Advent 4 A

Sermon for 19 December 2010

Nine Lessons and Carols

By Sharyn Hall

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we prepare for the celebration of Christmas by reading scripture and singing about the miraculous events surrounding the birth of Jesus. As part of this sermon, I will add another musical composition, which I believe appropriately heralds the birth of the Messiah. The music is a fanfare, which is a traditional way to announce the arrival of an important person, but this music has the title, ‘Fanfare for the Common Man.’ It was composed in 1942 by the American composer, Aaron Copland, to honour the cause of freedom for all people.

You may question why I believe this fanfare is suitable to honour the birth of Jesus. Jesus was an uncommon man, an extraordinary human being, the Son of God. In our Christmas celebrations we tend to emphasize the divine aspects of his unusual birth.

We remember the visit of the angel Gabriel to young Mary to announce to her that she will bear a male infant by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that child will be God’s Messiah. We sing about the appearance of angels in the sky over a lonely hill to announce to ordinary shepherds that a child born in Bethlehem will be the Saviour of the world. We marvel at the story of the strange Magi who follow a path of an unusual star because they believe it foretells the birth of a great king. We read again and again the wonderful stories of extraordinary events which surround the birth of Jesus, and we forget that Jesus was a human child, made of flesh and blood, fragile and vulnerable like millions of infants born before and since he came into the world.

We believe that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. It is a mystery, which belongs to God, and like many acts of God, we cannot comprehend it fully. God wanted Jesus to live a human life, an ordinary human life experienced by ordinary people. We know that Jesus was not born in a palace with the protection and comfort of wealth and power. He was born into a common, Hebrew family making the best of their circumstances, living with the turmoil of mass migration, the hardship of political oppression and the danger of racial prejudice. Jesus came into the world as a common male child; this was God’s plan. Only Mary his mother knew in her heart that the infant Jesus was an uncommon miracle.

Over the centuries, Christian belief in Jesus has emphasized his divinity, sometimes purposely diminishing his humanity. Doctrines and teaching in various branches of Christianity have developed in relation to his divine identity and mission. These interpretations of Jesus often have resulted in divisive arguments and fragmentation of the Christian faith, forgetting that all Christians are one body with Jesus in our shared humanity.

At about the same time that Aaron Copland was composing the ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, was preaching against Nazism in Germany, and urging his fellow citizens to find their Christian roots in the compassion of Jesus. In his writing, he states, “Christ was not essentially a teacher, a lawgiver, but a human being, a real human being like us…God did not become an idea, a principle, a program, a universally valid belief, or a law; God became human.” Bonhoeffer preached about the universality of humanity as God’s creation realized in the person of Jesus. He opposed the Nazi idea of a superhuman Arian race, which must be cleansed of all impure human strains, such as the blind, the deaf, the lame and the Jews, all people that Jesus welcomed with love and compassion.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and executed in 1945 for his resistance to Hitler. He was only thirty-five years old. Bonhoeffer was a common man, and yet his teaching and writings have influenced generations to see the humanity in Jesus, which calls us to use our own humanness to serve God’s love for all people. As Bonhoeffer says, Christ was not concerned with action as universal law, but whether my action now helps my neighbour to be a human being before God.

The ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ has appealed to people from many walks of life. It affirms the dignity of every human being. One of my favourite versions is an arrangement for organ and percussion instruments. It is performed every New Year’s Eve in St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. St. Batholomew’s is a huge Anglican church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which was threatened with closure because its congregation had dwindled. A few years ago, the congregation decided to become a parish for the people in the neighbourhood who needed a caring community. Today it is a thriving parish with programs for social needs, interfaith education and joyful hospitality. It is a Christian community, which looks outside itself to serve God’s people. Every year the congregation listens to the ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ and is reminded that they are members of God’s common humanity.

In this season of Christmas, many people are compassionate and generous to neighbours in their community. Poverty, hunger and injustice do not take a holiday, and sadly are most keenly experienced at times of seasonal joy. The birth of Jesus gives us hope in the face of hardship and sorrow in the world. The birth of Jesus reminds us that we too are made in God’s image with tremendous potential to carry on the mission of God’s Son. As a child of God, Jesus calls us to be humane and compassionate people, God’s people, not only in this Christmas season, but every ordinary day of our common lives. Amen.

