sacred relationship forged between Yahweh and Abraham’s family.
 
Moses reminds them that they are to live by God’s rules in the land they are about to receive. Deuteronomy 4:1, “So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.” These commandments were meant to guide and shape their shared life in the land… helping them walk in God’s good ways, and experience the blessings that they lead to. But there was another reason beyond their own benefit: by obeying God’s commands, they would be showing the rest of the world the blessing that they too can experience, if they draw near to the Living God in faith, and follow His ways.

Deuteronomy 4:5-6, “See, just as the Lord my God has charged me, I now teach you statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’”
 
In other words, if Israel would walk faithfully in God’s ways, they would become a sign to their neighbours, revealing God’s wisdom, goodness, power, and steadfast love that all are invited to share in. But if they refused to do so, the nations around them would miss out on this sign.
 
Following God’s commands, His way of life, is an integral part of sharing His saving love with the world. Faithfulness to Him draws us into His mission, and though it can be challenging, it leads us and others around us into life. Faithlessness, on the other hand… leads us all in a very different direction.
 
The rest of Israel’s story in the Scriptures gives us a clear warning here. Despite the words of the prophets continuously warning them to turn around and return to the ways of the LORD, God’s people kept pushing back against the commands Yahweh had given to them. And as a result, they end up losing their land, and are carried away into Exile.
 
And yet even so, God’s grace did not abandon them. In His great mercy, the Living God allows His people to learn first-hand where their lawlessness ultimately leads to, but eventually He led them back to the land… opening up the wonderful possibility that their descendants would remember His covenant with their ancestors, and walk again in His ways.
 
And so, although their story offers us a warning, it also offers us a vivid reminder that the One who gives us these commands is not a cruel uncaring dictator, arbitrarily making up rules for no reason! No, He is the Giver of Good Gifts… the Lord of Love, who longs for us to share in His blessed life… the One who can bring forth all sorts of unforeseen and beautiful possibilities in our lives, if we will trust in Him, and faithfully walk in His ways.
 
This leads us right to our second reading today from the letter of St. James, and his words reminding us that we can confidently place our trust in the steadfast grace of God.
 
James 1:17-18, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures”
 
The gift of God’s blessed life is not fickle or fleeting, uncertain like flickering lights or dancing shadows. God’s grace is completely consistent, trustworthy throughout the ages, carrying always a common purpose: to shape and transform those of us who trust in Him, so that we might become the first fruits… the starting point of His great work to transform the rest of His beloved creation… to bring His blessed, rescuing life and love, not just to a few, but to all who will receive it.
 
And so God’s commandments, God’s ways are a great gift to us, but one that we must also put into practice.
After all, it may be important to know the rules, but that won’t help us if we don’t actually follow them.
 
James 1:22-25, “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.”
 
God gives us the word, the Good News and the way of life that flows from it… a way of life intended to bless us, and to help us share this blessed life with all those around us. But we need to actually do what it tells us. It needs to take root in and influence our day to day decisions. Only then will it start to transform us into those who reflect the goodness and love of the Lord.  
 
This leads us at last to our reading from the Gospel of Mark, where we heard Christ’s confrontation with some of the experts on God’s laws: some Pharisees and Scribes, who were both deeply devoted to obeying the commandments of the covenant God gave to Israel… carefully and publicly putting them into practice… and watching to make sure everyone else did the same.
 
In fact, many of the Pharisees were so concerned about breaking God’s laws, that they created all sorts of other rules around the covenant to make sure they never got close to breaking them. These extra rules were often passed down, and followed just as strictly as God’s own laws, seeing this as as a mark of true faithfulness, even though they were not found in the covenant God had made with Israel… which led to the confrontation we read about this morning.
 
These law experts criticized Jesus and His disciples because they were not following the traditions of the elders; eating food without first washing their hands.
 
Jesus hits back with a withering critique, highlighting the hypocrisy that He sees at work in those who claim to be defending God’s ways, while twisting His commandments to suit their own purposes.
 
Mark 7:6-9, Jesus “said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’ Then he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!
 
Jesus then offers examples of how these experts on God’s laws would use pious sounding loopholes to avoid actually putting God’s commands into practice… showing that even if they thought they were committed to the covenant… to the rules God had given them, in truth their hearts did not belong to the Lord at all, but to themselves.
 
Jesus is here pointing out the hypocrisy of religious people using religion to serve their own purposes, instead of serving the Living God, and letting Him lead them into life.
 
This problem remains a temptation for many of us today. One example that quickly comes to my mind are all the politicians that make use of other people’s faith, and their religious commitments to build up their own following… arguing that, unless you sign up to their agenda, and support and vote for them, you can’t really be a faithful Christian.
 
But there are lots of ways that this temptation can be at work in our own lives too. Like when we follow the commandments we like… the ones that don’t challenge us to change our ways… and then ignore those that don’t suit us, as if they were dishes in a buffet to choose from, instead of essential ingredients in a recipe.
 
And as Jesus just showed us, we can even run into trouble when trying to follow them all… if we do so for the wrong reasons… if we are obeying the rules so we can compare ourselves to others, and try to prove how good we are. That’s like being so focused on the rules of a sport that we completely forget what the game is all about!
 
So if it’s so messy… if it’s so hard to figure out how to truly obey God’s ways, and faithfully follow His commandments, what are we supposed to do?
​
Well, as Christians our hope has never been about how we can sort through life’s challenges on our own, or how we can be sure to perfectly obey God’s laws in our own strength. We need something more than rules to follow… we need Someone to rescue us.
 
Jesus goes on to teach His followers that the uncleanness we should care most about comes not from the outside, but from within… and so, while rules about washing hands can perhaps point us in the right direction about the need to be clean, they can do nothing at all about the uncleanness already at work inside of us.
 
The point I am getting at is this: even God’s commands in the covenant are not an end in themselves… but a tangible, practicable invitation to trust in the Living God with our whole lives… teaching us to walk in His ways so that His goodness, and holiness, and saving love can take shape in us, and live in us, and live through us in the power of His Spirit.
 
Rules and commands, even from God, may be a good gift to us, but alone they are unable to cleans our hearts of sin. For that, we need the gift that God’s rules all point us to: the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, who gave His life at the cross to wash away our sins by His blood, and who, through His Spirit at work in us, shares God’s blessed life with us, and with the whole world.
 
These are the life-giving possibilities that God’s rules open up for us: God gives us a way of life intended to bless us, so we can start to share this blessed life with others. God gives us this gift for our good, but we need to put it into practice to truly benefit from it. And while trying to follow God’s ways on our own does not save us, they will point us in the right direction: inviting us to keep placing our trust in Jesus Christ, whose perfect obedience and sacrifice of love alone can save both us and our world.
 
So as Christians, committed to the way of Jesus every day, and in all that we do, let us remember that the gift of God’s commandments call us to keep the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord at the centre our hearts and minds. For it is there in His death that Jesus put the entire perfect law of God into practice once and for all. And it’s there in His rising again to share His new life with us, that He shows us what these rules are all about: /as He breaks down everything that stands between us and His saving love. Amen.

Scripture Readings: Joshua 24:1–2a, 14–18 | Psalm 34:15–22 | Ephesians 6:10–20 | John 6:56–69 

“So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ ” (John 6:67-68).
 
How many of us here today find it easy to make decisions?
How many of us don’t?
How many of us are struggling to decide how to answer that question?
 
Whether we like it or not, life is full of decisions to make… of moments when we are forced to choose one option or path, and to leave behind all of the others.

For some of us, it might be a struggle when it comes to simply ordering food from a menu… or having to choose which route to take through an unfamiliar city. We might find it hard to choose who to vote for in an election… or how best to respond when a conversation suddenly takes an unexpectedly controversial turn… or how to treat our friends, and family members, and neighbours who make choices that we would never even consider.
 
Life is full of choices… decisions we have to make… some small, some much more significant. And our Scripture readings this morning invite us back into some of the most important, and life-shaping choices that we will ever make… decisions that influence every other aspect of our lives.
 
In our first reading today, we heard how Joshua, called the people of Israel together to make a clear decision about their allegiance. After the death of Moses, Joshua had been the leader of God’s covenant people, helping them follow the ways of the LORD, as they finally entered the Promised Land. But now, as Joshua’s own life was drawing to an end, he knew that the people once again needed to reaffirm their commitment to serving the Living God alone.
 
Joshua knew all to well the story of his people: how they kept turning their hearts away from Yahweh, the Living God, who had rescued them from slavery in Egypt, sustained them through the wilderness, and graciously invited them to share in His own blessed life, if they would trust and follow Him.
 
Joshua saw first hand how fickle the people could be: quickly forgetting time and again all of the ways that the LORD had shown them His mercy, generosity, and steadfast love… and how easily they went back to their old sinful ways, serving their own self-centred desires.
 
And so, at the end of his life, Joshua calls Israel to once again make a definitive choice to serve Yahweh alone, and not to go after the other so-called gods, the spiritual powers worshipped by the peoples all around them.

“Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:14-15).
 
The choice is stark. There is no middle ground here, just two options: to be faithful to the Living God, walking in His ways, or not.

And how we respond to this choice shapes all other choices we make in life. It challenges us to re-evaluate all of our priorities. It calls us to reconsider so much of what we might otherwise simply take for granted. If our ultimate allegiance belongs to the Living God, than all of our choices, big and small, need to be made with Him and His ways in mind. It’s an ongoing acknowledgement that our whole lives now belong to Him.
 
And of course, this is a choice we don’t just make once… but over and over again. And not just with our words, but with our whole selves… our hearts, and minds, and actions as well.

In Joshua’s last days, the people of Israel said yes to his challenge to serve the Living God alone, but sadly, before too long they would fall back into their old sinful ways. And we too can say all the right things one moment, but still not remain faithful to the LORD in our daily lives.
 
What we need is not simply to make a choice, but to be transformed by a choice.  
 
This leads us to our reading from the Gospel of John Chapter 6, and the conclusion of a challenging conversation between Christ Jesus and the crowds that followed Him… a conversation where He claimed to be the Bread from Heaven, the source of God’s blessed life.
 
Jesus knew that many of those who were following Him did so, not because they really believed in Him, but because of the miracles He had done for them, like feeding thousands of hungry people with just a few loaves and fish.
 
Jesus knew that the hearts of these people were still serving their own interest and appetites… and so He pushed them to make a choice: to decide to trust in Him… to place their faith in Him as God’s gift of unending life… to not just be fed miraculous bread, but to give Jesus their full allegiance as God’s Messiah, the Son of Man sent to save them once and for all.
 
But sadly, many in the crowd that day chose to walk away from Jesus instead. They chose to trust in their own understanding, and not to believe in His words.
 
This choice lies before us too: are we simply interested in what Jesus can do for us? In the ways He can satisfy our desires, and help us achieve our goals? Or are we open to what He is offering us? Are we open to having our lives transformed by His invitation into God’s Kingdom? An invitation into a whole new way of life, centered not on ourselves, but on the holy love of God?
 
Jesus offers us Himself as the source of God’s own blessed life, and He invites us to believe in Him… to trust Him, and walk in His ways even when it’s hard. Even when we don’t understand. Even when no one else around us understands.
 
This is the choice that we Christians make every day: to place our trust in Jesus Christ alone. To entrust our lives, and our world into His saving hands, and to follow the way He has shown us.
 
After many of those who had followed Him turned back, our Lord turned to the Twelve Apostles and said to them: “‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:67-69).
 
As disciples of Jesus Christ today, we are invited to make Simon Peter’s words our own, and not only that, but to translate those words into action through all of life’s choices.
 
If we also believe and know that Jesus is the Christ, the Holy One of God, who alone has the words of eternal life, then are His words taking root and transforming the many decisions that we make from day to day? Do we consider His Kingdom’s priorities when we are making our plans? Are we open to making changes to our habits and behaviours as we learn more of His holy ways? Are we willing to go against the flow of those all around us when we know our Lord calls us to follow a different road?
 
Will we choose again today to give our full allegiance to our Saviour, or not?
 
At the cross, Jesus chose to suffer and died for you and me… and for everyone. And He calls us now to trust and follow Him… to live His way in the midst of a mixed up and combative world. But instead of simply giving in to the divisive and destructive spirit of the age, He longs for us to have our lives shaped and transformed by His truth, His mercy, His holiness, His compassion, and His self-giving love.

And no matter how chaotic and confusing the world around us might get, we can choose to stand firm in our faith, in the Good News that in Jesus, God has chosen us! He chose to give Himself to our world at the cross, laying down His life so that sinners like you and I might believe in Him and share in God’s unending life.

I don’t know what sort of choices you may be facing today… or the challenging situations you may be having to navigate. But as you seek a wise way forward, don’t forget where your true allegiance lies. Remember the Good News that God chose to share His unending life with us in Jesus Christ, inviting everyone to trust in Him, and to be transformed in Him. May this beautiful truth help to reshape all of our priorities, and may every choice that we make flow from His life-giving love. Amen.

