Looking Ahead to April 2, 2025 -- Lent 5C

(Communion Table at Riverview United in Atikokan)

This is the first Sunday of April so we will be gathering at the table of faith and celebrating Communion.

Also at the beginning of each month we remind folk of our Local Outreach Fund, which we use to support our neighbours here in Grande Prairie.

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Isaiah 43:1-2, 16-19
• Lamentations 3:22-26 
• Revelation 21:1-5

The Sermon title is What New Thing?

Early Thoughts: Many years ago I learned a Sondheim song from Merrily We Roll Along. The opening lines are:

Something is stirring Shifting ground

It's just begun

Edges are blurring All around

And yesterday is done

Those words came to my mind this morning as I re-read the Isaiah 43, particularly verses 18 and 19. As God does a new thing in our midst, as God reforms, renews, and re-creates the world the ground is indeed being shifted, what was clear becomes blurry, the old passes away.

That simultaneously fills some of us with hope and with anxiety. We look forward to the renewal and re-creation, the new heaven and the new earth. We also admit that change and transformation is unsettling and uncomfortable -- even brings a fear with it.

How do we lean into the hope and promise? What calms our uneasy, anxious, even fearful hearts as the new thing God is doing comes to be?

The beginning of Isaiah 43 and the verses from Lamentations 3 that we are reading this week help us with the anxiety, discomfort, and fear. The same God that is doing a new thig, renewing and re-creating the world around us promises to be there, promises that we need not be overwhelmed, reminds us that we are God's beloved. God meets us in our anxiety. God sees our fearful, uneasy hearts. God knows that change is unsettling. And God promises to walk us through the flood, to accompany us into the new thing, to help us move from the old that is passing away into the new that is being born, as this song (# 90 in More Voices) reminds us

We are deep in the season of Lent. The journey to Jerusalem is almost over. Soon there will be triumph and conflict, tragedy and surprise, death and life. The revolution that began at Christmas will come to a head. Where will the victory lie? Will the old ways that often lead away from life and abundance win or will a new way emerge, a new way of existing, a new way of being who God formed us to be? 

Easter tells us the answer. Resurrection tells us the answer. The victory is in life. The victory is in shattering the powers that hold back abundant life and blessing for all. The victory brings a new heaven and a new earth, for the old ones have passed away.

The old might fight back. The old WILL fight back. We see it all the time, those who benefit from the old ways, the old things, the old understandings want to stop the new thing from winning. But God tells us where the victory will be eventually. Spoiler alert: it is not the old ways. We are told to not even remember or consider them.

The world is shifting. Sometimes it feels like the ground is shifting beneath us. It is hard to see clearly what is happening. But still we live in HOPE, still we trust in the PROMISE. God is doing what God often does -- a New Thing. God is renewing, reforming, re-creating the world around us. And God promises to be with us, to support us as we live into a new world. In Christ God makes everything new (#115 in More Voices).

That is Good News.

--Gord

Looking Ahead to March 30, 2025 -- 4th Sunday in Lent

The Scripture Reading this week is Luke 15:11-32

The Sermon title is Get Found!

Early Thoughts: When have you been lost? When have you had to look for something or someone that was lost? When, perhaps, have you lost your sense of self?

Many of us know this story as "the Prodigal Son". Certainly that is how I learned it and how I have referred to it many times over the years. I am not convinced that is the best way to title it. In fact I think this is the story of the lost son, or even better the story of the lost sons. It is not a story about a wild rebellious child who squanders their inheritance (the term prodigal seems to want to cast a moral judgement on the younger son), or at least not only about that. Given that the two stories we find in Luke 15:1-10 have similar beginnings but are clearly about a lost sheep and a lost coin it seems that this is a story about losing and finding -- not rebellion and riotous living (though that is part of being lost as we may find).

More importantly, all three stories are about being found and the celebration that comes with being found.

So who is lost? Who gets found? Who does the finding? And what does this parable tell us about the Reign of God?