Advent 3 A

Advent III

Sermon

Matthew 11: 2-11

By Sheila Plant

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our Strength and our Redeemer.

Today marks the midpoint of the Advent season and the sights and sounds of Christmas are all around us. In days gone by, this Sunday was known as “Stirring Up Sunday”-the Sunday when women everywhere would rush home after church to give the Christmas pudding a good stir, making sure that all the ingredients were well soaked in brandy or sherry. Once that was done, family preparations for Christmas could continue.

More importantly though, we light our 3^rd candle on the Advent wreath today—the candle of joy and the Joy of God. We are called to keep alive the vision that provides us with hope and to seek the Peace of God—that special peace that only God can give; that peace that comes when we turn and walk in the path that Jesus has shown us. The lighting of this candle highlights one of the realities of the gift of joy—that reality which relates to the fact that while it cannot be sought, the gift of joy can be given or received by us.

So, joy is not something we can seek, but it is something that can overcome us when we are working to keep the vision alive. As we walk this path, joy happens to us as we gain glimpses of what God is all about. We encounter situations where we see God’s promises coming true and suddenly we have this great gift of joy in our hearts.

Imagine if you will for a moment John the Baptist—languishing in jail. Herod is about to kill him—and undoubtedly, he already knows this although the particular circumstances of his death are still to be shaped by Herod’s wife and daughter. John is uncertain about whether he has completed his ministry or not, uncertain about whether or not Jesus is the Messiah about whom he has proclaimed. He sends his messengers from the prison to ask Jesus that all important question: “Are you the one who is come or should we wait for another?”

Can you imagine the feeling that overcame him when the disciples returned repeating the words of Jesus: “Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them. Blessed are they who take no offence to me.”

John must have been overwhelmed with joy when he heard that all he had yearned for as a child of Abraham was in fact happening. God was working a great work through Jesus, child of Mary. This was the kind of work that Isaiah spoke of in our Old Testament reading this morning.

Absolute joy! We should remember not to confuse joy with happiness. Happiness is something that our American friends pursue according to their constitution. Joy is not happiness or even contentment. Rather joy is overwhelming. It is what happens when we witness God at work—whether within our family, our church, our community or the wider world. We see the works of God being done and as we allow God to do his work through us, we are given the gift of joy.

The church I attended as a young child after arriving from England recognized White Gift Sunday. I remember proudly taking a tin of soup or a box of cereal wrapped in white tissue paper to the chancel steps. It wasn’t until much later that I learned the significance of White Gift Sunday. It was about doing the works of God, the work of caring and praying that joy may come and that the hand of God may be seen through those gifts we gave.

Although a specific Sunday may not be designated as White Gift Sunday, conditions in our society have deemed collecting gifts of food as a necessity—for distribution to a food bank. These collections and drives take place as often as necessary. Traditionally, we here at St. Luke’s have generously given to food drives for St. Matthew’s House. Since the summer, a dedicated group of volunteers have chosen to help in our Food for Life programme. We are reaching out to the less fortunate in our community to help them put food on the table. These volunteers not only give the gift of joy by doing God’s work and by caring about others, they themselves receive the gift of joy for the same reasons. Just ask them.

Joy is a wonderful thing and it can easily overtake us. It is not continuous , but it pops up whenever we see God at work—healing the sick, curing the lame, giving sight to the blind or proclaiming good news to the poor. It pops up when we do the work of God and we understand that God is actually do his work in many circumstances that surround us.

Everlasting joy, says Isaiah, comes on the day of Christ’s second coming:

“The ransom of the Lord shall come to Zion with singing and everlasting joy shall be upon their lands.”

There is a day coming—a day which we are called to prepare for—a day of eternal joy. It is a joy that we get a taste of in the here and now when we receive the gift of God at work and when we do the works of God. It is then that it becomes possible for others to have the joy of seeing him.

And so, on this Sunday of joy, as we light the 3^rd candle on our Advent wreath, we thank you O Lord for the excitement and delight we experience at this joyful time of year. Help us to share your joy with others so that they too will be filled with your Spirit.

Amen.

Advent 2 A - Repent?!

Advent 2 A 2010

Isaiah 11: 1-10

Matthew 3: 1-12

By Stuart Pike

I must admit that in all my 22 years of ministry, It has never seriously crossed my mind to begin a sermon by calling my listeners a “brood of vipers!”