Scripture Readings: Proverbs 9:1–6 | Psalm 34:9–14 | Ephesians 5:15–20 | John 6:51–58

Jesus said: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” (John 6:54-55).
 
Does anyone here remember the TV show Survivor Man? I used to watch it years ago, and recently stumbled onto it again. It’s a show where an expert survivalist heads out into all sorts of wilderness areas, places like the arctic, or tropical jungles, or deserts, and then they record their attempts to last a week all alone in these life-threatening situations.
 
One of the things that I think the show highlights pretty well is the importance of wisdom when it comes to surviving in the wild: of recognizing the potential of simple, everyday objects to help overcome big challenges… of understanding your surroundings, and the dangers that need to be avoided… of making good use of precious and limited resources… and of finding enough food to sustain life… which can sometimes be found in surprising places.
 
Apparently, over the years several people have actually credited this show with helping them to know how to survive unexpected emergencies that they had faced while in the wilderness. They may not have been experts, but they picked up enough practical wisdom from it to help them in their time of need.
 
One piece of this survival wisdom that stuck out to me was when the host warned of the dangers of something called 'rabbit starvation', or 'protein poisoning'. Have you heard of this? It’s what happens when you only eat extremely lean meats (like wild rabbit), that don’t give you enough fat content, and you end up really sick, or worse. It’s kind of tragic. You can think you are eating plenty of food that will sustain you, but end up not getting the true nourishment you need to make it through.
 
And this danger struck me as a problem not simply for those in wilderness survival situations, but in lots of areas of life. I mean, in so many ways we can think we are getting everything that we need, but instead, we can end up starving ourselves… missing out on something that’s essential to our actual survival.
 
Now hunger is something that affects us all… urging us to seek to satisfy our very real needs… but sadly, we don’t always have the wisdom to know the best ways to meet those needs.
 
And that goes for our spiritual hungers too… for the deep longings in us, whether we’re conscious of them or not… longings for meaning, and purpose, and truth… for community, for a sense of belonging… and for love.
 
How we go about trying to satisfy these deep hungers really matters… and tragically, it’s all too easy for us to settle for things we think will fill us up, and give us what we need, but that cannot truly sustain us.
 
Which is where the need for wisdom comes in. Wisdom involves knowing where to look for what will truly sustain us. And wisdom can help us to avoid the pitfalls, distractions, and dangers found in the wildernesses of our hearts, so that we can be prepared to take in and receive that which will bring us life.
 
 
And the biblical vision of wisdom, as it turns out, can be quite surprising. It’s not the same as common sense… insights that should be obvious at all. And it’s not the kinds of hidden knowledge possessed only by experts who spend years mastering it. No, biblical wisdom is presented as a precious gift, one that actively seeks out any who will be open to receiving it… regardless of how learned or simple they may be.
 
Biblical Wisdom… the kind needed for knowing where to look to find what we truly need… is not held up as a prize or reward we can earn or achieve on our own, but as a gracious gift of God, to lead us into life.
 
In our first reading today from the book of Proverbs, true wisdom is personified as a woman calling out in the streets, having prepared a wonderful meal to provide for anyone who will come and share in it… eagerly and earnestly entreating us to be open to it, and find life through it.
 
Wisdom says to us in Proverbs 9:4-6,
“You that are simple, turn in here!”
To those without sense she says,
“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”
 
In this sense, wisdom’s not a body of knowledge, or a special skill set… but a summons… an ongoing invitation to turn to the LORD, the Living God, and find in Him all that we need in order to find life. In a word, wisdom tells us to place our trust in God to lead and sustain us.
 
And in our Gospel reading today from John Chapter 6, we hear our Lord Jesus Christ make the bold claim that He is Himself the One we are to turn to, in order to receive the gift of God’s life… referring to Himself as the wonderful, life-giving meal, the bread sent from Heaven to save and sustain us.
 
Christ came not to offer us tips and tricks to get through the tough times of life on our own, but He came to offer His very life as the gift that alone can keep us going… not just day by day, but forever.
​
Jesus tells us that He is the Bread of Life: the wonderful provision from God’s right hand, sent to meet the needs that we all have… the need for meaning, for a purpose, for truth… finding ourselves in Him, and that we are not simply intelligent animals, bent on mere survival, but the beloved children of God the Father, the Creator of all, and we are made to mirror and reflect His divine goodness and holiness into our world through our lives in all sorts of ways.
 
Jesus is the Bread of Life… meeting our needs for community, belonging, and love… assuring us that we are not simply adrift in a chaotic and cruel wilderness, destined simply to endure trial after trial on our own. No, in Jesus we find that each of us are deeply known and deeply loved, regardless of how many dangers we face, trusting that our Saviour remains God-with-us even in the darkest wilderness… and He calls us to place our trust in Him, again and again and again.
 
Of course, one tangible way that we do this… seeking to renew our trust in Jesus Christ, and all He has done for us… is when we draw near to His table in faith, and receive the gracious gift of His life, His body and His blood, shared together in Holy Communion.
 
At the cross, Jesus offered up His life once and for all to provide what we all need. Christ’s sacrifice of self-giving love became God’s way to set about healing our sin-sickness, to offer us forgiveness in His name, and to sustain us... sharing God’s own life with us, which is now at work in us through the Holy Spirit.  
 
When we come forward to share at Christ’s Table, saying yes to all that the Lord Jesus has done for us at the cross… and to all that He still longs to share with us who trust in Him… we do not need to be some sort of expert… or have our faith all figured out in order to experience the gift of His life. Far from it! It’s enough just to come to Him in faith… reaching out our hands to ask Him to give us what He knows we need… trusting in His saving love, even when we don’t yet understand.
 
The scholar Wesley Hill puts it well: “In the Eucharist, Jesus puts Himself in our hands so we know exactly where to find Him. In that moment, we don’t have to wonder whether God is for us. We know He is because we’ve just tasted His provision. He gives us His Son—His life-giving flesh.”[1]
 
Wisdom tells us to believe that Jesus Himself is God’s life-giving gift: the Bread of Heaven, offered to all who are hungry, so that all might be satisfied.
 
Just one more point to ponder: when our physical bodies are able to consistently feed on truly nourishing food, they are more likely to grow as they should. And when they don’t get to regularly receive what they need, things start to go wrong, just like with ‘rabbit starvation’.  
 
When we consistently feed on the spiritual nourishment that Jesus offers to us… His own life… it is so that our whole lives can grow into what they were always intended to be: growing more and more like Christ, through God’s Spirit at work in us, reflecting God’s goodness and holy love out into our world.
 
This is what St. Paul is touching on in our reading from Ephesians this morning, reminding us that when we draw near to Christ in faith to receive the gift of His life, it is so that His life might begin to transform our own.
 
Ephesians 5:15-17 “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”
 
Saying yes to the gift of Jesus’ life invites us into a relationship that changes us… that calls us to intentionally make some changes as well. Jesus gives us His life… He invites us to take and eat, not only so that we can make it through another day, but so that His life… God’s true and unending life… can transform us… and our world.
 
Wisdom tells us to trust Jesus, and to let His life make changes in us… and through us.
 
We all have all sorts of hungers… as do our neighbours… which require wisdom to satisfy.
 
The Good News is that in Jesus, God has shown us, and all who will believe, where to find the sustenance we need.
 
Jesus Christ is the Bread of Heaven… the true food that not only meets our needs, but shares with us the life of the Living God, so that we can actually live His ways today.
 
And this is Good News, not just for those of us who already believe, and who receive together the Lord’s life given for all… it’s also Good News for the world around us that we get to invite to draw near as well… and even though we may not all be experts, we can all still get the word out any way we can about where we all can find the answer to our world’s deepest hungers… the Bread of Heaven: Jesus Christ the crucified and Risen Lord.
 
So this morning, may we draw near to Jesus our Saviour in faith, and receive from Him again what we all need: the gift of His life… the source of our salvation that alone can sustain us, and transform us… not just to help us all survive, but to share in God’s blessed life forever. Amen.


[1] Wesley Hill, The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father, Christian Essentials (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019), 55.

As of Monday July 15 Rev. Rob has been on vacation, and will be returning to St. Luke's on Monday August 12. 

This week our Honorary Cleric, the Rev. Canon Cathy Laskey, will be preaching and presiding at St. Luke's, and our excellent team of Lay Readers will be leading our other In-Person services of Morning Prayer. 

Our service of Morning Prayer, Bulletin, and Sermon by the Rev. Canon Cathy can be found here:

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

Scripture Readings: Ezekiel 2:1–5 | Psalm 123 | 2 Corinthians 12:2–10 | Mark 6:1–13

[The Lord] “said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
 
Today we gather to worship the Living God as the stewards of the enduring witness of St. Luke’s Church, a place of worship which has stood vigil in this community, pointing our parishioners and neighbours to the Gospel of Jesus Christ for nearly 200 years. The gravestones around us serve to remind us of the many lives of those who have faithfully served Christ Jesus in this community, and who have now gone before us into glory.

​Today, we give thanks to God for their lives, and their labours… laying many of the foundations on which we have continued to build today. And whether we here can remember all of their stories in detail or not… we rejoice that they are all remembered by God, and trust that they now find their rest in His loving arms. Their time and presence here in this Parish matters. These brothers and sisters in Christ were all a part of God’s work in this part of God’s world… helping those around them live out their faith, grow in God’s love, and share the hope of the Gospel.

And their presence here also reminds us that our presence here matters too. That we now serve as witnesses to God’s work here in Gondola Point… a much needed service, especially as fewer and fewer of our neighbours seem to be familiar with the Good News of Jesus: with God’s saving love, the forgiveness of sins, and the New Life offered to all in His holy name.
 
Faced with this high calling, it might be easy for us to get a little discouraged at times: to feel the great weight of the legacy that we’ve been entrusted with, while also not necessarily knowing how best to share the Good News of God’s New Life with those around us.
 
Thankfully, our Scripture readings this morning have some encouragement to offer us: important reminders of the strange and wonderful ways the Living God works through His faithful people, helping them share in and point others to His power at work even in our weaknesses.
 
In our first reading from the book of the prophet Ezekiel, we heard a clearly less than positive message from Yahweh: God was sending Ezekiel to share His message with a stubborn and hard-hearted people, and there was no guarantee at all that they would listen to him.
 
And yet, despite the discouragement that he might have felt that his fellow Judaeans in exile in Babylon would likely not heed God’s word, Ezekiel could be confident that the Lord would be at work in and through him in ways that God alone could truly foresee.
 
And sure enough, though his contemporaries paid little heed to his faithful prophetic service, God did work in and through Ezekiel in powerful and unexpected ways. For example: Ezekiel probably had no clue that his words would be read by a bunch of New Brunswickers in Gondola Point thousands of years later, as we seek to live God’s way today! You and I are part of his story… a part of a living community that reaches all the way back to those ancient times… whose members have passed down the faith, one generation to the next… one people group and culture to the next… sharing the Good News through their faithful words and deeds, despite all sorts of hardships, missteps, misunderstandings, rejections, and even persecutions.

And as our Gospel reading reminds us, Christ Jesus our Lord Himself faced fierce rejection by His own people… first in Nazareth, and then ultimately at the cross. But the Good News is that God transformed that rejection into God’s gracious gift of reconciling love through the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ again from the dead. What seemed like utter defeat and failure became the ultimate victory of God’s great love. A love that we have tasted, and share in today, and are called to share with those around us.
 
After the episode in Nazareth, Christ Jesus sent out His first disciples to share the Good News of His Kingdom with their world… inviting one household, one neighbourhood, one community after another to receive it.
 
And Christ continues to do so today through His disciples gathered in His name, even here in Gondola Point. We too are a part of this same story: called to share his Good News through the lives that we lead, and through the love that we share. And this is true even when we feel weak and uncertain of our own abilities.

In our second reading, we are reminded of St. Paul the Apostle’s faithful service, carried out despite the great difficulties that he faced… including a persistent problem he referred to as a thorn in the flesh and “a messenger of Satan”. He pleaded repeatedly for the Lord to remove this chronic problem, whatever it may have been, but instead the Lord assured Paul that His divine grace would be enough to see Paul through… that God’s power is made clear in the weakness of His servants.
 
2 Corinthians 12:7-10, “Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated [That is, too puffed up or exalted]. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”
 
Now the point St. Paul is making is not that we should go out of our way to make ourselves weak, or to seek out suffering. But rather, to see that our weaknesses, troubles, and struggles pose no barrier at all to God’s Kingdom work, and can actually serve to reveal the power of God’s great love in ways we could never have imagined or planned. We are called to place our trust in Christ’s power, and in God’s grace, not in our strengths… or in what we see as stable circumstances. With God we are strong even when we are weak… for His power and love are at work in us.
 
So many of our sisters and brothers in Christ who have gone on before us have had to face times of great uncertainty, struggles, and weaknesses, and yet God’s grace was enough for them, and carried them through to the end.
 
And so, like St. Paul, and these our brothers and sisters, whose bodies lie buried here, and who now are at rest in the arms of the Risen Lord, waiting until His coming again, let us in our time be faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ in every circumstance that we face, trusting that His grace is enough to see us through, and that He will keep on working in and through us to share the power of His saving love with Gondola Point and our world. Amen.

