Could I have worked this into the sermon? Should I?

Lyrics are here

Be Not Afraid: A New World is Coming -- an Advent sermon

The Scripture readings for this week are:

• Isaiah 65:17-23
• Revelation 21:1-4 (Responsive Reading)
• Mark 13:24-37

Sung response (VU #23 Joy Shall Come Even to the Wilderness)

When I was on my internship I was scheduled to preach the last Sunday of each month. And so I preached the first Sunday of Advent. That week I phoned the lay reader to tell her the readings for Sunday. And she said “they better not be depressing”. What do you think she would have said after reading them?

Actually on that Sunday I did point out that we had the less depressing part of Mark 13 (feel free to check it out). But many people wonder at these readings for the First of Advent. Why do we begin the lead up to Christmas with passages about the end of the world? It isn't joyful is it?

Well no. But then have you watched the news recently?

The original hearers of Mark's Gospel lived in a time when the world was either being shattered or had already been shattered. Mark writes either during or right after the Roman-Jewish war which included that destruction of Jerusalem (one of many times in history that the streets of that city so many call Holy ran with the blood of the slaughtered) and the siege –and eventual mass suicide– at Masada. For residents of Judea/Palestine this was the end of the world. Earlier in this chapter Mark refers to the desolating sacrilege being set up in the Temple. It has happened. For Christians Mark is writing just after the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Nero who, it is said, had Christians burned alive as torches for his garden parties. There must have been many saying that the time was nigh, that the Messiah would come imminently.

And where are we today? Are we in a time of mass disruption and chaos? Are we living in a period of mass dislocation, social upheaval and injustice. Is it reasonable to say that the time is nigh? On one of the Just for Laughs specials Drew Carey talks about reading Revelation and going through it as a checklist: got it got it need it got it. Twice this year Harold Camping has announced that the end is nigh—with a date and a time even! And truly, can we say we don't understand why people would say that the end is nigh?

What world do we find this Advent and Christmas season? Well this week's news included OCCUPY protesters being evicted from their camps, protesters being shot in Egypt, the news that child poverty rates continue to go up in Alberta, and the news that a Attawapiskat, a Canadian community, has been living in an official state of emergency for 2 weeks because people are living in tents (and other very sub-standard housing) and neither the Federal nor the Provincial government have acted yet. The rest of the year has included continuing unrest and violence in Syria and a civil war in Libya and economic turmoil (if not outright collapse) in Greece and Italy. I'll be honest, I had to stop looking for examples to use here – there were way too many.

In a world where the richest few have more than the poorest half have (in the US it is the top 400 who have more cumulatively than the bottom 156 million), in a world where violence seems to be the default so much of the time, in a world where human rights are routinely trampled; can we truly sing and believe...
Sung Response

And so what do we do? How do we respond to a world that is not what it should or could be? Where is there hope this Advent?

Well what have other people done when they have realized that the world around them did not live up to their vision? Well the last chapters of Isaiah were written after the people had returned from exile. The exiles had returned with excitement. Now the Temple would be restored, now the nation would return to its former glory. But of course life is rarely that easy is it. The rebuilding of Jerusalem simply wasn't happening. What to do?

The passage we just heard is full of hope and promise isn't it? It speaks of God's reign coming in full force. It tells of the new heaven and new earth where all is made right. But that is not the whole story. A chapter earlier we read:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people. (Isaiah 64:1-9)

This Advent do we really want the heavens torn open, is that what it will take to change the world ? And will that create the way to the place where we can sing and believe?
Sung Response

I have a question for you. What is our Advent Hope? What do we hope for this year as Christmas approaches?

In some ways it is the same as every other year. We hope that the world will be changed. Earlier I raised the question of why we start Advent every year with passages that talk about the Second Coming, or the End of Days, or the coming of the Reign of God. Every year clergy ask themselves how to deal with these most un-Christmassy passages. We start there because they are the hope we share in Advent. We share the hope that God will, somehow, probably in ways we don't really expect, break into the world again this year. We share the hope that God coming into our lives in a real and experiential way will move the world toward a better place. We hope that a new world is being born in our midst.