I could be missing out on a great opportunity in preaching here, but somehow it just doesn’t seem to me to be the most tactful way of communicating my message.

Evidently, John the Baptist didn’t have the same seminary courses that I had. And yet, what was it that made his preaching so compelling? It appears that people were journeying from Jerusalem and all over Judea to come to see him

So what is really going on here, anyway? Most of us are already starting to get into the Christmas spirit. We’ve already had our Advent Carol Service. There is Christmas music starting to play on the radio, and certainly on the muzac at the shopping centres. The neighbours are already starting to outdo one another with their Christmas lights displays. Everyone is trying to get into the Christmas cheer and here we have this stern voice yelling antisocial things at us from the wilderness. Can’t someone just give the man a glass of eggnog or something? Just something to wash down the locusts and put him in a better frame of mind?

Doesn’t John know that there are only 19 more shopping days until Christmas? Isn’t Advent supposed to be about getting us into the cheery Christmas Spirit?

Well, the answer is basically, no. At least not in the popular way. John was born two thousand years before the phenomenal invention called tinsel! Advent, the first season of a new Church year is about preparing for Jesus’ coming, but not simply about his coming at Christmas, it’s about Jesus coming again at the end of time. And it’s about Jesus coming to each one of us personally in our hearts.

And so John the Baptist calls his listeners to repent. “Repentance” is not a word which is readily used these days. It might conjure up the image of some shabbily dressed guy wearing a sandwich board which might read “Repent, the end is nigh” or something similar. It might at the least make you think of a conservative and judgmental type of Christianity. We don’t want to preach repentance like that here, do we?

Well, I think that the word “repentance” has picked up a lot of negative baggage. Repentance isn’t about making yourself feel guilt and groveling in the dirt. The actual word, repentance means to turn around – to change direction. It isn’t just about feeling sorry and begging forgiveness, it’s about acting to change your direction. It’s about aligning your way to the way of God.

There are a few steps to repentance, and in fact, it is probably best to think of it as a cyclical process. It isn’t just about repenting once, and then you’re done. We should think of this as the way that we grow closer and closer to God. We could call it a Christian’s cycle of quality improvement!

The three steps of repentance are: seeing, assessing, and acting.

The people all knew that there was something missing in their lives, and that is why they trekked for miles along the dusty roads of Judea to see this prophet of whom they had heard so much. They’re wondering, is he the Messiah? And so they ask him so.

John tells them that there is someone more powerful than he who is coming after him and that John is not even worthy to carry his sandals. John the Baptist is telling his listeners to prepare to meet the most important person they would ever meet in their lives, and that is the Messiah.

So how do we prepare for seeing the Messiah?

Well, how do we normally prepare ourselves when we are going to meet someone important? Or if we are going an important event?

Well, even for an ordinary day, I start out in the morning by heading into the bathroom to check out what my face looks like in the mirror. After I get over the initial shock of what I see, I start to assess what needs to be done. I make sure there’s lots of light so that I can make a good assessment – no matter how painful that assessment may be. Then I start to go about the process of damage control! Time to wash the face, shave etc until I look respectable again.

So I will have done those three steps: seeing – looking at myself in the mirror; assessing – deciding just how bad it is, and acting – damage control. If I am preparing for an extra-special event or person, then I might have to get some expert help – like maybe arrange to get my hair cut in advance. All of this is a process of repentance for my face!

John the Baptist is asking people to prepare for the Messiah, however. His call is like shining a bright light on the people and holding up a mirror so that they can see what their lives are like, can assess them, and can act to change them so that they are in alignment with God’s way. John marked the action of repentance with baptism. The people returned to the Jordan river which their ancestors crossed to enter the promised land. Here, they were going back to the river, immersing themselves in it and then climbing back on its bank to find the promised land again. As John says, “The Kingdom of heaven has come near.” And Jesus, later says, “The Kingdom of heaven is among you.”

And that’s repentance. It’s not essentially about groveling, but it is about changing. And I believe it is something that we need to keep doing as we mature in our Christian faith. We shouldn’t just think that we’ve arrived and don’t need to change. Our faith is a journey along a path. We see, we assess, we act, and then do it over and over again.