Scripture Readings: Lamentations 3:22–33 | Psalm 30 | 2 Corinthians 8:7–15 | ​Mark 5:21–43 

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23).
 
Our world is hungry for hope.
 
For better or worse, long gone are the days of progressive optimism… the notion that we humans can figure out the solutions to just about any crisis we come across… given enough time, money, technology, and motivation.
 
True, these things can all be put to good use… alleviating all sorts of real problems… but then new ones keep popping up. And all the old ones seem to find new ways to unravel all our nicely laid plans.
  
We could talk about the generations of people being raised in poverty just down the road in Saint John… or those struggling quietly behind closed doors here in the valley. Or the growing numbers of our neighbours living without a home, or the opioid epidemic all across our country. Or the millions of people who are being crushed by famine, and war… made worse by our changing climate, and not to mention all those who are being invigorated and incited to act, not out of compassion, but out of fear and prejudice… seeing violence and oppression as the only path forward. So many today are hungry for some kind of hope to cling onto… but have no clue where to turn to find it.
 
Our Scripture readings today don’t paint a rosy picture of the world we live in… they don’t offer us simple or easy answers for how to bring and end to all of the suffering and pain… inside, and all around us. But they do point us to the One who we can turn to even in our darkest moments… so that we can receive from Him the hope we need, and start to share this hope with those around us.
 
Our first reading today is taken from the book of Lamentations; a collection of powerful and poetic prayers expressing the grief and anguish felt by God’s covenant people after the fall of Jerusalem. After centuries of living in the land God gave to them, while for the most part ignoring their commitments to walk in the ways of the Living God, the Babylonian Empire showed up and turned the world of those who lived in Judea upside down.

The holy Temple of the Living God built by Solomon… the centre of their people’s spirituality and society, lay ransacked and in ruins. God’s chosen people were defeated, crushed, and deported to foreign lands. The survivors felt abandoned… at a complete loss, and with no idea how things could turn around. A grim situation that has been repeated so many times around the world, including today.
 
And in that time of desolation, some of God’s people found the words to share their pain and despair… honestly expressing to God and to one another, the sense of hopelessness that had overtaken them.
 
The book begins with a metaphor of Jerusalem and its people as a woman whose future has been snuffed out. Lamentations 1:1-4,

How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a vassal.
 
She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
they have become her enemies.
 
Judah has gone into exile with suffering
and hard servitude;
she lives now among the nations,
and finds no resting place;
her pursuers have all overtaken her
in the midst of her distress.
 
The roads to Zion mourn,
for no one comes to the festivals;
all her gates are desolate,
her priests groan;
her young girls grieve,
and her lot is bitter.

And on and on it goes.
 
And yet, even in this deep desolation, the poet turns to Yahweh, the Living God. Not to offer easy answers, but to reach out towards the Lord in faith… in the midst of their grief, seeing Him as their only hope. Lamentations 3:19-24,
 
“The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
is wormwood [bitterness] and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
 
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
 
Against all expectations, at the centre of their Lamentations the poet places their hope in God: in Yahweh’s steadfast love… not in the absence, but in the midst of their afflictions.

When all other hopes appears utterly lost, the poet looks to the LORD. And this is a theme that runs all throughout the Bible: time and again this sacred story calls us to place our hope in the Living God, whose steadfast love endures forever.
 
In our Gospel reading today St. Mark tells the story of two other hopeless situations: a daughter who is dying, and a woman whose sickness will not end.
 
Arriving on the shore after His dramatic calming of the storm, Jesus is met by a desperate parent who begs Him to come and rescue their child. Then on the way, we’re told of the desperate act of a woman suffering from a chronic, stigmatized, and debilitating disease.
 
Just like Jerusalem in the opening lines of Lamentations, these two women were facing desolation, and they had no one else to turn to.
 
And yet they weren’t without hope… and in their troubles they both turn to Jesus. One through the public, earnest pleas of their father… who repeatedly begs Jesus to heal her. The other turns to Jesus with a secret hope she dares not share aloud, even with Jesus Himself! But even so, she reaches out to Him in hope… trusting that even the slightest touch of Him will be enough to bring her relief.
 
At this point, St. Mark amps up the tension in the story… which is an important question for us to consider in our own contexts too. And that question is: how close will Christ Jesus actually get to those who are suffering and hopeless? How near is He willing to draw to those who are themselves considered untouchable?
 
As we may know, one of the most isolating parts of the affliction of the woman who bled those twelve long years, is that for that whole time, she would have been considered unclean by her community. Of course, it might make good medical sense, in the past and today, to be concerned about unknown diseases, and afflictions in order to guard against any dangerous contagions. Our own experience in the early days of COVID-19, when much was unknown about how it is passed along can remind us of how tricky these things can be.
 
But it was not for primarily medical reasons that the woman with the hemorrhage was seen as unclean. It was part of the Israelite understanding about the sanctity of life itself… and the strict rules governing how humans were to relate to the Living God.
 
God was, after all, holy, sacred… uniquely set apart, and needed to be treated as such… in part by maintaining clear boundaries between His holy presence and anything associated with the forces of death.
 
Now to be ritually unclean was not an indictment of someone’s moral character… it was a common, but usually temporary experience that everyone would go through from time to time for a whole host of reasons. If someone was in an unclean state, they simply needed to isolate themselves for a time, and then perform some specific purification rites before rejoining the life of the community.
 
But what if the isolation kept on going? Imagine if you had to stay completely socially distant for twelve years… while everyone else could just go back to their old lives.

On top of the physical toll this person had to endure, they were also facing their afflictions alone… cut off from the life of their people, and apparently kept at a distance from the Living God Himself.
 
This part of St. Mark’s Gospel invites us to contemplate not only if there is hope in hopeless situations… but if there is hope for the people who seem to be hopeless themselves.
 
And one of the truly amazing things that stands out about how Jesus relates to people, even unclean people, and hopeless people, is how He draws near to them. He does not wait for them to be completely ready and made right before connecting with them, but rather He reaches out to them in the midst of the painful messes they find themselves in. Jesus did not let the normal boundaries define who was able to experience the presence and power of the Living God… revealing something I think is incredibly important:
 
In Christ Jesus we see that God is not removed from those who are afflicted… even from those considered outsiders for all sorts of reasons. No, in Jesus, God has truly drawn near to us all… placing Himself within our reach… present and eager for us to turn to Him in faith… to place our hope in Him, and so to experience His life-giving, and cleansing power.
 
When the hemorrhaging woman touched Christ’s cloak expressing her secret hope, Jesus immediately acknowledges her bold faith in Him. And even though everyone else thought that her ritual uncleanness would spread through that desperate touch, it turns out that drawing near to Jesus actually serves to restore and cleanse her instead.
 
And this same willingness to reach out to those who seem hopelessly cut off from is at play when Jesus arrives at the house of the synagogue leader, and takes the hand of his dead daughter. Again, this was an act that itself would have made anyone else ritually unclean. But again, Jesus reaches out to this dead child, and His life-giving power completely restores her.
 
In Jesus, St. Mark wants us to see that God is not threatened or limited by our afflictions, as desperate as they may be. Nor is He repelled by our uncleanness… standing far off from us to avoid contamination. No, in Jesus, the Living God has drawn near, and reached out to bring His healing, cleansing, and life-giving touch to our world. In Him, we know God is very present to our sufferings, and is at work to rescue us up close and personal.
 
This means that no one is beyond the reach of God’s mercy. All are invited to draw near to Him in faith, and to receive from Him the forgiveness, freedom, and hope that He offers to us all, through Jesus Christ… even those we might be tempted to see as hopeless.
 
Our world is indeed hungry for hope, and Jesus Christ is eager and able to fill us up with a hope that endures… not based on what we are capable of on our own, or what we see happening all around us… but based on the Good News of the steadfast love of the Living God made know to us in Jesus Christ the Risen Lord.
 
What does this mean for us His people today, as we seek to not only draw near to Jesus in faith, but also to faithfully follow His ways and share this Good News with our world?

Well, many things. But for starters, it means that we too are meant to reach out even to those who seem hopeless, and to extend God’s steadfast love to them… embodying His mercy and care as we serve as Christ’s hands and feet, and hope-full presence in our world in all sorts of ways.
 
One tangible example of Christians doing this comes from our second reading in 2 Corinthians, as St. Paul encourages his listeners to put God’s merciful presence and power into practice by providing for the needs of others… for strangers living in far off Jerusalem.
 
Though it’s not necessarily clear just from our reading today, one of St. Paul’s projects was to gather a collection on behalf of the Christians in Jerusalem, to provide support and relief as they were suffering from the effects of a severe famine.
 
And so, in our reading, St. Paul was offering the Corinthians encouragement to embody God’s generosity towards their brothers and sisters in their need. Even though Jerusalem was hundreds of miles away… and they may not have met each other personally, St. Paul knew they were all still a part of God’s family, and they were being invited to share God’s love with them in this hands-on way… to be shaped by God’s own merciful heart, and to bring help to those without hope. And St. Paul could see this as an opportunity to help the Corinthians to become a bit more like Jesus… learning to truly care for one another in their afflictions… practicing love for their fellow Christians, and in the process, growing in love towards all their neighbours. 
 
And to this end, St. Paul reminds them of the way that Jesus shared God’s great love with them. 2 Corinthians 8:9, “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”
 
He is of course speaking of the cross, where Jesus gave up everything… His divine glory, earthly security, community, bodily autonomy, all sense of dignity… all in order to reach out to our world of hopeless sinners… stretching out His hands in suffering to bring us the cleansing forgiveness and life-giving power of God’s steadfast and holy love.

And in His resurrection, Jesus gives us good reason to hold onto hope: in Him we know that not even our worst desolations… our suffering, isolation, and even our death can stand in the way of God’s rescuing love.
 
In our day, there are plenty of people who are facing what seems like truly hopeless situations. People facing famine in places like Gaza, and Sudan… and there are also those struggling to make ends meet right here in New Brunswick. There are people that we might be tempted to consider outside of our area of concern… untouchable… hopeless. How might God call us to share His love and His hope with them? To be His merciful hands and feet, as we seek to be faithful to God’s ways today?
 
And how can we support our fellow believers? Our neighbouring Christians in their struggles? Like the Corinthians, how can our hearts be opened to the whole family of God, not just our own community? And as we learn to love one another beyond our walls, also learning how to love all of our neighbours better as well?
 
And finally, when we feel overwhelmed and hopeless ourselves… facing afflictions we can’t overcome… and when we can’t seem to see a clear way forward… let us draw near in faith to Jesus Christ, our merciful Saviour, and receive from Him the forgiveness, freedom, and hope that He offers us all… the hope found in the steadfast, and saving love of God alone.
 
I’d like to close now with the prayer of General Intercession as found in the BAS.
 
Remember, Lord, your people bowed before you, and those who are absent through age, sickness, or any other cause. Care for the infants, guide the young, support the aged, inspire the faint-hearted, and bring the wandering to your fold. Journey with the travellers, encourage the oppressed, defend the widows, deliver the captives, heal the sick. Strengthen all who are in tribulation, necessity, or distress. Remember for good those who love us, and those who hate us, and those who have asked us, unworthy as we are, to pray for them. Remember especially, Lord, those whom we have forgotten. For you are the helper of the helpless, the saviour of the lost, the refuge of the wanderer, the healer of the sick. You know the need of all and have heard each prayer: save us in your merciful lovingkindness and eternal love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Scripture Readings: Job 38:1–11 | Psalm 107:1–3, 23–32 | 2 Corinthians 6:1–13 | Mark 4:35–41

“He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.” (Mark 4:39).
 
Many years ago, when I was a teenager back in the neighbourhood of Thunder Bay, I had the blessing of spending time in the summers at my Grandparent’s cabin on Hick’s Lake. It wasn’t a huge lake. A strong swimmer could cross it width-wise if they wanted to. But it was just about perfect for learning to swim, to fish, and to canoe.   
 
And I can recall one fateful day when my Dad, my cousin, and I decided to take the canoe down to the far end of the lake… which was a blast… until the storm clouds showed up. Suddenly, we were faced with some very strong headwinds… fighting whitecap waves, and pelting rain as we slowly made our way back to our cabin. At one point it seemed we were finally making progress, but then our canoe suddenly caught the wind the wrong way and we found ourselves clear across the lake again.
 
In that moment, I remember being frightened, and frustrated, and aching from having to paddle against these fierce forces of nature… and I really don’t know how we would have made it back without my Dad’s steady guidance and strong hands hard at work from the back of the canoe. It was certainly a humbling experience, and one with important lessons I hope that I’ll never forget.
 
And one of those lessons is that weather is a wonderful reminder of how much we really can’t control in life. There are many aspects of our day to day lives that we can seem to manage… or at least, we feel like we should be able to manage them. But weather is much bigger than us. It's beyond our capability to master. We can only do our best to observe it, to prepare for it, and respond to it.
 