Source

To begin, let us look at the beginning of the story: "There was a man who had two sons...". The earlier stories in the chapter now prompt us to wonder what is going to happen to the sons. What is the man going to lose? How will he search for that which is lost? After all that is exactly what happens with the sheep and the coin and we are starting to see a pattern. This is a story about a family unit (or at least part of it -- has mom died? are there sisters?)

So there are these sons. One, the elder, is portrayed as dutiful and the other, we are told, seems a bit restless, wanting to get out and make a life for himself. The restless younger son asks his father for "the share of the wealth that will belong to me" and heads out to make a life. It does not go well. At first life is grand but restless youth does not always make for careful planning and things start to go south. The vagaries of life lead to poverty and bare subsistence. The son is lost. Lost to the father and maybe lost to himself.

Then we are told that he comes to his senses (the King James says "came to himself") and realizes that he would be better off as a slave/servant in his father's house than he is right now. There at least he would have enough to eat. He resolves to go and plead for mercy. The finding, it seems has begun. He has begun to find himself again. It is not clear he likes what he has found.

The son returns home but does not get the reception he expects. Dad [long ago I read a suggestion that dad has been anxiously looking down the road every day since the son left, hoping against hope that he would see a familiar shape on the horizon, I like that image] looks out and sees his son, his beloved child, returning. Dad runs out with no worries about decorum and embraces his child. Before the confession and the pleading can even begin dad is kissing him and, I think, weeping with joy. The wayward son makes his confession but dad seems to ignore it. There are more important things to worry about! It is time for a party! The lost has been found, has come home. Wonderful!

The story could end there and make perfect sense. Indeed when I think back to hearing it as a child I am sure it ended there. But Jesus continues. After all, there is another son.

Enter the eldest, dutiful, faithful son. Is he excited to find out that there is a party because his younger brother has returned? Nope. He is resentful. He feels that dad is being unfair. Where is his party? I suggest the eldest son is now lost.

Dad remains dad. Dad challenges the eldest son to see things differently. Dad tries to help the elder son find his way back to the family. We are not told if this is successful, if the resentment is indeed overcome.

Poor dad, in this story he has, to a degree, lost both his sons and it is not sure if he has got both of them back.

So what does this tell us about the Reign of God? Traditionally it tells us that God is the one who keeps searching, who is overjoyed when the lost becomes found, when the wayward comes home. What else might it say?

Maybe it reminds us that we can never be so lost that we will not be welcomed back in, that we have the chance to come to ourselves and find who we really are.

Maybe it reminds us to not be resentful when grace is offered to others, and maybe to recognize that we could be gracious as well.

Maybe it reminds us to find ourselves, to reflect, to come to our senses so.

What else does this well-known story say to you?

--Gord

Looking Ahead to March 23, 2025 -- Lent 3C

The Scripture Readings this week are: 

• Isaiah 55:1-9
• Luke 13:6-9

The Sermon title is Eat! Grow! Be Fruitful!

Early Thoughts: What would help you grow? Are those things readily available? What would life look like if what we needed to grow and be fruitful was indeed readily and freely available?

This week gives us an interesting combination of Scripture readings. In Luke we have the short little story about a tree that has thus far been unproductive and so the owner wants to get rid of it. Why let it waste space and resources? But the caretaker, the gardener, calls for grace, realizing that with proper care things can change. I wonder where we might see ourselves in that story. When have we been the tree, the gardener, the owner?

Paired with that we have Isaiah 55, where the listener is invited into God's abundant life. An abundance where we can get basics at no price. An abundance where we are questioned as to why we spend our energy/resources for things that do not actually satisfy us. An abundance based on reveling in the presence and promise of God. Is that the world in which we live today?

It is my belief and understanding that in the Reign of God we are all invited to eat and drink deeply of those things that feed and satisfy our bodies and souls. It is my belief that God wants all of us to grow strong so that we would be fruitful (I also believe that there are many ways we can be fruitful, many ways we can bear good fruit). It is my belief that God wants us to care for each other to allow and encourage growth --- and God does not want us to fall into the trap of seeing something as a lost cause, a waste of resources, good only to be cut down and discarded.