That new world is what our Isaiah passage today spoke about. That new world is how our Scripture story ends. This morning we read a piece from the final chapters of Revelation. Before we get to this vision we have seen a whole lot of death and destruction. But in the end, says John of Patmos, God will have the victory. God said through Isaiah “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth” but John had a vision of it coming to reality.

And what confidence do we have that this is really happening? It is great to have a vision, to have a promise, to have hope. But it is even better to see some sign that our hope is not in vain, that the promise is being kept, that the vision is coming into focus. Where are the signs that a new world is being born?

The movement that began in North Africa as the Arab Spring and then emerged in North America as the OCCUPY movement is one sign of hope for me. In Tunisia, in Cairo, in New York people saw a world that was destructive to human rights and dignity and chose to take a stand. They saw the promise of a different way of being in community together and refused to be moved until they were heard, until change was made. It is my belief that the OCCUPY movement may well be the first labour pains of a new world being born. Of course there is a long way (and a lot of work) to go between the first contraction and the actual birth. But the Arab Spring and the OCCUPY movement (which I believe has made more of an impact than it is given credit for) are signs of hope that the new world is coming.

IN one of my favourite Advent songs we find this line “the world is full of darkness, again there is no room/ the symbols of existence are stable cross and tomb”. It is easy to see the signs that the world is falling to pieces around us. It would be easy to lose hope that things can get better. It is tempting to call on God to shatter the heavens with her might and make the mountains tremble with his power. Is it possible that the world is only changed when God breaks in to it?

Well here is the Advent secret. God is breaking into the world. Again. God is coming to be among us. And that means that the Reign of God is coming closer to reality. The symbols of existence are stable – the birth of hope, cross – the world's attempt to crush the promise, and tomb – God's final word that vanquishes death itself. Christ has come, and Christ will come again. The darkness will be lifted, even if only one spark of light at a time. Deserts will burst into flower, enemies will learn to be friends, and all God's children will live in justice and peace. Deep in my heart, I do believe, God SHALL overcome some day. And so, as a people of hope, we truly can sing and believe...
Sung Response

We Are Not Alone...

Many years ago (Grade 10 or 11) in Youth Group we were talking about faith statements.  As a part of the discussion we were asked what we remembered from things such as the 10 Commandments, the Apostle's Creed and the UCCan New Creed.  From what I remember, it is good we were not being graded on what we remembered.

However, I know what I remebered most clearly.  It was that the line "We are not alone" was at the beginning and the end of the UCCan Creed.  I think that tells me something.

As a teen (and well into my twenties) I often felt alone.  PArt of it was a feeling of not really fitting in. Part of it was, in retrospect, a feeling of not being comfortable in my own skin.  But I often felt alone {remember that feeling alone/isolated often has nothing to do with how many people are around}.

Now at one point in my teens I thought this was a good thing.  In Grade 9 Language Arts we used Simon & Garfunkel's I am a Rock as one of our poetry pieces.  ANd I, who was going through the worst year of my school-bullying life, decided that it would make a good model for life--try to be the rock, the island.  It was safer.  I'd be happier.  But looking back I see that I was trying to convince myself.  And that I was not really successful.

And the point of all this?  Well we are drawn to faith because there is something in our faith that speaks to our deepest hopes or fears or anxieties or wounds (or all of the above).  25 years later I think that "we are not alone" stuck with me because it is what I deeply needed to hear.  And I think I still need to hear it.  For me, the reminder of the God who is always with us "in life, in death, in life beyond death" is not just pop theology.  It is a theological at-one-ment statement.

So maybe the key to faith is finding what we most need to hear at that point in our lives.  Ask what our deepest fear/anxiety/woundedness/empty space is and then ask how we find GOd responding.  It isn't as simple and esy as claiming that there is one answer that works for all people, one way we are made at one with God.  But to me it is more realistic and a whole lot less arrogant.

Or maybe I am chasing the wind....