And as we are reminded all the time these days, there are some truly terrifying forces at work in the natural world: wildfires, floods, heatwaves, tornados, hurricanes… all of which can cause great destruction… and which can also serve to remind us of those other experiences in our lives that can also feel out of our control: like illnesses, and loss. And addictions… insecurity… poverty… injustices… and war. We know that people all over our world keep getting swept away by all these terrifying realities that we mere humans just can’t seem to master, as hard as we may try.
 
Our Scripture readings today do not hold out the promise of preventing us from facing these troubles and storms of life…  but they do direct us to the One who is not only with us in the midst of them, but who we can trust truly cares for us in our moments of fear and suffering… and the One who can overcome them… and help us to overcome them too.
 
Our first reading today is a passage from the final chapters of the book of Job, where we hear the Living God respond to Job’s complaint against God on account of his unjust sufferings. The book of Job as a whole is a profound exploration of so many questions that we still struggle with today… and we don’t really have time this morning to work through all of the wisdom it has in store for us. But in our passage today we get a good glimpse of God’s response to Job: a stark reminder that we humans simply can’t see the big picture… nor can we master the world with all its wonderous and dangerous capacities.
​
But as frightening and frustrating as this can seem, this passage is good news for us, because at its heart, this is an invitation to trust the One who can! Yahweh alone is the One who wields power over all the forces of the earth. It is no struggle for him to master the winds and the waves that simply overwhelm us. And so in Job, we are invited to trust in the Living God even without knowing all the answers… without clinging onto the illusion of control… without even any explanations. It’s an invitation to trust God precisely when it’s hard, and to find Him trustworthy.
 
And in our reading today from the Gospel of Mark, we see Jesus displaying God’s own power in silencing the storm, to the amazement and fear of His disciples. I mean, its one thing to see your Rabbi as a great teacher, and a miracle worker. It’s another thing entirely to witness Him silence a storm with just a word. “Who then is this,” they said to themselves, “that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Far from just being a great man, Jesus was able to do things that the Living God alone can do.
 
But Jesus does something else in this story that is of great importance for you and I today aside from revealing a glimpse of His power and glory as the Son of God: He rests in the boat in the midst of the storm… completely entrusting His fate, despite the dangers all around Him, into the hands of His Father in Heaven.
 
And this is the call to action of this story: not only to stand in awe of and worship Christ Jesus for His great power over the forces of nature… but also to trust in the Living God… in our loving Father, when we are in the midst of our storms… in whatever forms these storms may take.
 
Notice that, just like with Job, the disciples had done nothing at all to deserve the dangerous situation they found themselves in. It’s not like the storm was the result of their poor planning, or as a punishment for their mistakes. Actually, St. Mark tells us that it was Jesus Himself who leads His followers into this situation where they are in danger.
 
This serves as an important reminder for us to avoid the temptation to try to assign guilt when life’s storms descend, either on us, or on others. True, these challenging moments might be helpful to remind us of the fragility of life, and of the importance of living faithfully each day… but storms come upon the righteous just as much as they do upon the unrighteous.
 
Suffering itself is not a sign that God is out to get us, or is punishing us for wrongdoing. But it is always an invitation to trust in God’s character, in His compassion, and in His saving love… which is exactly what the disciples struggle to do in our passage.
 
The violent storm tempts them to question Jesus’ concern for them… God’s concern for them: “they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’” (Mark 4:38).
 
How many times have those same thoughts entered into our minds, if not our lips, when the waves and the winds rage around us? How many times have we asked God, “if you love us, why is this happening?”
 
In many ways, I can deeply sympathize, and identify with the disciples, and with this question… and maybe you can to.

But Jesus’ response invites us to consider some other important questions: Like what do we think would have happened if the disciples had simply let Jesus keep on sleeping? Would they really have perished, as they feared, if they had not awakened Him? Or did Christ really have good reasons to remain calm, trusting in His Father’s love?
 
And was it really because Jesus didn’t care about them that He could rest silent in the stern of the boat, instead of shielding them from having to experience the terrifying storm raging around them? Or was this a way to invite His disciples, including you and I today into a deeper faith?
 
When we encounter the silence of God in the midst of our storms, is it because God does not care about us? Is it because He is powerless to still the wind and the waves that we find ourselves in?
 
Or… is our Father calling us to trust Him? To place our faith in Him, and in our Saviour Jesus Christ, especially when it’s hard? To believe even when we struggle… and start to go under… and even if we should perish, to remain confident in His rescuing… and resurrecting love?

There is of course another moment in the Gospels when Jesus clearly displays this deep trust in His Father’s power and love… not when He was threatened by the wind and waves, but by the shadow and specter of the cross.
 
In Gethsemane, Jesus pleaded with His Father that if it was possible to take the cup of suffering from Him. But in the end, Jesus entrusted His life completely into the Father’ hands, allowing His life to be drowned by the consequences of our sins… suffering great pain and humiliation… abandoned by all, and crucified as a criminal.
 
Jesus trusted His Father even to the point of death… and the Good News is, He was not let down. God raised Jesus again from the dead, overcoming not simply the powers of the weather, but the strongest foes ever imagined: the powers of spiritual darkness, of sin, and of death itself.
 
And Jesus has been revealed as the victor, not by avoiding suffering, but by faithfully enduring the worst it could throw at Him, and by being raised again to God’s new life, no longer subject to these defeated foes.

And this is how Christ calls us to share in His victory… not through avoiding suffering ourselves, but through faithfully enduring it, trusting in the saving love of our Heavenly Father, and in Jesus Christ our Risen Saviour, and in the Holy Spirit of God still at work within us.
 
Our reading today from 2 Corinthians Chapter 6 calls us to consider St. Paul’s own experience as a faithful apostle of Jesus: weathering all sorts of storms… sometimes quite literally, being shipwrecked multiple times... and in the end, laying down his life as a witness to Jesus… trusting in the Risen Lord to share His own victory with him, and with all who place their trust in Him.
 
2 Corinthians 6:3-10, “We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left;  in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
 
Regardless of the turbulent circumstances that St. Paul found himself in, time and again, as He sought to serve the Risen Christ, he trusted in the saving love and the power of God to bring about God’s good will in the end… to bring to completion the New Creation begun that first Easter morning as Jesus Christ overcame the grave… the Good News that invites us all to believe in, and take part in sharing with our world.
 
Back in the boat, Jesus called out the disciple’s lack of faith… not in an abstract, academic sense… but in the life or death moments when the pressure’s on: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40).
 
And maybe Christ Jesus is asking you and I this same question this morning in our own moments of doubt. A question of correction, yes, but not of condemnation.

Jesus knows why we are afraid. There are lots of things to be afraid of these days. But even so, He calls us all to trust Him when we find that we are afraid. To trust in His victory of new life over death… to trust in His great compassion and love, for us and for our broken world… to trust that, even if we do suffer and perish, we know that in Him there is the promise of God’s eternal life… and that no matter how terrible the storms we face may be, in Jesus the crucified and Risen Lord, God is with us and always will be. Amen.

Scripture Readings: Ezekiel 17:22–24 | Psalm 92 | 2 Corinthians 5:6–17 | Mark 4:26–34

“He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.’” (Mark 4:26-27).
 
What’s your favourite kind of flower?
 
My favourite are Forget-Me-Nots. Aside from being simple, small, and yet beautiful, they also remind me of a time in my life when I was preparing to answer a calling to ordained ministry in the Anglican Church.
 
A few of us who were also about to be ordained were on a silent retreat at the Roman Catholic monastery in Rogersville. It was a time of deep prayer, and of serious reflection on the implications of taking this step… and I can recall feeling overwhelmed at times, and very conscious of my own limitations… my own smallness compared to the mission ahead of me, and the whole Church I was called to serve.
 
But then I went for a walk around the monastery grounds, and found a little path to a grotto… a solitary outdoor place of prayer. And in that peaceful place, where God’s Spirit continued to quietly invite me to trust in His guidance and grace, I found myself surrounded by Forget-Me-Nots. They completely lined the pathway, these little blue flowers… and this image is still vivid in my mind… an image which now helps me not to forget how God works through these simple and small ways to bring about His good will… drawing us closer to Him, and inviting us to trust in His gracious, life-giving love, for us and our world.
 
When we moved to our home some years back, we found all sorts of wildflowers around the property. And to my delight, amongst the various wild plants and weeds, there were a few Forget-Me-Nots at the end of our driveway. No idea where they came from, but there they were.
 
And for the first few years, they remained just a few in number. Easily overlooked. But then last year, instead of just mowing them down with the grass, I let them be… hoping that maybe they would spread a bit. And this year, to my growing delight, we now have a big patch of them… as well as a few more patches springing up nearby.
 
Now I know that’s the way with Forget-Me-Nots, but like all growing things, even those that seem so commonplace, familiar, or insignificant… there’s an amazing and mysterious beauty at work in life if we take time to notice it… inviting us to humbly reflect on how our own lives fit into creation, and the Living God’s ongoing work within it.
 
And in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus our Lord gives us two parables about God Kingdom using the imagery of planting and growing: wheat planted by a farmer, which then grows into a harvest, and a small mustard seed which then grows into a shrub big enough to offer shelter to the birds.
 
These are moving images, but we need to remember that Jesus used parables not just as relatable word pictures about general truths… Jesus used them to offer true insights into who He is, and into what He is doing. They are about God’s Kingdom. Meant to reshape our ideas about what God is up to, and our place within His will for His world.

Sometimes these parables seem pretty straightforward and familiar. Sometimes they seem a lot more mysterious. But if we want to actually understand the Good News that these sayings have to share, we need to remember their purpose: they point us to Jesus Himself, shining light on what He is up to… bringing about God’s good Kingdom even now.
 
The parables we heard today are spoken by Jesus at a particular moment early on in St. Mark’s Gospel: after Christ had already called the Twelve disciples, had been confronted by the religious experts, and carried out many miracles. And so at this point, many of the common people in that region had begun to take notice of Him. People with all sorts of different ideas about what God’s Kingdom and God’s King should look like.
 
At the start of Mark Chapter 4, we can read that Jesus “began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. He began to teach them many things in parables” (Mark 4:1-2), including the two parables we read today.
 
Mark 4:26-29, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
 
It’s a simple and profound image: a seed planted in the ground comes to life in ways completely hidden from human agency. It’s something that happens all the time, all around us, but it’s still mysterious… outside of our understanding and direct control.
 
Of course, all the gardeners here today know a bit more than the rest of us about what might help plants to grow; what kinds of soils and fertilizers works best, and so on. And those a bit more scientifically minded might have a better understanding about the whole process of plant cell replication, etcetera… but remember: this parable is not really about plants… it’s using plants to make a point about God’s Kingdom. About how it grows in ways we often don’t recognize, understand, or control. And yet, when the harvest is ready, there is a real need for us to respond rightly.

Then there’s the second parable about the mustard seed. Mark 4:30-32, “He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
 
Any botanists among us (or those like me with access to Google), might be tempted to point out that orchid seeds are actually smaller than mustard seeds… but to focus on this detail is to miss the point of what Jesus is getting at: that something so seemingly insignificant and easily overlooked is designed to transform into an unexpectedly outsized blessing for others to share in.
 
Like many other examples of abstract wisdom found in the world… these parables might provide some edifying food for thought for anyone to consider. But for those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ, these sayings have a much more direct message, with real implications for how we go about the work of God’s good Kingdom.
 
In short: we simply can’t accurately assess the potential growth of God’s Kingdom based on appearances! It is in so many ways mysterious… outside of our understanding and control… and able to exceed all of our expectations. And yet, we are all still graciously called to take part in it… trusting the Living God to do His work, as we seek to do His will.
 
This means that we don’t need to be discouraged when the things of God seem small and insignificant. And we are warned against placing our faith in what seems like success by human standards.   
 
After all, God’s Kingdom is not all about us! It’s not based on our own potential or lack thereof. By God’s grace, we have a real role to play, but it is God’s power at work in us that brings about His New Life… often in really mysterious and unexpected ways.
 
Christ Jesus Himself is the prime example of this.

He is Himself the Living God, the Eternal Son whose glory was hidden like the grain of wheat, not in soil, but in the life of an ordinary human being like us… the life of a humble carpenter’s son from Nazareth… and yet there He was mysteriously and powerfully  accomplishing God’s redemptive and life-giving work in ways beyond all expectations… healing the sick, confronting those who were misleading God’s people, and setting people free from the powers of darkness… and calling for people like us to respond to what He was up to with faith and obedience.
 
And just like the tiny mustard seed sown in the ground, Jesus Himself would suffer a fate reserved for those whose lives are seemingly deemed insignificant… crucified as a criminal… publicly shamed and reduced to nothing from a human point of view… and yet from His death God’s New resurrection life bursts forth, upending our world for good… defeating the powers of darkness and death, and offering shelter and salvation for all the peoples of the world, calling us all to come and discover our truest home in Him.
 
And as we Christians reflect on the life, and death, and resurrection of Jesus our Lord, we also come to understand the place of the Church within God’s good Kingdom as well.