How do we live as if those things are true?
--Gord

Looking Ahead to March 16, 2025 -- 2nd Sunday in Lent

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Genesis 15:1-6
• Psalm 27

The Sermon title is Future? Trust? Hope?

Early Thoughts: Someone has made you a promise. But then a lot of time has passed and there is no sign that the promise will come true. What do you do?

If you are Abraham you ask the person who first made the promise what is happening (and you start to make a back-up plan).

Source

When we first meet Abraham (Abram) in Genesis 12 he is childless (in the late verses of Chapter 11 we are told that his wife Sarah (Sarai) is barren) and yet he is told that God will make of him a great nation, and that in him all the families of the earth will be blessed. Now to be the source of a great nation one sort of needs progeny, preferably male progeny but here we are several stories later and still no progeny. It appear Abraham may be getting a little anxious for he and Sarah are no longer young. He calls out to God who reaffirms the promise, adding to it the promise that Abraham's descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Thins seems to comfort Abraham (for now). Still the wait for progeny will take many years and include another attempt by Abraham and Sarah to create a back-up plan (the birth of Ishmael with the slave Hagar). Delayed gratification is the lot of Abraham and Sarah but the story relates that they still remain faithful to the promise, they trust in the God who first made the promise, they still live in hope for the promised child -- though they also doubt at times.

WE are all people waiting on a promise. As followers of Christ we live in the promise that the old world has been defeated and the new world, the reign of God "on earth as it is in heaven" both has replaced it and is going to become fully evident in the fullness of time.  I don't know about you but there are days when it looks like that promise is a LOOOONG way from being fulfilled. It is easy to doubt that it will happen. It is easy to lose hope -- particularly when it seems that many powerful forces (the ones who supposedly were defeated in the cross and empty tomb) are actively fighting against the growth of the Kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven".

What do we do? How do we respond as people of the promise? When we feel that we/people we love/things we hold dear are under attack, when the promise itself is being attacked what do we do?

Source

I think Psalm 27 might be a good place to start. In this song David (who is traditionally listed as its writer) both sings about his trust and and confidence in God and calls out to God for help and comfort. As people of faith our trust and hope lie in God. As people of faith that is where we turn for consolation and strength in times of trouble.

It is tempting to think that we have to step in. And it may well be that God is calling us to step in, somehow. What we have to be wary of is to start to think that we know the way to make the promise come true, to make back-up plans and stop trusting in the promise-maker. When Abraham and Sarah made back-up plans (either as in this week's passage or in the Hagar/Ishmael story line) God reminded them that the promise was the promise and it would come out as promised. Our plans may or may not match God's plans for the fulfillment of the promise.

We live as inheritors of a promise. In some ways it is still the promise made to Abraham, that all nations would be blessed through his family, because Christianity is one of the Abrahamic faiths. WE are part of the family of Abraham. To that promise is added, or maybe refined through, the promise of Jesus that the Kingdom of God has come near. We live in the promise of the Reign of God that is both here among us and yet to grow to full bloom. We live in the promise that in the cross and the empty tomb the powers of evil and injustice have been defeated and a new world has emerged victorious.

At the same time the powers of evil and injustice still seem pretty lively for having been defeated. Some days we seem to be moving away from the promised victory of the new heaven and the new earth, the Peaceable Kingdom envisioned by Isaiah, the time when "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" feels like a reality rather than merely words in a prayer. It would be easy to lose hope while we wait for the promise to be fulfilled. Delayed gratification is a great theory (and a necessity for us to learn) but sometimes it really doesn't feel good.

So remember this, while we wait patiently (or less patiently), God is still at work. God is still on the side of the promise. God remains faithful, even when God's people doubt or lose hope. There is a promise and it will be fulfilled.

Hopefully soon. Some of us are tired of waiting. Some of us are worried what damage the powers of evil and injustice might do in their death throes.
--Gord