Happy Halloween!

COmmunal Grieving

We see them all over the place.  Crosses stuck in the ground by the roadside, flowers taped to a lightpost, piles of stuffed animals intermixed with votive candles.  Ways to mark places that people have been killed in traffic accidents.

And whenever I see them I have to ask myself what they say about how we as a society deal with grief.

They are, after all, a fairly new phenomenon.  How did we as a society deal with grief before?

SOme would suggest that the movement away from a strong faith presence in people's lives, a presence that gave us more tools to deal with death and dying, has left us less able to deal with these tragic events.  But I think that is, at best, only partly true.

I think that another, larger, part is that we as a society simply have, to a large part, our skills and knowledge at dealing with death in general.  In our societal attempt (often subconscious) to deny the reality of death we have robbed ourselves of the ability to talk about grief and death openly.  ANd so it comes out in these ways where once it would have been limited to rituals such as worship services or wakes and the memorial site tied to a cemetery plot.  BUt in a society that denies death, who wants to go to a cemetery?

Last weekend 4 young men in this community lost their lives in a traffic accident.  And now the community is trying to find the best way to honour their memory, name and express their grief, and try to find a way forward.  I am sure that the church has a role to play, somehow.  WE have the tools that help find meaning when life makes no sense (maybe not right away but over time). 

And in the end, the path to healing and meaning and light aren't found in a cross or flowers by the roadside.

But first we have to give ourselves permission to grieve publicly and heathily,.  Which of course means we have to get back to acknowledging openly and realistically the reality that death happens.  Death happens sometimes after a long life, and sometimes suddenly and too young.  Life is not fair, at least not all of the time.  When we can do these things we will be healthier for it.

Book 11 of 2011 -- The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World

I heard Tex speak at a UCCan event in 2002.  I remember being, on the whole, underwhelmed.  What he was saying about worship planning was meaningless in the place where I was then serving.  ANd beyond that, even for what did have value his solution was totally unreasonable and unworkable [as I remember it was along the lines of "blended worship doesn't really exist, traditional worship doesn't work for younger generations, so the only answer is to start a second service"  in a town of 3000 with an average attendance at Sunday worship of 40?].

However, this book was in an area that I have been wanting to look at and so I picked it up.  (well that and over the intervening 9 years I had forgotten my reaction to hearing him speak)

It had some valid points.  But on the whole I did not find it compelling.  At the end of the book he describes what he calls a worship service.  But to be honest I read a description of a production/performance -- not a worship service.

Worship is, and always has, at least partly spectacle.  And there is a need for those of us in the church to explore what role the electronic culture of TV, Rock music, Dance, Social Media etc can play in our public worship.  But Sample seems to go more into embracing it wholeheartedly than I am comfortable with.

Waste Reduction Letter to the Editor

So this is National Waste Reduction Week!

Great, but I have to ask if we are doing all we can to promote actual waste reduction. In particular I am wondering about these massive garbage cans we were all issued last year.

We spent over half of August in another community this summer. They also revised their garbage collection this past year. And they did it better. Residents their had a chance to choose how big a garbage can they wanted: the size we have, half that size, and a quarter of the full one. And if you chose a smaller can then you paid less for garbage collection.

And yet here we were all given a garbage can that many people find way bigger than they need. We have four children. In a normal week our can is less than half full. Even if our 1 year old was in disposable diapers instead of cloth we would not come close to filling that massive can. We would jump at the idea to have a smaller can, or to do the other thing I noted done elsewhere (arguably for cost savings as much as waste reduction)--garbage collection every second week.

I applaud this community for moving to curbside recycling. I celebrate that we can put yard waste at the curb for pick up (although it would make more sense to have bins for that instead of all those plastic bags) instead of mixing it in with the garbage. I just wonder if we, as a community, could do more to push waste reduction. Great big garbage cans don't encourage waste reduction, but smaller ones definitely would. Especially if we got to pay less if we produced less waste.