These parables point us first to Jesus, and call us to respond to Him in the light of the truth that they share.
 
Just as God’s mysterious and hidden power was present and at work in and through Jesus in His earthly life, so too God is present and at work through His Spirit in the life of the Church today. The community of God’s faithful people may not seem all that significant in the world’s eyes… but that doesn’t mean God is not still at work in us, even in ways that we don’t understand.
 
Even if it’s hard to see, God’s life continues to bear fruit in us as we draw near to Him in faith… as we let His word shape our imaginations, and spread its roots deep in our hearts… as we turn from our sins, and receiving His gracious forgiveness… offered through Christ’s own broken body and blood shed at the cross… and then as we put into practice all that we have received… walking in His ways, and tending to the life of God growing inside us through the Holy Spirit.
 
Like a grain of wheat, God’s Kingdom is at work in us in ways we can’t always measure or observe… but we can be faithful and ready to respond when the time is right for Chris’s work in us to bear its good fruit.
 
And just as Jesus Himself was cast aside, and His life considered a small thing to those who opposed Him, we too His people should not be surprised when we find ourselves dismissed as too small to matter, or to make a difference. God’s people might be a minority, but with God’s own Spirit still at work in and through us, we can become a real blessing to our world… helping all those who are lost to come into contact and receive the saving love of the Living God.
 
These parables offer an important word of hope for the Church in the West these days: we don’t need to despair over having small numbers, or when we seem to only be making slow progress… and we don’t need to chase after quick ways to draw crowds, or get things done at the expense of faithfulness to the call of Jesus Christ to trust and follow Him.
 
True, the more people who come to follow Christ Jesus, the better. And if our projects and programs seem to succeed, that’s great. But the point is: we can never clearly assess what God intends to do in and through His people, and He loves to use what seems weak and insignificant in the eyes of the world to bring about His gracious Kingdom.
 
So, when we are tempted to be discouraged, or overwhelmed by the challenges that lie before us, let us not forget that God’s Kingdom grows in all sorts of surprising, and unexpected ways, with God’s Holy Spirit showing up where we least expect Him to, and when we need His grace and guidance the most.
 
Let us not forget that Christ Jesus is the source of our confidence and life, and that if we follow Him in faith, our very real limitations won’t stop Him from drawing us into His good work.
 
Let us not forget that God’s Kingdom is so much bigger than you and me… and yet, we are all called to share in its joys, in its labours, and in its blessed life. And let us not forget that Christ Jesus calls us share this Good News with the world around us too.
 
I’d like to end now with a poem I wrote a while back called A Penny in God’s Pocket.
 
A penny in God’s pocket
Of infinitesimal insignificance;
Almost perfectly pointless.
 
And yet…
 
Hidden, not forgotten.
Lovingly remembered,
As holy fingers play.
 
Toying with this secret
Silly treasure
Tossed by all the rest.
 
A penny in God’s pocket
 
Almost nothing at all,
But held by One
Who makes all out of nothing.             

Amen.

Scripture Readings: Genesis 3:8–15 | Psalm 130 | 2 Corinthians 4:13–5:1 | Mark 3:20–35

“If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” (Mark 3:24-25).
 
A divided house cannot stand. There’s a lot of wisdom in these words. So many troubles our world is facing today highlight the truth of this saying. Whether we’re talking about politics, or business, or personal relationships… how can we expect to do all that needs to be done if we’re always attacking and opposing each other? Where else would we expect that path to lead then to our own destruction? And yet, we just keep on dividing.  
 
And to make sure we don’t go pointing fingers at everyone else, it’s important to remember that we Christians have a pretty divided history as well. Over and over again, we’ve found ourselves falling into the same old traps as everyone else. What we’re dealing with is truly a universal human problem.

So then, what is the way forward? It’s not to expect the world around us to suddenly start getting along… and it’s not necessarily to just go along with what the world around us expects either.

We Christians, as divided and struggling as we may be at times, have been entrusted with a particular vision of what we all need to come together again in unity… a vision which our Scripture readings today invite us to explore.
 
Like so many other aspects of life, this Christian vision of unity begins back in the book of Genesis, and is connected to the story often referred to as “The Fall”… a powerful exploration of the origins and source of all of the divisions that keep on plaguing humanity… the start of our turning away from the Living God, and from one another… from those we were created to care for and bless… those we are meant to love, and to be loved by in turn.
 
The book of Genesis is intended to set the stage for how the rest of the story of Scripture unfolds. And in our reading today we see the beginning of a broken pattern that plays out, again and again. A problem much bigger then mere human stupidity and sin… as big as those problems may be… a problem involving dark spiritual forces in rebellion that feed and fuel our self-destructive desires.
 
But this story also points us beyond the problem to the hope that we Christians have of how God can set us free from these divisions… how God intends to put His beloved but fractured world back together again.
 
The background of our passage today from Genesis Chapter 3 is that Yahweh, the Living God has created our world, and human beings to serve as His image… His representatives on Earth, reflecting and enacting His good rule over all His good world.
 
But then we humans were tempted to reject this high calling. A crafty, cunning Serpent… a mysterious creature already in rebellion against Yahweh, convinces them to reject God’s instructions and to reach out and seize wisdom for themselves… tragically trying to make themselves like God, but without God.
 
Too late, they realize that this is actually a trap, and that the ‘wisdom’ and ‘freedom’ from God’s ways that they sought really just led them to shame, and fear, and feeling exposed, and cut off from one another.
 
And in that moment, the Living God Yahweh comes to meet with His beloved image-bearers. The gig is up, as they say. But notice how God first responds to the rebellion of the humans who have turned away from Him:
 
The Almighty Creator… the One who understands all mysteries, and fathoms all of the factors that are at work in the universe, doesn’t arrive on the scene with angry accusations… but with questions, not playing dumb, or interrogating… but questions that invite them to turn back to Him and find life. An invitation they do not receive.
 
“Where are you?” God is depicted here as searching for His beloved people… longing to be with the ones He created to share in His divine fellowship and love. He already knows where they are, but invites them to stop hiding and to come to Him.
 
“What have you done?” He already knows what happened, but rather than attack and accuse, God invites them to tell the truth. He’s creating space for them to confess. To clearly acknowledge their sin, their betrayal, and to seek His mercy and forgiveness… because He longs to offer it.

But instead, the humans begin accusing each other, and God… shifting away the blame from their own shoulders… no longer free to love, and to be loved… and free then to fail, and find forgiveness. Now they were both bound to fear, and cut off from one another, and from their Creator.
 
The humans no longer trusted in God’s goodness, His mercy, and His love… and so they could no longer fulfill their calling to reflect God’s character to one another, and to the world.
 
And this story is just as much about us as it is about Adam and Eve. It’s the Bible’s diagnosis of the deadly sickness that’s infected humanity… exposing the source of the misery of sin.
 
But this is not a story without hope. For God traces the human’s rebellion to its deeper source… to the rebel Serpent… a symbol of spiritual forces in creation who have cut themselves off from the ways of the Living God. And over this Serpent, God pronounces his verdict: this agent of evil will one day be undone… and by the work of one of Eve’s own descendants at that.

Though the Serpent sought to cut off humanity from the love of the Living God, Yahweh Himself would ensure that this division would itself be healed… that a human one would somehow overcome the power of evil, and reconcile us to our Creator and to one another.
 
But not without a high cost: even as this descendant of Eve crushes the head of the Serpent, they will themselves be bitten… suffering a deadly strike, all to bring God’s estranged family back together again.
 
The rest of the Bible tells us how this story unfolds, and today, we turn to the Gospel of Mark, and the story of Jesus to see the hope it has to share:
 
So far in Mark, Jesus has been busy performing miracles, healing diseases, drawing eager crowds, offending certain religious people… and driving out demons… directly confronting the dark spiritual forces who had cut themselves off from the ways of the Living God, and who were at work wreaking havoc in peoples lives… doing what they could to deceive, and bring misery to daughters and sons of Eve, and lead them to self-destruction.

St. Mark clearly depicts Jesus, and through His power, Jesus’ disciples, as those who are undoing the work of evil… setting people free from the tyranny of shame, of fear, of estrangement… of sins that cut us off from one another… so they could finally experience the new life of the Living God together.
 
And it seems Jesus was causing quite a stir. So many people wanted to taste this freedom… pressing in to get close to Him… desperate to experience this new life for themselves, and for those they love.
 
And the same is true today! People may not be pressing into our doors… but the very same spiritual hunger… and desperation for freedom from shame, and fear, and isolation… our neighbours and our world are searching everywhere for it… whether they recognize it or not… we’re all trying to connect again with the life we were always meant to share… full fellowship and communion with our Creator, and with one another.
 
And the dark deceptive forces of evil are still at work today too! Leading people to look for life in ways that actually strip away our capacity to love and be loved. Cutting ourselves off from those around us… searching for our own wisdom, and our own so-called freedom to do whatever we want… which just leads us to death.
 
But thankfully, Jesus is still at work in our world today… and He is still drawing people to Himself… inviting all those who are cut off to come out from hiding, and to step into the light… inviting us all to stop making excuses, and to speak the truth… inviting us all to resist the temptation to point our fingers at others, and instead to  place our trust in His power and His desire to set all things right… to set all of us right. Jesus is inviting us all to believe today in God’s reconciling love… which Christ came to complete.
 
At the start of our passage from Mark this morning, we heard how Jesus’ own family… His mother, and siblings were unsure of what to do with Him. He had turned out to be so unlike anything they had imagined… all the strange things He was saying and doing… and they were starting to be concerned that others were thinking that Jesus had lost His mind.

And so rather than recognize the Living God’s life-giving power at work in Him, His own family come to collect Him… to get Him out of the public gaze… before He does something to bring shame on Himself, and on them too.
 
Like Adam and Eve, Jesus’ mother and siblings felt vulnerable, exposed, and afraid. So they want to hide Him away.
 
We’ll come back to this point again, but sandwiched into this story of Jesus and His family, we find Him being challenged by the religious Scribes from Jerusalem… the biblical and spiritual experts of the day, who were actively opposing His ministry, and seeking ways to discredit Jesus… pointing their fingers at Him… blaming Him of trying to lead God’s people astray, and being in league with Beelzebul… a name for the dark spiritual powers rebelling against God that the Serpent in Genesis also represents.
 
Like Adam and Eve, the Scribes eagerly accuse Jesus of being the source of the problem, making the case that “…by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” (Mark 3:22).

Ironically, the Scribes are actually the ones reflecting the ways of the Serpent… and the word that Jesus uses here for the spiritual enemy of God’s people highlights this for us. Mark 3:23, Jesus responds: “How can Satan cast out Satan?”
 
The word Satan is not really a proper name… it’s more like a title, with a clear meaning: Satan means the Adversary… the one who Opposes… or, importantly for us today, Satan means the Accuser.
 
Imagine a sort of spiritual prosecutor… one who is always seeking to find fault and to project blame on others. That is the heart of Satan. And remember how Adam and Eve turned on God and one another after listening to the Serpent… after embracing its lies… they blamed each other, instead of acknowledging their own failures, and their need for mercy, forgiveness, and for new life.
 
In Mark Chapter 3, the Scribes fall into this same pattern, following in the ways of the Serpent… the Satan, the Accuser… but are in fact they are trying to blame and accuse the sinless One who had come to save them.
 
And Jesus responds to their false accusations just like God did in the Garden of Eden… by asking questions that cut through the lies, and invite His listeners, back then and today, to let go of our prejudices and fears, and find in Him God’s gift of New Life… trusting that Jesus is not leading us astray, but is in fact confronting the powers of evil that have deceived us, again and again, and are still trying to lead us to destruction.      
 
Mark 3:24-29, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.”
 
“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”
 
The reason Jesus has power over the demons is not because He is in league with them, but because He is truly stronger then them… He is the One God had promised to send, the descendant of Eve who would crush the head of the Serpent, and shatter the chains of evil and death.
 
Jesus is inviting the Scribes to take back their hasty accusation… and to trust in Him instead. They could chose to let go of their doubts… and listen to His invitation to turn around… to step into the light, and find the freedom of God’s forgiveness and mercy… or they could keep on acting like the Serpent, and find themselves guilty of accusing God, and cutting themselves off from His New Life.
 
This is what Jesus means in His warning about blaspheming the Holy Spirit: That’s not an accidental misunderstanding, it’s when we clearly see God at work in the world, and harden our hearts to Him… choosing to accuse God Himself of being the source of evil. It’s a heart posture that makes it impossible to approach God and receive forgiveness from His hand. Which is why it is unforgivable. A prescription will do us no good at all if we won’t go to the pharmacist.  

And we know the direction that this story goes: the Scribes choose to conspire with others to kill Jesus… executing an innocent man at the cross to preserve their own sense of power, and status among God’s people.
 
