Moderator's Advent message 2009

Carol Call

In preparation for the coming Advent and Christmas season, we're taking requests for favourite carols and hymns. There are sign-up sheets in both churches or you can list them here as Comments by clicking below.

So far we have:

• Joy to the World
• O Come All Ye Faithful
• Away in a Manger
• Handel's Messiah
• Silent Night
  

Regional Worship at North Ekfrid

It's already the coming up on the 5th Sunday of November; our rural regional network is worshipping together at North Ekfrid United Church (6110 Olde Drive, at Springfield) this Sunday the 29th at 10:30 a.m. Nursery is available for children up to 6-years old. Lunch is provided afterwards.

This means Appin United and Trinity United will be closed this Sunday morning. We'll be back in our respective places and times on Dec. 6 for White Gift Sunday at Appin and Pennies from Heaven will be received at both churches.

sermon excerpts: "Beginning and Ending of Discipleship" (Rev. 1: 4-8)

...The scripture verses give praise to God, recounting the glory and promise of Jesus, and putting humanity in its place as witnesses and recipients of divine power and might. The overarching theme is of the greatness of Christ, ruling over all and our part is to simply obey. This is the tradition and heritage of Christ the King.

It is a difficult translation for us to make in a democratic society where our leaders are elected by the populace, where merit and ability determines who governs, not family lineage or military power. We live in a society where church and state are separate and distinct – where one is considered strictly private and personal and the other most decidedly public. So we trip over the words and images of Christ the King because it comes across as elitist, classist, sexist and medievally-historic and therefore inapplicable.

But the fact remains that Christ continues, and completes, the line of kingship that began with Saul and David and Solomon. Not only is there a legacy and legitimacy to this image of Christ the King, there is value in the Saviour’s use of personal power and privilege to uplift the status of those on the outside, of sacrificing and serving others. ...

Now if we’re looking at metaphors and definitions of kingship, we should also examine the theme of our past few weeks: discipleship. We’ve discovered that being a disciple is not about magic and miracles, that we’d still be limited in what we can do when, and that in spite of our missteps and excuses, we have a message to share. But we have not discussed what a disciple is.

The word “disciple” comes from the Latin verb discere which is connected to discernment, to discipline and means “to learn”. So in essence, all anyone needs to be a disciple is a willingness to learn. That’s it, that’s all; a disciple is a learner. We admit that we all that we don’t know and commit to discovering more, about life, faith, Christ, God, the spirit…

Surely, we can do that much, can’t we? The message from Jesus, King or otherwise, is the timelessness of God’s presence, that even on the cusp of utter destruction, the holy calls us to worship, work, and learn in faith. I, for one, would like to find out what the world could be like if its leaders, kings or otherwise, all worked for a cause bigger and longer-lasting than their own reputations and legacies. That would be a revelation worth waiting for.

Harvest Brunch Harvest

Many thanks to the workers and supporters of Trinity United's Harvest Brunch on Sunday. Reports show 87 people were served a scrumptious menu of eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausage, hashbrowns, toast, muffins, and fruit salad. Such is the success of working together: feeding body and spirit of the community!

Visioning Updates

The respective Visioning Committees have been hard at work, at different times, over the past few months. Both have circulated questionnaires to the congregations and Appin presented its findings last month. Trinity has been compiling the received data and hopes to have a report put together soon.

As a broad, introductory overview, there have not been any startling discoveries; the responses have confirmed what was generally suspected. There are concerns about finances and attendance and the future, and a great number of suggestions and ideas which shows interest in what might be in our future.

One of the next steps would involve the Visioning Committees of both churches meeting together to share findings and explore common points of interest and cooperation. Stay tuned; progress is being made!

for Nov. 22 - Revelation 1: 4b-8

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.
‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

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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: "The Secret Life of Words"

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight O God our Strength and our Redeemer. Maybe you recognize that litany as a prayer before sermons uttered by preachers.

I had a mentor in Kingston when I was studying for ministry who confided in me that his body reacted very queasily every Sunday morning at the thought of climbing into the pulpit to share the sermon message. Not from performance anxiety but from the fear that what he would say was not actually from God, but his own distorted version of that vision.

...

Words are tricky. Language changes and adapts. The use of words shifts and slurs as new slang and jargon as well as cyber-speak with all of its acronyms and shorthanded terminology, spreads faster and farther than before.

In the call of the great prophet, Jeremiah, there is early assurance that our hero is exempt from such concerns. God literally put words in his mouth. What he speaks is not of his own accord but from a greater source and a higher power. He is but a boy when God commissioned him to a life of speaking out against the powers that be. He is one who would uproot, pull down, destroy and discard, calling to account the sins of the people.

...

Jeremiah is a prophet to the nations – not just to Judah in the south where he lived, but to Israel in the north, to Babylon, to Egypt. What might his message be to the nation of Canada, a confederacy beyond his wildest imagining, thousands of years after his ministry?

He was preaching a message of impending doom and disaster at the hands of enemy armies because the people had rejected God and worshipped other false gods and idols. The people had failed in maintaining their side of the agreement to live fairly, treating each other with respect and above all, recognizing the supremacy of God over any human enterprise.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Our present society has entrusted more in its own devices and schemes than in God’s providence and abundance. Success is attained at the expense of others, winning over losers and part of me wonders if the decline in mainline churches is akin to the Temple in Jerusalem being overrun.

Even before he was born, God had plans for Jeremiah. This raises all kinds of theological questions about predestination and freewill, why bother making choices and decisions if God has already decided these things for us? Or we wonder why do some people have a great plan and purpose laid out for them in life and others have to figure out what they will do?

