for Mar. 1 – Genesis 9: 8-17

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’

God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’

God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.’

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What feelings, questions, thoughts and prompts to personal action arise from this scripture?
What about hymn suggestions or ideas for Children's Time? Share them as Comments below or in an email, and help shape Sunday's worship service.

sermon excerpts: "Good to Be Here" (Mark 9: 2-9)

It is good for us to be here. Peter said it on top that mountain long ago; I say the same thing from this pulpit now. It is good for us to be here.
...
Peter, James and John are astounded by their trip to the mountaintop with Jesus. Still puzzling over the words of Jesus that spoke of death and sacrifice, they suddenly see that the great pioneers of faith, Moses representing the Law and Elijah representing the Prophets, in their fullest glory, are there too. They spoke with him; maybe, consulting with Jesus about the days ahead in Jerusalem.
...
The point is not so much the fact that the biggest names are returning to earth from the heavenly dimension to endorse Jesus in his quest. Here we have a spectral and supernatural reminder that we are not alone. We build our present and future upon the work and legacy of the past. ...

But back to transfiguration: There’s a lot that is remarkable and unbelievable. This even proves what? That Jesus is God’s son, that we should listen to him. I think that was unnecessary. He’s already proven himself wise and compassionate, healing and performing miracles. What the transfiguration reveals is that he, too, has a connection to a bigger story, a broader tradition.

Even Jesus couldn’t do it alone. With his spiritual connection to Moses and Elijah, with his community connection to the disciples, with his eternal connection to believers and today’s people of faith, we are part of the story.

We are transfigured when we express and share our faith, our doubts and our hopes. Working to sustain and nurture our spirits, giving words to the meaning of life, our understanding of where God is, how to live as morally responsible people, how to make a difference in the world. How can we reach out and make the world a better place? How do we bring light to darkness, offer hope in the face of evil?

It is good for us to be here, whether it’s Mount Taber or Mount Hermon, Appin or Glencoe. It is good to be here together, part of a bigger picture, receiving a communal message and a shared experience, but it is not enough for us to stay here. We still need to come down from the mountain, leave Sunday morning, and engage the ordinary and everyday tasks and duties as agents of transfiguration: bringing light, radiance and love.

for Feb. 22: Mark 9. 2-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.

And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

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What feelings, questions, thoughts and prompts to personal action arise from this scripture?
What about hymn suggestions or ideas for Children's Time? Share them as Comments below or in an email, and help shape Sunday's worship service.

Sick Day

I'm working from home today, as best I can. Kai is still feeling unwell and I'm trying to get him into the doctor.

So I won't be in Appin for Office Hours today, but you can reach me by email or call the cellphone. Thankfully (?), I'll still be able to go to Presbytery tonight!

sermon excerpts: "Healthy Choices" (2 Kings 5: 1-14, Mark 1: 40-45)

Much of life is balancing expectations with reality. In the 2 Kings reading, Naaman expected great and marvelous, miraculous things from this mysterious healer, not the simple direction to go have a bath. He wanted a spectacle and dramatic display of power. All he had to do is show up at the river? He didn’t have to undertake some mythic quest and slay some dragons? That’s too easy, it’s so easy that it’s not even worth doing.

We look for the hard way of doing things. After all, I’ve said to myself many times that it must be the right thing to do if it’s the hard thing to do. Maybe it is as simple as listening to what we’re told. In the end it is a choice that we have to make.

We know of the placebo effect in drug testing, ... [proving] the mind is a powerful persuader of our reality. Wednesday night’s viewing of the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know?” overwhelmed our brains with this message. What we choose to believe and visualize can change the events and future of this world.

This theme of choice was heard in the gospel lesson. The leper presents a choice to Jesus: that he could heal him or not. Jesus chose to heal the leper. But the leper then chose to disobey the warning to keep quiet. So Jesus’ stay in town had to be cut short and he fled to the countryside where there would be more room for people to gather.

But isn’t that what we want? So many people gathered in church that there isn’t room? What about parking? What if someone sits in our seat? What if we grow so big that we don’t know who everyone is? ...

We really and truly only want growth on our terms: according to expectations, well-managed and tightly controlled. But when we live in the Spirit, as people of God, what we want is not what we get. Not even Jesus got what he wanted. He preferred a low-key ministry free from miracles and publicity so that the real message of changing your life, choosing to live for service in love could be the focus, not the razzledazzle of casting out demons, curing the incurable and bending the forces of nature to his will.

All because the leper couldn’t keep his mouth shut. We call it evangelizing, spreading the good news, telling our story. And maybe Jesus had no right to tell the leper that he couldn’t speak of the greatest moment of his life, but at the heart of these lessons is choice. Our own free will to decide: do we wash simply in the Jordan, or make things harder on ourselves thinking we know better? Do we keep silent and to ourselves, or do we dare to approach others and ask plainly for what we need?