Gord Waldie

40 Years is Too Long

Yesterday a new premier was elected.   She is the 4th PC premier of Alberta since 1971.  That makes 40 years of uninterrupted majority government (at times virtually 1 party government since the opposition was so small).  A friend of mine once commented that Alberta elections reminded him of elections on the former USSR -- anybody was free to run as long as it was understood that the party would win.

This is not unusual in Alberta.  In the 106 years since it became a province Alberta has had 4 dynastic governments (1905-1921-Liberals, 1921-1935-United Farmers of Alberta, 1935-1971-Social Credit, 1971-?????-Progressive Conservative).  And, IMHO, this is not a healthy form of government.

It doesn't matter what party it is.  It doesn't matter if I vote for them or not.  40 years of government by one party is not healthy for that party or for the jurisdiction they govern.  SOme will point out that the PCs have held the dynasty by reworking themselves from time to time as the context changed (the most disastrous in the minds of many (but not all, and obviously not a majority) being in the 1990's when a strong fiscal conservatism took hold.

But after 40 years it is not easy to form a new government.  So when will the change come?  And who might be waiting in the wings to take the reins?

10 years ago...

As we were driving home from Presbytery tonight it struck me that 10 years ago this afternoon I was heading home from my first Presbytery meeting after ordination and settlement.

It had been a good meeting.  In that Presbytery the fall meeting is always the last weekend of September, starting with registration on Thursday night and concluding with worship with the host congregation on Sunday morning (actually the 2001 meeting concluded then but we were encouraged to reassemble 2 hours later for a covenanting service in the next Pastoral Charge).  For theme time that weekend we were talking about First NAtion's issues. 

But the REAL reason to remember that meeting had little to do with business or theme.

Thursday evening as I was wainting to follow my billet home and after the time for registration had ended a lay member of Presbytery came running in yelling "DOn't Leave! I'm here!".  While she waited for her ride to her billet we introduced oursleves and chatted a bit.  Apparently she then spent the next two days arranging to be close to me (and finding out what she could about me).  But I was a little oblivious.  Then at the feast Saturday night we connected.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Still, how many people can say that the first words they ever heard their partner say were "Don't leave! I'm here!"?  (Yes I know she wasn't talking to me, but to the registration people whe were getting ready to leave)

Making an Impact

Apparently we like to shape the yards of the places we live.

The first spring and summer I was in my Settlement charge I planted a hedge along the manse sidewalk (which was just getting going nicely by the time we left),  I expanded the vegetable patch from 8x8 to 16x24, and I dug out a bunch of overgrown/rangy/half-dead stuff in the front flowerbeds.  Over the next few years we planted several shrubs and trees (some we bought, some trees one of the trustees brought in from the lake).  We also tried to get the front beds going with perenniels but they never seemed to take hold -- poor soil.  In the time we were there we also had a double pull clothesline put in (60 feet long for a total 120 feet of hanging space, we could hang lots of stuff at once).  The yard was not the same when we left as it was when I arrived.

Fast forward to last year.  When we arrived there were a number of things that we knew needed to be done.  SOme were inside (like replace the crimped water line leading to the dishwasher, install a shower curtain rod, hang a mirror in the bathroom).  SOme were external.  Immediately after we arrived we did some desperately needed fence repairs (the whole fence needs to be redone, a project that will be done in stages starting next spring),  Later in the summer I started turning over sod to make a vegetable garden.  This spring I finished that project and put 10 yards of new dirt in the garden before planting it.  We also added dirt to the side flowerbed.  Then we built our new sidewalk and big front flowerbeds.  This meant getting some shrubs to serve as anchors for those beds and starting to put in perreniels (the front beds will largely be in perreniels), a job that finished for this year last week with some perenniels purchased on sale and some fall bulbs.  Over the summer we have also planted 4 trees.  And we have created a whole bunch of ideas for what else could be done in the yard.

Of course we will never see these efforts come to maturity.  Just like in the manse, we plant things for those who come after to enjoy.  There is a message about faith and life in there I think.

But apparently we like to shape (or re-shape) the yards of the places we live.