And just like God promised in Genesis, the One sent to crush the Serpent’s head would also suffer a deadly strike… but in dying in the place of sinners, Jesus Christ God’s Son disarmed and defeated the powers of the Accuser, the Satan, and opened up the way for humanity to be set free: to receive true forgiveness for our sins… to let go of our shame, and fear, and need to accuse one another, and cut ourselves off from one another… and instead, to share in God’s grace, and mercy, and compassion, and to share this with those all around us.
 
At the cross, Jesus broke through everything that keeps us apart from God, and from our fellow humans… and in rising from the grave, Jesus began God’s new creation for us all to share in… led now and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit to live God’s way every day.
 
What does this look like? It looks pretty different from how the world around us seems to want to do things… because God’s New Creation doesn’t play by the Serpent’s rules anymore.
 
It may seem strange to our neighbours not to get caught up in accusing others, or when we own up to our failures… and instead of being crushed by guilt, we find the freedom that forgiveness makes possible.  
 
The strangeness of the Christian life is nothing new. From the start, Christians stood out precisely because they lived by a different pattern… they cared for the outcasts and the poor… they refused to take part in common practices that demeaned and exploited others… they actively sought ways to overcome the divisions that kept people apart… be they ethnicity, class, gender, age… seeing all of humanity as invited to share in God’s family, and in Jesus Christ, invited to recover at last what it means to reflect God’s image in the world.
 
Many might be drawn to this strangeness. Many will resisted it. Many will be confused by it. But one thing’s for sure: if our lives simply mirror the world around us, they won’t reflect God’s New Life.
 
Back to the Gospel of Mark, and to Jesus’ own family trying to restrain Him… to keep Him from getting out of control… to keep Him in line, and out of trouble.
 
Mark 3:31-35, Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
 
If the way of the Serpent… the Accuser, is the way of division… cutting us off from God and from one another… then the way to find unity, peace, and true communion comes from following God’s ways today: from placing our trust in Jesus, God’s Son who came to set us free from our sins, and gave His life at the cross to draw us all into God’s great family.
 
Jesus invites us all today to trust in Him… to believe that in Him, the Living God has finally confronted the powers of darkness… disarmed and defeated them, and that He is at work through the Holy Spirit to bring about New Creation in our midst.
 
Jesus invites us to come to Him… so He can save us by His blood. So He can teach us to truly do God good will instead of our own. So He can bind up our wounds, and bring us together into His family, united to our loving Creator and to one another through all that Jesus has done for us all.
 
What is the Church to do in our divided world? We are to do the will of God the Father: to trust in Jesus, and live His way here and now… creating space in our homes and communities for others to hear God’s voice calling to them to receive His forgiveness, new life, and reconciling love… and be set free to share this love with everyone else at last. Amen.

Scripture Readings: Deuteronomy 5:12–15 | Psalm 81 | 2 Corinthians 4:5–12 | Mark 2:23–3:6

“Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent.” (Mark 3:4).
 
What are some of your favourite ways to rest? To unwind a bit and relax for a while?
 
Maybe it involves a leisurely stroll on the beach… or a good book, a glass of wine, and a warm bath. Maybe it looks like sitting around with some friends… or finding a quiet moment to ourselves. Whatever our ideas and ideals around rest might be, one thing’s for sure: one way or another, we all need it. We humans need time to be restored… time to recover our strength… to refocus… to remember the blessings we have received… and where these blessings really come from.
 
And our readings today from the Scriptures invite us to reflect on the sacred rest that the Living God offers His people… not just a break for our bodies and minds… but the blessed rest of His new life.
 
Our first reading today from Deuteronomy Chapter 5, is from one of the two places in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, where the famous Ten Commandments are listed. These Ten Commandments served as the cornerstone of the Living God’s covenant partnership with Israel, setting out the clear parameters of the life of God’s chosen people. And as we heard, the fourth of these Commandments was to observe the Sabbath, the sacred seventh day of rest, and to keep it holy… to set it apart, not to pursue their own interests, but to honour the Lord their God and all that He has done for them.
 
In other words, Israel was to regularly practice rest for an important purpose: to celebrated… to keep alive in their hearts, and minds, and bodies, the story of God’s great compassion… God’s concern for justice… and God’s saving, and sustaining steadfast love. Week after week, they were to break up the rhythm of their daily work to remember what the LORD had done for them by coming to their rescue and setting them free from slavery.
 
Deuteronomy 5:15, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.”

The Israelites didn’t save themselves from Egypt… nor did anyone else come to their aid. No one pitied them. No one cared… but God cared! And God saw their plight. And God Himself saved them with an outstretched arm from the power of Pharoah.
 
What happened to them was pure grace. A gift of God’s great compassion, justice, and steadfast love.
 
And so now, God’s people were to rest to remember the freedom and new life that the LORD had won them. Before that, they had no rest… or freedom. They had been trapped, and exploited, and oppressed by a tyrant… but now, the Living God had given them a whole new life… one they were to ensure everyone got to share in… rich and poor… women and men… strangers… even their animals were equally set free to share in this sacred rest.
 
Deuteronomy 5:13-14, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.”  
 
The whole community was given this gift of sacred, Sabbath rest… a chance to regularly relive the experience of deliverance… of being set free to be restored, and to remember the grace, and justice, and steadfast love of the Living God who rescued them. This gift of new life was to be baked into the pattern of Israel’s weekly rhythms… a constant reminder that even though they had been slaves, God had saved them, and shares with them the blessings of peace and rest… providing for them, attending to them, and offering them a glimpse of the glorious future that awaits them: God’s ultimate rest when the world is set right and God’s blessed reign fills all of creation.
 
At its heart, the Sabbath was a sign of God’s salvation already achieved in the past, and of the blessed future rest that awaits His faithful people.
 
But tragically, God’s people tend to forget our story… and according to the prophets, over the centuries Israel too forgot the grace, the compassion, the justice, and the steadfast love of Yahweh, the Living God, and they gave themselves over to their own desires… and became enslaved again to sin… transforming the way they treated each other… leading to the practice, not of sacred rest, but of injustice, exploitation, and oppression… reflecting the image of the tyrant Pharoah, instead of their gracious Saviour.
 
And as the old saying goes: “the corruption of the best is the worst”… and even God’s good gifts like the Sabbath, can get turned into a tool to build up self-righteousness… or worse… a weapon of oppression… creating misery instead of sharing in God’s new life.
 
And of course, this is a warning for all of God’s people… not just ancient Israel… we know that over the centuries, and even today, we the Church can just as easily fall into this same pit.
 
But the Good News reminds us that even then, the Living God can lift us up, and set us free… that God sent His Son into the world, not only to rescue the oppressed… but to break sin’s hold on oppressors too.

Turning now to our reading today from the Gospel of Mark, we see Jesus of Nazareth, God’s own Son on the scene, bringing about God’s sacred rest… God’s gracious compassion, concern for justice, and steadfast love in ways that really challenged how many in His day understood what it meant to keep the Sabbath holy.
 
As we saw earlier, the Sabbath was one of the Big Ten Commandments… a practice of deep faithfulness to the Living God, and a commitment to His covenant. But over the years, strict Sabbath adherence had sometimes been used as a way to build up people’s public image… to show off one’s own status within the community. And when this happens, the good gift of the Sabbath gets twisted into a tool of self-righteousness… a sign of how good and ‘godly’ we are… and no longer serves as a reminder of God’s grace, which we can do nothing at all to deserve.
 
And it can also become a weapon… a way to attack and accuse those who do not fall in line with our way of doing things… instead of as a sign of God’s great acts of salvation… rescuing the hungry, the hurting, the lost and oppressed… and bringing them His blessed rest.

But that is exactly what Jesus Christ has come to do… to achieve God’s greatest gift of freedom and release… to win for His world lasting peace and rest… to offer and embody the fullness of God’s sacred Sabbath… in Himself.
 
Our passage starts off with the story of Jesus’s disciples plucking grains of wheat as they walked along on the Sabbath. Some of his critics, eager to find fault with Jesus, pointed to this simple act of grabbing a snack as an example of law-breaking… of deeply dishonouring God’s holy Commandments… and proof that Jesus Himself was not in line with the LORD’s ways, and so should be opposed.
 
In response, Jesus recalls a story from Israel’s past, when King David, out of great hunger, shared the sacred bread from the Tabernacle with his followers… and yet remained faithful to God.
 
It’s not that He’s saying that the Sabbath doesn’t matter, but that those who were using the Sabbath to condemn those who were hungry had forgotten what the Sabbath was all about: not just avoiding work for no reason, but to cultivate a way of life that was based on the grace of God… a living reminder of His great compassion, concern for justice, steadfast love for the vulnerable, and the blessed life that He would one day bring about for good.
 
And when Jesus enters the synagogue, we see Him again challenge His critic’s vision of what the Sabbath’s all about. In this gathering of their faith community, Jesus sees someone with a withered hand… a man who, because of his injury, would not have been able to do much work any day of the week… and who could not undo the damage, or deliver himself from his suffering. In other words, Jesus saw someone in deep need of God’s grace… and so Jesus  brings Him new life.
 
Mark 2:4-5, “Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.”
 
Right before the doubting eyes of the crowd, God’s gracious compassion, concern, and steadfast love breaks through the bonds laid on this man’s life… finally setting him free to experience and enjoy the blessed rest that the Sabbath was always meant to recall. Far from dishonouring this holy time, Jesus was bringing its deepest purpose to light… a gracious invitation to share in the blessed life of the One who is Himself the Lord of the Sabbath.
 
In these two episodes, St. Mark is showing us something profound about Jesus: He is the Lord even of the Sabbath. Jesus is the One who shares God’s blessed life with us. He is the One who sets us free. He is the One we can truly turn to for God’s grace, His compassion, justice, and steadfast love… the Cornerstone of our faith, and the One who deserves our truest devotion.
 
And in Jesus Christ, God’s holy Sabbath has come to life… reaching out to us in whatever slavery we might be facing today… in our own struggles with sin, with our fears and doubts, with the heartbreak, and burdens, that we cannot seem to be rid of, no matter how hard we try… and He says to us all: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28).

How will we respond to Him today? Are we willing to let Jesus sustain us? To heal us? To correct us? To deliver us? Or like those who saw the miracle in the synagogue that Sabbath long ago, will we harden our hearts, and look for ways to resist and reject the work of the One who came to bring God’s gift of rest to all?
 
Saying yes to Jesus, following Him means letting our lives be reshaped by the grace, compassion, justice, and steadfast love of the Lord. It means regularly taking time to remember what God has done in Jesus to set us free from our sins, and from everything else that keeps us trapped in slavery. It means embracing a new way of life that retells this story, keeping it alive in our hearts, and minds, and bodies, and seeks to share this Good News with those around us. It means coming to Jesus, week by week, as we gather in His name, to hear His word, and to receive together the gifts of His body and blood… His own life given to save us… pointing us forward in hope to await His return to set all things right, both in our own lives, and in the world around us.
 
And so, with the Holy Spirit of God at work in us, may we look to Jesus our Saviour, and find in Him the rest we need today. May His grace, and compassion, and justice, and steadfast love sustain us, and set us free to serve Him without fear. May His new life reshape our hearts, and minds, and bodies to take part in His healing work in our corner of His world. And may we share this Good News with others, so that they too can come to Him and find God’s blessed rest. Amen. 

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 6:1–8 | Psalm 29 | Romans 8:12–17 | John 3:1–17

 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17).
 
Why spend time reflecting on the identity of the Living God as Trinity: the Three in One, and One in Three?
 
Short answer is: Because this is the way God has revealed Himself to the world! It’s God’s self-disclosed identity.
 
If we want to get to know someone, we do well to pay close attention to how they show themselves to us: how they introduce themselves… the stories they share, their mannerisms… what makes them unique.
 
If we want to truly know someone, and share real fellowship with them… if we want to love them, then we can’t just settle for surface level assumptions… or worse yet, decide for ourselves who we might want them to be… projecting our own ideas and ideals on them, instead of just letting them be themselves.
And so, we Christians take time to reflect on the nature of the Living God as Triune because we believe, as mysterious as it may seem, that God truly is Three in One, and One in Three: The Father is God. Jesus Christ the Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. These Three are all equally God. And yet, at the same time God is One.
 
All our words hit a wall here because we are dealing with Someone who transcends all of our categories…. Someone wholly unlike anything else in Creation. Someone completely beyond compare. But even so, this Someone has drawn near to us… in order to draw us near to them. This Someone has opened His heart to us, and invites us in… despite all our doubts and our failures.
 
And though our words hit a wall, God’s Word has broken down everything that stands between us and our Triune Creator… taking on our human life, and lifted up for us at the cross, so that all those who believe in Him may have eternal life. And now because of Jesus Christ, God’s Word made flesh, God’s Spirit has been breathed into us to bring about something new in us, and through us: God’s new creation… His divine and holy life leading us out of the ways of darkness and into God’s kingdom of light.  
 
And just like that, as we start trying to tell the story of the Good News, the story of our faith, we find ourselves talking about not just any conception of God… but the Trinity… the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit… because the Good News is this God’s story… it is Their divine invitation to come to know who They are and what They are up to… and to take part in it too.
 