And that’s why it is important for us, as a Church to truly experience the season of Advent as a time to prepare, to repent, that is to see ourselves, to assess how we’re doing in our faith, and to act to walk more closely in Jesus’ way, which leads us to our God.

So let’s hold off on that eggnog for now, please, and let’s use this season of Advent to prepare our hearts for Jesus’ coming. Take a serious look at yourself and at your life. What is missing in it at the spiritual level? What can you change to walk more closely in Jesus’ way? When we see the messiah, we do want to be ready. Amen.

New Beginnings

Advent 1 2010

What a wonderful time we had yesterday at the Christmas Market – selling, buying, eating, chatting and overall a great feeling of community spirit.

If we had added some live chickens and several donkeys, we might easily have been in the market place in Nazareth.

When Canon Stuart writes in the Newsletter that St. Luke’s is a busy parish full of interesting and committed people who reach out to one another and to the wider community, he’s right on the mark.

This year has seen new incentives such as the Advocacy information breakfasts and a second fresh food programme.

We have welcomed the community with musical evenings, bible study, book studies, and contemplative prayer.

We have welcomed visitors on Sundays and during the week, along with those who came to St Luke’s for baptisms, weddings and funerals.

Today we celebrate our achievements. We rejoice and thank God who makes it all happen, through each and every one of us.

Today we look back with satisfaction on a church year completed and we look ahead with hopes and dreams to a new one.

Advent marks the beginning of a new Christian year.

It is a time to pause and reflect on what has been and on what is to come.

It is a time full of promise as we await the birth of Jesus.

And it’s a time to hope and to dream.

It’s also a time of commercial bedlam when we get frantic and fractured even as we prepare to celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace

I recently read of a lady doing her Christmas shopping who got bumped into. As her packages spilled in every direction she said “I hate Christmas. It turns everything around in my life.” So it does and that’s what God intended it to do.

The mystery of the Incarnation is that God decided to join us here on planet earth. What’s more, he chose an unmarried teenager to be part of the plan.

He chose a stable as a maternity ward and was taken into exile as a baby to escape the mass murder plot of a deranged leader.

The miracle is that it all worked out as I imagine God knew it would.

However, it was a huge risk, and it seems to me that God showed us his vulnerability and his intense love for us by even considering it.

God has always demonstrated his love and his willingness to keep giving us second chances. From the earliest times he intended to free his people and he did this by using humans with their consent. He needed them to say yes of their own free will and if they did, he stayed with them as their guide.

That was how Abraham came to leave his country and journey to a new land where he would become the founding father of a chosen people. It was how Moses got the courage to return to Egypt and free the Israelites so that they could eventually return to their homeland. It was how the prophets got the tenacity to speak out as a force for change.

Now God has asked Mary and Mary has said yes. We cannot begin to know what the message from Gabriel meant to Mary but in her time and culture she would have to have been terrified. Yet she said yes. And that yes changed the world.

Throughout biblical history, God has used dreams or visions to speak to humans. Joseph was told in a dream to stay with Mary and protect her. The wise men were told in a dream to return home by another route rather than tell Herod what they had seen. The bible is full of accounts of dreams bearing messages from God.

Meister Eckhart, the 14^th C mystic recorded this strange dream

I dreamt that even though a man, I was pregnant and filled with nothingness, like a woman who is with child, and out of nothingness God was born.

That dream changed his whole perspective of who God was and where God was

He says that he began to understand the indwelling of God in all humanity and all creation. God no longer far off but living within.

Martin Luther King had a different kind of dream – a dream of a better future for Afro - Americans. It was what some would call a pipe dream because it seemed unattainable. It took a while but that dream came to fruition.

Most of us stifle our pipe dreams.

We get stuck thinking that nothing will ever change for the better.

All of us have some reluctance to grow, to change, to open the mind, to respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

When God visits us it might be in the REM dream of sleep or it might be in the pipe dream of alertness. It isn’t a requirement to have a sky full of angels singing or a blinding light on a road to Damascus.

God calling us to service frequently happens during the ordinary times of our lives. Times when we are really busy doing Very Important Things (in our own minds). Times when we mentally ask God to come back later. We may be too busy to hear his voice at all.

Now we have a second chance coming during Advent.