AJ Jacobs once spent an entire year living all the laws, rules and regulations of the Bible. He soon discovered that he could not. One of the consoling pearls of wisdom that a Rabbi offered him was this truth: “The words of the Bible are eternal. The meaning evolves.” That’s the comfort and challenge both: God’s message is with us, we have to figure out what it means for us.

for Nov. 15 - Jeremiah 1: 4-10

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’
Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’
But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say, “I am only a boy”; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.’
Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’

* * *

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: "Here, There and Everywhere"

(Psalm 139; Matthew 28: 16-20)

In the psalm we learn of how God is everywhere, eternal and everpresent, there is no place we can go that we can escape. One interpretation of this truth is God as bogeyman – being everywhere, lurking nearby, watching everything. Kind of like Santa Claus who was tallying good and bad behaviours, my parents used this aspect of God to keep us kids in line. That even if they couldn’t catch us in a misdeed, God sees and would know. ...

The psalmist writes that even before our birth, God sees us. God is everywhere, can go everywhere. Technically, I should say that God is already anywhere that we might go: whether we are able to find and see the holy presence is a matter of choice, willingness and focus.

By contrast, we can only be in one place at one time, we can only be aware of so much. That is the folly of our being. Trying to find a meeting time that works for everyone on a church committee, is but one example. In the management of our time and resources, we have to make decisions and choices about where we spend our time and with whom. I should also express gratitude and encouragement for those who gather on Sundays for the spiritual nurture found in communal worship with family, friends and neighbours.

We can never be entirely certain what exactly Jesus had in mind when he gives the great commission, his last set of instructions to the disciples. It’s pretty clear that the word must spread, that the world needs to hear the story of Christ, and that we go to do so with the eternal accompaniment of Christ.

This good news cannot be restricted to one specific set of people to a specific time in a specific place. The story of love and discipleship, of resurrection and hope is a universal one that needs to find its existence and expression in all places. Just like the presence of God: in all places for all people.

The disciples had to resolve this difference for themselves, having an eternal, unlimited mission with limited resources. Just like our church. So we do our best to continue in the history and tradition of Christ, to carry that spirit wherever we go. Not to make everyone exactly like us, but to help others find their own expression of faith and witness. ...

When God looks at us, our entire being is revealed, nothing is hidden. The interaction the other way is not equal. We are at a decided disadvantage: we look to God and we only get a small glimpse of what we can experience of the infinite divine. We cannot grasp the full measure of God’s intent, purpose or perspective. We look to God and try to take in what is described as more than all the grains of sand.

... We do not have the benefit of being everywhere all the time for everyone. We have the assurance of God who experiences and understands what we go through, the abiding sense that we are not alone. Personally, it has become a comfort now, that thought of God being with us – ever present always watching. No matter where we go, or what happens, God is there.

Better Safe than Sorry

Once more, I'll be tending to things from home, nursing my daughter back to full strength. I'll be into the office later this afternoon for a while before lining up for my flu shot.

-Kenji

for Nov. 8 - Matthew 28: 16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

* * *
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.

And again ...

Home with my recovering daughter again - I should be back in the office tomorrow.

-Kenji

Working from Home

Due to my daughter's fever, I'm staying home with her and working from here. Hopefully, she'll be back to school soon, but if her friends' afflictions and absences are any indicator, we've got a couple more days like this...

I can be reached by email or on my cellphone and will get out about as much as I can when things calm down here (and when my own coughing and sniffling abates).

Be well,
Kenji

sermon excerpts: "Do You Believe in Magic?" (Exodus 7: 8-13; Acts 8: 9-25)

Now, any honest magician will tell you that the tricks are just that: tricks, illusions, misdirection and distraction. Their show is a disciplined routine of deceit to entertain and amuse in the best case, to defraud and humiliate in the worst. The smoke and mirrors act is an avenue to consider the possibility of living outside the laws of nature.

Aaron and Moses demonstrated power beyond this world in their meeting with Pharaoh. The miracle of their staff turning to a snake and overwhelming the other stick-snakes of Pharaoh’s magicians was not enough to convince someone who didn’t want to be convinced.

And that is the necessary ingredient of faith, being open to the divine message. It is not about changing the physical properties of other substances, but about changing one’s own spirit. It is a willingness to listen, consider, and adapt our behaviours and priorities.

Back to Simon Magus in Samaria, he almost got the message. He was attracted by the nature of what he was hearing, of Christ’s love, sacrifice and resurrection, of what all of that meant for him personally. He stayed close to Philip because of the signs and miracles that were performed.

I wonder if he really understood what was being asked of him, of the hard work of required of the Christian way, of the suffering he would experience at the hands of the persecutors, of true humbleness and service. His over-eager attempt to add a new trick to his bag exposed him and his motivations.

The magic attention grabbing tactics are self-serving and not for the greater good of the world. Of course, it shouldn’t surprise you when I say that magic is not the answer to the troubles of the church. But following the story in scripture, and the Stewards might curse me for saying this, but neither is money.

For Simon, money was the answer, but it turned out to be a symptom of the problem. Too often and too easily it is the substitute for the time, energy and effort needed for the work of faith. It is a long journey of hard work, slow progress, trust in one another, perseverance in hardship, and as Peter and John said, it is the rightness of one’s heart before God.

What must we do for our hearts to be right with God? A clear sense of ministry in our community, what will we do that makes this world better for those in need. What needs can we identify? How can we best respond?

I’ll leave us with these questions now, just like we don’t know what happened at the end of the story with Simon Magus, we don’t know the end of the story that we’re in now. With or without magic or money, all we have is the intent of our hearts.