We celebrate the truth of the Trinity, and take time to contemplate what it means for us, and for our world because it is truly inseparable from the Good News we have been given to share in, and to share with everyone.
 
Our Scripture readings today shed important light on this Triune Good News… not to explain the mystery away, but to draw us into it… to help us begin to get to know the God is, and who has always been Father, Son, and Spirit, so that we may draw near to Him in faith, and receive the holy love He longs to share with His world.
 
Starting with Isaiah, and his vision of God’s throne room… the Holy sanctuary of Heaven that the Temple in Jerusalem pointed to. In this moment the prophet is painfully aware of his own sinfulness… and of God’s glory and holiness… and how dangerous it is for him to be so close to the LORD.
 
Sometimes it’s hard for us to wrap our heads around what the authors of the Bible meant by words like holy, but I think this is a pretty helpful image: holiness is like the sun. The sun is bright, it illumines the darkness… it’s the source of life on earth… it is ultimately Good. But the sun is not safe! If someone draws near to the sun they end up burned up. Serious protection is needed just to get a bit closer… not because the sun is bad, or means any harm, but because of the frailty and limits of our human bodies.
 
Something similar is going on in Isaiah’s vision: he’s drawn into God’s presence, close to the Holy One, the Living God revealed in all His splendor… and so Isaiah rightly thinks his days are numbered… because he is painfully aware of his sin… his failures to be like the Living God… holy as God is holy.
But rather than being struck down, an angel is sent with a burning coal from God’s heavenly altar to transform Isaiah… to do something to him to purify him… to cleanse him… to graciously make him holy, and able to stand before the Triune LORD, and not be consumed… but rather, so that he could be commissioned… sent on his own mission to share God’s words of warning with His unfaithful covenant people.  
 
Isaiah’s story is a long one that we don’t have time to explore this morning… but notice that in this vision, he, and we along with him, are given a glimpse of God’s unique glory and holiness. The Living God is not just some impersonal force, or divine wish-granter, just waiting around to make our lives a bit nicer down here… He is the Almighty… the Glorious and Holy One, the Sovereign LORD over all creation. And in His Holy presence, we humans are in trouble. Something in us is out of sync with His life and light, and if it were just up to us we’d have no hope.
 
But as Isaiah discovered, it’s not just up to us… and we are not without hope. For the Almighty, the Holy One does not desire our destruction… but our transformation… our purification… our cleansing from sin and all that keeps us far off from sharing in His glorious presence. And so, as Isaiah is graciously made able to stand in God’s presence, and share in the LORD’s divine holiness, we can see something true of God’s will for all of us.
 
In short, the Living God Himself can overcome all that stands between Him and His human creatures… He can cleanse us, and transform us, and make us able to share in His holy life.
 
And as we heard in our Gospel reading today, it’s not just that God can do these things… God wants to do these things! And we know this because, out of love for our broken, messed up world, God the Father freely gave His own Son Jesus Christ to save all who trust in Him.
 
John 3:16-18, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
 
Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
 
The life, and death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s own gift of love to us and our world… because Jesus Christ is truly God Himself, taking on our humanity in order to save it. Jesus is not just some designated servant… some middle-man doing the hard work while the Father sits by watching… Jesus is the Living God incarnate… the Living God-in-the-flesh… God laying down His life in love to save sinners like us… to cleanse us by His blood… to make possible our forgiveness and freedom… and draw us together to the Father… so that through the Holy Spirit we can be transformed to truly share in His blessed life.
 
And here we turn to our reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome, and to the Apostle’s understanding of what the Christian life looks like: our transformation… being led by God’s own Spirit away from the darkness of our old lives, and into the light of God’s family.
Romans 8:12-14, “So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh [that is, according to our old sinful and selfish desires]— for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.”
 
God’s Spirit has been given to us to truly transform the way we live each day. But this isn’t about some unwelcome interference from on high, bent on sapping our freedom and joy… or an attempt at intimidating us to get us to change our ways out of fear of punishment. Far from it! For the Spirit of God is moved by the very same love as the Father and the Son… transforming us the way a child is transformed by being welcomed into a loving family.  
 
St. Paul goes on in Romans 8:15-17, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”
The Spirit of God draws us into the holy love of the Trinity… bringing us into the same bond that has existed for all eternity between the Father and the Spirit and the Son. The Spirit nurtures in us the very same love that Jesus expressed on earth when He would pray to His Abba, His Father… a connection of true trust, and intimacy… and which empowered Him to face all sorts of trials and suffering… even to the point of laying down His life, because He was convinced of the untold depths of His Father’s life-giving, resurrecting love.
 
The Spirit of God brings this same love that fills the life of the Trinity into our lives by drawing us in faith to Jesus, God’s Son, and through Him into the arms of our loving Almighty Abba-Father.
 
And the Spirit is also at work sharing this same love through His people with those who do not yet know Him… who have all sorts of strange ideas about what God is like, and what God wants, if God even exists at all. People who have no clue that God truly cares for them, and has done everything Himself to deal with their brokenness and sin… giving His life out of love to bring them forgiveness, and freedom, and lead them out of the darkness, and into the glorious light and blessed life that has no end.
 
The Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, have shared their holy love with us, and have shown us God’s heart for everyone: sending Jesus not to condemn the world, but so that it might be saved through Him. We are the ones who have already heard this Good News, and have begin to be transformed by it already. We are the ones who have been entrusted with this story of salvation, and who are called to share it… to share in the sufferings of Christ Jesus… the long-suffering love of God for His lost children.
 
How can we help those in our lives come to know this God??? The Triune God who loves them so? The God who we might not be able to wrap our heads around, but who has still wrapped His arms of love around us, and who longs to do the same for absolutely everyone?
 
How can we help them come to know this God if we don’t draw near to Him ourselves? If we are content to remain at a distance… how can we share His love with one another and with our world?     
                                    
May the Holy Trinity Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, continue His cleansing, empowering, and transforming work in us all so that, convinced of God’s great love for us all, we might draw near to Him always, and share the Good News of His story in everything that we do. Amen.  

Scripture Readings: Ezekiel 37:1–14 | Psalm 104:24-35 | Acts 2:1–21 | John 15:26-16:15

Happy Pentecost.
 
Today we celebrate one of the most significant moments in the story of the Church… when the disciples of the Risen Lord Jesus, gathered together in uncertainty and expectation, suddenly received the gift of the Holy Spirit of God… filling them up with His life-giving presence and power.
 
In many ways, Pentecost celebrates a brand new beginning. The beginning of the Church… the creation of this one, world-wide community of those bound to Christ Jesus, and bound to one another in Him.
 
But Pentecost also marks another beginning: the beginning of the end… of the completion of God’s New Creation, begun in the Risen Christ Himself, and spreading all throughout the world through the lives of His faithful people… from Jerusalem, to Gondola Point, and beyond.
 
And while this new beginning started two thousand years ago… we don’t simply celebrate Pentecost as an irrelevant event from the distant, dusty past… but as an invitation to take part in the Living God’s ongoing work here and now, and everywhere… making all things new, and bringing His beloved world to it’s proper destination… to the blessed end that His power alone can bring about.
 
Above all, we celebrate Pentecost today because it brings to light the world-changing implications of the Good News of Jesus Christ the Risen Lord… the results of who He is and what He has done for us, and for our world. Pentecost points out the true purpose of the Church, and the power that is at work in and through God’s people… two thousand years ago, and even today.
 
The story of Pentecost and the arrival of the Holy Spirit is about God’s rescuing love, putting our broken world back together… beginning with those who have come to believe the Good News of Jesus… but this story does not begin in that famous upper room encounter we heard about in our reading from Acts. It is a story that has been unfolding all throughout the Holy Scriptures… a story of hope passed down through generations… hopes based on the promises of the Living God to His covenant people, through the words of His holy prophets… hopes that, despite how truly hopeless things may seem, they can trust the Living God to stay true to His word, and to ultimately bring them to life.
 
We heard part of the story of Pentecost in our first reading from the Old Testament today, when we heard the words of the prophet Ezekiel, and the vision that he was given of the valley of dry bones… a vision offered to Israel at a time when the fate of God’s chosen people seemed hopelessly lost.
 
As we might recall, Ezekiel had this vision after being carried off into exile in Babylon… after Jerusalem and the Southern Kingdom of Judah had been conquered by their enemies… which in this case was a tragic consequence of turning away from the Living God, and seeking a path for themselves that seemed best, but ultimately led to death.
 
And so, at this point in the story, Ezekiel and his fellow Judaeans had lost everything… their land, their freedom, their future… their sense of connection to the Living God, and to one another.

Sadly, we don’t have to think too hard to recall people in our own day and age who are facing very similar situations: whole communities completely destroyed… families ripped apart by war… hopes and dreams for the future that once seemed so promising going up in smoke.
 
And even in our own corner of the world, there are, of course, those who are experiencing this same sense of hopelessness in their own personal ways: maybe through a sudden loss of health… or loved ones… or through the ending of a familiar and comforting way of life.
 
And we can think of Church communities facing hard decisions these days about how to move forward… how to carry on Christ’s mission in their changing neighbourhoods… and perhaps considering having to close their doors.
 
When we face these kinds of painful, and heartbreaking situations, it can certainly feel like the end. And yet, throughout the centuries, the Living God has continued to breathe new life into even the bleakest circumstances, bringing healing and help and hope even to the hopeless.

And this is exactly what He did for those in Exile along with Ezekiel: God Himself promised to bring life to His people again, beyond all their expectations. Even though on their own, they may have had no more hope of turning around their situation than dry bones do of getting up and walking about, the same God who brought all creation into being, and who would one day raise Jesus Christ from the dead, can indeed bring life and hope to His people again. Ezekiel 34:11-14,
 
“Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,’ says the Lord.”
 
And as the Lord promised, He stayed true to His word: despite all expectations, the exiled people of Judah were eventually able to return to Jerusalem, and begin rebuilding their lives. The loving-kindness of the Living God had rescued them from their hopelessness, and given them a new beginning.  
 
But a new beginning to what end? What was supposed to come next? What was the purpose of God raising His devastated people to new life? Was it just so that they could keep going about their own business? To fall back into the same old self-destructive ways? Or did God have something more in store? Something more for them, and for those around them too?
 
Remember how in His message to Ezekiel, God promised to put His own Spirit within His people… to share His own holy life with them. To not simply have them go back to how things were before, but to draw them together to Him, and to each other in holy love… which of course, is no simple thing.
 
And right after he receives his vision of the valley of dry bones, God gives to Ezekiel another message of hope… about how God will heal the broken divisions within God’s family, which at that time seemed completely  insurmountable.
 
Long before they were carried away into Exile, Israel had torn itself apart in civil war. During the reign of King David’s grandson, the Northern tribes of Israel revolted against Judah, and split away… setting up their own rival kingdom, and for centuries the two kingdoms lived side by side in deep tension… and sometimes even warring against each other. God’s people had gone from being one family set apart to love God and each other, to becoming enemies.
 
That is, until the Assyrian Empire showed up on the scene and conquered the Northern tribes, leading its people away into the far regions of the East, never to return. They were completely lost to one another… swept away beyond the hope of reconciliation.
 
Again, it’s kind of easy to see parallels of this story at work in our world today: communities that were once united now seeming to be fracturing beyond all hope of restoration… so many of our neighbours eagerly aligning themselves with divisive and even hate-fueled cultural and political agendas. It seems harder and harder to imagine how our communities and society could ever be brought back together again. But this is precisely the hope that the whole story of Pentecost holds out for us: the hope of a brand new beginning heading towards the blessed end of God’s reconciling love.
 
Right after his vision of the valley of dry bones, Ezekiel is given another message from the Lord: the prophet is to take two separate sticks, and join them into one… symbolically showing the exiles in Babylon what the Lord has in store for His divided people. Ezekiel 37:15-23,
 
“The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the Israelites associated with it’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with it’;  and join them together into one stick, so that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, ‘Will you not show us what you mean by these?’ say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am about to take the stick of Joseph (which is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with it; and I will put the stick of Judah upon it, and make them one stick, in order that they may be one in my hand. When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from every quarter, and bring them to their own land. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all. Never again shall they be two nations, and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms. They shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. I will save them from all the apostasies into which they have fallen, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”
 
What a picture of hope! Not only would the Living God restore the exiles of Judah from their hopeless situation, but God would also bring back all of their estranged and exiled fellow Israelites to be by their side again.
​
God promised here to reconcile His shattered people… gathering all who had been scattered, and reuniting them in His hand… repairing all those long centuries of divisions, and bitter enmity, and making them one… together again under the reign of one King.
 
And this is the hope-filled story of Pentecost that we find at work in our reading today from Acts Chapter 2: here we see the Living God starting to fulfill His promises to bring His people back together again, filled with His life-giving Spirit, and living God’s way under the reign of Jesus, the Risen King.
 
Here in Acts, we are told that devout Jews from every nation had gathered in Jerusalem… for one of their ancient annual festivals, celebrating the first fruits of the harvest by offering them back to the LORD. God’s covenant people, scattered throughout the Mediterranean world, had all made a pilgrimage to worship the LORD, and had no idea of what God had in store for them.
 