Advent is a time of waiting and listening. It is a time of stepping back even for a short time, from the fray which is associated with the worldly celebration and remembering the real reason for our joy.

Today God is asking you and me to be pregnant – pregnant with hopes and dreams for a better future for humanity and for our planet. If we find the Christ within and if we remember that with God all things are possible, then we can embrace our new church year at St. Luke’s with vibrancy and love. We can continue to reach out to one another and to the community and we can give birth to new ideas and new ways of looking at the world around us.

We have the words of the prophet Micah to encourage us

Here is Eugene Peterson’s translation from The Message:

God has already made it plain how to live, what to do, and what he is looking for in men and women.

It’s quite simple

Do what is fair and just to your neighbour,

be compassionate and loyal in your love

and don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriously.

Amen.

Proper 33 C - Go Fish

Sermon for 14 November 2010

Stewardship Sunday

Luke 5: 1-11

By Sharyn Hall

On January 24, 1986, two fishermen were walking along the shore beside the Sea of Galilee in Israel when they discovered the remains of an old fishing boat. There had been a drought in the area and the water level of the sea was very low. The Sea of Galilee is really an inland lake, also called Lake Geneserat by the local people. People have fished on this body of water for thousands of years, before the time of Jesus to the present day. These two modern-day fishermen wondered about the age of this wooden relic, so they contacted the archeological authorities. By the scientific technique of carbon dating, it was determined that the boat was built within the time span of forty years before and after the birth of Jesus. The archeological community was excited because never before had the complete hull of an ancient vessel been uncovered.

The boat hull is about 27 feet long, 7.5 feet wide and 4 feet deep. The boat is approximately the length of two pews placed end to end and the width of two pews placed side by side. If we were to push together the front two pews from both sides of the centre aisle, we would have the approximate size of this ancient fishing boat.

In addition to its archeological importance, the boat has religious significance for both Jews and Christians because of the numerous times that boats and fishermen are important in the scriptures. For example, boats of this type are mentioned almost fifty times in the gospels of the New Testament.

In our gospel story today, Jesus was standing on the shore of this same body of water surrounded by crowds who wanted to hear him preach. When he saw two boats on the shore, he got into one of the boats and asked the fisherman to put out a little into the lake. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When Jesus had finished speaking, he said to the fisherman, whose name was Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon replied, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”

Simon must have sensed something special about this holy man Jesus, but he could not have anticipated what would happen when he let down his nets again into the deep water. The catch of fish was so huge that the nets began to break and the boats began to sink. Since we have an idea of the size of the boats in our story, we might think the catch was not very large, but to these fishermen, who had caught nothing all night, and then were swamped with fish, the catch was miraculous.

Simon’s reaction was to be frightened of the power of Jesus, but Jesus said simply, “Do not be afraid.” Then he said that curious phrase, “from now on you will be catching people”. In the older translation of the Greek scripture, the phrase is, “fishers of men.” The image of catching people or fishing for men was an old one in the Hebrew scriptures, which meant gathering people together. Jesus was telling these fishermen that their new vocation would be to gather people together into a new relationship with God.

What can we learn from this gospel story? We are ordinary people like these fishermen and we too are called by Jesus to offer ourselves to his mission to bring people to God. Whatever our skills or talents we can contribute to the well-being of God’s people. That miraculous catch of fish would have provided food for many people in the village. Whatever we have, we can offer to God’s purpose as Simon willingly gave Jesus the use of his boat. Sometimes like these fishermen we are discouraged when our efforts seem futile, but we too can be inspired by the teaching of Jesus to have faith that with God all things are possible. It may mean that we need to venture into deep water, to risk failure, and to try again, perhaps in a different way. Jesus offers us renewed hope in our own abilities to participate in his mission for the world.

For centuries, an image of the Christian church has been a boat, a ship with its sails to the wind. The central space in a church building where the congregation gathers is called a nave, a term from the Latin word for a ship. Sometimes the boat sails smoothly over calm waters. At other times, the boat feels empty and is tossed about in stormy weather. We are all members of the crew, all fishers for people. We all have something to contribute to the care of the boat, and in turn, the boat offers us a way to draw closer to God. As disciples of Christ, we have been called to keep our boat afloat, to endure the storms, and to seek the winds of God. With God’s help, amazing things can happen.

Thanks be to God. Amen.