Whether we choose wisely or not, is not the worry. We have the ability in our life to make a decision before it gets made for us. Let us never waste those opportunities. Such is the gift of our existence and the call of our faith.

for Feb. 15 - Mark 1.40-45

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’

Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’

But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

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What feelings, questions, thoughts and prompts to personal action arise from this scripture?
What about hymn suggestions or ideas for Children's Time? Share them as Comments below or in an email, and help shape Sunday's worship service.

sermon excerpts: "A Promise of Strength"

The following story actually took place in a midwestern American home: one night, the channel on the baby monitor got switched so the receiver wasn’t picking up noises from the baby’s room. This event wasn’t discovered until one of the parents, happened to walk past the stairs and heard the baby screaming and wailing. They ran up to get her, to comfort and console her. The older brother comes toddling in, awakened by the commotion, and sweetly joins in the comfort huddle. He gently strokes her hair and calmly repeats, “It’s OK, you just had some hotus. It’s OK, it was only hotus.”

The father, rather perplexed, asked, “What is hotus?”

To which he replied, very matter-of-factly, “it’s when you’re alone and crying and no one comes to pick you up.”

That is hotus. And while it’s amazingly heartbreaking to think that a toddler has the capacity to put such a concept into his vocabulary, it puts the Israelite experience of exile into perspective. Isaiah speaks to the people in a difficult time of conquest, exile and uncertainty. The Israelite faithful have felt abandoned while the Babylonians ran roughshod over their lands and homes and separated their families.

They are crying and alone and no one is there to pick them up. But what the Israelite people and to figure out, and what our young theologian has yet to learn, is that a life of faith does not grant immunity or escape from the terrors and trials of the world. Life is big, and beyond us, and that can be frightening to think of all the forces of nature, politics and economy sweeping along with, or without us.

Even as Isaiah offers poetic words of reminder that God’s power is above all of ours, that the middling efforts of humanity will fade and vanish, we find also the promise of strength – to overcome, persist and endure. We will find renewal and energy and hope, we will not faint nor grow weary, mounted as if on eagle’s wings.

In baptism, in our faith, we commit our life to a wider family, recognizing the work of God’s hand in those that are around us: family, friends, community. These bonds transcend the distances of geography and history, that as members of God's family, we join the story of this congregation and it becomes a part of us as much as we become a part of it.

But we belong to something bigger and greater than even life – God’s care and promise for us that justice will be done, the powerless will grow strong and that we are known and cherished. Hotus will be vanquished, our understanding and sense that we are alone and forgotten will be proven wrong. We are not alone. We live in God’s world. Thanks be to God.

for Feb. 8 - Isaiah 40: 21-31

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God’? Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

Even youths will faint and be weary,and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

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What feelings, questions, thoughts and prompts to personal action arise from this scripture?
What about hymn suggestions or ideas for Children's Time? Share them as Comments below or in an email, and help shape Sunday's worship service.

sermon excerpts: "Call to Change"

This past week, I served as a chaplain for the first ever CanLead Forum, a national conference for people involved and interested in youth ministry. Aiden Enns (a keynote speaker) is one of the editors of Geez Magazine, an impassioned critic of our consumer society, an advocate for change and an honest voice of conscience. ... He longs for the world to change, knowing that it can only happen person-by-person.

It would seem that his lectures would fly directly in the face of the other keynote speaker, Dr. Andrew Root, whose theory that youth ministry focus should be on the relationship between people and not using that relationship to seek to change others. Andy asserted that we should not, and cannot, push youth to believe what we want them to believe, to use our connection with them as a means to influence. Rather, we journey alongside as a place-sharer – listening, experiencing, seeing the other person as who they really are.

Jesus of Nazareth happens to be travelling through Galilee and calls others to join him. And just like that, they do. So it’s not like he’s abusing his relationship with them, they’d just barely met. The disciples would find that he’s not asking them to do things they don’t want to, rather he invites them to choose for themselves. But he doesn’t manipulate them towards a desired outcome.

What compels someone to just drop everything and go? Maybe these four men were desperate for a change, sick and tired of the stink of fish and calloused hands. Maybe James and John were fighting with their Dad that day. But would they all throw away a life’s work of training, knowledge and capital on the mystical invitation to fish for people?

Yet, on their reckless abandonment, these people would form the community of care and support, of service and outreach that would become the church. This is the same church that cannot seem to make a decision without forming a committee to consider it, writing reports to describe it, and vetting it through Presbytery. It would be tempting to say that the wave of change that Christ represented as slowed to a trickle in our bureaucratic busy-making.

Yet firebrand Aiden Enns spoke very sensitively, and sensibly, of the difference between quick conversion and long conversion. A quick conversion is a split-second, overnight, in-the-moment decision usually facilitated by a dramatic event or charismatic person. ...

On the other hand, a long conversion is a more gradual, longer term, small-steps shift in behaviour or understanding that is more personally oriented. ... What is most important to remember is the fact that both approaches to change are equally valid and valuable.

So we don’t need to feel bad that things are moving as quickly as we’d like in our lives, in our families, in our churches. It is what it is and God is working in and through many ways and means. What both the CanLead conference keynote speakers ended saying was that we already are who have to be.

God sees us as we are, by the lakeshore in a boat, on a tractor blowing out snow, in a minivan chauffering kids, and accepts that we are good enough as we are to be disciples. Recognizing that truth and living that way is the next step. Come, for all of us are fishing for people, for purpose, for truth and faith.