At just the right moment, God’s Holy Spirit is given to Jesus’ followers… to the disciples who had already been given the Good News, and the mission to share it with the whole world… but who had also been told to wait in Jerusalem until they had received this power from on high.
 
And then it happened: with a rush of wind, and the appearance of fire descending on each of them, these ordinary people were given something they could never create on their own: God’s own life-giving presence within them… filling them with His holy love… the very same love which filled and flowed through Jesus Christ our Lord.
 
And what does this Spirit do? He empowers the disciples to speak in languages they never knew before… He helps them to overcome all the barriers of culture, and communication, so they could connect with their fellow Jews from all over, who had been cut off from them before.
 
Think about that for a moment. The first thing that the Holy Spirit does in the lives of Jesus’ disciples is to begin reconciling God’s scattered people… bring together again this fractured community by the Good News of Jesus Christ the Risen Lord… the Promised Saviour King that Israel’s prophets had spoken of centuries before, who reigns now at God the Father’s right hand.
 
But as great as this new beginning is for the Jews gathered in Jerusalem that day, God’s Holy Spirit doesn’t stop there… as we know, that was just the beginning! The story of Acts is all about how this Good News of God’s Saviour King Jesus is going out to all the world… beginning from Jerusalem, and spreading into Judea, Samaria, and beyond. In the last few weeks, we heard the story of how the Good News of Jesus was shared with the Ethiopian eunuch, and with the Roman Officer, Cornelius, and his family… and as this same story goes on, we know that this Good News has travelled to the very ends of the earth, inviting absolutely everyone to place their trust in Jesus, and share in the new life of His Kingdom… a new life made possible by the gift of God’s Holy Spirit  within us.
 
This is Good News for our world today: that despite all the divisions and devastation we see around us… despite all the losses and lingering doubts… we know this is precisely the soil in which the Spirit of God brings about New Creation… breathing new life into even our dry bones, and filling us with God’s holy, reconciling love.
 
And this same Holy Spirit is still active in our world, working through the lives of those who trust and follow Jesus, the Risen King, serving as His hands and feet together, not to destroy, but to make all things new… leading His people towards the blessed end of God’s eternal Kingdom… and giving us all our own part to play in sharing this Good News with everyone.
 
As the prophet Joel proclaimed:
 
‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
 
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ (Acts 2:17-21).
 
What are the ways that we need the Holy Spirit to be at work in our lives today? What new beginnings do you and I need Him to bring about in and through us?
 
Maybe we need a renewal of hope for God’s world? Reassurance that the Living God will not abandon His creation, but will bring it new life, just as Christ rose from the grave.
 
Maybe we need the Holy Spirit’s gift of conviction? Inviting us to turn around… to repent of our sinful, and selfish ways, and to find God’s forgiveness and freedom offered to us in Jesus, our Saviour King?
 
Maybe we need reconciliation? Finding ourselves torn apart inside… or cut off from those around us.
 
Whatever we are facing today, Pentecost reminds us that even when things seem to be at their darkest, the Living God Himself is still with His people, and His power at work in us can do infinitely more than we could ask or imagine. Pentecost calls us to hold onto and share the Good News that God’s rescuing, and life-giving love in Jesus Christ is making all things new, and bringing about God’s New beginning for His broken but beloved creation.  
 
And so, may the Holy Spirit of God fill us today with the faith, and love, and hope we need to take part in this new beginning He has in store for our world, through Jesus Christ the Risen Lord. Amen.

Scripture Readings: ​Acts 1:1–11 | Psalm 93 | Ephesians 1:15–23 | Luke 24:44–53 

“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” (Luke 24:51).

Today is Ascension Sunday: the final Sunday of the season of Easter, and a time to commemorate the moment when Jesus Christ the Risen Lord was taken up from the sight of His disciples, and into the highest heaven… to take His seat at the right hand of God the Father, and from there to take up His royal reign forever.
 
The feast of the Ascension calls us to look toward heaven, and recall the real reason for our hope for our world… not the hope of a retreat somewhere else, but the hope of the recuing reign of the Risen King. And these days, we don’t need all that much reminding that our world stands in real need of some real hope to hold onto… reasons to not give up, and get to work bringing about things like beauty, peace, and light. But sadly, and for some time now, it seems that many of us Christians have forgotten the true hope we’re called to share with the world around us, and have instead placed our hopes in getting to escape from it. Seeking simply to be swept away from all of this darkness and mess we humans have made.
 
But as common as this message of escape might be, even in Christian circles, it isn’t the real hope that the Bible or the Christian faith is about at all. In the Holy Scriptures, and in the Creeds we find, not the hope of being rescued from the earth… but the hope of being rescue along with the earth… set free to live under the reign of our Saviour King forever.
 
And so, as we turn now to our Scripture readings for this morning, and take a closer look at what the Ascension of Jesus Christ really means, pay close attention to why we can have real hope for the future of our world.
 
Turning first to our second reading, from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we find the Apostle commending the faith and the love of this early Christian community.
 
Ephesians 1:15-16, “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.”

And yet, it seems that St. Paul recognizes that there is something this Church community was needing… namely, he prays for them to have hope… to understand the story that they were a part of already in the Risen Christ, and to know where this story is headed, despite the darkness and difficulties they were facing in their day.
 
Ephesians 1:17-19, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.”
 
St. Paul can be a bit wordy at times, but his meaning here is important for us to here today: we too need to come to understand the hope that we are called to as Christians… both the glory that awaits us, and how God’s power is at work bringing it about.
 
We can’t just lean on wishful thinking, or cling to vague ideas about a happy afterlife, somewhere out there, over the rainbow… we have been offered real, concrete reasons to have hope for our future: and that is God’s life-giving power which we have seen at work raising Jesus Christ from the dead… and in His ascension to the right side of God the Father.
 
St. Paul goes on in Ephesians 1:20-21, “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.”
 
While many of us today find it easy to imagine that the point of Jesus leaving His disciples was to go off somewhere else, for the first Christians like St. Paul and the rest of the Apostles, it clearly meant something very different, and much more hopeful: the ascension of Jesus  was not His escape from the world… but His elevation to it’s highest throne. He’s not abandoning creation, He’s taking charge of it! Taking His place in the divine command centre, so to speak… to guide and direct God’s people, and to empower us to carry on the work of His Good Kingdom here and now.
 
And so, the Church… the worldwide community of those who have turned our lives over to Jesus Christ in faith, and who have already received the gift of His saving love… we are the ones who are now called to share this hope… the hope of the Risen Saviour King.
 
Ephesians 1:22-23, “And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
 
The Church community, the shared life of us believers… not simply on Sundays… our lives together are to be the main location on earth where the Kingship of the Risen Christ is acknowledged, and made known. Our lives are to be the sign that, above every other claim to power, authority, and might… Jesus Christ is Lord of all… and that one day, every other power, as St. Paul puts it, will find its proper place under His feet.
 
That’s a startling image for us, for sure. How is it Good News to be placed under the feet of a king? This is an image of being conquered! In ancient times, vanquished foes would have their victorious opponents symbolically stand upon their necks. Wasn’t the ascension of Jesus supposed to be about offering hope to our world? What kind of hope are we talking about here?
 
Of course, some Christians have picked up this kind of imagery in the Bible, and run with it… imagining that Jesus wants to violently overthrow all who dare oppose Him, or those who get in His people’s way.
 
We know there are those who have thought this way for centuries… from the early Christian Emperors in the late Roman times… or the medieval rulers of Europe… or advocates of Christian nationalism here in North America today… those who would use Christianity to justify their own aggressive grasping after worldly power… and who seek to rule by actively destroying the hopes of those who aren’t on their side.
 
This is how tyrants have always ruled… following a principle we could call “Limited Concern”: insisting that our tribe, our culture, our way of life must be on top, and in control… that our will must be done… and who cares what happens to everyone else.

But it’s not just tyrants and moral monsters that have a habit of seeing the world this way. Lots of us may simply limit our concern to our little corner of the world, in much more subtle ways. In our reading from Acts Chapter 1, and its account of the Ascension, we see can that even the disciples had a hard time shaking this mindset of ‘limited concern’… but Jesus Christ the Risen Lord, calls for a very different approach for His people, back then and today.
 
Forty days after Easter, the disciples excitedly ask the Risen Lord: Are you about to bring God’s good kingdom to Israel at last?
 
They knew all of the prophetic promises that had helped Israel hold onto hope for centuries… promises from God that despite the devastation and darkness of Exile, the Living God would again rescue and restore His people, that the Messiah-King would one day come… and that from Jerusalem the blessed reign of God would be victorious.
 
And Jesus knew the limited scope of their hopes… focussed on Israel’s restoration alone. Israel’s peace. Israel’s future as God’s beloved children.

And all this mattered to Jesus too. But He had, and has, a much bigger mission in mind… offering a hope that far exceeds their expectations… one which would fulfill all of the promises of Israel’s prophets… by extending God’s good reign to the ends of the earth.
 
Acts 1:6-8, “So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
 
The Good News of God’s reign is not just for one people, one culture, one nation… it is for all the earth to enjoy! All are invited to believe, to be loved, and to be inspired by this whole new vision of where our human story is headed.
 
The disciples were more concerned with their own corner of the world. And we are concerned about our own corner too, here in Gondola Point. And so is God. The Good News of the Ascension of Jesus Christ reminds us that Gondola Point is to be a real part of God’s good Kingdom. And we are His witnesses here… our lives display His Lordship today.
 
But to be clear, the hope of the Ascension is not about some of us being elevated over our neighbours… sitting by watching while others are crushed underneath Christ’s feet. Listen to what St. Paul says here!
 
Ephesians 1:21-23, the Father elevates Jesus “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
 
Jesus is lifted up, elevated above every name… all things are under His feet… including you and I. This is not about how we Christians can make our kingdom come, and our will be done… but God’s alone. Absolutely everyone and everything is now underneath Christ’s feet.
 
Again, this image may strike us today as disturbing, rather than as Good News, and a reason to have real hope. But that is because we keep forgetting what God’s Kingdom and God’s will actually looks like. Along with our non-Christian neighbours, we tend to keep imagining that God’s rule is basically oppressive, damaging… about keeping us from truly experiencing the “good life” we deeply desire.
 
But again, the Ascension reminds us that the One who has been both raised from the dead, and raised to the highest throne of heaven is none other than the One who gave up His life to save His beloved world! The One who has been given the ultimate authority in the universe… the One who will one day call us all to account, and sort out all of the mess we humans have made in every corner of creation… this is the same One who stretched out his hands in suffering, to be nailed to the cross in our place… dying to save, not just Israel… or any one people, or nation, but the world through the Father’s self-giving love, which the Scriptures have pointed us to all the way through.
 
Luke 24:44-48, “Then [Jesus] said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.”
 
The same Jesus who died to save us while we were still sinners… to bring us true forgiveness, and the freedom of God’s New Life… the same Jesus who still bears the scars of the cross even now, is the same One who reigns on high, and because He does, we can have real hope for our world  today.
 
Christ’s resurrection, His victory over the grave is the first sign of God’s intentions for the world we see around us. As dark and as devastating, and even as dead as things may seem at times, the very same power that was at work raising Jesus Christ to eternal life will also rescue and reconcile all things, sorting out His beloved creation in justice and love, putting everything back together again in its proper place… underneath the nail-pierced, peace-bringing feet of our Saviour King.
 
And as Christ’s people, here and now, our place is to be His witnesses… to live as those who are already existing are under His good reign: learning more about, and living out our faith… growing deeper and wider in God’s great love for all… and sharing the hope of His good Kingdom, both here in our little corner of the world, and beyond.
 
This is a tall task, but not one that we are expected to do all by ourselves. We’ll have more to say about this next week, as we celebrate Pentecost, but it’s a key part of the whole story of Scripture, and especially the Ascension: the same power of God that raised Jesus from the dead, and that will one day restore our broken world, has already been poured out on those of us who place our faith in Jesus… the power of God’s own Holy Spirit.
 
As Jesus the Risen Lord is lifted up to the Father’s right hand to reign, He sends the Holy Spirit to empower His people to live God’s way in the world.
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We hear this in Luke 24:49, where Jesus says, “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
 
And in Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
 
And right before our reading today from Ephesians, St. Paul says this in Ephesians 1:13-14, “In [Christ] you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.”
 
As I said, we’ll talk about the Holy Spirit more next week, but these passages remind us that the Ascension is certainly not the end of the story, but simply the beginning of a whole new movement… the power of God’s Holy Spirit at work in His people, as we share the hope of His Good Kingdom with our world.
 
So, may the Good News of the Ascension of Jesus Christ the Risen Lord to reign at the Father’s right hand, fill us with the hope that our Saviour King has no intention of abandoning this world He died to save… the hope that His justice, and mercy, and faithful love reach out to every corner of creation… and that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, and which has been poured out into the lives of His people today, will bring God’s broken world back together again in Christ, once and for all. Amen. 
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